The echo awoke without pain for the first time in what felt like an eternity all its own. He was still sore and aching, but he no longer felt as if being ripped apart from inside. His head still felt thick and heavy, but it didn't feel as though a knife was carving his face open. He could hear the Voices once more, more than one—the cold Other and the low soft one he liked to hear. Wanting to know who owned the Voices, he parted his lashes slowly, though only one eye could open; the other one was swollen shut.
He saw two people. One was large and broad, dressed all in black, holding a gun. The echo felt his breath freeze in his throat, recognising one of the Others; it might not be one of the Mistress's, but he knew that the Others were dangerous no matter what, that it was their existence to kill. The other person was smaller, slighter, and wore many different colours, nothing quite matching. It was a visual delight that the echo was transfixed by. They were speaking; his ears felt as if they were full of cotton, making it hard to hear, and he had to concentrate hard to discern the words.
"The hell do you think that you're doing, Temple?" demanded the Other in that cold voice he knew so well, just like the Mistress's. "We don't know how drugs will affect it."
The colourful one was smaller than the Other yet didn't back away from that harsh voice; the echo didn't think he'd be so brave. "Stop that, stop calling him an 'it'. He's a person, not an end table. And he was in pain, I wasn't just gonna let him lay there and suffer. Look at his face. It was only a half-dose of morphine, anyways."
My face? Is there something wrong with my face? The echo wondered if perhaps he had been wounded and that was why his head hurt so much. The colourful one—the Other had called him Temple—had done something to stop his pain, with something called morphine. He didn't know what morphine was, but if it could stop him from hurting so much, then he was quite sure that he liked it. It was the Temple that had put the cold wetness on his face earlier, too, then.
"Lester is gonna be pissed when he finds out. He said that nobody is supposed to give it anything," said the Other.
The Temple gave a snorting noise. "I'm not afraid of Lester, so tell on me if you want to, Action Man," he ordered, pointing to the door.
The Other stood for a moment before turning and striding out of the room. Temple turned back towards him, and the echo hastily closed his eye and feigned sleep. There were soft footsteps, and then a gentle hand touched him on the shoulder, very gently as to not hurt him. "Don't worry. I'll not let them hurt you," said the Temple's soft voice. Then the hand pulled away; there was a rustle of fabric before something warm and soft was draped over him, and then Temple left the room, the door closing.
He didn't bother trying to open his eyes again, so instead he just laid there, contemplating everything he had learnt in the past moments. The Other did not like him, and apparently neither did this…Lester, whatever that was, because the Lester had said to let him suffer. The Temple, though, was good. The Temple had given him morphine—he didn't know what it was, except that it alleviated his pain—and put something cold on his face to soothe him when he was burning and could make the Other leave and had given him whatever this…covering was, that was so warm and soft and comforting. The echo was starting to feel very drowsy, and he yawned, curling up tighter. Yes…the Temple was very good.
When the echo woke up again, he could open both eyes, and he could move his body without agony. He started to sit up and gasped when he realised that he was lying in a bed. This was bad, very bad. He was never permitted to sleep in beds. Not even when he was in the Institute was he given a bed. He would surely be punished for this. Terrified, he hastily rolled off the bed, falling onto the floor. He crawled across the floor until he was in the corner of the room, pressing back into the corner and drawing his knees up to his chest. He would be punished for sleeping in a bed, he was certain of it, probably by the Other that seemed to hate him so much.
Burying his face against his knees, the echo sat there and trembled, waiting for the punishment that was sure to come to him.
"Have you learnt anything useful yet, Captain Becker?" asked Jenny as she and Cutter approached the room where the clone was being kept. The professor still felt like he'd been run over by a bus, and his shoulder was aching something fierce, but he refused to stay in the hospital. His argument was that if they were going to interrogate his own damned clone, then he had the bloody right to see it.
"No, it won't speak to anyone; it doesn't eat, doesn't drink, doesn't move. It won't speak, just there. Damn thing is scared of its own shadow," Becker replied, the frustration evident in his voice. "Maybe you'll have a little more luck. It's yours, after all," he said, addressing Cutter as he unlocked the door, allowing them to walk in.
The room was very much a prison cell, with no windows and only the one door. There was a single plain cot, though it was unslept in, and nothing else. The clone had been dressed in plain clothes—black t-shirt, trousers, and shoes, probably spares from the other SAS blokes. It crouched in the corner of the room furthest from the door, knees drawn up to its chest, arms hooked around both legs, head buried in its knees; all they could see of the clone was the top of its pale blond hair. If not for the faintest movement of its back as it breathed, the clone might have been a statue.
