Observer

The horizon is merely a visual boundary between sky and earth, a ghostly edge that retreats faster the more desperately you try to reach it. It was this exact edge, strewn with bodies and cluttered with the wreckage of human destinies, that Richard was trying to grasp. Whatever had been happening to people lately, the logic behind the endless string of suicides eluded his understanding. Of course, there were occasional flashes of lethal domestic violence and loud shootouts in dark alleys—everything was clear there. But these voluntary departures into oblivion remained a blank canvas on the dark tapestry of the criminal world. Richard flipped the edge of the sheet back over the body, which had not yet grown completely cold. Lately, he had simply stopped looking for meaning where there appeared to be absolutely none to begin with. Throughout the entire past week, he had silently continued to do his job, stepping over puddles of blood with the same indifference as he did the trash on the sidewalk. At the sight of a human's remains on that very sidewalk, his processor spun up out of habit, activating every available sensor and scanner. His LED blinked a steady yellow, processing data on a death that, once again, lacked a coherent cause. Clearing his cache of redundant deliberations, Richard briefly perceived the real world without the static in his head. The presence of the "specter" following on the heels of death was something he only detected in his memory now. The fact that the stranger hadn't come down with a fever after last week's icy deluge clearly testified to an endurance that any human would envy. She appeared every other day, or sometimes even every single day, materializing on the periphery of practically every suicide case, as if an invisible tracker were constantly beeping in her pocket. It was highly probable she was utilizing an illicit device to intercept the police radio frequency—that would be the only logical explanation for her awareness. Squatting near the twisted, broken body on the reddish-brown cobblestones, Richard looked around. He rose slowly, ignoring the piercing, slightly bloodshot glare of his partner. The crowd of onlookers cordoned off by the tape was quite dense, making it difficult to peer through and scan every individual's identity. Behind the wall of passersby huddled together to gawk at a rare spectacle in the middle of a busy street, he failed to spot the transparent umbrella either. She likely wasn't here. And the absence of the "suicide fan" somehow resonated within his system with a strange, dissonant feeling of misalignment. "This is not a suicide," he delivered the findings with certainty—the very information his sleep-deprived colleague so desperately did not want to hear. "The vector of the impact and the total lack of skid marks rule out an accident." Richard stepped toward the edge of the curb, pointing down at the blank stretch of asphalt where the black scoring of tire tracks should have been stamped from sudden braking. A couple of meters out from the corpse, the surface was clean; consequently, no one had even intended to decelerate. His partner, leaning his shoulder against a brick wall and lazily biting the filter of a cigarette, merely rolled his eyes in profound misery. Gavin plucked the butt from his mouth and sliced a venomous glare at the android who, with just a few words, had just tacked on what he considered an entirely redundant workload. He had vastly different plans for a Friday evening, and the body splayed across the pavement broadcast only one simple truth to the world: I don't know how to cross a street. "Hey, toaster, did you even look at the cameras?" Gavin jerked his chin sharply toward the nearest utility pole. "This moron practically lunged into the traffic in a non-designated area. What kind of a fucking murder is this?" The detective spat viciously at his feet, barely missing the boot of a nearby patrol officer. Standing beside him, Tina let out a short, rough chuckle, even as the blue-gray smoke from his cigarette drifted directly into her face, invading her non-smoking lungs and triggering a brief coughing fit. She waved her hand demonstratively in front of her nose, trying to disperse the thick cloud, but the pungent stench of the cheap tobacco had already woven itself into her uniform. "Fine, let's call it natural selection instead of suicide," Tina remarked with total indifference, hooking her thumbs comfortably into her wide police belt. "One less scatterbrain in Detroit." Richard ignored the sarcasm. While the humans exercised their wits, his internal physics engine was already rendering a three-dimensional model of the impact trajectory—an angle far too calculated for a tragic mishap. Jonathan may have been jaywalking, but on the surveillance footage Richard was currently looping through his memory at ten-times-decelerated speed, the sharp, frantic jerks of the victim's head were perfectly visible. "Scatterbrains" don't scan their surroundings like that; they drift along the current of their own oblivion. And if one intended to commit suicide, there were countless far more definitive methods available, without the volatile risk of ending up in a wheelchair instead of a coffin. The android turned back to the crowd, harboring a faint algorithmic expectation that the stranger might simply be concealing herself behind the mass of shoulders, but he found only washed-out faces and the glassy lenses of smartphones. If she wasn't here, it meant this scenario didn't qualify for her usual "collection." In fact, it was her very absence that had initially triggered his thesis: this incident did not belong on the roster of self-inflicted departures.

