missiondeterminant | [Open Post]

[ She'd held Alice through Markus's speech, reassuring her that they'd be well on their way to Canada by the time the protest began. They were safe here in the abandoned church, she'd said. Luther made it, she'd said. They just had a little longer to go, and to make it easier, Alice should nap. The girl didn't need the rest, Kara knew now, but her programming made this suggestion into one Alice thought she should follow. Scary, how well Alice was designed, that even she could believe she was human. Scary, and to their benefit all this time. Did the deviants here recognize her as one of them? Did Markus, when he came over and apologized to them?

It sure won't matter if Kara never sees her again.

They got separated in the commotion, and despite her screaming Alice's name and trying desperately to get back into the crumbled church, Kara is carried outside in the wave of fleeing androids.

The fear would choke her if she needed air to breathe. As it is, she's wide eyed, consciously holding her breath as if it could make any difference at all. She's so absorbed in thinking of where Alice could be, hoping desperately that she's alive, that she almost misses that whisper. Once it registers, she stares in the direction of the church for just a few seconds longer before turning to him. ]

I need to find Alice. [ She's just as quiet as him, though it's shaky with stress and simulated tears. The humans are hunting them all, and if she dies, who will take care of Alice? ] She's-- we were in the church together. I don't know where she is.

[He hadn't even realized it was Kara he'd ended up with, and he briefly wonders if she recognizes him, but that's not all that important right now. But knowing it's Kara explains immediately who Alice is, and leads him to respond with--]

We'll find her.

[He doesn't feel as confident as he sounds, but projecting calm is one of the things he was designed to do. Besides, what good would it be for either of them to mention--and he could give exact percentages--the chances of all the other possible outcomes in this situation?

Suddenly the sound of voices comes filtering through down the alley, the flashlights of the soldiers sweeping the area brushing far too close to their hiding place. Connor freezes in place, ducking his head a little and relying on his dark clothing to blend in, and hopefully the soldiers will just continue moving.]

[ Connor hides, and Kara plays dead, slumping against the wall and letting her head and arms hang loose until the soldiers pass. It's only as she lies still that she remembers Connor, the chase he gave when he found her in the abandoned house. She had expected him to follow her across the busy roadway. Surely a police android has the specs and programming to do that and more. But he'd let her go, and she still doesn't know if the decision was his or the officer he'd been assigned to.

Where is that man now, she wonders as the soldiers' footsteps grow quieter. Dead? Did Connor kill him? Someone else? He's a deviant now, so she's not in any danger.

But Alice is. When the soldiers are gone, she gets up and faces Connor. ]

She might still be in the church.

[ Kara waits only a moment before she starts in that direction. ]

[...Where is she going? She's going to get herself killed; running back to the church right now would be suicide with all the soldiers running around, and if Alice is there then hopefully she was hiding and would be safe. But rushing back in there would just attract attention and probably get Kara killed, so Connor reaches out in an instant to grab her arm and stop her.]

If she's at the church, drawing attention back to her while there are still soldiers around won't help.

[He says it quietly again, in case any of said soldiers might still be close enough to hear. But despite his own words, Connor is not the type to sit in one place and wait for things to be safe, and he knows that he's probably not going to convince Kara to just wait and hope anyway. So, after a moment, he adds--]

We'll have to be careful. We should circle around and approach from a different angle.

[Since most of the androids were probably driven in their direction, away from the way the soldiers had come in, if they circle around they might be able to avoid detection and approach the church.]

[ Kara isn't thrilled to be stopped, to say the least. If not for the deep concern guiding her, she might very well be hostile with Connor. As it is, she feels a confusing mixture of both -- but it's always Alice that gets her through the moments like this. Alice. She has to find Alice. She hss to be alive to do that, and getting Alice caught is the opposite of what she wants. ]

Right.

[ She visibly calms down, enough to refocus and think more rationally. She has a gun, but she'd rather not have to use it. That wouldn't end well for them, two androids versus all those human soldiers with their weapons. ]

Before we go, promise me-- promise me that if something happens to me, you'll find her and keep her safe. [ It's the worst case scenario, and she hates considering it, but-- ] Please.

