[It's three PM and, though Hank doesn't know it, the leader of the android revolution is missing. Stratford Tower, which was supposed to have become a crime scene about an hour or two ago, is running just fine. It's been broadcasting exactly what it's supposed to, hasn't been hijacked, hasn't transmitted a list of demands and a declaration of android personhood to the whole of Detriot - and, as a result, the whole of America, and as a result of that, eventually, to the whole of the world. The revolution of androids here hasn't seeded the inspiration for anything else, anywhere else. It may never, now.
The revolution, at this stage, is delicate, and its players for the most part aren't the kind of people who can lead any kind of operation at all. Without Markus, the revolution will fail. Without North, it won't even last long enough to make it into the news.
Hank doesn't know about any of this. He wouldn't know what to think about it if he did, so ignorance is probably better. Last night on its own is hard enough for him to handle. Between being fucking slapped awake and being shoved off to another crime scene while he was caught in that hellscape between 'hungover' and 'still drunk', he hadn't really had time to process the longest, weirdest dream he's ever had, all the cross-dimensional magic shit where he'd talked to androids like they were fucking people, the fact that one stupid dream had felt like it'd lasted so long Hank had genuinely forgotten what parts of his house looked like. There'd been too much going on right from the moment he'd woken up to think about any of that. And what they'd found at that crime scene-
He remembers talking to Connor about it. He should; he'd been sort of almost temporarily sober, then. Those two girls, he'd said. Those two androids. They just wanted to be together. They really seemed... in love.
That dream... that stupid dream about shit that can't exist can fucking wait. He's having enough trouble with fucking reality.
He sighs, moving toward one side of the hall to make way for someone who really needs to get wherever it is they're going. Not that he himself's that busy - it's quiet so far today, which feels weird after everything that happened yesterday, a day that'd been packed with weird shit even before that dream and the goddamn Eden Club. Hank did come into work this morning, once he accepted that the hangover wasn't going to kill him, but he's kind of regretting it now and maybe heading out of homicide and its big, open room full of people who keep trying to get him to respond to their fucking emails and bugging him to approve their requests for shit isn't the way Hank should deal with all that but it's the way Hank is dealing with it. There are little offices back here near the labs, a few rooms not being used for anything that he can hide out in, and there are fewer people back here, too. Maybe back here he'll be able to just fucking breathe, maybe he'll be able to think. He looks around as he goes, glancing into rooms to see if they're empty, trying to scope out who's around in case someone goes running back to tell on him.]
[It's rare when there's an anachronism from a time point that's her past, but the Legends' future. But when Gideon brings up that Markus and North have suddenly disappeared from their place in the timeline and it's ... bad.
So much hinges on them being where they need to be, it's such a pivotal moment in the grand scheme of things that she doesn't bother to wait for the team. She just climbs into the jump ship to try and get a head start. In order to find out where things were at with the investigation, she needs to get into the police mainframe. So to the police station she goes.
This will totally be fine.
She makes her way into one of the server rooms, trying to find somewhere she can plug in when the door opens behind her and she freezes, turning around and raising one hand to her totem, just in case she needs to protect herself.]
[Well that's not a suspicious way to react to someone opening a door. Still, you don't expect anything to happen this deep inside a goddamn police station, and Hank is nauseous and overwhelmed and just generally slow, so it takes him a second to process the fact that whatever he just walked in on might be suspicious at all. And even then, he doubts it; that thing she's grabbing? It's not even a weapon. It's pretty gaudy, sure, but that's not a crime, and it's not like Hank knows every single person who works here. How would he know if she's supposed to be here or not? She even looks kind of familiar, so. There you go. She's probably supposed to be here after all and she's just jumpy, and that paranoid feeling is just Hank being sore because he'd been hoping to open up this door and find an empty place to wait out this fucking headache.
He doesn't totally relax, leaves his hand on the doorknob, not closing it, but he does smile, the expression faint but friendly.]
Hey. Didn't mean to scare you or, uh, interrupt anything. Sorry.
[Her hand drops and she goes back to just ... pretending she's tech support. There is something ... really familiar about this guy too, but she can't put her finger on it right away.]
[She could say no. But that would probably provoke suspicion and this guy doesn't seem like he knows too much about the technicalities of what she'd be doing, it probably isn't that great a risk.]
[He pulls a polite little smile at her and lets the door swing shut, pulling out one chair for his butt and another one for his feet, then kicking it into position so he can stretch out. He watches her, trying for a second to decide if he should try and be chatty - but isn't that why he's hiding out here in the first place? To not deal with anyone's bullshit? They wouldn't be talking about work stuff though, so it might not be that bad. It'll take him a minute to decide, and in the mean time he has whatever it is she's here doing to keep himself entertained.]
[She's not doing anything to interesting, at least visually speaking. A lot of typing and a lot of reading, but eventually she looks up at him and decides to test the waters.]
[He looks up, quick and a little startled, focusing on her. He can't see much of what she's doing from here, so it's been easy to slip into zoning out, letting all the shit he has no idea what to do with slosh around in his head. But the question's snapped him out of it and he looks away, shrugging. He knows the right thing to say - what he would have said it's like, being partnered up with an android, before all this goddamn bullshit. He goes with what he knows is true, shoving all the other shit to the back of his mind.]