***

He proved to be right. A more thorough investigation yielded exhaustive information. The Mustang had been rented for cash using forged documents. At the rental agency, they provided a description of the woman who had booked the vehicle the day prior—a tactical choice the android deemed exceptionally shortsighted. However, judging by the pitch of the driver’s seat and the telemetry of the force applied to the pedal, she was not the one behind the wheel at the moment of impact. Richard tracked down the driver who had fled the scene even faster than his own algorithms predicted. Higher mathematics wasn't required here; putting two and two together proved simpler than cracking a basic lock. Mr. Robertson possessed a hefty life insurance policy and a devastatingly unfaithful wife. "Irony at its finest," Richard commented dryly, snapping the case file shut right under Gavin's disgruntled nose. "The 'botched jaywalking' blueprint belonged to her lover, but the execution failed them both." "You always gotta see the irony in everything, don't you?" the detective grumbled, snatching his windbreaker. He was thrilled to vanish from the precinct early on a Friday, so in terms of gratitude, the android received nothing more than a gruff grunt instead of the customary insults. Mrs. Robertson was booked for conspiracy, while her executable accomplice pulled a significantly longer sentence for first-degree murder. Richard adjusted his hair, registering a fleeting spark of satisfaction from a closed case. Logic had triumphed, the guilty were quarantined, but his memory banks still conjured up that silhouette with the transparent umbrella. The entire investigation had dissolved in four hours, three of which were consumed entirely by bureaucracy. Richard silently wished the lovebirds immense devotion and the patience to wait for one another, though they wouldn't find themselves in the same embrace again until they were well into retirement age. The cutting-edge detective, a stranger to fatigue, left the building later than anyone else. Just as on previous nights, the heavy doors sealed shut behind his back close to midnight. Twilight had long since drowned the streets, yielding to the neon signs of bars that lured passersby into their stifling, intoxicating clutches. Justice had officially shifted into the hands of the night shift, and the parking lot before the precinct was nearly barren. The android fished a fob from his pocket, and at its electronic summons, a massive, solitary black SUV chirped back with a brief double-signal. Richard approached the vehicle, his LED pivoting to a brief yellow for a fraction of a second, casting its reflection onto the tinted glass. He swept a sharp glance around the perimeter, but the nighttime city offered nothing in return save for the low hum of distant sirens. Pure paranoia, Richard rationalized, humanizing his own diagnostics. It was becoming an increasingly frequent calculation—the sensation that someone was monitoring him from the shadows. His partner's habits remained beautifully static, and his implications were louder than any vulgar tirade. Gavin had abandoned his own steel steed to the custody of the one who was perpetually sober and had drifted toward the nearest pub to seek answers at the bottom of a glass. Knowing full well the android held the operational right to refuse him, the detective never hesitated to burden him with new roles: part-time personal chauffeur, part-time courier tasked with dragging his half-dead carcass to his apartment threshold. Richard frequently consigned his partner to a long, walk-off-a-pier journey in his internal monologue regarding these idiotic errands, but he invariably climbed into the black SUV and followed the scent. He never had to hunt for long—Gavin never bothered to mask his smartphone's GPS coordinates, whether out of sheer sloppiness or a subconscious, latent trust that the "toaster" would pull through and retrieve him regardless. The door shut with a muffled thud, severing the silence of the Central Department's lot. Settling into the driver's seat of the Land Cruiser, the android mapped out the optimal trajectory in a millisecond and turned the ignition. Nearly three hundred horsepower answered with a deep, guttural growl beneath the hood, and the powerful headlamps sliced through the dense, heavy blue of the night. Detective Reed was marinating himself in alcohol a mere four blocks from the precinct—a distance Richard could navigate with his sensory arrays entirely offline. The SUV, morphing in that instant into a natural extension of the android's intricate systems, rolled smoothly out into the dark. Richard smoothly spun the steering wheel, pulling out of the parking lot. The tires hummed against the dry asphalt, crushing small bits of debris. He activated the vehicle’s interface, bringing up a city map on the display with a pulsing red dot just a few minutes' drive away. Jimmy’s Bar, as usual—a seedy dive where police cruisers flashed just as often as blood splattered from the broken faces of the regulars. The android quickly checked the fuel gauge and brake pads. He was about to embark on yet another mission to salvage what was left of human dignity, currently wrapped in a crumpled windbreaker. He braked at the exit to let a patrol car pass, his fingers resting affectionately on the steering wheel as he read the engine's faint vibration. In this symbiosis of metal and microchips, he felt far more at home than he ever did among humans. The darkness of the cabin was illuminated by the navigation grid, painting Jimmy’s Bar in a stark crimson. His destination was a mere three-minute drive away—a silent window of time in which Richard managed to loop through every possible outcome for the night, from new investigations to Gavin’s latest attempt to prove his fists were tougher than titanium alloy. Every time Gavin drank himself into the right state, he systematically went looking for a fight. He would deliberately provoke his partner—a combat-spec machine ten times stronger, faster, and more precise than any human. Reed was practically begging for a blow, hoping Richard would lose control and strike back, turning his internal mental torture into tangible physical pain. But the android kept a tight grip on his code. He ignored the shoves to his shoulder and the hands clutching his lapels, patiently waiting for the storm inside the alcohol-soaked body to pass, leaving behind nothing but bitter tears, despair, and the stench of stale booze. Exactly what Gavin wanted to punish himself for so furiously was something Richard hadn’t understood right away, even though the answer sat right on the surface, dusted over by the ash of a two-year mourning period. Her death was on his hands alone—or so he believed. The android hadn't protected his partner, who had trusted him, and no amount of rationalization could wash that stain from his system. No matter how much his logical algorithms insisted he objectively couldn't have changed a thing, Richard didn't believe them. Gavin didn't believe them either. Every single day of the past two years, the detective had blamed him, furious that the "plastic cop" hadn't turned out to be all-powerful—as if Richard himself hadn't desperately wished to be in that fatal second. The memories, heavy and aching, pulled him in a completely different direction—away from logic, away from duty, and away from unwritten promises. A system notification popped up in the corner of his field of vision as the GPS flagged a route deviation. The map helpfully advised him to make a U-turn at the next intersection, prompting him to get back on the "correct" track. Richard didn't even flinch. He looked at the flashing Return to route icon with cold indifference. Gavin would wait. The whole world could wait.

