quiet determination.

CONNOR

He arrives, drawn by the call.

A bellowing beckon caught his audio processor and replayed in his ears, but it was a foreign voice. Unknown. Connor could not place it. Much is the same in this odd world he found himself in now. It was different. Strange. Nothing like the civilian bustle and constant, fast-paced action of before.

So far, in this place, this place that he still did not know the name of, Connor found no use. He was given no directive, no mission to complete. His previous designation was clear, a constant reminder to find all deviants and apprehend them, stop them, no matter the cost, yet he was beginning to wonder if this world even had any deviants. The terabytes upon terabytes of knowledge stored within his memory core proved to be useless. His functions, protocols, superior programming, and various forms of analysis were wasted in this world of lacking function and missing orders.

He had no handler. No form of self-regulating. Whenever he would slip into a few brief moments of stasis, his mind palace was always empty. He was, in short, completely alone.

Nothing was right, and Connor could not help but notice an irregularity within his program. Something was amiss. Different, in a way that had no correlation to this strange world of snow and ice. If he could place a name to the irregularity, he would call it ’unease’. An emotion reserved to those of flesh and blood, not of metal and biocomponents.

So, when the call whirled across the breeze and caught his ear, he followed. His eyes are on the large, furling tree that appeared through the mists. His gaze roams, analyzing, cataloguing every detail and memorizing it with crystal clarity. Interesting. LED whirring a steady, constant yellow, blinking and flickering as it processed the sparse information provided.

The tree is dead. He can tell. He estimates that the tree had been dead for a very long time, seemingly incinerated from the inside-out, yet... His scans come back inconclusive, just like every other time he ran a diagnosis. Then, the artificial bay’s eyes shift, deep brown resting on the figure that stood in waiting upon a low branch with that same expression of vacant tranquility. He could only assume that it was she that had summoned them, shouting into the darkness to any who would listen.

A furtive glance was all Connor spared in either direction, and drawing himself up to his full height, he stood within the shadow of the massive tree and waited in silence.

Without a primary directive, without a handler or any form of self-regulating, all Connor could do was perform how he had been created; to adapt and learn.