Sunshine

by elfin


 cap


Stephen still bore the fading marks of the attack when he walked back into the ARC for the first time in five months.  Cutter had fired him and he’d left; gone travelling, needing to distance himself, needing to think.  Close to the base of the Guyana Kaieteur Falls was the last place on Earth he’d expected to face an anomaly, let alone the business end of a Tarbosaurus, and that’s what had brought him back.  The anomalies weren’t localised in the British Isles, they were a global problem.  Whatever issues he had with Nick, this was much, much bigger than them.  He just had to get the arrogant, infuriating, incandescent Scotsman to see that.  And he wanted to apologise.  He hadn’t seen Helen since the night she’d spent at his flat, the one he’d given up when he’d left the UK for South America, and he hadn’t missed her.  But he’d missed Nick.  He’d found himself standing in one of the wildest, most unexplored wonders of the world and wanting to share it with his old professor, with his best friend.  Even before the anomaly had appeared right in front of him, he knew he shouldn’t have left, shouldn’t have slept with Helen that last night, let alone the first night.  He should have fixed things. 

After the anomaly, getting home was all he could think about; finding Nick, asking for his job back, asking for forgiveness.  But when he finally stood where he’d wanted to be, looking up at the state of the ARC made him feel sick.  The front was still standing, and although the back and left side were twisted and buckled by the explosion, it was at least habitable.  Inside, the labs, offices and the rec area towards the back were devastated; walls destroyed, windows shattered, corridors still obstacle-filled paths of burnt, twisted metal and lumps of melted glass.  Fire had raged through the ARC after the initial explosion, burning out quickly but leaving so much destruction it was going to take months to clear up and even longer to rebuild.  The clean-up operation had barely begun.  The relief, when he saw Abby and Connor sifting through the pile of electronics which used to be the anomaly detector, was incredible.  They didn’t look as if they’d been hurt, maybe everyone had got out in time, maybe no one had been inside when whatever had caused the explosion had happened.

He was welcomed back with open arms – or crossed arms in Lester’s case – but he knew something was wrong beyond the ravaged ARC.  But no one tried to punch him and maybe he didn’t warrant a hug and a kiss but his return had to at least hold a certain fascination value with his old Professor and he asked the question, “Where’s Cutter...?”

He watched as Abby’s face fell and something cold settled in the pit of his stomach.  “Stephen...”

He repeated himself quietly.  “Where’s Nick?”

Connor spoke up, voice flat.  “He’s dead.”

~

Stephen turned the key in the lock and pushed open the front door, hesitating before he stepped inside, closing the door behind him.  The house was dark, dusty in the dusk light outside the windows, the curtains open from the last time Nick had been there.  There were tears in Stephen’s eyes as he walked through into the lounge, but then there’d been tears in his eyes almost constantly since Connor had said those two, heart-stopping words and gone on to describe Nick’s death as if it was playing over and over in his mind’s eye.


“The fire was still burning.  Helen had gone.  He was slumped against some crates that had fallen over, he was trying to move.  I helped him sit up and I hurt him.  I tried to get him out but he wouldn’t go, he just told me that it was okay, asked me to stay with him.  He handed me the artefact, told me that it mattered, he didn’t know how but it did.”  He wiped away tears that were only replaced by more.  “Then he put his head on my shoulder and just... died.  I sat with him, just for a while until it got too hot, too smoky and I... carried him outside.”


Stephen hadn’t been able to offer him any comfort, his own eyes had been filling; tears he thought might never stop.  He wanted to shout and scream; if he’d been there he would have thrown a bleeding, protesting but still breathing Nick Cutter over his shoulder and carried him bodily to an ambulance.  But he hadn’t been there.  He’d left, abandoned them all, and Nick had died.

Inside the house, time was standing still.  Nick had planned to come home that night.  Books were open on the coffee table, papers strewn everywhere – on the floor, on the sofa, on the chairs.  Nick must have sat on the floor when he was in there.  Stephen tip-toed through the chaos, not wanting to disturb anything even though he knew he would have to sooner or later – box all this stuff up and... do something with it.


Stephen stared at the three keys Lester had dropped into his hands.  “What are these?”

“Keys.”

“I know-“

“Cutter’s house.”  Glancing up at Lester he shook his head, he didn’t understand.  “His will.  He left everything to you.”  Stephen stared at them.  “No one’s been near the place.  I would doubt Helen’s been back.  We have a warrant out for her arrest.”


He stopped next to the piano, opened the lid and fingered a couple of the notes tunelessly.  He’d never been able to play.  He’d never heard Nick play.  He didn’t know if Nick could – had been able to – play.  He wished he knew.  On top of the piano there were photo frames – a life in snapshots; Nick and Helen, an older couple, people Stephen didn’t recognise.  He was faintly disappointed that there weren’t any of him – they’d been best friends once.  Dropping the lid back down quietly and carefully, he walked past the window and leaned over to pull the curtains closed, crossing to the bookshelves.  There were Nick’s own publications, alongside books on evolution, zoology, history, archaeology, palaeontology, biology, chemistry, engineering... even Computing for Dummies and a couple of novels by Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre. 