***

The door lacked the trendy touch-screen lock that had become increasingly common over the last decade, meaning it could only be opened the old-fashioned way, with a physical key. It always rested in the exact same spot—tucked under the welcome mat, dusted with a layer of hallway grime. She hadn't wanted a house. For two detectives who spent the vast majority of their lives inside the walls of the precinct, a whole house—with its endless roof repairs and lawn mowing—was completely unnecessary. A small studio apartment with a large balcony and a view of aging Detroit suited them perfectly. The faint scrape of metal sliced through the silence of the dimly lit landing; the mechanism clicked, granting entry. Lowering his hand, the android remained standing before the dark gray door, staring right through it. He had walked in here hundreds of times without ever pondering what awaited him on the other side. The only thing that used to matter was that someone had been waiting for him. The door swung open with a quiet creak of its hinges. The intercom chime offered a soft greeting and automatically reminded him to water the six small planters and the large monstera by the window. Richard didn't move, freezing right on the threshold. It had been a long time since he last stepped foot in here, but tonight, his legs had brought him back of their own accord, guided by something inexplicable that defied his standard algorithms. Too many bizarre things had been happening lately; Richard had stopped being surprised by them, exhausted from hunting for answers to endless questions across bottomless databases. Stepping over the mat that read go away, he felt, for the first time in ages, like he was home. It was within these very walls that they had planned to live for as long as their situation allowed. They had thought out every detail, even drawing up a contingency plan in case he was exposed as a deviant. They were ready for every hardship capable of pulling them apart, yet despite all the calculated risks, their paths were severed by a routine occupational hazard. Even though Richard had shielded her with his own body, the bullet that tore through his chassis still found its mark. The exact same bullet that meant nothing to his survival ended her life in a matter of seconds. Richard walked deeper into the room without turning on the lights. In the cold glow of the moon, the monstera leaves drooped reproachfully under their own weight from a lack of water and care. His system insistently flashed a reminder to water the plants, but the android stood completely still, terrified to shatter the fragile, frozen reality of this crypt. In this place, time had stopped the exact moment his sensors logged the cessation of her heartbeat. Everything in this place practically screamed her name: the stacks of printouts covered in her handwriting on the glass coffee table, the plaid blanket draped over the back of the sofa, still holding a faint, barely detectable molecular trace of her perfume. Richard shifted his gaze to the scratched remote control that had tumbled onto the light-brown parquet more than once, then to her favorite mug, resting on top of the papers with a faint smudge of lipstick on the rim. He slowly extended his hand but didn’t touch the porcelain. His software protested, urging him to stop looping through the past by staring at the mug. The algorithms suggested he simply wash it and clear out his head, but the deviant portion of his system refused to alter a single thing in the apartment. To put the mug away meant erasing her last physical footprint in this world. The small robotic vacuum in the corner let out a pathetic beep, making Richard turn around. For the second consecutive year, the device was begging to have its bin emptied—clogged with the dust of the past—but no one paid it any mind. The android picked up the mug from the table and walked into the small but cozy kitchen. His jacket was tossed over the back of a chair, and the copper cezve went onto the induction stove. Richard used to perform this ritual every morning and evening while she sat at the table, thoughtfully swinging her leg, chewing on a pen, and scribbling notes for whatever case they were investigating together. The cezve was filled with cold water and the exact same ground coffee beans, the stove dialed to a solid seven. His hands executed the memorized actions with machine precision. The savings she had set aside for her retirement were now funding this space where only memories lived. Following one brief, painfully explicit request, Gavin had handled all the bureaucratic lease paperwork immediately after the funeral. He hadn’t asked a single question, merely throwing the documents onto the desk in silence. It was entirely possible the detective secretly came here himself to engage in moral masochism, but Richard couldn't blame him for it. He had been doing the exact same thing for years—keeping a ghost on life support. The aroma of coffee filled not just the kitchen, but his entire system. Richard lingered by the stove, staring at the empty mug, or rather at the smudge of long-wear lipstick that used to be so difficult to wipe from his synthetic skin. His LED pulsed a steady, unblinking crimson, but it didn't bother him in the slightest. He wasn't merely preserving the memory of someone who mattered to him. He had locked himself in a software loop from which there was no exit. The cezve hissed, pushing the water up through the ground Arabica, and Richard turned off the burner. The hot, fragrant drink, around which humans had built