"Hasn't moved from there. The moment it woke up, it just got off the cot, sat over there, and stayed there," he said, looking over at Jenny and Cutter, who were both gazing at the clone with expressions of mixed curiosity, disgust, and wariness. Becker shook his head and glanced over at the dark form that was still hunched, unmoving in the corner of the room. "I still say that we handle this situation right now and get rid of it—"
"I am not an it!" the clone nearly screamed, startling everyone out of their skin. They all turned to look at the carbon copy, still crouched in the corner of the room with knees pulled up to its chest and arms wrapped around its legs. It had lifted his head to glare at them, fire in its eyes as it glared at the captain. There was a crooked line of stitches running down the left side of its face, hairline to chin, forking at the bottom to touch the corner of its mouth and curving down to its jaw. For a moment, it stared at them furiously, the scar giving it a fearsome look, but then it lost the furious gaze, replaced by an almost lost expression, like an abandoned child. "I am not an it," the clone repeated softly, then rested its head against its knees once more, pale hair obscuring its face.
Jenny glanced over at the professor, then touched his arm and stepped forward, crouching on her toes to look at the clone. It was bizarre, looking at this…creature…who looked just like the man she cared so much about. "Then what are you?" she asked softly.
It slowly raised its head to look at her. "I am not an it. The Mistress called me Nick Cutter, but I am not him. He—" It pointed to the professor. "—is Nick Cutter."
She felt a little ill, hearing Cutter's voice call Helen 'Mistress.' "That's right. You know what you are, then?" she asked, and it…he…nodded slowly. "Where did you come from?" she asked; the clone frowned in obvious puzzlement. "I-I mean, Helen must have had you created somewhere. Do you know where that is?"
He nodded again. "It is called The Osiris Dynamic Institute. It will not exist for another 137 years. They created and patented the process of creating echoes and specialises in genetic engineering, gene manipulation, and recombinant DNA synthesis," he murmured. "After going through the proper channels and providing DNA samples, Mistress can create echoes of whomever she wishes."
"Anyone?" Becker echoed in a faint voice.
"This is unbelievably dangerous," said Jenny as she straightened up, stepping back over to stand beside the other two men. "I mean, Helen could make a clone of any one of us and infiltrate the ARC."
"That was Her plan," said a soft Scottish burr, and they all turned around. The clone was looking at them with familiar blue eyes, some of his pale gold hair falling into his eyes; he didn't bother trying to brush it away. "The Mistress wanted to take control of the ARC, but She wanted to be able to ensure Her way inside, a failsafe. If I did not arouse suspicion, then Mistress would begin to replace the others, one by one, until She could control the ARC by proxy through us."
"Jesus," said Connor faintly; as they talked, he, Sarah, and Abby had joined them, standing in the doorway and listening to their conversation. "So...are there clones? Of us, I mean?"
The genetic photocopy nodded his head. "Yes. Mistress made one of all of you," he answered in that soft, oddly childlike way of speaking he had.
"How many clones are there?" Becker demanded.
"Of the Other, there are many. Of you, there is only one, same as the rest of you."
They all were silent for a few long minutes, all of them mulling over their own thoughts, trying to imagine a genetically identical photocopy of themselves in Helen's control, a living, breathing mirror image.
"We have to think of something," announced Becker. "A way to identify who's real and who's not if ever she tries this again."
"A password, maybe?" suggested Connor.
The gentle voice spoke up again. "Check for the Mark," the clone said, and they all turned towards him again; Jenny asked, "What mark?"
The copy unfolded his limbs from the curled-up position he was in, stood up, and turned his back to Jenny. With one hand, he lifted his hair away from the back of his neck; right at the nape of his neck, just below his hairline, was a tattoo, stark black against the paleness of his skin. It was a jagged lightning flash less than half the size of her little fingernail, and one part of the bolt crisscrossed with another so that, to Jenny, it almost looked like a capital 'H'. For Helen. "We all have one," announced the clone. "It is the insignia of Osiris Dynamic Institute. Every echo is given a Mark so we can be recognised if we were ever to remove the Collar."
"Collar?" Connor repeated from the doorway. "What do you mean, collar?"
"In the future where I was created, many people create echoes, sometimes of people that have been dead for a very long time. They are not allowed the same privileges as originals. They were never actually born, so they are not considered to be people. They are required to wear a Collar." He lifted a hand to his neck, rubbing his fingers across his throat. "I wore one, but when we arrived, Mistress removed it."
"My God," mumbled Connor; the idea of collaring another human being made him feel uneasy; clone or not, nobody deserved the indignity of being collared like an animal.
Cutter was staring at the wall without really seeing it. "You said that there were other clones, one of every one of us," he said, voice hoarse. "Is there one of a man called Stephen Hart?"
Everyone in the room went tense, turning to look at the clone in dreadful anticipation of his answer. "She never said his last name, but Mistress did make an echo from a blood sample She took from a man called Stephen," he replied. When he noticed the looks of shock and disgust and horror on the faces of everyone else in the room, he tilted his head. "What?"