All that and more. Because he could almost, maybe consider it. Consider that Hank was right. That maybe there was more to this than what Cyberlife said. But empathy is as much a strength as it is a weakness. And admitting there was something to this meant there was innocent blood on his hands.

The thing that made him want to believe made him terrified to believe.

"I'm not lying to himself. I test myself regularly, I know what I am," he said. At least he did whrn Amanda was here. Now its a lot harder to test himself.

And there's a shift at the question. The lost desperation melting because in the end, stopping the war was an in the moment added objective. It wasn't what he was originally supposed to do. He can at least make progress on that.

And he knew how to get it. "Because you want me to deviate," he said, confident and challenging. "You want me to think I'm alive. You want me to not be a threat. Killing you, capturing you, neither of those have a point here, but you're still a deviant. The first who can only run so far. You want me to change. I want to know what broke your program. Only way either of us gets that is interaction, so the question becomes who gets what they want first."

Because that plan can only go well for Connor.