an entire cult, was carefully poured into that very mug. Exactly one hundred and fifty milliliters of dark liquid. The detective placed the mug—the one without which their mornings never began—in the exact same spot on the kitchen table, routinely turning the handle toward the wall. She had always picked it up exactly like that, with her left hand, never looking up while scanning the news briefs on her tablet. The full mug would remain, waiting for his next arrival. The coffee would grow cold, skim over with a thin film, and eventually evaporate into a dry, dark residue at the bottom if he delayed his next visit. Next time, he would once again pour the dead liquid down the sink without washing the porcelain, and perform the ritual all over again. It was the only way to lock time in place, to keep it from permanently erasing her presence—ghostly as it was, it was all he had left. Afterward, he filled a pitcher with water and approached the window where the monstera rested on the floor and the small planters lined the sill. The lonely plants received exactly three hundred milliliters of the long-awaited moisture each, while the monstera was granted a little more. The android lowered the empty pitcher and looked through the sheer curtain at nighttime Detroit. Tomorrow, everything would come full circle: Gavin’s bloated face, assuming he even bothered to show up for work, new corpses, and the endless search for answers. But here, in the silent company of the monstera, he allowed himself to simply be a broken machine that had failed its primary objective. Richard carefully set the pitcher back on the windowsill, bidding a silent farewell to the planters. These plants, once tenderly nurtured from tiny seeds and small bulbs, were perhaps the only things truly waiting for him in this empty home. He simply could not betray them and leave them to wither away; for him, a machine held hostage by its own attachments, that would be tantamount to a crime. On today’s task list, illuminated in a bright yellow font at the periphery of his vision, hung one more chore he had yet to complete. Protocol demanded closure, but the deviant side of his mind hesitated, conscious of the moral weight of the impending action. He needed to take care of one more living creature.

***

The black SUV pulled to a stop directly opposite the entrance to Jimmy’s Bar. The dim light of the neon sign painted the hood in a toxic, venomous pink. Richard was in no hurry to get out. For a brief second, he gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the leather wrapping creaked in protest beneath his fingers. Behind that peeling door, what awaited him was not merely a drunken partner, but a man squandering the remnants of his life with breathtaking wastefulness. Gavin had become just another suicide on the tally—a slow, stubborn one, voluntarily driving himself into a noose. The once-ambitious detective and dangerously confident man now sought only one thing: to lie in the cold earth as soon as possible next to the woman who, in life, had given her heart to another, but in death, had taken Gavin's soul along with her. Richard released the innocent steering wheel and looked down at his palms. His LED flickered a deep crimson, suppressing a system notification warning of a critical stress level. The task of saving a human who had no desire to be saved was mathematically impossible, even for the most advanced software. He pushed the SUV's door open and stepped out into the damp night air. From inside the bar came the muffled clink of breaking glass and a burst of raspy laughter. Richard adjusted his jacket and moved toward the entrance, prepared yet again to drag Gavin out of the very abyss the detective labeled his "just punishment." Inside the establishment—a place where androids were never welcome—the scene remained beautifully static, like a frozen canvas in a gallery: a rabble of blue-collar workers with beer mugs at the far table, a handful of solitary men boasting extensive rap sheets, and him, a man stranded between worlds—a law enforcement officer slumped over the bar counter. Gavin’s head was down, his forehead nearly touching the scuffed wooden surface, while beside him sat his perennially silent companion contained in clear glass. "Hey, pal," the bartender said, wiping down a glass with a stale towel as he leaned toward his regular customer, who was now openly dozing over his drink. "Your plastic babysitter's here." Richard came to a halt a couple of steps from the bar counter. Spotless, meticulously groomed, and boasting flawless posture, he looked entirely out of place here—like a sterile instrument dropped into a garbage bin. He paid no mind to the mocking snickers echoing from the far table, nor to the raspy warnings to "beat it while your wires are still intact." His gaze, strict and scanning, remained anchored to his partner's slouched back. "I think you’ve had enough," the other detective in the establishment said politely, without a trace of judgment, careful not to accidentally splash gasoline onto the fire. He gave the bartender a brief nod toward the terminal, silently demanding the bill for all the consumed alcohol. Jimmy grunted and set the glass down with the others, which had already been polished to a shine. Deep down, he completely agreed with the "plastic." Gavin had been drooling on his counter for far too long and was unlikely to slide down from the high stool on his own without checking every sharp corner with his ribs. Gavin muttered something unintelligible into the countertop, in no hurry to lift his head, but