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It didn’t take the 118 long to warm up to their new firefighter.
Connor Anderson is just a ball of sunshine, a rival to Buck’s golden retriever positivity. He’s endearing and definitely more than a little quirky but he’s also efficient and amazing at what he does out in the field and that creates an impressive juxtaposition.
Connor comes from Detroit, apparently an ex-police officer who wanted to explore something more than following in his father’s footsteps. He knew he wanted to help people the way he did when he was in the police force but in a more direct way, and thus, firefighting.
Connor is an open book. He talks about his father, Hank, a Lieutenant who transferred to LAPD, at almost any opportunity he can get. He gushes about his dog Sumo, an adorable Bernese mountain dog that they’ve gotten many chances to pet. He talks about old cases that he had up in Detroit (obviously redacted enough that they couldn’t track down the specifics) and he talks about his friends from Detroit and he talks about his fascination with pop culture and basically anything that’s on his mind, especially when he discovers something new.
But despite how much he talks, they don’t know much about Connor himself.
Connor is young, probably in his late twenties, and yet he never talks about his childhood or anything that happened before he was an officer. When asked about his childhood, he clams up, considering his words carefully and masterfully changing the subject before it can be pushed any further.
And that’s because the truth is unbelievable.
Because how do you tell your team that you’re an android from 20 years in the future?
The first glimpse his team gets about the truth is during their family meal.
Connor mentions offhandedly about how he met Hank which makes them all pause.
“When you met Hank?” Chimney says.
Connor stills, and Chimney is ready to backtrack and apologize for pointing out something that is clearly not his business, but Connor smiles sheepishly.
“Hank wasn’t always my dad,” Connor says. “My creato… my… well, I suppose you could call him my father. He claimed to see me as his child, but I knew better than to believe he had meant that. Because I would always be his creation, something made by his hands and his mind but not his heart. He would never value me more than his work. His life’s work. And even though I was a product of it, even though I deviated into my own person, I was nothing more than a machine to him.”
There’s a silence that falls over the table.
“I didn’t mean to upset you with this information,” Connor starts.
“We’re not upset with you, Connor,” Hen says. “We’re upset that you’ve had to go through that.”
“And know that you’re not a machine,” Bobby says. “You’re you. Alive and human,” Connor flinches at the word. “You make your own choices and no one, especially him, can control what you do with your life.”
“Thank you, Bobby,” Connor says with a terse nod. He pushes the food around on his plate, always uneaten, always cut and spread out to give the illusion of having been eaten, and changes the topic swiftly. Sometimes he puts the food to his lips when someone looks at him for too long and he ignores the analysis that pops up.
The alarm goes off and Connor is relieved to get back out there and away from this conversation.
However, as they sit in the truck having idle small talk, Connor can feel his stress levels begin to rise.
The call isn’t anything too out of the ordinary. A fire alarm set off from a forgotten loaf of bread left cooking in the oven.
It seems like a simple enough mistake and the homeowner seems understandably flustered but Connor sees something more in her demeanor. A small thrum of panic hidden in her eyes, stiffness in her posture and tightness coiled in her muscles.
Connor pulls a piece of burnt bread from the pan and pops it into his mouth and frowns as the statistics pop up.
“You didn’t bake this bread,” Connor says.
“Excuse me?” the woman says.
“This is store bought bread,” Connor says. “It was already baked and in a plastic bag.” Connor scrapes at the charred plastic.
Bobby’s brows shoot up.
“You can’t really believe that,” she says, looking between the rest of the crew. “That’s… that’s ridiculous. Why would I put a pre-made loaf in the oven still in the bag?”
Hen circles the table and sniffs the bread, nose wrinkling as she recognizes the scent of overcooked plastic that clings to its charred remains.
There’s a thump from upstairs and they all go quiet.
“What was that?” Bobby asks the woman.
“It’s nothing. Probably my cat—”
A muffled scream.
The woman immediately tries to bolt but Buck and Chimney grab her as Connor runs upstairs with Bobby, Hen, and Eddie.
They’re met with an excessively padlocked door.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” Chimney mutters.
