"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds,
which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"…but the flesh did not make the man. The sum of his experiences did.
Memories shaped a man's life and gave it purpose and meaning."
—Steven Savile, Primeval: Shadow of the Jaguar

"I'm sorry, Nick, I can't let you go."

"What the hell are you talking about now?" he demanded, turning around, but then he froze at the sight of her, holding a gun pointed directly at his chest. With a low, exasperated sigh, he turned around. "Oh, for God's sakes," he grumbled softly, then turned to face her once again. "You really know how to pick your moments, don't you?" he asked, shaking his head. This was un-bloody-believable.

"I'm sorry, Nick, but if you'd seen the things I have, you'd understand. The future is more important than either of us," she replied, a slightly manic look in her eyes.

"You know what, Helen?" Cutter said as he stared at the woman that had been his wife. He had once loved her, had once thought that she was the person he could spend his life with; now he was seeing who she really was. She was off the deep end entirely. Madness flickered in the depths of her eyes even as they filled with tears, and the hand holding the gun was trembling. "You're not as smart as I thought you were."

A muscle in her jaw ticked, and he could see her finger tighten on the trigger. He waited for the pain of being shot, knowing there wasn't going to be any escaping this one. But it didn't matter. He knew that Connor would be able to solve the artefact without him. He knew the team would be able to survive. Three things happened extremely fast right then: there was a tremendous crash, something came barreling out of the wreckage and tackled Helen, and the gun went off. Instead of hitting him in the chest, the bullet slammed into his shoulder, staggered him back a step, and knocked him onto his arse. Cutter gave a strangled gasp of pain, blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder, the hot, coppery scent of fresh blood briefly overtaking the smell of smoke and fire.

Another shot was fired, and he looked up from the bleeding hole in his shoulder. The thing that had come out of the wreckage and tackled Helen wasn't a thing at all. Connor Temple was struggling to wrestle the gun out of her grip, covered in soot and ash; suddenly she brought her knee upwards into his stomach, barely missing his groin. Connor doubled over with a strangled wheeze, but then Helen cried out in sudden pain, releasing the gun as if it'd burnt her. Her dark gaze flitted to Cutter for a moment, taking in his blood-covered shoulder, and then she turned and ran away, vanishing into the smoke without a trace. Connor shoved the gun into his belt and ran to Cutter. "Professor…oh God," the boy whispered as he saw the bleeding wound. "C'mon, Prof, let's get the hell out of here."

Cutter gasped in pain as Connor took his unhurt arm and pulled him up to his feet, his vision spinning sickeningly. "The—get th-the artefact," he managed to stammer out, trying to get the room to stop turning.

The student hastily glanced around, grabbed the coat he'd wrapped the artefact in, and held it under one arm. "Let's go. We've been through too much shite together to die now," said Connor quietly, putting his other arm around Cutter and all but dragging him forward. Their progress wasn't the swiftest, given that there was debris scattered all over the place and the professor couldn't exactly make his legs cooperate with his brain's wishes. His nausea and his pain were grappling each other for control, and it was the struggle that kept him from passing out on the spot.

Voices, blurry and indistinct, reached his ears over the loud rushing sound he heard, and he glanced upwards. The entrance to the ARC was only a few metres away now. The sight of fresh air and the scent of sunlight made relief briefly overtake his pain. Wait a moment, that doesn't sound right, he thought, but he couldn't quite puzzle out why. Next thing he knew, he could hear someone shouting for an ambulance, and Jenny's voice calling out to him. Should've listened to her in the first place, his mind whispered, but then a peaceful darkness swept across his mind, wiping out all thought.

To come awake after being unconscious for a very long time was a most disconcerting experience, Nick Cutter decided. He felt as if he was floating, the entire world bathed in a soft, golden-white haze. Part of him wondered if perhaps he was dead and this was the afterlife. Not so bad, I suppose. Slowly, though, that warm, hazy feeling began to dissipate. Little by little, he became aware of his own weight lying on something soft yet firm, not floating at all. There was a sharp scent in the air—latex, antiseptic, and floor cleaner—and his left shoulder felt oddly numb despite a consistent throbbing sensation just below his collarbone. The gold-ivory haze began to fade as well; with a superhuman effort, he managed to get his lashes apart.

Three white walls and a fourth of nothing but windows. The blinds were drawn halfway, bars of shadow-light falling across the rest of the room. Grey tiled floors. One door—he could see a black-clad soldier lingering outside. Cutter let his lashes fall shut for a moment longer, struggling to make his cotton-filled brain make sense of what he'd seen. Hospital room. Why am I in a hospital room?

The numbed feeling in his shoulder was fading, and the consistent throbbing ache he felt was getting sharper as the numbness waned. It was a sharp, persisting pain that struck every other heartbeat or so. Ah…Helen. She shot me, he remembered. He remembered fire and smoke, his ex-wife holding a gun. Christ, his life was insane. Now he could hear the hushed hum and chirp of machines, tracking his bodily functions, ensuring he wasn't dead just yet, and he could feel something warm wrapped around his hand.

His eyes came open once more. Jenny Lewis was sitting in the chair beside his hospital bed, curled up and fast asleep; it was her hand that was holding onto his protectively. For a moment, he simply watched her. She was still wearing the same clothes from the explosion, her hair was unkempt, and her face was make-up free and bearing smudges of soot. He wasn't looking at two women, he was looking at one—Jenny Lewis. As alike as she looked to Claudia Brown, they weren't the same. They were two different people, with different strengths and weaknesses. Identical twins, in a sense: alike on the outside but entirely unique inside. And it only took a bullet for me to figure it out, he thought wryly. How bloody thick was he?