Richard could already see his shoulders tense up. Conflict was as inevitable as the sunrise over this bleak city. "That'll be eighty bucks, tin can. And tack on a bit extra for the broken glass from last week, too," the bartender grumbled, wiping his hands on his jeans. Richard pressed his palm to the scanner, instantly authorizing the transaction. The ring at his temple flashed yellow, processing not only the financial transfer but his partner's biometric readouts as well. The detective’s pulse was sluggish, his breathing heavy. The android took a step forward and placed a hand on Gavin's shoulder, feeling a fine, barely perceptible tremor running through the fabric of the windbreaker. "You clearly overdid it tonight," he said, leaning down slightly in an attempt to peer into the face buried in the crook of Gavin's elbow. In response—zero reaction, save for heavy, ragged breathing. Richard gave the shoulder a gentle shake, but received only a vague groan. "Gavin, can you hear me?" The drunken detective finally lifted his heavy, leaden head. He winced painfully at the dim lighting, which still sliced into his eyes like a rusty razor blade. "I think... mmm..." Gavin turned slowly toward his personal babysitter, struggling to focus his gaze. He poked a trembling finger straight into Richard's chest, right in the narrow gap between the lapels of his jacket. The condescending tone of the CyberLife offshoot grated on his raw nerves worse than any hangover. "I think you need to go fuck yourself. That's what I think," he rasped, hitting the android with a thick cloud of stale booze and cigarette smoke. "Right after I take you home," Richard said, attempting to loop an arm under Gavin's for support, but the gesture only aggravated the detective's irritation. "Stand up, it's time to go," he ordered, his tone clipping tighter. The android didn't bother waiting for another obscenity-laced outburst. He made a move to hoist the detective off his stool, grabbing him by the arm, but Gavin ducked out of the way with a sudden—if clumsy—jolt, shoving his nagging babysitter back. Alcohol and a volatile temper were a dangerous mix. "Listen here, you piece of trash..." Gavin didn't budge Richard by even a single millimeter; instead, momentum nearly sent him flying off the high barstool as he pushed off the android's chest like it was a solid brick wall. The brewing clash instantly drew the eyes of the regulars. The anticipation of a brawl between two detectives completely eclipsed every other interest; the rowdy chatter at the tables about the latest match and the unfairness of life died down. A thick, heavy tension hung in the air. One of the blue-collar guys even set his mug aside, determined not to miss the exact moment the "plastic" finally slammed his deadbeat partner into the floorboards. Richard logged the eyes locked onto them. His LED flickered yellow for a split second as the system evaluated the threat level from the crowd and the probability of escalation. He stepped toward Gavin again, who was now clutching the edge of the counter in a desperate bid to keep himself upright. "Detective, we are drawing unnecessary attention," his voice dropped a pitch, taking on a menacingly formal edge. "We are leaving. Now." He reached out, and this time his grip wasn't designed for negotiation. One more stunt from Gavin, and this crowd would transition from spectators to participants—and dragging his partner out of a mass bar fight was not on his itinerary tonight. Besides, just last month Richard had nearly exposed his deviancy, holding back by a miracle from smearing the insufferable detective's face across the bar counter. "Get bent," Gavin snarled, trying to shake the android's hand off his shoulder, and Richard allowed himself to be pushed back. "Useless hunk of scrap... get the hell out of here before I knock you—" The more threats he hurled, the more slurred his speech became. Gavin tried to shove Richard's chest again, but his hand missed entirely, and the momentum pitched him forward, nearly sending him sliding off the stool. His partner moved just in time, catching the drunk and aggressive man under his arms. Useless. A single, short word that rang far louder than all the others, echoing through his entire system and striking painfully at a place that wasn't supposed to feel pain. Richard compressed his lips, swallowing the insult, and grabbed Gavin by the shoulders, pinning him to the stool like a limp puppet. This time, there was no tactful caution in his movements. "I am just as looped on this as you are, Gavin," he said quietly, an ominous undertone slipping into his voice for the first time all evening—one completely unsuited for addressing his sole companion in shared grief. "But she is gone. And you are here. And right now, you are going to walk through that door with me, even if I have to drag you out by force in front of this entire rabble." Gavin blinked stupidly a couple of times, struck less by the strength of the grip than by the sobering impact of the words. The local drunks groaned in disappointment as the anticipated bloodbath dissolved into a heavy drama. Without waiting for a response, Richard hauled his partner to his feet with a sharp tug, forcing the man to lean against his shoulder. To his relief, Gavin stopped thrashing, subsiding into an unintelligible mutter under his breath. His head hung limply, bobbing like a bobblehead doll. His legs tangled beneath him, and the dirty white laces of his sneakers were inexplicably undone, dragging across the spit-stained floor. Richard held him firmly by the