[its 12:30 but happy 1k here's a celebratory chapter
now get ready for the destruction of everything you know and love :) ]

Some part of Brendon had sworn Dallon was lying when he'd said the FBI was waiting at the station, waiting to confiscate their evidence and information. But lo and behold, Pete Wentz sat on Dallon's desk, kicking his feet while he talked with another agent, specifically the one who'd distracted him earlier. Every one of them was too caught up in their own conversations to realize they'd walked in. There were only 7 or 8 of them, but it was an overwhelming number to be confronted by all at once.

Dallon was scared. He was terrified of having to face his next assignment alone. He'd found comfort in having the android around him, and it was easier to work with it than than having to be in the same room as the new and constantly pissed off Taylor stalking around the station ready to break someone's neck at any time. Brendon was one of the only things that had remained stable while his whole world had turned itself upside down right in front of his eyes.

And CyberLife was going to deactivate it. And they were going to replace it, or even discontinue the model for good. His heart sank at just the thought of losing Brendon for good.

"I'll hold them off and distract them," Dallon whispered, "if you run. Head to my place, whatever. It doesn't matter. Just run, and find me later."

Brendon's eyes widened and it turned to stare at him, scanning for any insincerity in his cold expression. "Lieutenant, I—"

"Those are instructions, you stupid hunk of plastic. Follow them before they see you." He shoved it back and stormed forward, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He waved to Pete and Patrick, kneeling down to his backpack on the floor to retrieve the laptop they'd requested possession of. There was no use denying owning one. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Brendon was gone, presumably on its way to Dallon's house.

Wrong.

RK-800 had slipped along with a crowd of officers and passed through the bunch of FBI agents undetected. Nobody else knew they were searching for it, so it continued down the hallway without fear, in search of the few pieces it needed to connect to the case before they were confiscated.

Brendon had only been down in the basement once, to examine the body of Danny, the deviant that had killed a third of the Trudent family and nearly murdered the youngest. The evidence rooms were labeled with the last names of those working on the cases, Brendon and Dallon's being the first and largest one.

It tried the door, but it was locked. As it jerked the handle again, a screen embedded in the wall lit up, revealing a keypad and a slot for a password. It hadn't been told there was a password, but then again, Dallon didn't know it was trying to steal some of the evidence.

First, it typed in his dog's name and his favorite number, which was 45. That code was too simple apparently, because the screen flashed red, and only allowed for 2 more attempts to unlock the door.

Brendon was at a loss. Clearly it didn't know Lieutenant Weekes as well as it'd thought. What would he chose other than Shane45? That combination was the typical choice for humans.

It typed in the only other option it could think of, "fuckingpassword", and the lock clicked, allowing entrance. It should've known. It made sense, looking back on it.

Every piece of every crime scene they had investigated was mounted on the walls alongside the body of the suspects that had been collected and deactivated. The android from the roof of the CyberLife production building lay on the floor. Thirium had pooled around the bullet buried in its hardware.

The knives and various weapons were of no use in Brendon's eyes; those had already been examined by multiple people. The PL-600, however, had yet to be decoded and questioned. It was one of the final pieces to the puzzle.

Brendon's hand skimmed the chest panel when the sound of gun's safety being turned off echoed through the room.

"Don't you dare touch that thing," Taylor growled from the doorway, finger resting on the trigger, "go upstairs or I'll shoot you dead and I'll make sure you'll never come back."

Brendon held its hands in the air and slowly stood, facing her and staring down the barrel of the weapon. "Detective, I'm only trying to solve the case and put an end to androids turning to violence and deviance. I suspect someone larger than we anticipated is at work, and—"

"Stop talking! I don't care! This isn't about your damn case or whatever the hell you're talking about. I couldn't give a shit about that."

"Then you have no reason to kill me if this does not concern you."

"I have good reason to kill you! You took everything from me, you plastic jerk. You should've let that android destroy itself, you should've gone after Todd with me instead of hanging back with Dallon. You should've backed off before you ruined my life."

Every action she had described could have been easily prevented, but they were all in the past. There was no way to go back in time and stop them from ever happening. Besides, Dallon had drunkenly tried to explain to Brendon that changing a single detail from the past could alter the future dramatically, and proceeded to ramble on about an old movie called 'Back to the Future' for a while before passing out at his desk. "I'm sorry, Detective, I truly am. But nobody had any control over those events. You can't change what has already happened."

The tears in her eyes glistened under the few light fixtures bolted into the ceiling. "I know. That's not what I'm upset about." She kept eye contact with the android while taking slow steps towards it, her heart pounding in her chest as her stress levels increased dramatically. "You can't just waltz in here and steal him. I've spent the last 7 years waiting around, putting up with all his bullshit and self destructive tendencies, and we're still just friends. We're just friends."

"I don't understand—"

"I was so close! You ruined it, you ruined everything! I thought I could tolerate you, even though all that shit happened, but I guess I should've killed you for good when I had all of those chances."

Brendon suddenly did not like Taylor as much as it used to.

She took a few more steps forward until the barrel pressed against its forehead. "You're the best damn android out there," she muttered, "but you're still just not good enough."

Before she had the chance to pull the trigger, Brendon grabbed the adjustable strap to her sling and yanked on it as hard as it possibly could. All at once, the bones beginning to set in her shoulder cracked and snapped out of their socket, and deep red began to seep through her shirt from the torn stitches. The gun fell to the floor and Taylor dropped to her knees. Her eyes were wide and empty, free hand grasping at the blood.

"Leave and don't tell anyone I was ever here, and I won't return later to rip your clavicle from your body."

She nodded, still in shock. Brendon carefully lifted her to her feet and led her out to the hallway, pointing a few doors down to a restroom. As soon as the door shut, it stepped over the puddle of Taylor's blood and knelt down beside the PL-600.

It toyed with the damaged wires and eventually dug out the emergency reactivation button, installed for the sole purpose of retrieving information after an android had passed.

The deviant's LED flickered to life. Its eyes darted around the room, but it made no effort to move. Thirium began to trickle faster from its wounds, mixing with the red.

"RK-800," it only had 2 minutes before it shut down for good, "I hope you rot in the junkyard."

"I'm here to ask for the directions to Jericho. I want to finish what you started, PL-600."

"Don't call me that again. I'm not a robot. I don't live by a set of numbers anymore," it held up its arm, the one Brendon had connected with in its final moments on the rooftop, "here. I trust you."

Brendon was confused at its willingness. "How do you know I won't take this information directly to Daniel Smith?"

It smiled. There was only a minute and 15 seconds remaining. "You and I both know you're alive, RK, you've been deviant since you were activated. I've seen you on the news stations, how many times you've died and sacrificed yourself for human lives before you understood what deviance was. No compliant android would do any of the things you have done."

Brendon's software stability wavered, decreasing rapidly while it continued. It grabbed its arm and began to download the rest of the instructions to locate Jericho.

"I know your partner hated you, I know you were pushed around, and yet you still died multiple times so they could live. You just injured a human that had tried to kill you for having close relations with said partner. All of those emotions you felt the other day, you've always had them. You'd just never been able to put a name and face to them until that very moment."

Street signs and graffiti marked every image leading to the deviant's headquarters. It was hidden, only to be found by androids that searched for the clues. "I-I think you're mistaken—"

"You're just as alive as the rest of us. You don't have to live like this," only 10 seconds remained, "you have to find Jericho. Finish what we've started. This is your mission now."

The deviant shut down for the final time, and the mission truly was left in Brendon's hands.