Everything hurt. He ached in places he didn't even know he had places at all, and shivers ran through him, making his aching muscles quiver. Whenever he tried to take a breath, it hurt in his chest and his lungs; swallowing burned his throat. His back felt worse than it did that time he was punished after Mistress found him trying to read. His head was aching something fierce as well, a consistent ache that spread down to his neck and shoulders, and something burned terribly on his face, as if someone had taken a knife and dragged it down the side of his face. His left arm throbbed with agony that he felt from his shoulder down to his fingertips. He wanted to sob, cry out for his Mistress to help him, for anyone to help him, make this pain just stop, but he couldn't speak for the pain in his throat. The consistent aching discomfort plagued him so severely he could not even manage to sleep, find some reprieve in his dreams.
The echo of Nick Cutter often dreamt. The Mistress said that he was not supposed to dream, so he had never told Her of it, afraid that he would be punished for it. He didn't know how to not dream. His dreams were usually painful and flickering, full of confusion and disorientation and lots of red colours and pain, but every now and then, his mind would sink down into a calmer, better state that didn't hurt quite so much. There was one dream in particular he often had, though it was more of a memory than a dream; it was from brief time in the future after the Mistress took him from the Institute.
He dreamt/remembered being in the city with the Mistress; She had insisted upon physical exercise in the first few days after his awakening so his muscles would grow used to exertion and he could learn coordination. She had stopped at a bookstore to peruse the selection; he could not read, so he had stood beside Her and looked into the window of the shop beside it. In the window display had been several objects—a small aeroplane, model trains on little tracks, cars, and other such things, most carved of wood. There was a man inside, sitting on a stool with a piece of wood in one hand and a knife in the other. He worked at the wood with the blade, whittling away, shaping it into small arms, small legs, a face. As the Mistress sat on a bench to read, the echo stood and watched the man smooth out the rough parts of the small wooden manikin with a piece of sandpaper, pick up a tiny wig of soft blond hair, and fasten it on the manikin's head with some glue. Finally, the man picked up a small white dress and buttoned it around the small wooden person with care. His long-fingered hands looked as if they were dancing, moving so delicately, so lovingly, as he fashioned his little creation.
When the echo imagined how he was created after seeing the man in the shop, that was how he imagined it, even though the reality of his creation had never been fully explained to him. He'd asked the Mistress once, and She had told him there was fire involved and that he had been stitched together…and then She'd forbade him from ever asking again, reminding him that the next time he spoke without permission, he would be punished. So when he laid awake on the floor in the Institute near the other echoes, unable to sleep in the darkness, he would imagine the Mistress sitting at a great wooden desk in a workshop full of many different tools, sunlight glinting off wood and metal. In Her hands She had a bit of the original's hair or skin, just enough of his self to use to make the echo look just like him, to put a bit of him into the echo. All the rest of him was put together from other pieces, pieces of someone else, perhaps someone long dead. Old bones smoked out to clean them. Old flesh burned to whittle it down. Fire stoked high to shape him to fit the mold that had been cast for him. The Mistress stitched him together, adding his organs and all the other little bits and pieces that lay within him, that make him work, and then glued his edges together to make him whole. She buttoned on his clothes and fitted on his Collar and seared the Mark into his skin. The hands of his Mistress looked as though they were dancing. But no matter how many times he imagined it, Her hands never moved as though they love him. Because they don't. The echo knew that they didn't. It was a fact he had always known. His Mistress created him just as She created the other echoes, but She doesn't love him, no more than She loves the other echoes. She stitched him and them together, and She gave them their Collars and their Marks so they knew, always, that they belonged to Her.
"Has it woken up yet?" asked one of the Voices from before, making him gasp at the sudden pain it caused his overly-sensitised nerves, like wet silk dragged across stone.
"No, sir. Just lays there moaning," said a new Voice, this one gruff and cold, reminding the echo of the others, the dark Other echoes that the Mistress used to harm others. "Medics say it'll come 'round eventually, though. We'll just have to wait, I suppose."
The echo shivered at the sound of the terrible Voices, just as loud and powerful as the Mistress's, ringing in his ears and making all his bones tremble. He wished they would go away, leave him alone, let him rest. He was so tired, and everything was hurting so much. He wanted to sleep. Let me sleep. Please. Just…let me sleep….
Lester couldn't help but sneer as he looked down at the prone figure of the clone, still curled up on the cot. It hadn't done anything but lay there whimpering since the medics pulled it out of the wreckage of the ARC where Temple found it. "Keep your watch, Captain. I don't want any of these recent events to ever be repeated," he said coldly.
Becker gave a brisk nod. "Yes, sir," he replied.
The suited man reached up and smoothed out his tie. "I now have the ultimate pleasure of informing the actual Cutter that his…doppelgänger…is still alive," he said in a tone of voice that said he would rather have bamboo splinters shoved under his fingernails than go and talk to the professor.
