#ethanyar

Dorian had been waiting for John for over an hour, when he got the call from detective Stahl.

“Dorian, there’s been a situation. I’m picking you up and driving you to the station. John’s been kidnapped.” The world narrowed down to those three words, all problem-solving algorithms immediately working on hacking the cameras at John’s apartment building and receiving incoming reports.

There was very little to see; three hooded figures, one of them clearly an android, probably black market issue. John gave them a fair fight, but the android grabbed him and hauled him in the car, while one of the others stripped him of his prosthetic. The camera managed to capture his face right before they pushed him into the car. He looked frightened. Dorian burned.

Dorian listened to Stahl’s report in the car ride to the precinct and stayed silent. He was aware of her worried looks, but didn’t care to reassure her with small talk. He was already hacking the MX database through Stahl’s assigned unit, sifting through the information from the patrols.

The precinct was all gathered together; presumably either to help or to gossip, Dorian didn’t care enough to find out. He went directly to the Chief’s office, ignoring the protocols usually in place for units without a human partner.

“Dorian…” Captain Maldonado started, a look of sympathy on her face.

“I need to hear the ransom phone call and I need permission to access FBI and NSA databases.”

“The call hasn’t come in yet, but I’ll make sure you can be there when it comes. As for the FBI…Dorian, I can’t do that. If you can’t give me probable cause and if you’re not paired up…”

“So without John, I’m not really a detective and you can’t let me do my job so I can find him. What am I supposed to do?” He had already hacked the databases anyway.

“Look, Dorian I know you’re worried about John, we all are…” A channel in Dorian’s circuitry flashed red.

“The call is coming in.” They rushed out of the office to the briefing room, where the shrill ring of the phone line was marring the air. “Monitor the sonic frequency as well as the GPS tracing.” Dorian ordered a tech, who, surprisingly, obeyed without question.

The call turned out to be a video. John was chained to the table and his face was swollen and beaten bloody. Dorian felt a shudder through his circuitry when the detective opened his eye to glare at his attacker in defiance.

Apparently the group used to be part of a larger empire, formerly owned by a man that John and his previous partner put behind bars. The kidnappers demanded their leader be released in exchange for detective Kennex’s life. But Dorian already knew this by looking through the MX databases, as well as the fact that the man was in NSA custody and that the agency would never consent that their prize possession be exchanged for the life of a homicide detective. Dorian watched as the same realization dawned on Maldonado as she took a deep breath and called on the technician to patch her through to a liaison in the NSA.

Meanwhile Dorian began looking through the data on the sonic measurements, looking for a resounding frequency that would tell him about the android that was patching through the call from the kidnappers.

A hand touched his arm, lightly. Rudy was standing at his elbow, looking increasingly nervous, but sympathetic.

“We’ll get him back Dorian, don’t worry. Detective Kennex is tough!” Dorian attempted a smile, which Rudy returned timidly and moved on to where an increasingly anxious Captain Maldonado was calling him.

Dorian felt for the small device Rudy had dropped into his pocket and met the engineer’s backward look with a barely perceptive nod. What he held in his pocket was an override device, with codes for access to any circulating android unit and even some of the more classified databases. People tended to underestimate Rudy, forgetting that he built the Police Synthetic Unit division with his own two hands and could quite possibly make the world much worse with a few well typed commands.

“…check out the scene. Paul, take Dorian with you.”

Dorian followed the detective out the door, the MX unit following. They moved through a part of the precinct with very little security cameras, abandoned because most of the staff was still in the briefing room. Paul was in the middle of a rant on the uselessness of robots, so Dorian didn’t feel too bad about knocking him unconscious, while simultaneously activating the MX’s override coding. They both dropped like sacks of potatoes. Dorian dragged them carefully into a supply closet and locked the door. Hopefully nobody would miss them for a while.

Armed with the car keys and Richard Paul’s identification, he made a stop at the armory, where the new intern was very happy to provide the charming detective Paul with all the weaponry he needed and a phone number that he didn’t, then calmly drove the car out of the police station and onto the highway.

 *

 He arrived at the correct location quickly, following the signal that the foreign android was emitting and that he’d been tracking since Rudy gave him the override. He took in the abandoned warehouse. John would probably say it was a cliché, but John wasn’t there and Dorian felt his absence like a wound.

As he got out of the car, moving toward the front entrance, he noted that the security cameras were turning into the other direction, leaving him a blind spot through which he could slip undetected. Rudy must have been tracking his signal.

He had a brief flash of compassion for the man guarding the door, before he remembered the bruise around John’s eye and the way he held his ribs as if they pained him. The man didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the ground.

Dorian moved through the halls like a ghost, brutally efficient. He found the android he was tracking guarding the room they were holding John in.

He was probably an early model DRN, judging by the flash of surprise that showed on his face before Dorian twisted his head off.

Dorian didn’t even look at the man in the room with John, emptying the whole cartridge in his body by guide of artificial sensors alone. All his attention was focused on John.

John with bloody lips and a bloody nose, some possible broken ribs and bruising all along his torso. John whose prosthetic was missing and his other leg probably broken, lips cracked due to dehydration. John who was grinning at him through the blood and sweat. His John.

Dorian stepped close to him, running a gentle hand along his jaw and wiping the blood from the corner of his lips. The detective leaned his tired body just a fraction into Dorian’s.

“This is the second time I saved your life, you know. I hope you realize I’m moving in after this.” John gave a wheezing laugh that ended as a grimace as he jarred his broken ribs.

Dorian gathered him in his arms like a child, conscious of the battered state of his body and headed out the door.

“Up we go, princess.” He muttered against John’s sweaty hair.

Right then, a man appeared out of the shadows of the corridor and opened fire. Dorian turned just in time, to protect the detective’s body and braced himself against more bullets slicing into his back, when the man behind him gave a wet gurgle and fell to the floor. John calmly clicked on the safety on the gun he pulled from Dorian’s holster.

“What were you saying about that princess, partner?” and Dorian laughed for the first time since they separated the previous evening.

When they came outside, there was already perimeter around the building and ambulances waiting.

They drove John to the hospital. Dorian refused to leave his side, even by threat of decommission.

 *

 His actions couldn’t go unpunished, of course.

His heroics saved the department a lot of face and no people, save for John’s torturer, were dead, but many argued that a robot with such blatant disregard for rules should be destroyed immediately. In the end, a compromise was reached. Dorian would be allowed to continue his work as a detective, on the condition that he undergo some reprogramming.

John protested. Loudly. Dorian was a silent shadow at his side, ready to steady him on his still not entirely healed legs.

However, both of them were soothed when Rudy volunteered for the task.

When he opened Dorian up at some of his key programming points and checked his encoding drives, he was astonished at what he found.

John’s name and identification number were written into the starting sequences of every single program drive, down to the most basic maintenance programs. Dorian couldn’t activate any of his working processes without first thinking of John.

Rudy thought for a while, before moving to re-cover Dorian’s circuitry. He wouldn’t change anything, though his report said differently.

When John came to pick him up, Rudy waited enough to see the results of the diagnostics and then left them alone.