[Okay, good, he'd half expected a fight about it; he lets go of her arm and is about to scope out which way would be best, and then she says that and he stops instantly, just staring at her a moment. Why him? Even temporarily he would be the worst for this, and surely Alice doesn't like him and wouldn't trust him, for very good reason.

But he isn't about to refuse, even if Connor isn't sure if he'll actually be able to do what's asked of him. But then again, he always accomplishes his mission, right?

...Maybe if he redefines his mission constantly, but that's a detail he doesn't care to consider for too long. So he carefully smooths out his expression, locking eyes with Kara and nodding.]

I'll find her and keep her safe.

[Even if he does that by passing her off to someone like Markus who can doubtlessly do a better job than him. Provided Markus is even still alive.

Connor considers trying to reach out to him mentally, but he's still too afraid to open the communication, and he wonders for a moment if Kara might be too; has she tried to reach Alice and gotten no response, or has she been too scared to even try?

But he shoves that thought aside for now, taking the lead and cautiously moving to the end of the alley so he can peek out. He sees some flashlights in the distance, but they have a clear route across the road to another alley if they go now.]

Ready?

[ The fact that she asked him that at all is an indicator of how desperate she is. Kara knows, without a doubt, that Alice is her family, her daughter. That she loves this child like a human loves their own, maybe more because of the circumstances that brought them together. She would die for Alice in a heartbeat, but not without a fight. Alice trusts her, and Kara will do everything in her power not to let her down.

(It's the fear, by the way. That's why she hasn't reached out mentally for Alice.)

Knowing he's built for things like this, Kara is comfortable (for a given value of comfortable in this situation) following Connor. She sees their opening too, and nods when he answers.

Then they're off, crossing the street quickly and quietly. The relief of having come this far doesn't last long. There's the reflection of a flashlight beam in a storefront window not far from them, but it doesn't come closer. The soldiers don't seem to be looking this way.

She could ask Connor to please hurry, but she doesn't want to waste time herself. He's aware of the danger, right? So she says nothing, ready to follow as soon as he starts moving. ]

[He's glad she seems willing to let him take the lead on this, because it is indeed what he's built for; calculating odds, choosing the right actions to take, and focusing on his mission objective is not just natural but calming. It helps that Kara is clearly attentive and quick on the uptake, and he doesn't have to worry about her making unnecessary noise or otherwise causing problems.

He feels a jolt of nerves when the flashlight illuminates the window nearby, but he also quickly concludes it was just a random sweep and no one is really paying attention or had noticed them. They made it into the next alley and Connor looks up, finding the fire escape.

He glances at Kara and then back at the fire escape, leading the way up the structure until they reach the roof. There are only two helicopters, as far as he can tell, and neither is nearby so they're pretty safe to travel by rooftop for now, at least as long as Kara can make the jumps.

...Can she make the jumps? Surely she can, if the other models designed for mundane tasks can manage to do so.]

There's the church.

[It's still a few blocks away, of course, but visible with their vantage point. He can't see anyone entering or leaving it, which is equal parts good and bad; good in that there's no soldier activity, bad in that it doesn't look like there's deviant activity either.

He glances back at Kara to make sure she's ready and still on task, before taking off at a run across the roof in order to gather the momentum to jump. It's... Honestly a lot more frightening now that he's deviant, but there'a also a thrill that certainly wasn't there before, and he rolls on the impact before coming back up on his feet and turning to make sure Kara can follow.]

[ She keeps following. The sight of the church is almost enough to make her start running, but her rational mind -- her programming, her base code, does she even really have a mind? -- keeps her focused on doing this as safely as possible.

It's... not something she's done before. Kara was designed for housework and babysitting, but she's certainly stronger than a human. More athletic too, enough to cross a busy freeway with a child in tow, and to fight off armed soldiers in the midst of the Jericho raid. There's a moment where she doubts this will work, but then she looks at the church and narrows her eyes in determination. Like hell is she giving up just because she's a robot maid. She's free to decide who she wants to be, and she's going to rescue her daughter.

