[in honor of my last first day of school rip]

Daniel decided to send them over to another crime scene instead of the interrogation room. The suspect they were supposed to investigate was simply a human that had gone on a murder spree, but the bodies at the house outside of town correlated to the ongoing deviants case.

Dallon was explicitly not excited. He'd griped the whole drive and muttered about it during the sporadic power naps he took. All 3 passed through the police tape at the same time, Taylor and Brendon trying to focus on something other than his incessant complaints, and stared at the mess before them.

All the lights in the house were on, the front door was open, and the roof outside of one of the rooms was missing a few tiles, as if they were knocked off during an escape. A large stain of Thirium had been dragged halfway across the driveway and into the house.

The inside seemed to be even worse. White chalk outlined the bodies of a female model of the AX-400 holding a kitchen knife and a little girl who Brendon had identified as Alice Peterson.

Blue blood and human blood dripped down the walls and stained the carpet, the glass coffee table in the living room had collapsed, and most of the furniture had been broken. With each and every detail Taylor noticed, she whispered, "what the hell", a little louder every time until she was hollering at full volume from the kitchen. Lieutenant Weekes had started to join her halfway through the first glimpse of the house, but only examined the front room.

"I would love, just absolutely love," Dallon put his head in his hands, "to have a normal investigation, but apparently those don't exist anymore. Fucking androids. They ruin everything."

While Taylor fired back at his comments, Brendon had already gotten to work scanning the crime scene. It dipped its fingers into the blue liquid surrounding the android, and raised it to its mouth, but was stopped abruptly by loud and disturbed screaming from the Lieutenant. "Ew, ew ew! That's so disgusting, don't do that again, Brendon! Put it down!"

It frowned. "Lieutenant, I have to analyze it—"

"Well, analyze it without tasting it! Who knows where your fingers have been?!"

It nodded. It was still obvious to tell the blue liquid was Thirium, and the human blood belonged to Alice. They both had suffered multiple blows around the body from a blunt object and 3 shots to the chest each. The pose they had passed in suggested the android died first, and the girl had knelt beside it before being killed herself.

"And how do we know this is a deviance case if the deviant is dead?" Taylor ran her fingers through her hair, pulling apart the few knots that had tangled together in the wind.

Another officer at the scene spoke up. "The one that killed them was seen by his neighbor that came by to borrow a ladder. He reported him to the police immediately, but he was long gone by the time they arrived. They got a brief description, but nobody has really gotten to the bottom of anything yet. It may take some time."

"Well, then our work here is done," Lieutenant Weekes sighed, "the android is dead. There's no deviant we need to interrogate or anything, and the suspect is AWOL. Let's go home."

"We still need to find out if she was a deviant," Taylor pointed out, "because something had to set him off. She must have tried to defend herself and the little girl."

"We can't interrogate it because it's dead. This case is over, can we go home? I want to go home."

"No," Brendon sat down beside the android and opened up the buttons on her uniform to expose her chest panel, "we can restart it, but only for a minute or so. We can utilize that time to find out the truth."

As Brendon's arm brushed with the androids while it began the reactivation process, quick flashes of images stored in its memory began to flood its vision. Cleaning the house, uncovering illegal substances in drawers, spending nights alone on the street with the little girl, everything it had remembered specifically had been shown to Brendon for just a split second. One of the final images stuck for a few seconds longer, a large billboard with 'Jericho' printed in bold white letters. It didn't think much of it; there were more important things to focus on. 

Both Dallon and Taylor had turned away while Brendon restarted the android. There was something disturbing about opening up a chest and toying around with the wires and plugs inside. They hadn't seen it pause and quickly glitch at the Jericho image.

"Restarting in 30 seconds," Brendon stood back near its partners and watched as its eyes shot open and it quickly scrambled to its feet, holding the blade arms length away at Taylor.

She held her good hand up, shaking. "W-we don't want to hurt you. We just need to ask you some questions."

The android didn't lower the weapon as its gaze darted between them. "Where's Todd? I-Is he dead? Please, tell me he's dead, he has to be."

Brendon stepped forward towards it. "Is Todd the man that killed you and Alice? Why did he do it?"

"I don't know," it whispered, "I-I never did anything wrong, but he started to hurt her, and I couldn't stand by and watch. I was so scared, and so angry, but... but he had a gun. We never even stood a chance."

"You were afraid? Afraid of dying?"

The android shook its head and glanced back at Alice's body. "I was afraid she would be injured. When I was shutting down, he shot her and I couldn't do anything about it. I just watched her die."

Taylor took a step forward, standing just behind Brendon. "What happened to Todd? Did you happen to see where he went?"

The knife lowered from its grip and its knees started to shake as it fell to the floor. It was shutting down again for good. "I-I heard the back door open. He might be... in the shed..."

"Is he armed?" Taylor dropped to her knees and rushed to the android's side to keep it upright in hopes it would answer the final question, but she moved too quick and jostled her shoulder, and the android crumpled to the ground. "Fuck," she said through gritted teeth, "I'm going to fucking die. Let's go check out the backyard before I kick the bucket, yeah?"

Brendon performed a quick scan of her shoulder. Spots of blood had started to seep through the bandages. "Detective, I would strongly advise you not do so—"

"I don't give a shit. Can we please hurry up and get to the bottom of this? I forgot to take my pain meds and I want to go home. My head hurts." She shoved past it and marched out the door. Dallon followed a few paces behind her. He didn't want to tell her to calm down in fear of being slapped for the second time in the last 24 hours. He dragged Brendon alongside him by its arm.

They'd lost track of Taylor as soon as they made it outside. She was on a mission, and the quicker she completed it, the sooner she got to return to her bed.

"Did you see where she went, Lieutenant?"

"No, I fucking didn't. Have you seen how fast she moves? Her mile time averages out at 5 minutes and 30 seconds."

"Her legs are long; they must be an advantage. I'll send a request to CyberLife regarding the possibility of longer legs on future models."

"I know. She's shorter than I am, but faster. Isn't that wild? I think she told me she was on her cross country team in high school, but I dunno. Probably." Brendon concluded it preferred buzzed Dallon over the usual sober and angry Dallon.

They tried the right side of the house first, and turned the corner just in time to see Todd lunge out of the shed at the end of the property and tackle Taylor to the ground, another large serrated kitchen knife held at the ready. Brendon and Dallon both hit the ground running, shoving Todd off her as fast as they could, but they didn't get there fast enough.

Taylor was extremely lucky Todd's vision was blurred by the blood streaming from his forehead down into his eyes. The sharp edge of the blade sliced open the bridge of her nose, and nothing more.

The Lieutenant had focused his attention to restraining a particularly violent Todd before turning reassure Taylor was safe. She had gotten the best of the worst end, torn between clutching the flap of skin hanging on her nose for dear life, and the blood gushing out of her shoulder and steadily through the bandages.

Lieutenant Weekes sighed in short-lived relief. He wasn't sure if he could handle losing her of all people. He snapped the handcuffs around Todd's wrists and turned around to face Brendon to congratulate it, but was instead greeted with copious amounts of blue blood spilling steadily from between its lips.

With the kitchen knife buried in its chest control panel, RK-800 died for the third time.