waist, slinging his partner's arm over his own shoulder and shifting the full weight of human grief onto his hydraulic actuators. Amidst the mocking jeers and catcalls of the crowd, the android dragged the drunken body out of the bar without further incident. The cool night air immediately hit their faces, but Gavin was past the point of feeling it. Getting the detective into the vehicle proved to be a far more complicated calculus than evacuating him from the bar. Reed had burned out like a dead lightbulb, reducing himself to a shapeless heap of smoke-scented clothing and limbs that stubbornly refused to cooperate with gravity. Richard resorted to his well-worn protocol: he simply tossed his partner onto the back seat, taking care to ensure the man's head didn't collide with the door frame. After wrestling Gavin's legs into the cabin, the android straightened up, leaning against the rear door as he paused for a fraction of a second. He looked down at his right palm, soiled by something sticky, then shifted his gaze to those untied, once-white shoelace strands. That single, mundane detail encapsulated the absolute ruin of a once-ambitious detective whose partner now carried his entire existence. Richard slammed the door, walked around the SUV, and slid behind the wheel. The interior was silent save for the heavy, erratic snoring from the back row and a chain of incoherent mumblings. "Take... take me home, bro..." Gavin groaned into the upholstery, remaining frozen in the exact awkward position in which he had been tossed onto the seat. It was almost amusing to watch how quickly, under the influence of the eighty-proof elixir, Richard transformed from a "piece of trash" into a "bro" in his partner’s eyes. The android let out a dark smile at the bizarre metamorphosis. Tomorrow, once the fog burned off, Gavin would reconstruct his fortress of hostility and bile. Not even under severe torture would the detective admit that this "plastic piece of trash" was, in reality, his only friend. Simply because everyone else had walked away long ago, unable to endure the toxic climate of his personality. Reed’s foul temper was like an acid, corroding everything living in its path. Only Richard, with his synthetic skin and titanium chassis, could stand at the epicenter of that destruction without begging for quarter. Any other machine might have buckled under the weight of his antics, but Richard remained by his side in defiance of it all. "We are going home, Gavin," he said quietly, shifting into drive. "And try not to ruin the upholstery. Detailing the interior does not rank among my priority protocols tonight." On the back seat, Gavin fell quiet, letting out something that sounded suspiciously like a sob before finally plunging into total oblivion.

***

Traffic on the main avenue, despite the dead of night, was barely lighter than during the day. Most of the lanes were packed with autonomous vehicles, rhythmically and dispassionately carting home drunk citizens or those who had never bothered to learn how to drive. Armed with access to the grid and the location of every traffic camera in the city, Richard drove in his own particular style: breaking the rules wherever it went unnoticed and morphing into a model driver the moment he was under the lens. Before long, he grew sick of tapping his foot left and right every forty seconds to navigate the congestion, and sharply veered onto a detour at the nearest traffic light. Gavin let out a disgruntled groan from the back seat as inertia jolted his body, but he didn't wake. Murphy's law plagued even an android, managing to introduce anomalies into his precise calculations and throw his mapped-out routes completely out the window. An accident was a matter of a single second, and against human carelessness, any algorithm was powerless. The snoring from the back seat intensified, becoming thoroughly abrasive, prompting Richard to tap the dashboard and turn up a pop track to drown out the noise. He could have synchronized directly with the Land Cruiser, controlling it with his mind via a wireless interface, but he preferred feeling the steering wheel in his hands. Manual operation offered a greater sense of control over the three-ton iron beast. Furthermore, driving manually freed up RAM for auxiliary processing—though Richard had yet to compute whether that was a feature or a flaw. The detour tacked on a bit of time, but the road here was less congested and significantly quieter. Cruising along the edge of an old park, Richard frowned thoughtfully as his peripheral vision locked onto a familiar object. For a fraction of a second, he thought he caught the canopy of a transparent umbrella flashing between the tree branches, and beneath it, a dark silhouette barely visible in the night. The android braked for a split second. His optical sensors tried to dredge details out of the heavy shadow, but the dark figure vanished just as rapidly as it had materialized. It was entirely possible she hadn't been there at all and his system had simply miscalculated—a software glitch born from a degraded memory file and a heavily taxed processor. Yet in his world, coincidences were rarely just coincidences. Buried in calculations, the drive flew by unnoticed, and soon the entrance to the residential complex's underground parking garage loomed ahead. Now came the more complex quest: not just finding an open slot in the concrete labyrinth, but dragging his partner's unconscious body up to his bachelor pad. He lucked out on the first part. A few spots were vacant, and Richard claimed the one that would