He squeezed her fingers. "Jenny," he said, but his voice came out as barely more than a rasping whisper. Cutter swallowed hard and tried again. "Jenny."

Her lashes fluttered, then parted. "Nick? Oh, God, you're awake!" she gasped, sitting upright in the chair. "How are you feeling?"

"Pleasantly numb, really," he answered, though it was difficult to speak. "How long have I been out?"

"Not that long," she answered. Jenny reached out and lightly touched his cheek, and he tilted his head against her palm. "Don't you ever scare me like that again, Nick Cutter. Do you hear me? Ever. I swear to God, if I have to visit you in a hospital again, I'll shackle you to your desk and make you live off rations of lettuce leaves and water," she threatened, lightly pulling on his hair.

He smiled weakly, turning his head to kiss the soft skin of her palm. "Yes, ma'am." When he looked up at her face, he could see that Jenny's lashes were suspiciously damp, and he sighed quietly. "Oh, Jenny…."

She bent forward and kissed his cheek. For a moment, the faint smell of smoke and musk replaced the sharp, clean scent of the hospital, and soft curls of her hair brushed against his skin. When she leant away, it was physical effort to open his eyes again. Jenny took his hand in her own, and she seemed about to say something else when the door of the hospital room opened. A young woman in a nurse uniform came in; she had honey-coloured skin, and her hair and eyes were a similar shade of brown, which made her look oddly monochromatic. The fact that she wore tan scrubs only added to that. When the nurse saw him awake, she scolded Jenny for not calling the doctor and set about checking his vitals. The PR smiled and lightly squeezed Cutter's hand. "Well, I'm going to head back to the ARC now, tell the others you're awake. We've got a lot of work to do," she said with a small laugh, and she ran her thumb across his knuckles before releasing his hand and leaving the room.

Cutter watched her go, sighed softly, and let his head fall back against the pillows with a smile on his face.

"Your wife, she loves you very much," said the nurse with a barely detectable Spanish accent. "She hardly ever left, neither did your son."

It took him a moment to realise that she was talking about Jenny and Connor. "She's not my wife," he corrected. "My wife is the one who shot me."

The nurse's eyebrows shot up.

Connor sighed quietly as he picked his way across the wreckage of the ARC. The fires had all been extinguished, and it was at last deemed safe enough for people to reenter the structure. Most had been evacuated from the main part of the building, so hopefully, there wouldn't be too many casualties. S&R was already combing the ruins for any injured. He looked down at the mangled remains of the ADD and sighed dejectedly, hands in his pockets. That'll be a bitch to fix, he thought. He leant down and began to carefully sift through the machine; perhaps he could salvage some of their files if the hard drive wasn't too badly damaged. As he shifted aside a piece of broken monitor, he heard a faint moan from somewhere underneath the debris. "Hello? Someone under there?" he called, not sure if his ears were deceiving him or not.

There it was again, a tiny groan, barely audible but there. Connor hastily bent down and began to move aside more of the debris. He lifted aside a chunk of metallic debris, revealing a dirty, bloodied arm. "Oh, God," he said quietly, then stood up. "Oi! Hey, there's someone over here!" he shouted. He pulled aside another piece of the rubble and gasped. It was the clone, not one of the Cleaners, but Cutter's; the clone was covered in soot, his clothes were torn and bloodied, and his hair was matted down on one side with blood.

Several medics came into the room, and he waved them over. "Quickly, over here," he said, moving aside to let the medics study the still form underneath the rubble. Connor turned and headed back outside. "Jenny!" he called, spotting the form of the PR among the others. "What are you doing here?"

"Nick's awake," she said; Connor sighed in relief, as did the others. "What's going on here?"

"The clone's alive," he said, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise. "Cutter's clone. I just found him inside."

Even as he spoke, the S&R team went past, taking the clone into another waiting ambulance; so covered in dirt and filth as he was, it was hard to tell just how injured he was, but there was no mistaking the dark wetness on his clothes as anything but fresh blood.

"I hope it dies," said Abby, her voice surprisingly cold, and Connor looked down at her in shock. When she noticed his stunned expression, she frowned. "What? That isn't natural, Connor. There shouldn't ever be a clone of someone. It's just wrong. It's unnatural."

He didn't answer her, just looked back at the ambulance in silence.

The echo whimpered in pain, the harsh, glaring lights too bright in his eyes, cold air raking across his too-sensitive skin, causing agony to fire through his hypersensitive nerves. Something was wrong. Something was so very wrong. He could not hear the Mistress in his head; Her voice was not there any longer. He whined softly, shudders wracking his entire frame from head to toe, nothing but his own thoughts rattling around inside his own head, echoing in that empty space where the Mistress had once been. Curling up on his side, he buried his head in both arms, hands fisted in his hair; every part of him hurt, from head to toes, a consistent, stabbing, wrenching pain that refused to go away. Where was the Mistress? Why had She left him? He wasn't sure what was happening to him, but it felt as if he was being torn apart from the inside. He tried to call out for Mistress, but all that left him was a small, low-pitched whine.

"What are we going to do with it?" a voice said, huge and enormous, echoing in his ears. It wasn't like the Mistress's voice, but rather a different one, someone else, and he'd been separated from the Mistress; She could not protect him now. He was alone.

"I don't know. Keep it alive for now. We might learn something from it later," said another Voice that felt as if it reverberated in his bones. He realised that they were talking about him. The echo shivered again, and a fresh wave pain rippled across his frame. Something sharp stuck into his skin, and he couldn't even find his voice to cry out in pain, only a weak, cracked sound rasping from his throat as he tried to shy away from the sharp thing. A tingling numbness began to spread through his body, a black oblivion overcoming his mind.