A:N I don't hate Connor, believe me the fact that I torture him is a sign of my love. I am a sucker for the whole "guy gets beat up and bloodied" thing. Btw, has anyone else ever noticed we never see Connors wrists.... I think there is a past there. Like he used to be super popular and then something bad happened and he become an emo, and then he went to college and became SUPER NERDTASTIC (just the way we like him)

Beginning Quote

"You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind."

"HE SAW YOU" Stephen was spitting in the rough wrinkled face of one of the cleaners. They were lined up at in the research floor of the secondary lab. This was the place where all the good research would go, the reality of his grimy little cleanup job in London. The little operation back in London was always a safety net in case the ARK caught wind of what was going on. But still, when Danny had come out of that building, with barely a scratch on him, yelling about the 'clones'. The team had immediately put two and two together and shown him the surveillance of cutters death. The surveillance which had been skilfully edited by those same cleaners to put a random lab technician in Connors place in every single shot.

"Sir he didn't know who we were"

"HE STILL SAW YOU. And then the brilliant little miss page got out her giant POPUP BOOK OF CLONES"

He turned around and ran a hand through his scruffy hair and looked out into the sunken area where they kept Connor. The lab was arranged in three floors the two top floors were circular balconies, packed with computers and cramped desks, but the bottom one was a sunken pit, where they kept the predators, and Connor.

Ah, Connor. It had been so easy for the Stephen to send a couple of cleaners through the future anomaly after the ARK team, to lie in wait until Abby and Connor had gone off to sleep and then snatch the snoring scientist right out of the past and into the lab using the dying anomaly device. After that it had been an easy job to activate the newly improved neural inhibitors in the minor staff at the ARK and put them into the field agents once they got back. If only Abby hadn't been so stubborn and refused medical checkups after her trip, she would have the chip two, and the whole mess of moving in to keep an eye on her could have been. He had also paid off a couple of excellent hackers to do a cleanup job on the records and surveillance systems. It had been a rush job and Stephen was still worried that if you dug hard enough you might still be able to find surveillance footage of the ARK during down time with Connor skateboarding throughout the halls, but the important stuff was all edited and slipped back into place with ease.

Now all that was left was a broken body and a scared mind. Connor temple sat huddled in a heap at the bottom of what the cleaners referred to as the pit, where bad employees would be sent for death by predator. It was a simple circular room, sunken 20 ft down into the ground and surrounded on all sides by cages, some full of weapons and research, and some home to the predators. Connor sat in the center of the pit, where he usually was kept, and scribbling plans out furiously on a giant sheet of paper he had taped together. That was what Stephen needed him for, his brain, his unstoppable brain. The only man alive who could even hope to reconstruct the artefact and make the device that could send him back in time to save her; Helen, the creator. She was the one that made them all; some of them for their hard work like the cleaners, and some of them, like himself, as her successor.

He turned back to the assembled line

"Has anyone told him we lost the plans?"

"No. We thought you would want to". Stephen smiled, they knew him well. He nodded to them and then made his way to the pit, via the cage elevator. The elevator opened up in the room where he kept the weapons, surrounded on both sides by the large ugly predators that he and his scientists worked so hard to control. He gazed at the table that held the impressive array of knives. They gleamed in the orange glow of the old light bulbs; small rectangular combat knifes, WW2 trench knifes, Balisongs, and hooked Corvos, light daggers, stilettos and huge gleaming Macheties. But he selected from among his favourites, the short precise scalpels, old fashioned straight razors and vicious Bowie knifes. He carefully picket up one of the Bowie knifes weighing it on his palm and then gripping it firmly as he unlocked the door to the pit.

"Hi Connor". The young man's head whipped up. His arms were still caked in blood from previous torture sessions, his hairs was stuck to his sweat slicked forehead and his skin had a pale, sickly tinge to it

"This horrible thing happened today, would you like to hear?" Connor remained silent, watching Stephen with wide calculating eyes. He knew better than to answer him now. If he opened his mouth even to agree he would be punched, kicked and cut. So he kept silent, crouched over. He was boiling from the overly hot temperature that Stephen kept the pit at. He claimed it was all for his predators, but Connor suspected it was just so Stephen could watch him suffer from heat stroke. The temperature made him think of to a faraway place, and a faraway person, him and Abby dancing around the kitchen in nothing but their underwear, singing along to bad pop music.

But then Stephen thrust his finger deep into one of the bullet wounds in Connors shoulder, scraping his finger through the flesh. "They will find me" it was a whispered mantra, spat through gritted teeth, repeated again and again. Stephen would have cut it out of him long ago, but he had a feeling that to produce work Connor would need his sanity.

"I said, would you like to hear?" Connor rocked backwards, muttering the same thing over and over. "Answer me, COME ON, YOU WANT TO KNOW "

"Go ahead, make my day". A movie quote, entirely appropriate in Connors opinion. And even though most of his bravado was gone, and the phrase was muttered weakly; it was worth it to feel the rumblings of laughter again, even if they did hurt his muscles all over. Stephen expertly ran the tip of the hooked blade along Connors bare chest, leaving another shallow cut, marking out another scar.

"we lost the plans, you insolent little kid, your brilliant plans" Stephens voice was dripping with sarcasm, but unfortunately, he really needed those plans, and to get them back, he obviously needed to re-train Connor, get him back under his thumb.

"You almost gone you know. I have been picking up pieces of you all week. Stuff you left lying around. And you know what that means, don't you"

Connor had gone back to silence now, his eyes flicking shut

"DON'T YOU" Stephen swung the blade across Connors ribs and then smashed the hilt across his purpled cheekbone.

"Your almost gone, she's almost forgotten you. And once she forgets you it will be easy for me to just, slip into your life, become their little brain box. And you know the best part about being you"

Stephen had the knife poised at Connors shoulder, his grin manic as Connors eyes widened

"I get her, all to myself, where ever, when ever, however. And when I'm done, she will be a cheap little whore"

He drove the knife down into the joint and Connor roared in pain.

End Quote

"It's amazing how someone can break your heart and you can still love them with all the little pieces"

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