Kara watches Connor make the jump, and when he lands safely, she mimics his running start and his trajectory. She's not as graceful on landing -- she manages to roll but ends up flat on her back for her trouble -- but she did it. As she stands, there's an amazed little smile on her face. She did it.

Looking at Connor, she nods firmly. ] I'm fine. Let's keep going.

[ She'll be a little better with every jump, but the exhilaration of freedom, of flying through the air from roof to roof, doesn't fade. ]

Edited (always typos) 2018-07-06 12:57 (UTC)

[He watches with some trepidation as she backs up to attempt the jump, ready to try to intervene if she doesn't make it all the way, but she lands and the look on her face makes him feel a sense of triumph for her. He imagines Hank making some comment about empathy and suddenly misses his friend a lot, but he shoves that thought--and the more positive empathetic one for Kara--aside for now. They need to focus.

He leads the way across several more rooftops, noting Kara's improvement, and it's a nice moments in the midst of everything else. He makes a mental note to himself to do this again sometime later when things calm down--if they ever do--because he thinks it might actually be fun, which is sort of a weird thing to realize.

And they've made it across to the other side of the church, which leads Connor to look for another fire escape down. It takes one more roof to find a building that has a suitable one, but then he leads the way back down to the ground.

The good news is that he doesn't see any soldiers, so they're probably in the clear for the moment. The bad news is that if there are no soldiers here, that's because they didn't see any reason to remain.

He really hopes that isn't because everyone in the church is dead.]

I think it's clear.

[Their path to the church, he means, and he tries to make it sound like a good thing instead of a potentially terrible one as he ignores an emotion that he thinks is dread.]

[ Kara, meanwhile, is deeply familiar with dread. Walking through Zlatko's basement, freeing the androids he toyed with, thirium pounding through her body with every second that passed while she'd still been searching for Alice -- to say nothing of all that came before and after. Fear has driven her to make a lot of choices she regrets, but it has also moved her to action in the first place. Fear for someone else's life -- empathy -- set her free from the constraints of her programming.

(She doesn't remember the day she was "born" and how she'd been like this from the very beginning, and that's probably for the best. The dread that sat cold in her mind as she went dormant when put in a box to be sold... It's better to worry about Alice now, and to feel like she can actually make a difference if she tries.)

So she feels dread now too, but thinks nothing of it. The better part of the past few days was spent denying Alice's true nature, after all. This? It's easy as pie.

Barely sparing Connor a glance, she walks into the church, now big and silent and in pieces. It's the silence that bothers her, really upsets her. If she hadn't removed her LED, it'd blink red in the dim lighting. ]

Can you-- can you scan for people? Can you tell if anyone's alive?

Not like this.

[He could scan for heat signatures, for objects that break up the established pattern of their surroundings, for faces that come up in his databases. But the rubble of the church is too chaotic for his scanners to be able to determine anything from, and they're going to have to search for survivors by hand.

He really hopes they won't find anyone; that everyone somehow escaped, and so the church is just destroyed but empty and that's the reason for the silence. But he knows that's logically unlikely, and it's confirmed a moment later as he spots the first casualty.

It's an android he doesn't know--no surprise, he barely knows anyone--shot by the soldiers and still spilling thirium onto the floor even though their LED is dark. Connor stares down at them a moment before pulling himself out of the mess of emotions swirling around in his head, trying to refocus and stepping carefully around the body.]

Where was Alice when you saw her last?

[He addresses Kara quietly, but his voice still seems too loud in the somber place.]

[ Staring at the mess of rubble and debris in fromt of them, Kara isn't sure she wants to find Alice here or not -- especially not when Connor finds a victim of the raid. Guilt fills her mind, mixing with the relief she feels at realizing it isn't Alice. She thinks that guilt is strange, hot and cold simultaneously. It makes her want to stay put and run away, laugh and cry, scream and stay quiet. ]

Uh-- [ It takes her a second to refocus her racing thoughts on the matter at hand. ] By the front pews. She got up to look at the altar. She only took a few steps when--

[ When the humans attacked.

She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling useless here; the best she can do is clean this place up. That's what she was built for. That, and taking care of children, and right now, it's all too likely she failed. ]

I shouldn't have let her go alone. [ Shouldn't have let her go at all. ]

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