He wondered from the lounge into the kitchen, opening the fridge and wrinkling his nose.  The milk was off.  But it was all that was in there.  He fetched out the bottle and let the crème coloured sludge ooze down the plughole in the sink, finding bleach in the cupboard underneath and adding a squirt.  The bin didn’t have a liner in it – it must have been collection day the last day....  Stephen leaned heavily on the work surface, blinking moisture from his eyes.  He’d been in this house a hundred times, maybe more, and he’d never paid it much attention before.  But now he could feel Nick everywhere; it felt as if he could walk into a room at any moment, papers in his hands, smile on his face; that pure Glaswegian drawl telling him something he almost certainly didn’t want to hear.  Nick was in the decor, in the furniture, in the un-stocked fridge and the almost bare cupboards.  There was a coffee grinder, coffee beans, a mug upside down on the draining board.  But it was as if he’d hadn’t really been living here during the last few weeks of his life.

Connor’s words, ‘he’s dead’, had blindsided him.  In South America he’d assumed he had time, to get himself back on track then to come home to apologise, make things right between them again, however long it took.  To realise he’d never, never be able to say he was sorry... once or twice already that had left him breathless and on the verge of panic.

Leaving the kitchen, he went to the bottom of the stairs and hesitated before starting up them.  Everyone’s home had its own distinct scent and upstairs was quintessentially Nick; familiar deodorant and aftershave, shampoo and soap.  When they’d still been working at the university, Nick would pick him up in the mornings, drive him in.  He’d always smell clean, that subtle aftershave he used which still permeated the house.  Stepping into the master bedroom, Stephen didn’t have to close the curtains in here; Nick hadn’t opened them that final morning.  The bed was unmade too – what man ever made his bed? – duvet thrown back, pillows stacked and battered.  A pair of jeans and a blue sweater had been dropped untidily to the floor, and Stephen couldn’t help himself; he bent to pick up the sweater.

Sitting heavily on the side of the bed, Stephen lowered his head into the wool and took a deep breath.  It smelt of sweat and soap; it smelt of Nick.  His tears came easily, unbidden, and fell unheeded into the sweater.  He cried, for minutes, for hours, until his nose was blocked and he couldn’t breathe, until he’d cried himself out.  Then he lifted his feet and toppled slowly sideways, curling up on the bed, hugging the sweater to his chest, closing his eyes and letting the painful world blank out, just for a while.

~

He opened his eyes, raised one hand and wiped the sticky sleep from them.  It was dark outside and reaching for the bedside table, he felt around until he found the lamp switch, illuminating the room.  He blinked, and reached for the small stack of photographs he saw lying under the light.  So here were the shots of him, from their jaunts in the Rain Forest and Africa, from the Badlands dig, from Kenya, even photos taken at a departmental night out in the city and Stephen’s birthday celebrations three years ago.

Had Nick missed him when he’d left?  Helen’s revelations had shattered the incredible friendship and cracked the unfailing trust between them but it was his actions in the months that followed that had finally destroyed what he’d once believed was unbreakable.  They were once inseparable.  Nick had died, never knowing, never understanding these feelings Stephen was only just beginning to realise he had.  They’d lost each other, somewhere along the way everything had gone wrong, now all he could think was that it wasn’t supposed to be like this, that everything was upset and the present – the future – wasn’t what was supposed to be.  He stared at Nick smiling back at him from a photo of them both but for now he had nothing left to cry.

Unbelievably he was hungry and he needed a drink.  He lifted the clock that been dropped face down and it read 02:54.

He left Nick’s sweater on the bed and took his boots off before padding downstairs.  The heating had gone off and it was cold in the house.  No one had thought to cancel the electricity or the gas, to get the phone, cable and internet disconnected.  No one had had time, they’d had other things to think about, Lester had said dismissively when he’d asked.  He was grateful now.  He threw the bolt on the front door and switched the light on in the kitchen, emptying and filling the kettle, opening a fresh bag of coffee beans and grinding a scoop.

He checked the small freezer section at the top of the fridge.  A tub of vanilla ice cream and a bag of frozen chips.  He turned the oven on and drank the coffee as he let it warm up.  Half an hour later he carried a plate of chips coated in salt and pepper into the lounge and carefully moved enough papers and journals to be able to sit on the sofa and eat.  On the rectangular wooden coffee table before him, Nick’s laptop sat on a stack of pencil sketches – he could see the lines starting and ending at the edges of the papers.  Stephen lifted the Sony Vaio and picked up the pile carefully, turning them to what he thought was the right way up.  He recognised it from the ARC; he’d seen the stranger, Sarah Paige, constructing something that looked like it.

It was the model of the pathways of the anomalies; mapping and predicting, plastic tubes interlocking, woven around and through one another.  These were Nick’s original sketches.  He’d designed it.

He forced himself to eat even though he was no longer hungry, then he switched off the lights and climbed the stairs again, undressing this time before he crawled into Nick’s bed, pulled the duvet over him and lay awake for a long time, Nick’s sweater clutched to his chest, wondering why the world was still spinning. 

~

He must have slept but he didn’t remember falling asleep.  It was light outside when he woke, sprawled across the big bed on his front, face buried in a pillow, fingers still tangled in blue wool. 

The shower was as powerful as he remembered it being after returning from treks covered in mud and digs covered in sand and dust.  Hot too, Nick had the heating timed to come on early and go off late, he’d always hated being cold when he absolutely didn’t have to be.  The idea that he was never coming back just kept hitting Stephen in different ways at different times.  He missed Nick more than he believed was possible, more than he would have ever thought he could, if he’d have given it any thought.  But Nick was gone, dead, killed.  Murdered.  By his own wife.

