It had started with a nightmare. A dream of a memory that wasn't even his, the feeling of a gun against his chin and the cold pain that followed as his mind closed off with a sharp finality. There had been so many various code errors blinking across his mind in that moment of death...
Connor sat up, startled because he hadn't even realized he'd powered down...
The android tilted his head, LED on his right temple swirling with a flicker of light that shifted quickly from blue to yellow and finally rested on an uneasy red, the light unsteady in its consistency as it continued to run around the circle there. He closed his eyes and focused on his applications, trying to find the root of the problem. When had he shut down? Why had he shut down? Why didn't he remember it?
This time when he opened his eyes he at least remembered shutting down, but he hadn't meant to. What was going on? He'd never fallen into a force reboot during a simple diagnostics before.
This wasn't right. Something was desperately wrong, and he felt a flicker of fear run through him as his thirium pump began to beat dangerously fast beneath his chest plate. Connor was taking breaths he didn't even need to take now, trying to focus on the present.
He stood up on unsteady feet and suddenly wished Hank was there to reassure him everything would be okay. Connor had friends here, but there had always been something oddly soothing about the seasoned detective's way of comforting him even if it had usually been through sarcastic means.
Connor took a few steps towards the door, pausing to lean against the doorframe, holding on to it as if the world might spin away from beneath his feet. His thirium pump wasn't just racing now, it was beginning to warm--not a good sign in most other androids, and even if he was a unique prototype Connor could assume he ran similarly in his basic biocomponents.
He tried to blink away the error message as he made his way outside and into the snow. He couldn't feel the cold the same way a human might, but it registered on his chassis, seeming to mollify the worst of the heat for the moment. But as he started to take another step, the android frowned, dropping to his knees this time as his systems once more initiated an unwanted reboot. As it happened, Connor briefly wondered if this was his punishment for spying on another's death--reliving his own over and over for eternity. It would leave him there in the cold snow, kneeling and seemingly dead until his systems could restart properly, the only sign he was alive at all anymore the faint flickering of his LED on the side of his forehead.