Conner

Conner is Burton Fisher’s former fellow soldier and Flynne Fisher’s friend, a disabled veteran whose life in the present-day storyline is shaped by the contrast between his vulnerable physical body and the martial-arts peripheral he can operate elsewhere. The contrast is not a simple story of replacement: Conner remains a person who needs care, rest, and ordinary company, while his remote body can enter dangerous situations beyond the limits of his own body.

Identity and Embodiment

Conner is introduced in these scenes through concrete signs of his physical circumstances. His surviving arm bears a tattoo reading “FIRST IN, LAST OUT,” while Macon carries him from the shower to his bed and helps him put his arm into the only sleeve of his Polartec. Conner has been left exhausted and wet; Macon has managed to get him mostly dressed before settling him into bed. The moment gives care an everyday, practical form: Macon supports Conner’s weight and helps with clothing, rather than treating his disability as an abstraction.

Conner’s identity also appears through the dancing master, a martial-arts peripheral associated with Lev Zubov’s brother. Flynne describes it as an instructor and notes its apparent dancing ability. When the peripheral speaks to Ainsley Lowbeer, Conner is recognizable not merely by the borrowed body but by how he inhabits it: he lounges against a bedroom jamb in a way Pavel would not. The distinction between operator and peripheral is made explicit when another character says that Conner has only been seen in the dancing master. The remote body is a means of action, but its posture and manner still communicate something particular about the person using it.

Care, Friendship, and Daily Life

Macon’s care for Conner is physical and immediate. After carrying him from the shower, Macon puts him down on the bed and helps him into his sleeve, then says he is going back for his clothes. He checks whether Flynne and Griff are all right, and Flynne replies that they are. The scene situates Conner within a network of people who look after one another without turning that support into ceremony.

His connection to Burton is shown through a recurring memory of summers at the town pool. Burton and Conner would leap from the high board in tightly curled cannonballs, surfacing to cheers, while Leon sometimes made a deliberately enormous belly flop and mocked their effort. The recollection locates Conner in a shared past defined by play, competition, and friendship, rather than by the later constraints of his body. It also gives the later appearance of his peripheral in a cannonball-like descent an echo of those summers, transforming a familiar gesture into an act of intervention.

Remote Action and Its Limits

At Coldiron, Conner and Burton are both seen beneath white crowns. When Clovis asks Tacoma whether she wants to switch jobs, he explains that neither man is home much. Flynne asks whether they are being made to work; Clovis answers that Burton is choosing to do so, glad to be out of his body, while Conner returns mainly to eat and sleep. The exchange suggests that remote operation gives them a way to spend time beyond their physical bodies, but it also makes the body left behind an unavoidable part of their working lives. Conner’s pattern is notably limited: however capable his peripheral may be, he still has to return for basic needs and rest.

That separation becomes consequential when Flynne’s group is approached by a man attempting to get Conner into a car. Conner’s peripheral drops onto the man and a Michikoid accompanying him, interrupting the attempt. The intervention is forceful, but its result is not a clean victory: the Michikoid is taken out, the man is injured, and another Michikoid bundles him into the car and drives away. Daedra pulls Flynne back inside and identifies Newgate as their next destination. Conner’s remote body changes the immediate balance of the encounter, yet the attempted abduction still propels the others toward a new confrontation.

Confrontation and Narrative Significance

At Newgate, Conner again acts through the dancing master, this time in a confrontation involving Daedra. As the group moves single-file down the stairway, Flynne asks what Conner is doing to her. Ossian explains that Conner is trying to remind her of the possible consequences, while insisting that he will not harm her and that the warning will do no good. Crashing iron can be heard above them as they leave. The episode presents Conner’s peripheral as a visible instrument of intimidation, but it also distinguishes threat from intended physical harm: his action is described as a warning, and the account makes clear that it cannot achieve its purpose.

Across these moments, Conner is neither reduced to disability nor detached from it by technological embodiment. The bed, the Polartec sleeve, and the need to return to eat and sleep keep his physical circumstances present; the dancing master makes his skill and agency visible in spaces his own body does not enter. The shifts between those modes are the point. His story links the unglamorous routines of dependence and friendship to the extraordinary reach of a remote body, while leaving intact the costs and limits that neither can erase.