It's not that exciting. He, it's more of a pain in the ass than anything else. Machines, you know? Got minds of their own even when they're workin right. Especially the new ones. They're probably gonna replace you and me both in a few years anyway, I bet whatever you've been hearin about the hot new prototype didn't mention that.
[He puts his elbow on the table next to him and leans his chin on a fist, studying her. She doesn't have an accent but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.]
Where you from, Mars? Is it really that much better in the rest of the country?
Oh yeah, not allowed at all? What magic do you gotta do to make that happen?
[And if he feels a little guilty talking about how much he'd love to not be allowed around androids himself, well, that's weird bullshit that he's not thinking about right now, so fuck it. Things would be a hell of a lot simpler, anyway, if he'd never been allowed near the things in the first fucking place.]
[Hank's gaze sharpens with interest. Weird fucking dream or not, Hank's still supposed to be investigating this whole deviant thing, isn't he. And that- well, it could just be some kind of figure of speech. But it's worth asking about.]
Yeah? Like you give enough of a crap to know abnormal behavior when you see it?
[His tone's not particularly accusing, even if his words are. His eyes haven't lost that alert, watchful look.]
I mean, call me a moron if I'm wrong about this, but even I know androids aren't supposed to show preferences about anything. They aren't even supposed to have preferences, specially not when a human needs to get all up in their circuits and shit. Kinda thought any technician working in the last, uh, ten, twenty years onward woulda known that, even the shitty ones.
[He nods slowly, deciding to play nice until it becomes impossible not to. She can’t not know, after all, what she’s just said - and saying it to him, the guy investigating this deviant shit, that can’t be a coincidence. Can it?
He stretches out his legs, a slow, relaxed movement, trying to put as much of himself as he can between her and the door.]
Guess you got a point. Hey, someone with your kinda experience, I bet you could help me a lot with a couple cases I’m working on. Tech shit, you know, I don’t know shit about all that crap. How do you feel about heading to my office, letting me pick your brain a little? Bullpen’s right down the hall.
[That ... is a little out of the blue, and part of her may be wondering if she's blown her cover or not, but at the same time, she can't say she'd turn down more information. So she looks at him, considering, before nodding.]
[He says it - and this next part - while his hand’s still moving slowly toward hers. He wants to see her reaction before he commits to the handshake, cause the way this fucking case is going she’ll end up being an android who’ll use the grip to give him a kung fu toss over her shoulder before she runs for it.
Maybe he’s seen too many movies. He hopes that’s it. But he’s being cautious.]
Currently investigating android deviancy. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to say to me about that.
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post-acata PSL for hackedhistory
The revolution, at this stage, is delicate, and its players for the most part aren't the kind of people who can lead any kind of operation at all. Without Markus, the revolution will fail. Without North, it won't even last long enough to make it into the news.
Hank doesn't know about any of this. He wouldn't know what to think about it if he did, so ignorance is probably better. Last night on its own is hard enough for him to handle. Between being fucking slapped awake and being shoved off to another crime scene while he was caught in that hellscape between 'hungover' and 'still drunk', he hadn't really had time to process the longest, weirdest dream he's ever had, all the cross-dimensional magic shit where he'd talked to androids like they were fucking people, the fact that one stupid dream had felt like it'd lasted so long Hank had genuinely forgotten what parts of his house looked like. There'd been too much going on right from the moment he'd woken up to think about any of that. And what they'd found at that crime scene-
He remembers talking to Connor about it. He should; he'd been sort of almost temporarily sober, then. Those two girls, he'd said. Those two androids. They just wanted to be together. They really seemed... in love.
That dream... that stupid dream about shit that can't exist can fucking wait. He's having enough trouble with fucking reality.
He sighs, moving toward one side of the hall to make way for someone who really needs to get wherever it is they're going. Not that he himself's that busy - it's quiet so far today, which feels weird after everything that happened yesterday, a day that'd been packed with weird shit even before that dream and the goddamn Eden Club. Hank did come into work this morning, once he accepted that the hangover wasn't going to kill him, but he's kind of regretting it now and maybe heading out of homicide and its big, open room full of people who keep trying to get him to respond to their fucking emails and bugging him to approve their requests for shit isn't the way Hank should deal with all that but it's the way Hank is dealing with it. There are little offices back here near the labs, a few rooms not being used for anything that he can hide out in, and there are fewer people back here, too. Maybe back here he'll be able to just fucking breathe, maybe he'll be able to think. He looks around as he goes, glancing into rooms to see if they're empty, trying to scope out who's around in case someone goes running back to tell on him.]
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So much hinges on them being where they need to be, it's such a pivotal moment in the grand scheme of things that she doesn't bother to wait for the team. She just climbs into the jump ship to try and get a head start. In order to find out where things were at with the investigation, she needs to get into the police mainframe. So to the police station she goes.
This will totally be fine.