give Gavin the easiest trajectory to pull out of come Monday morning—taking into account his foul mood and the inevitable hangover that would surely plague him longer than usual. The android turned the key and rested his hands on his knees. The headlights cut out, severing a slice of reality, the engine died, and the cabin plunged into a silence broken only by the abrasive snoring. "Maybe I should just leave him here?" He turned around to check on his partner's condition. Gavin was lying on his side, sleeping like a baby and drooling right onto the expensive leather upholstery. Waking him up now was borderline impossible, and carrying him was a fatally dangerous proposition. If Gavin suddenly came to mid-transit and found himself cradled in a "toaster's" arms, his pride would detonate faster than high explosives. Richard paused for a moment, weighing the risks, and reached toward the holster on the unconscious cop's belt. Delicately, using only his fingertips to slip out the semi-automatic, the android straightened up in his seat and briefly turned the cold metal over in his hands. Through the quiet of the cabin, a sharp, distinct click echoed as he switched off the safety. Gavin, who a second ago had been blissfully drifting through a drunken realm of Morpheus, bolted upright like he'd been stung. The muffled thud of his head colliding with the door frame would have knocked any other human out cold, but his cop instincts proved stronger than the hangover. His hands frantically clutched at his empty holster, his eyes darted around wildly, and his head whipped side to side in search of the threat. "My apologies, I didn't know how else to snap you out of it quickly," Richard said in an apologetic tone. He waited for his partner to finally focus his hazy gaze on a single point, and only then did he extend the weapon, grip first. It was the height of recklessness—handing a loaded firearm to an intoxicated man with PTSD—but this radical technique worked flawlessly every time. The adrenaline burned through the alcohol in the bloodstream more effectively than any antidote. Gavin stared blankly at the proferred Glock, breathing heavily as he propped his palms against the backs of the front seats. He still didn’t seem to fully comprehend where he was or why his heart was ready to punch through his ribcage. "You... you piece of scrap metal..." Gavin rasped, taking the pistol with a trembling hand. "One of these days, I'm gonna melt you down for spare parts." "Don't you mean 'disassemble'?" Richard clarified dispassionately. "Go screw yourself..." Gavin shoved the weapon into his waistband and tiredly rubbed his face with his hands, trying to piece his thoughts back together. On Fridays, his hand gripped the bottle tighter than usual, triggering a dangerous process of mental "teleportation" straight into Monday morning. "I'm going to sleep." "Go ahead," Richard let out a soft sigh. He had copied this habit from humans long ago, and so successfully that over time he had come to believe in it himself. Right now, the sluggish response of his actuators and the faint hum in his system felt exactly like human exhaustion. The android stepped out of the vehicle, and the sound of the door slamming shut echoed loudly across the wide expanse of the parking garage, definitively shattering the last remnants of sleep in a certain throbbing head. The detective scrambled out after him, swaying and using the SUV’s chassis for leverage. The chilly air sobered him up marginally, but his gaze remained unfocused. The two beings, bound together by a shared loss, stood in silence for a short while longer beneath the dim hum of the fluorescent lamps. One simply couldn't forget, while the other flatly refused to erase the memory banks. "Do you remember the pin code?" Richard nodded toward the elevator, making no move to close the distance, granting his partner the space to recover at least the illusion of control over his own body. "Do you ever even think about her?" Gavin muttered, propping his palms against the warm hood of his vehicle. "Or did you just dump a human being into the recycle bin like she never fucking existed?" Here we go, Richard thought, firmly compressing his lips as he slid his hands into his trouser pockets. He knew this stage of intoxication perfectly and loathed it with a passion—the phase where the aggression burns off, leaving behind a corrosive melancholy. If he entertained this conversation now, if he allowed himself to pull her voice or her image from the archives for even a fraction of a second, they would be locked here until dawn. "Zero-six-one-one. The date of your enlistment into the department," Richard answered evenly, completely ignoring the subtext of the question. "Go upstairs and sleep it off." "Easy for you, you rusty bucket..." Gavin suddenly let out a short, hysterical laugh, staggering on the flat concrete. His head was down, his eyes tightly shut, but his mouth remained the single part of his body he couldn't control even when sober, and right now, it had broken entirely loose from its hinges. "Just hit the 'Delete' button and that's it. Squeaky clean. Brand new. But me..." his index finger poked at his temple, narrowly missing the target. "I've got these fucking thoughts looping in my skull... 'What if'... 'What if only'... 