Stephen put his hands flat on the tiles behind the spray, the water raining down his shoulders and back, closing his eyes.  They’d come back here late one night, he and Nick, back from Kenya, back from the airport via the pub, jet-lagged, a little drunk, riding an adrenaline high, mud under their fingernails, dirt in every orifice.  Nick’s house so he’d been the first in the shower, and with three whiskies and a pint warm inside him, Stephen had been in that happy, mellow place, standing in the open door of the bathroom, watching his friend behind the frosted glass doors; watching and admiring.  It hadn’t even been sexual, not really.  Maybe slightly.  Just reaction to being in each others’ pockets for a month, Stephen had told himself, to the warmth of the house and the heat of the alcohol.  Nick had stepped out of the shower, utterly shameless, and just smiled at him, with the words, “All yours.”  And just for a moment there.... 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, suddenly feeling like he hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night, Stephen finished his shower and stopped the flow of water, stepping out to grab a towel.  He could hear his mobile ringing and he ignored it.  They’d managed without him for months; they could manage for another few hours.  He wondered if they were managing without Nick because since the beginning he had been their fearless leader and their father, as much in the dark as the rest of them but still willing to make mistakes and to forgive his team for making them too.  To a point.  Stephen’s mistake had been a personal betrayal.  He wouldn’t ever forget watching as Nick’s heart was broken by her exposing their affair.  The way he’d looked at him, eyes filling, able to believe Helen had cheated on him but unable, unwilling, to accept it had been with Stephen.  His best friend, a man he’d trusted with his life.

Blaming Helen for how things had gone between them easy, but it wasn’t as simple as that.  Helen had made the wounds, it was Stephen’s fault they were still open, still raw when Nick died. 

He checked his messages – the call had been from Lester requesting his presence back at the ARC and he ignored it, deleted it.  The reasons he’d come home still stood, so did the reasons for wanting his job back, but without Nick it all seemed... hollow and while he knew it wasn’t pointless it just felt that way right now.  He made a couple of phone calls then walked to the local supermarket, bought beer, cornflakes, milk, frozen food and tins, things less likely to go off considering the hours he knew he’d end up working.  When he got back to the house the locksmith he’d called was waiting.  At Stephen’s request he changed the current Yale locks and installed a Chubb tumbler in the front door.  The man from the alarm company turned up an hour later and fitted motion detectors downstairs and up and a keypad with a zone controller in the cupboard under the stairs.  Stephen would ask Connor to link it to the ARC and to his mobile.  If Helen went anywhere near the place, he wanted to know about it; he wanted to keep her out as much as he felt like possessively protecting everything that was Nick’s.

It was lunchtime by the time he got into the ARC and spoke to Connor.

The young man listened and nodded.  Then he said, “You’re moving into Cutter’s house.”  A statement not a question and although Stephen could hear the disapproval he couldn’t understand it.

“He left it to me.”

“I know.  And we’re all grieving....”

“My best friend was shot by his wife because he was trying to save her life, and I wasn’t there for him.  I wasn’t there because of her, because of me.  She systematically took everything from him until he had nothing left, then she killed him.  Grieving doesn’t come close.  And the worst thing...” he found himself choking on unshed tears, “I missed his funeral.”

Connor’s tone gentled.  “Stephen, I’m sorry.  We didn’t know where you’d gone.  We tried to contact you, tried to tell you.  But we couldn’t find you.”

“I know, Connor.  I just need... time.  Nick left the house to me; I’ve every right to be there.”

With a nod, Connor showed he understood.  “As long as there’s no anomaly, I’ll have the alarm hooked up by tonight.”

“Thank you.”

~

They’d set up makeshift offices and labs in the unaffected end of the building.  Stephen found Sarah Paige in one of those labs, completely focused on rebuilding the 3-D anomaly map using what looked like system diagrams based on the sketches he’d found on Nick’s coffee table in the early hours of the morning.

“Hi.”  They’d been introduced yesterday but he hadn’t really been listening to a word anyone had said after Connor’s two-word bombshell.

She straightened, smiling.  “Hi.  Stephen, right?”  He nodded, stepping further into the room, eyes already following the first curved tubes that had been painstakingly put in place.  “The original was destroyed by the fire,” she explained and he could feel her eyes on him as he walked around it.  “Professor Cutter designed it, I helped with the history.  He struck upon the idea of legends, stories of strange creatures throughout history actually being evidence of anomalies.”

“So this thing... predicts where they’re going to open?”

“Attempts to map them,” she corrected, “where they’re going to open, where they might originate, what might come through them.”

Stephen ran a light finger over the curve of one of the tubes.  “Does Helen know about this?”

“Lester thinks she might have seen it, when she and her soldiers got in.”  At each intersection there was a folded yellow Post-It note with a location and year written in black marker pen.  “Most of it’s guesswork but the Professor accurately predicted an anomaly three weeks before he died.”  Stephen glanced at her and she faltered, then apologised.  “Why don’t I... leave you alone for a while?”  She put down her pen and the Post-It pad.  He didn’t notice her leaving.

If this predictor worked, it would be Nick’s legacy.

Turning, he saw piles of retrieved papers, photos, reports on the floor... all of it presumably rescued from the other half of the ARC.  He flicked through a few on the top of the first pile, recognising Nick’s fluid handwriting on the outside of a beige folder. 