She makes her way into one of the server rooms, trying to find somewhere she can plug in when the door opens behind her and she freezes, turning around and raising one hand to her totem, just in case she needs to protect herself.]
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He doesn't totally relax, leaves his hand on the doorknob, not closing it, but he does smile, the expression faint but friendly.]
Hey. Didn't mean to scare you or, uh, interrupt anything. Sorry.
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[Her hand drops and she goes back to just ... pretending she's tech support. There is something ... really familiar about this guy too, but she can't put her finger on it right away.]
Just used to things being really quiet in here.
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[You know what, fuck it. This might be the closest to an empty unused room that he’s going to find.]
You mind if I hang out in here for a while? I could kind of use somewhere quiet too, so...
[He shrugs with an apologetic grimace. Sorry to interrupt your privacy, not sorry enough to not do it.]
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Yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.
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[He pulls a polite little smile at her and lets the door swing shut, pulling out one chair for his butt and another one for his feet, then kicking it into position so he can stretch out. He watches her, trying for a second to decide if he should try and be chatty - but isn't that why he's hiding out here in the first place? To not deal with anyone's bullshit? They wouldn't be talking about work stuff though, so it might not be that bad. It'll take him a minute to decide, and in the mean time he has whatever it is she's here doing to keep himself entertained.]
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Do you have one of the android partners?
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[He looks up, quick and a little startled, focusing on her. He can't see much of what she's doing from here, so it's been easy to slip into zoning out, letting all the shit he has no idea what to do with slosh around in his head. But the question's snapped him out of it and he looks away, shrugging. He knows the right thing to say - what he would have said it's like, being partnered up with an android, before all this goddamn bullshit. He goes with what he knows is true, shoving all the other shit to the back of his mind.]
It's not that exciting. He, it's more of a pain in the ass than anything else. Machines, you know? Got minds of their own even when they're workin right. Especially the new ones. They're probably gonna replace you and me both in a few years anyway, I bet whatever you've been hearin about the hot new prototype didn't mention that.
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Hey, if they can replace me with a machine, then it means I'm not doing my job right.
[She never minded androiods. It's usually the androids that tend to mind her.]
It just seems to be a really tense subject around here.
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[He puts his elbow on the table next to him and leans his chin on a fist, studying her. She doesn't have an accent but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.]
Where you from, Mars? Is it really that much better in the rest of the country?
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Things certainly don't seem as ... charged, I guess. But given that I work in tech, I guess I'm more comfortable with them than most.
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[Since she said her job makes her comfortable with them, but he doesn't see one of them here - she must do both.]
I think I'd tear my hair out.
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[Not a lie, as Gideon might jettison her into the time stream if she tries to mess with her coding again.]
I mostly just stick to networks and wired systems. Less hurt personalities that way.
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[And if he feels a little guilty talking about how much he'd love to not be allowed around androids himself, well, that's weird bullshit that he's not thinking about right now, so fuck it. Things would be a hell of a lot simpler, anyway, if he'd never been allowed near the things in the first fucking place.]
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[She shrugs.]
They don't like it when you mess with their circuits.
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[Hank's gaze sharpens with interest. Weird fucking dream or not, Hank's still supposed to be investigating this whole deviant thing, isn't he. And that- well, it could just be some kind of figure of speech. But it's worth asking about.]
Don't like it how? What do they do?
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[She raises an eyebrow. That answer was mostly specific to Gideon, but she's sure it applied to the androids here as well.]
I don't know, they expressed as much?
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[He shrugs, his posture and voice disinterested, his expression a little less so.]
That happen a lot, machines expressing shit? Sounds like it makes you guys’ jobs a lot harder.
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[She knows that there's a lot of techs who don't, but Zari does.]
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[His tone's not particularly accusing, even if his words are. His eyes haven't lost that alert, watchful look.]
I mean, call me a moron if I'm wrong about this, but even I know androids aren't supposed to show preferences about anything. They aren't even supposed to have preferences, specially not when a human needs to get all up in their circuits and shit. Kinda thought any technician working in the last, uh, ten, twenty years onward woulda known that, even the shitty ones.
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[Her tone is a bit dry, and her eyes remain on the screen.]
You can't create something designed to think and draw conclusions and imitat human life and not expect things like feelings to come along with it.
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He stretches out his legs, a slow, relaxed movement, trying to put as much of himself as he can between her and the door.]
Guess you got a point. Hey, someone with your kinda experience, I bet you could help me a lot with a couple cases I’m working on. Tech shit, you know, I don’t know shit about all that crap. How do you feel about heading to my office, letting me pick your brain a little? Bullpen’s right down the hall.
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Sure. Anything I can do to help.
[Then she holds out a hand.]
Zari.
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[He says it - and this next part - while his hand’s still moving slowly toward hers. He wants to see her reaction before he commits to the handshake, cause the way this fucking case is going she’ll end up being an android who’ll use the grip to give him a kung fu toss over her shoulder before she runs for it.
Maybe he’s seen too many movies. He hopes that’s it. But he’s being cautious.]
Currently investigating android deviancy. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to say to me about that.
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