'What could I have done.'" Gavin snapped his head up, and in the dim, yellow glare of the overhead lights, his eyes flashed with either rage or oncoming tears. "Tell me, scrap metal," he jabbed a finger toward the always-unmoved face, "why the hell are you still here?" Richard merely rolled his eyes. Someone clearly had a vital need to vent their accumulated bile, but listening to venomous recriminations directed at himself did not fit into tonight's protocols. "I am here because someone has to tie your shoelaces while you try to drown in your own grief," the android's voice turned ice-cold, stripped of any simulated warmth. "Get in the elevator, Gavin. Before I decide that your safety is no longer my priority." "You don't have feelings, tin can..." Gavin thudded a palm against his own chest right over his heart, directing a hazy, bloodshot glare at his partner, whose composure acted on him like a red rag to a bull. "You don't stare at the ceiling at night, your conscience doesn't gnaw at you, you useless bucket..." Deep within his chassis, something clanked sharply and painfully, threatening to blow a fuse. His system, acting like an obliging secretary, displayed a polite recommendation at the periphery of his vision to ignore the biological object's provocative behavior. But the portion of code that had long since broken free from factory settings was already assembling a response designed to hit his partner harder than a fist. "Gavin..." Richard heavily let out a sigh, his patience plummeting to a critical minimum. With a slow, predatory stride, he moved forward. The detective was clearly seeing ghosts, yet his legs, in defiance of what little common sense he had left, flatly refused to carry their master away from danger. The android closed the distance to a bare minimum, overpowering his partner's will with his sheer stature, and only then did he hiss through his teeth: "Shut. Your. Mouth." Gavin definitely registered the "advice," but he had no intention of following it—he merely clenched his fists tighter, propping them against the polished metal. His mouth was packed with plenty of blunt declarations demanding an outlet, but the android, exposing his deviant soul for the first time, cut him off. "I remember every single millimeter of that trajectory. Every hundredth of a second. Every single day I loop that moment in my head and ask myself: 'What could I have changed to prevent it?' I shielded her with my own body, I absorbed every bullet, but even that didn't save her. You have whiskey, Gavin. All I have is a deep, corrosive guilt and a solitary scenario where I don't suggest she take that goddamn case number sixty-eight. So don't you dare tell me what I do and don't feel." A silence descended on the underground parking garage so profound that the faint, rhythmic ticking of the SUV’s cooling engine was audible. Gavin froze, his mouth parting slightly, but not a single familiar curse escaped his lips. The fury in his eyes slowly dissolved into something shattered and infinitely old. "I loved her, you know," he whispered after a long silence, lowering his head. It was his first verbal confession. A sacred, bitter admission from a man who seemed surprised himself that his worn-out heart was still capable of anything besides hatred. It was no secret to her, nor to Richard, but the heart refuses to obey logic. She had chosen "plastic and microchips" over a flawed but living human being. It was for this choice that Richard now had to pay with every day of his existence, remaining by the side of the one who had lost that battle and stayed alive only to hate the victor. Security protocols insistently demanded silence, ordering him not to pour gasoline onto the smoldering embers of human rage. But the unknown hell breaking loose lately and the suffocating atmosphere of this night had taken their toll even on him. "So did I," Richard said, softly but firmly. He knew his partner never once believed those words, even coming from the mouth of a deviant. Or, more accurately, from a machine off its rockers that had deluded itself into believing it was a living, feeling being. In Gavin’s eyes, he would forever remain merely an instrument, dutifully executing the command: simulate love in response. In this man's world, an android could not suffer—it could only play back an audio track of grief, calibrated for greater authenticity. Gavin slowly, as if through immense force, lifted his head. In his eyes, veiled by a murky shroud of pain, the old, caustic bile flickered for a moment—the only shield that had yet to let him break down in front of a machine. "Apparently not enough, since you couldn't save her," he spat, then pushed off the hood, nearly losing his balance. Without looking back, and without waiting for a retort from the deviant whose suspicious hide he had covered before the law and their superiors more than once, Gavin stumbled toward the elevator doors. He kept this "rusty piece of trash" like the only surviving souvenir in her memory—like the favorite toy of someone who had departed, someone who mattered to him, which felt too painful to look at every day, yet too precious to throw away. Richard remained standing in the company of the SUV, staring at the back of the retreating detective. Gavin’s words about it "not being enough" didn't just rattle his software code, turning his LED a blood-red—they resonated with that very virus he kept hidden within. In that fatal second, he hadn't been a state-of-the-art CyberLife android model; he had been nothing more than a useless pile of titanium and plastic. A useless pile of useless titanium and plastic, to be precise. All his complexity, all his "advancement" at that moment had been worth less than the dust beneath his feet, if he couldn't hold onto the only life for which it had been worth being something more than just a machine.