‘A07-04-09 5146.9 234.6’

Curious, he opened it.  The top sheet confirmed the date of the anomaly at April 7th 2009, four days before Nick died, the location as the Forest of Dean, the original anomaly hot spot.  Underneath there were A4 photographs of another world, a sky filled with Pteranodons, a yellow note stuck to one of them, the words, ‘Connor – wouldn’t Stephen have loved this?’ written in pencil.  He smiled, sadness squeezing his chest as he lifted one after the other, recognising Nick’s photographic style and aptitude.  The final one was different, a smaller photo, 6x4, taken of Nick by an invisible hand as the sun set had on that alien world, as they’d been packing up to leave.   He was pointing something out to someone, sunglasses pushed back on his head.  That was what Stephen noticed first – his blond hair was longer, flowing in waves, held away from his face by his shades, and Stephen could almost feel the sensation of it through his fingers.  The second thing he noticed was that Nick looked thinner, like he wasn’t eating properly; not a great surprise having seen the depleted stocks in his kitchen; the man who’d died here wasn’t the same man Stephen had known.  Five months apart and Nick Cutter had changed.  Stephen guessed his betrayals and his departure had had a lot to do with that.

He desperately regretted leaving.  More than that, he regretted not having the chance to say to Nick all the things he should have said, words that came so easily to him now he could only say them to a ghost.  Or to a grave.

He kept that last photograph, sliding it into the back of his wallet.  It was of a man he wished he’d known; the final chapter in his best friend’s life and he’d missed it.  He found Lester and asked him where Nick was buried.

~

He found the Toyota Hilux parked in the underground lot.  He’d always had a key for it, despite it being Nick’s. 

He stopped at a florist and bought a dozen white roses.  When the lady asked him what he wanted written on the card, he couldn’t tell her, he just said, “It wouldn’t all fit.”

Lester had given him the location of the plot as well as directions to the cemetery.  Stephen thought Nick would have wanted to be buried in Scotland but his parents were dead, he had no other family and his will hadn’t mentioned specifics, just that he didn’t want to be cremated.  His next of kin was Helen and if she’d shown her face, she would have been arrested.  Lester was mourning too, Stephen had noticed, and that was maybe the biggest surprise of all.

A simple wooden cross marked the fresh grave, a brass plaque stating simply:

NICHOLAS DONALD CUTTER
14-02-69 – 11-04-09

It was covered in now dying flowers from the funeral just under a fortnight ago.  Two weeks.  If only he’d come back just that little bit earlier.  He’d have stopped Nick going back into the burning building.  He’d have pinned the man to the ground until the firemen had put out the flames and found Helen’s charred remains, however hard he struggled and however bright his language became.  However much he hated him afterwards. 

Stephen crouched by the grave, lay the roses just under the cross and blinked yet more tears from his eyes.  “Nick....”  He choked on the word and it was a few minutes before he could speak again.  “God... I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”  He shook his head, eyes moving over the words on the faded cards left by mourners.  It was all so pointless, such a waste of a life.  After all the dangers they’d faced together, to get shot by the woman he’d loved enough once to marry.  “Why the fuck did you have to save her?  She left you, Nick, she destroyed us.  Why did you have to die for her?”  There were no answers here and he knew it.  His questions were just as useless as his grief.  “I miss you....”  He reached out, touching the cold, damp wood of the cross.  “I love you, Nick.”

He couldn’t stay, he felt as if being there was tearing little pieces out of him and it hurt too much.  If someone had told him five months ago, when he left, that he’d never see Cutter again he wasn’t sure he’d have cared.  South America had granted him distance and perspective; just that little bit too late.

As he rose to his feet he looked around the beautifully maintained cemetery, thinking it was a nice spot, then wondering what the hell that mattered to a rotting corpse in the ground.  Nick would have laughed at him, then again Nick was sentimental enough to believe his wife would thank him for saving her life, so what did he know? 

Something caught his eye – another fresh grave, this one over to one side, close to the perimeter fence, as if it had been hidden.  Nick’s was alongside the previous one and it seemed strange for the pattern not to have been continued.  Stephen walked over to it.  There was a wooden cross here too, but the engraving on the brass was strange:

NDC-C
11-04-09

And there was only a single, long-stemmed Cala lily placed deliberately on the mound of freshly dug earth.  The same initials, the same date - of death, presumably - and no birth date.  Strange, but then Stephen knew how strange a world it could be.  Returning to Nick’s grave, he found a another Cala lily, this one with a card attached, and he read the words still visible:

‘Thank you for giving me purpose and reason, sense and adventure, a life and love.  Rest in peace.  Abby.’

~

He cornered Abby in the makeshift rec area.  “Who was NDC-C?”

She sighed, “Where did you see that?”

“The cemetery.”

Taking him to one side, she looked at him with heartfelt sympathy.  It surprised him because by the time he’d left she could barely bring herself to look at him at all.  Not that he hadn’t deserved it.  “Helen... cloned Nick.  That’s how she got in.”

Stephen wasn’t sure he’d heard right.  “Cloned?”

And Abby nodded.  “We think now that she broke into his house, got his DNA....  We can’t start to guess how she created the clone but it looked like him, sounded like him....”

“Cloned?”  He wasn’t sure he believed her but she looked so sincere.  “What happened to him – it?”

“We’re not sure.  We think Helen instructed it to detonate the bomb.  When we found the body... it was so badly burnt.  Lester just wanted it cremated and forgotten, but Connor wouldn’t let him, he said it was a part of Nick.  We had it buried, the evening of the funeral.  There was just me and Connor and a vicar gave a quick service.”

“He detonated the bomb while he was standing next to it?”

“Yeah, we think, because Helen told him to.”

~

He found Nick’s fine whisky collection in the base of the bureau in the lounge.  He sat on the sofa and filled a tumbler, thumbing through the sketches of Nick’s anomaly predictor.  His fingers brushed the laptop and curious, he opened it up and pressed the power button.