Becker barely managed to bite back a loud, unprofessional snort. "Good luck, then, sir," he said in a voice strained with fought-down laughter.
"It's still alive?" Cutter repeated incredulously, looking from Lester to Jenny as if searching for any sign of deceit, hoping that maybe one of them would crack a smile and say 'got you!' But neither did. Their faces were set in stone.
"We thought that, being a part of Helen's plot, it might yield some pertinent information," Lester replied coolly as he brushed a piece of nonexistent lint off his expensive suit. His voice sounded entirely calm, smooth and flawless, as if he was doing no more than discussing the new annual budget instead of the survival of a perfect genetic replica of Cutter's own genetic material. "Don't strain yourself, Professor, it is being kept under watch; Captain Becker himself has personally taken on the task."
Strain myself, my arse, Cutter thought. Using his good arm, he pushed himself up into a better sitting position. "What the hell is this? Are you out of your mind?" he demanded, gritting his teeth at the sharp pain that movement sent through his injured shoulder, his arm strapped to his chest. "Get rid of it."
"Nick—" Jenny started to say.
"No. I want it gone," he said. It made him feel uneasy down to his very core, the idea of another version of himself existing. Another living, breathing person identical to him in every way, down to a genetic level. It made him feel sick even thinking about it, that creature—he wasn't sure he could call it a person—living in the ARC whilst he was here in the hospital. It made him apprehensive.
"At least let us talk to him first, find out if he has anything worth knowing," Jenny pressed, stepping closer to him and lightly placing her hand on his uninjured arm, fingertips lightly resting on his sleeve. "We don't know what Helen's plan is, and we have to figure it out. The clone might be able to tell us something about what she's doing. We're running blind here, Nick, especially with the ARC in the state it is at the moment. If it knows anything useful, we need to find out what."
Cutter shook his head stubbornly. "No. I want it gone." He didn't want that…thing to be alive any longer than was absolutely necessary. He wanted it gone. Now.
Connor walked down the hallway to the room where Becker had been standing watch over the clone. The black-clad soldier stood just outside the door, holding his shotgun in a relaxed grip; there was a kind of lupine grace about the captain, even when standing still, like a wolf full of easy, prowling confidence. It was the kind of stance that said he was aware of every muscle and joint in his body and had total control over each one. "What do you want, Temple?" asked Becker, arching one brow.
"I-I wanted to go see him," he replied, pointing to the door. "The clone, I mean."
"Why?"
Connor frowned slightly. "What d'you mean, 'why'? I just wanted to go see how he's doing. The guy was a little roughed up, y'know, after being in an explosion," he said, unable to fully keep the facetious tone out of his voice; well, it wasa stupid question.
Becker returned the frown, staring at him with inscrutable dark eyes, then shifted to the side and unlocked the door. "Go on, then. Five minutes, that's all," he ordered briskly.
The room that Connor walked into was very much like a prison cell. There were no windows and only the one door, which locked from the outside. There was no furniture other than the cot that the clone was lying on, looking like he'd been run over by a bus. There was hardly an inch of him not mottled with dark purplish-black bruises or bandaged with white gauze. There was a crooked line of stitches down the side of the clone's bruised face, running from hairline to chin. It barely missed his eye, though it did cut through his eyebrow, and the cut forked at the bottom, reaching to the corner of his mouth and then down to his jaw. Well, at least now we can always tell them apart, Connor thought wryly, though part of him ached with sympathy. There was no way that it couldn't hurt, and it wasn't easy, seeing this man that looked like Cutter in such a weak, pained state.
The clone was twitching and groaning on the cot, breathing raspily; every now and again his brows would draw together in a frown. Connor gently touched his fingertips to the man's arm and was surprised to feel how hot and feverish he felt. Unwinding his scarf, Connor stepped over to the sink, running cold water into the cloth before returning to the cot, very, very gently touching the wet cloth to the stitches. The clone let out a soft whimper, but his body relaxed slightly. "Bet that feels better, don't it? You'll be alright, mate. Don't worry," he murmured.
The echo was beginning to wish he had died. The pain was not going away. In fact, it seemed to only be getting worse, and now his body could not seem to decide upon a temperature. One moment he shivered uncontrollably, and the next he felt as though burning from within.
Something touched his arm, making him shudder. A moment later, though, something damp and cool touched the aching, throbbing pain on the side of his face, cooling the terrible burning feeling that radiated through it. A whimper of relief slipped from his lips, the first noise he had made that was not of pain. "Bet that feels better, don't it? You'll be alright, mate. Don't worry," said a new Voice, but this one was not like the others. It was not loud and terrible and painful, but rather low and very soft, like velvet rubbed the wrong way, dragging across his exposed nerves pleasantly. The heavenly coolness on his cheek shifted slightly, making him sigh again.
He did not know who this new presence was, but he very much liked it.