Hen, who had the foresight to grab a battering ram, hands it to Bobby who calls out a “stand back!” before he breaks through the door.
Hidden in the room a terrified, wide eyed woman in a maid’s outfit. She bursts into tears at the sight of them. “It worked. You came.” She collapses against Bobby’s, hugging his middle as she cries.
Connor recognizes the woman, his processors pulling up a memory of a missing post he had seen on social media posted by her partner.
“Mindy Chekov?”
She looks at him with wide eyes. “Yes. That’s me.” She laughs through another sob. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard my own name.”
“We’re going to get you out of here, Mindy,” Bobby says. “You were so clever and you did exactly what you needed to get us here.”
Connor is moving before he understands what he’s doing, a bullet hitting his shoulder as he blocks its path from hitting Bobby and Mindy.
“Connor!” his team shouts.
Eddie tackles the man with the gun, an unexpected accomplice of the woman detained downstairs.
Connor sees the blue thirium gush from his shoulder and his stress levels skyrocket. No. No, they were never supposed to find out, especially not like this.
The stress turns to near self destruct and it takes all of his self restraint not to start bashing his head against the floor to escape the inevitable confrontation.
“Hank,” Connor gasps. “Need. Hank.”
Hen, who’s got her hands pressing against his wound with confusion and worry, tries to smile with reassurance. “We’ll get your dad here, Connor. Don’t worry. You’re gonna be alright.”
“I—” He stops, his vocal processor glitching, voice more static than actual speech.
Hen’s eyes go wide at the noise and Connor knows there’s no way out of this without the truth.
Connor doesn’t know how long it’s been as the moments blur together (that is a lie, the milliseconds click through his internal timer) when he hears familiar heavy footsteps approach.
“Connor?!”
“Hank,” he sighs with relief, his voice more normal than before, but still glitching. “There’s something in my system. I can’t think straight.”
“Yeah, it’s a bullet, kid.” He pushes Connor’s hair from his forehead. “How much have you lost?”
“About 2.6 liters,” Connor says with a grimace.
Hank looks around at the others in the room, Bobby having left with the victim, Eddie with the man who had shot Connor, but Hen and Chimney tending to his bulletwound as best they can, which is not very much considering his foreign anatomy.
“You can trust them,” Connor says.
“I don’t like this.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
Hank sighs, and pulls out the thirium pouches from his jacket and hands them to Connor.
“Woah, hey, what the hell is that stuff?” Chimney says.
“It’s the thing keeping him alive,” Hank says gruffly before bringing the pouch to his lips.
Connor gulps greedily at the thirium and feels as his synthetic skin starts to repair itself, the bullet thankfully missing any of his vital internal working.
“Holy shit,” Chimney breathes, staring at the healing exterior.
“C’mon,” Hank says, pulling Connor up. “Take my jacket. Can’t let anyone else see that.”
“I am just thankful that this is hardwood,” Connor says, grabbing a towel from the attached bathroom, wetting it and beginning to clean up the messy pool of thirium that leaked from the bullethole.
“What—” Hen starts.
“I’ll explain everything once we get back,” Connor says. “I promise.”
.-~*~-.
“So… you’re an android,” Bobby says flatly.
“From the future,” Chimney adds giddily.
“And Hank…?” Eddie starts.
“Is a human,” Connor says.
“From the future too,” Hank finishes.
“I can’t believe it,” Chimney says, nearly vibrating with excitement. “I mean, time travel? It’s real? And not only that. Androids?! I mean… Connor, you’re so human. Wait. Is that offensive?”
“No,” Connor says. “I… appreciate the sentiment.”
“So what now? I mean, are you trying to get back to the future?” Hen asks.
“I… don’t know,” Connor says. “I’ve got a life in the future but I’ve also got a life here. And unless we can recreate the technology that sent us back, which is unlikely, I think we’ve got something… good, here.”
“What I don’t get,” Buck says. “Is why you took a bite of that burnt bread.” Realization dawns on Buck. “That’s how you knew, wasn’t it? Is that an android thing?”
Hank smacks Connor on the shoulder. “I told you to stop tasting shit during investigations.”
“The sensors on my tongue—”
“Connor!”