All afternoon he’d been thinking about what Abby had said; a clone, science fiction made real, Helen’s ticket in to a secured Government facility, access to its staff, to Nick, and the opportunity to kill him.  Abby had said she thought they’d met – Nick and his clone – and Stephen couldn’t help but wonder what he’d made of it.  Curiosity, surely, revulsion maybe, fear – what was it like to look yourself in the eyes and see no intelligence, no self-will?  Helen had essentially ordered it to commit suicide, to blow itself up with the bomb.  Maybe she hadn’t even told it what would happen, perhaps told it there would be time to get away, or hadn’t even considered saying anything.

The laptop asked him for a password and he typed Nick’s usual one – the one he’d been using since Stephen first studied under him at the university.  There were a hundred shortcuts scattered across the rainforest photo he had set as a background.  Some were old, from those same university days, some were obvious, reports he’d written for Lester or higher up the food chain over the three years they’d been working with the Home Office.  There was a Word file and a design package file titled ‘AP.wrd’ and ‘AP.gph’ respective.  Stephen opened them both, the graphic design package opening along with the file: the design of the predictor Sarah was rebuilding at the ARC.  The corresponding Word document contained complex equations, formulas, calculations and results.  There were notes too, typed at speed with spelling errors underlined in fuzzy red and grammatical nightmares in fuzzy green. 

Stephen drank the whisky and tried to make sense of what Nick had figured out but he couldn’t.  He had no idea how Nick had done it. 

Glancing up as he poured another, his eyes settled on a photo of Nick and Helen taken on their honeymoon, in a frame and still displayed on the flat top of the upright piano.  “What is all this?” he asked the snapshot, “How can I use it?  How do I make all this stop?”

He knew what the answer would be if Nick could answer him.  You don’t.  You don’t use it.  You don’t try to change anything because you could destroy everything.  He threw back the second whisky, sloshed a third into the glass. 

“Sorry, Nick.  I have to try.  It hurts too much.  I wasn’t supposed to lose you, you weren’t supposed to die.  Not like this.  I was supposed to come back and apologise and you were supposed to shout and mope and give me hell but in the end we’d be okay.”  There was no answer this time, just Nick smiling at him from a photo taken too many years ago.  “I miss you.”  There were more words gathering in his throat but he didn’t give them voice.  He didn’t trust himself to be thinking clearly as he drained his glass and regarded the bottle with disdain.  It was too quiet.  He needed company but he couldn’t face conversation.  He looked around, Nick’s floor-to-ceiling CD rack catching his eye but he didn’t want music either.  The television in the corner was plugged in, but not switched on at the power, and once he’d done that he spent fifteen minutes hunting for the remote, finally finding it between the armchair cushion and the wing.

He turned the set on, flicking through the Freeview channels.  BBC1 was showing Jurassic Park III and he left it, turning back to the laptop.  He fired up Thunderbird and using the same password he’d logged on with, he watched Nick’s unread emails load up from the Service Provider as Sam Neill screamed at his young assistant not to do whatever stupid thing it was he was doing.  Stephen smiled sadly to himself; he and Nick had seen this film together at the cinema and they’d decided they were the new Alan Grant and Billy Brennan.

The email was mostly spam, nothing that seemed to warrant any attention, no one was mailing Nick expecting a response.  There was one draft message in the folder, saved almost a month ago and left – never completed or deleted, never sent.  To read it would be prying, but Nick was dead, and the whisky in his bloodstream and his need for some communication from beyond the grave was palpable.  So Stephen double-clicked the message and the first thing that caught his eye was the email address in the recipient line.

To: Stephen.Hart@yahoo.com

There were three short paragraphs, and he looked away, uncertain now if he wanted to read them or not.  Whatever the mail said, Nick hadn’t sent it, probably hadn’t finished it and now he never would.  What if he’d meant to change it, and that’s why it was never sent?  What if he’d written it in anger and had decided not to send it but to wait?  Did he want to know Nick’s last words to him if they weren’t what he wanted to hear?

But he was fooling himself.  He knew he was going to read it.  He poured another whisky and let his eyes focus on the text.


Stephen –

I don’t know why I’m writing this like this.  You didn’t leave a number, although you might have with Lester, I haven’t tried too hard to speak to you.  I don’t know if you’re picking up email, but eventually I’ll send this and hopefully eventually you’ll read it and... well, you know how to get in touch.

I wanted to say I’m sorry.  It’s late, I know, but better late than never, right?  I fucked things up between us.  I could blame you and I could blame Helen but in the end what happened to us was my fault.  I told you I was okay but I wasn’t.  Then I just kept telling myself I was okay.  I should have talked to you, shouted, ranted, fought you - something, but I just kept it inside – blame pride. 

I’m sorry I fired you.  I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to leave.  I thought I didn’t care but I do.  I miss you, nothing’s right without you.  The team’s young, they’re great but they’re young.  Lester’s driving me crazy.  You were my confidant.  When Helen said what she said... it wasn’t her betrayal that took me apart.  You weren’t her first affair, maybe you’ll be her last but I don’t care anymore.  You were the best thing to happen to me and she took you too.  She’s taken everything but you’re all I miss, you’re all I want back.  Please come back, Stephen.  Let me buy you a drink, let me say this face to face.  Please give me the chance to apologise.


He emptied his glass in one mouthful and refilled it, crying steadily, drinking and refilling until the bottle was empty, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands,   And by the time it was, he’d made a decision, a drunken, grief-born decision.  He sent the mail to himself before shutting the laptop down, then he pried himself up off the sofa and stopped with his finger on the light switch in the doorway to the lounge.  His eyes met the still smiling ones in the photograph on the piano and he told it, “I’ll find a way, Nick, I promise.  I’ll give you a chance.”

~

When he woke his head was pounding and he made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up.  It was still dark outside.  He drank a beaker of water, popped a couple of pills and crawled back under the duvet, falling asleep with his fingers clawed into Nick’s blue sweater.

~

He felt better when he next woke up.  It was light but dull out – he’d not closed the curtains when he’d finally headed for bed and he could see the dark clouds and the rain spitting on the window.  He showered and dressed, made coffee and fixed a bowl of cornflakes.  Heading back into the lounge he picked up the empty bottle and the glass, and stared at the sketches of the anomaly predictor on the coffee table.

It was fucking insane, the idea forming in his head.  But once formed he couldn’t shake it and from that first seed, it blossomed.  When he arrived the ARC he went straight to the office where Sarah was working on rebuilding the beautiful sculpture of curves and lines that Nick had designed.  She wasn’t around, hardly anyone was, and Stephen stood for more than an hour, studying it, until before she turned up.

“Stephen....”  She sounded surprised to see him there.  “Morning.” 

“Morning.  I was just... admiring it.”

She nodded.  “I didn’t know Professor Cutter all that well but he seemed like a good man.  And very clever.”

“He was.”

“I’m sorry... I understand you were close.”

“We used to be.”  He moved around the functional sculpture. 

“It’s not finished.  I’m working off the Professor’s designs but it’s complex and my progress is very slow.”

Stephen wasn’t listening.  He was staring at a circle, the only one, close to the centre of the labyrinth.  “What’s this?”

She stepped forward.  “Oh, that’s....  At first Cutter thought it was a glitch, but it’s actually a circular anomaly – it originates and terminates in the same place, only 12 hours or so into the future, or into the past – we’re not sure.”  He must have looked as confused as he felt because she continued trying to explain herself.  “It opens and closes regularly, but there’s no pattern to it.  Becker and his team have been through.  They came out in the same place, but it was night when they went through in the day.  Connor has electronic surveillance set up but it’s in the middle of an old industrial estate, no one works there, no one goes there.”

Stephen stared at the yellow Post-It wrapped around the loop.  In his head as well as his gut, it just felt right.  “Where is it?”

~

His fingers were on the Hilux’s door handle when he heard her voice.  “You can’t bring him back.” 

He turned and watched Abby close the distance between them.  “What?”

“He died.  He’s gone.”  There was real sadness in her voice, like if there was a way, just the vaguest hope, she would grab it.  It was just what he was doing.

“Try to remember what Nick meant to me,” he told her quietly.  “I know things were bad before I left but it wasn’t always like that.  I knew him long before you did.  There was a time we were practically inseparable.  We were really good together.”  He glanced at the expression on her face and smiled.  “Not in the way you’re thinking.  Although maybe it crossed our minds on rare occasions, when were in the middle of nowhere or after we’d had too much to drink.  I’d be thinking about it and I’d look over at him and he’d been looking at me.... I’d already slept with one Cutter, it didn’t seem fair to collect them.”  She was still staring at him and he half-expected disapproval, disgust – the same way she’d looked at him back in the Forest of Dean after Helen’s devastating revelation - but she just looked surprised.  “What?”

“But you’re... and Cutter....”

He rolled his eyes.  “Labels, Abby.  I don’t like labels and neither did Nick.”

She pursed her lips, stared at him for what seemed like forever, then said, “You loved him.”

Hesitating for a second, he nodded.  “And I never got a chance to tell him.”

“You had a thousand chances.”

She was right.  “But I didn’t take any of them and now he’s dead because... because his bitch of a wife fucking cloned him.”

“So what are you going to do?”

He opened the door of the Toyota and paused.  “Helen used to tell me that Nick always hid in the past.  When I got to know him, when I told him, he said, ‘you can’t hide in the past forever, it always gives up its secrets eventually.’”

It was a moment before she worked it out.  “You know where she is.”

“The technology she used, it has to have been from the future, but the future anomalies are dangerous.  I don’t think she’d have stayed there, I think she stole what she needed and used that looping anomaly to hide what she was doing.”

“The one near Brentwood?  Connor’s got surveillance.”

“Right.  A CCTV camera pointing at an empty space monitoring a randomly opening and closing anomaly.  How difficult would it be to rig that so he’s just watching a streaming video?”  He shrugged.  “I’m just going to check it out.  She’s probably left by now anyway, she did what she set out to do.”

Abby regarded him, assessing.  “Why don’t I believe you?  What’s the gun for?”

“In case I run into a clone soldier or into something with teeth and claws.”

“Or Helen.”

“I’ll be back later.  Don’t tell Lester where I’ve gone?”  Climbing into the Toyota, he started the engine and checked the petrol gauge.  Nick always kept it full, he was always prepared and a flash of him in a Boy Scout uniform brought a grimace to Stephen’s face.  Reaching for the radio controls and finding a station playing music, he backed out of the space and left the ARC.


He parked out of sight, inside one of the abandoned, derelict warehouses.  He found the site easily and checked Connor’s surveillance – it was definitely rigged, a small flash drive had been connected to it and a lens cap covered the eye of the camera.  It was still transmitting, but it was sending video not live images.  Finding that reassured Stephen he was right about this.  All he had to do was stay out of the way and wait.  Boot prints in the dirt around the area were large and heavy, there were tyre tracks too, but no vehicles that he could find.  Gravel had been disturbed and when the anomaly appeared less than an hour later, it was exactly where Stephen had expected it to.

He waited a few minutes, hidden from sight, to be as sure as he could be that Helen and her men weren’t coming through, then with his hand gun loaded and the safety off, he stepped through.

It was dark on the other side, and although it might have looked the same to a casual observer, there was less decay here, the buildings weren’t so old, the surrounding roads weren’t so overgrown with weeds.  It was only a couple of years in the past but Stephen knew that was enough.  He just had to hope that Nick’s theories were right.

As quietly as he could he moved away from the anomaly, following the disturbance of the gravel and his instincts.  He turned a corner, listening to the eerie silence, and spotted lights in the dirty high windows of a warehouse two down from where he was standing.  His heart started to beat faster and he headed for it, checking each open space for soldiers or cameras but not seeing anyone or anything.  He wondered when this was, how far back he’d come.

When he found the entrance to the warehouse with the lights on, he eased himself inside, pushing the door open carefully, slowly, each footstep measured and checked.  He didn’t make a sound.  The ground floor was wall to wall machinery, rusted and silent, stored here rather than being installed.  He climbed the metal stairs upwards and at the top of them peered in through a window in a wooden door leading to what he thought might have been offices at one time.  Now there was a lab, and Helen had definitely been here because it looked like a scene from the latest incarnation of The Incredible Hulk.  Laptops, centrifuges, samplers, gene splicer, anything – it seemed – she’d been able to get her hands on.  There were no dramatically bubbling test tubes, no failed clones in huge glass jars.  But as he stepped inside, gun raised, what was there made his heart race and caused an involuntary groan to escape his chest.  There was Nick.  To all intents and purposes it was Nick Cutter, sitting ramrod-straight on a work surface, legs hanging down, feet off the ground.  He was facing forward and he didn’t move a muscle as Stephen walked into his line of sight.  But he seemed to focus, blue eyes meeting Stephen’s part-curious, part-horrified expression.

“Nick?”

“I am Professor Nick Cutter.”  Oh God, that accent, that voice.  It was Nick.  Stephen fought back sudden tears and the urge to run over and hug the man who was once his best friend, but at the same time never had been.   When Abby had told him about the clone he hadn’t really pictured something so flawless, so right.  Little wonder he’d walked straight in to the ARC, without being questioned, without being stopped.  Stephen took a couple of steps towards it, reaching out his hand then drawing it back, forcing himself to raise his gun.  The expression on that much-missed face didn’t change, but those bright blue eyes seemed to focus for a moment on the muzzle of the gun before looking up at him.

“No, you’re not.”

“I am.  I work at the ARC.”

“Where are you now?”

It made its first real movement since Stephen had laid eyes on it; head twisting from side to side as if it was looking around.  “I don’t know.”

“Is this where she made you?”

“Made me do what?”

The question suddenly brought to mind so many terrible possibilities it turned his stomach cold and he didn’t dare give them any more thought.  Was the ARC incursion the only thing Helen had intended for this clone?  Or was she intending to – had she already – had her fun with it?

“You were made in a test tube.”

“I don’t know what that means.”  Stephen went closer, stopping two feet from the thing with his dead friend’s face.  He levelled the gun, holding it with two hands, finger rested on the trigger.  “What are you doing?”  He heard some uncertainty underlying the thick Scottish brogue.  “Who are you?  I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”

“My name’s Stephen Hart.  I’m surprised she hasn’t mentioned me.”

“She doesn’t talk to me.  She tells me to do things, shows me how to.”

There was that cold dread again.  “Do what things?”

“I know how to fire that gun you’re holding.  I know how to set off a bomb.  I know how to open the doors and the main gates.”

“Which doors?”

“The ones she tells me to.  Why are you here?  You’re not supposed to be here.”  The uncertainty held a tinge of fear and this time Stephen did take his left hand from his gun and reach to touch the clone’s face, to take a lock of hair between his fingertips.  The skin felt real and the hair felt like silk, grief clutched at Stephen’s heart and he blinked moisture from his eyes.  As if mirroring him, the clone reached out too, and Stephen batted his hand away before it could touch.

“Do you know the man you’re cloned from?”  Its face contorted in confusion.  “His name was Nick Cutter.  He was a friend of mine.”

“I’m Nick Cutter.” 

But Stephen shook his head.  “You’re not.  You’re a copy of him, just his face and his body.  You don’t have his brain.  You were grown in a test tube, like a dummy come to life.  I think you’re supposed to kill him but something went wrong – something... goes wrong.  I think he talked to you, like Helen never did.”  Stephen could imagine that, Nick trying to reason with something that was – in essence – himself, knowing the right things to say but not quite getting through because this wasn’t him.  To look into those eyes again, to see him sitting there, alive, breathing, it was so very tempting to believe it.  “Come with me.”

It didn’t move.

“It won’t, Stephen.”  He spun on the spot, levelling his gun at Helen as she stepped into the room, alone, the door clicking shut behind her.  “It will only follow my commands, like the soldiers.”  She smiled as he walked passed him and he lowered the gun as she stopped at the clone’s side and stroked the blond hair like she might a puppy.  “Isn’t he beautiful?  Nick was always... beautiful.  I fell in love with his eyes.  Didn’t you, Stephen?”

He didn’t answer her.  He put the gun to the clone’s head, in the centre of its forehead, the muzzle pressing a dent into the smooth skin.

“You’ll never pull the trigger.”  She purred, so certain of herself, so controlled.  “Look at his eyes, Stephen, look at his face.  This is Nick.  You’ve been in love with him as long as you’ve known him, we both know it, deep down.  And this Nick will be whatever you want him to be, will do whatever you want him to do.”

“It isn’t Nick,” he almost laughed, “it doesn’t have more than a basic intelligence.”

“But you can teach it – we can teach it – together.  Come on, Stephen, don’t tell me the idea of having us both doesn’t turn you on.”  One hand still in the blond hair, she reached to touch Stephen’s face, thumb brushing his lips, “You fucking me as Nick fucks you, so slow, so deep.  All yours, all you’ve ever wanted, every fantasy you’ve ever had.  The real Nick never wanted you but this one would call out your name, beg you to do it harder or slower, whatever you asked him to want.”

He swallowed as her hand dropped and her palm rubbed over uninterested bulge in his jeans.  But he felt his dick twitch against the gently pressure and he looked at her – eyes dropping to her cleavage before lifting to her face.  He fought the sudden urge to kiss her as he glanced to see the clone’s blue eyed gaze watching them both steadily, no real emotion behind it, just interest, curiosity, like Helen wasn’t whoring it out like a cheap prostitute. 

This wasn’t Nick, not the man he grieved for, not the man whose blue sweater lay back on the empty bed he’d been sleeping in, not the genius who’d design a way of predicting the anomalies, not the friend who’d tracked through jungles with him, uncovered fossils at his side in the badlands so many years ago.  This clone had no memory of him, hadn’t shared any experiences with him, and if Stephen accepted the offer Helen was making, it would kiss and fuck him with no feelings for him whatsoever.  Or if he did feel, it would be as far from love as it was possible to get.

He held its gaze, ignored Helen, and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” before he tightened his finger on the trigger and shot a bullet through its skull, shattering bone, turning his brain to mush, splattering blood and grey matter across the wall behind them like a macabre painting.  The body toppled forwards and fell to the floor like a broken doll and all Stephen could hear was Helen screaming, not in terror but in rage.

Swinging round, he silenced her by putting the smoking gun into her face.  She shook her head slowly, taking a step back which he immediately followed.  “Don’t, Stephen....”

“You killed him.”

“You just shot....”

“Not that!”  He felt anger and exhausted grief flood him.  “That was a freak!  Something you made like Frankenstein’s fucking monster.  You killed Nick.”

“What..?”

“Don’t deny it.  You went into the ARC with a clone of him and when he didn’t die in the explosion, you shot him point blank in the chest.  You murdered him in cold blood, why shouldn’t I do the same to you?”

But Helen’s expression, the slow movement of her head, denying it, suddenly had his pulse racing harder.  “You just shot the only clone!  The attack on the ARC... hasn’t happened yet.  We go tomorrow.”

He didn’t – couldn’t believe her.  “What?  Why?”

“We weren’t ready until now....”

“I mean, why attack at all?”

“Because... there’s something I need to ask Nick.”

“You’re planning to kill him.”

She didn’t deny it.  “I’ve seen the future, Stephen, I’ve seen every human being wiped out and it’s all down to a decision Nick makes.”

“What decision?”

“I don’t know!  I just know it’s him.”

Stephen stared at her, anger turning incredulous.  “Nick Cutter, Zoology Professor from the Central Metropolitan University, a man who likes fossils and whisky and still loves and still mourns his wife even though she’s a bitch and a fucking adulterer, is responsible for the end of mankind?  Not a president or a prime minister?  Not some politics-disguised-terrorist with his finger on a red button?”  He shook his head, “That’s utter bullshit, Helen.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“How do you know it was Nick?  What possible decision could wipe out everyone?”

“I don’t know!”

“And why not just warn him?  Why not work with him to figure it out so he won’t go through the wrong anomaly, won’t shoot the wrong creature, won’t... do whatever it is you think one man like Nick can do and accidentally destroy the world!”  His finger itched to pull the trigger a second time, but shooting a clone and shooting a woman in cold blood were two completely different things and besides... was she really serious?  Had it not yet happened?

“I swear to you, if you hurt him again, I will find you and I will kill you.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Really?  Do you want to test that theory?”  He thumbed the safety back on and lowered the gun, taking a step into her very personal space.  “I’m going back through the anomaly.  I know you won’t set your soldiers on me.”

She smiled that snake-like smile, sickly sweet, and kissed him.  “The world’s more interesting with you in it,” she murmured, then her eyes left his, dropped to the clone’s blond head lying in a growing pool of its own blood, and the smile slipped from her face.  It was time to run.


The sun was breaking through the clouds as he emerged back into daylight.  The anomaly stayed open behind him and he ran for the warehouse where he’d left the truck.  Or where he thought he’d left it.  It wasn’t there.  He checked another three buildings before he decided to head for the main road.  Once he was certain no one was following him, he stopped running and slowed to a walk, pulling out his mobile and calling Abby’s number, heart pounding, stomach churning.  He knew where he’d parked the Toyota – it was gone.  He’d changed the present, he just wasn’t sure if he’d done more than lose the car.

She answered after five rings.  “Stephen!  Where the hell are you?”  She sounded like she was trying to keep her voice down.  “We’ve got an anomaly in a hospital, Cutter wants everyone there.”

Oh, God.  “Cutter?  Nick?”

“Yes, Stephen, Professor Nick Cutter, my boss, your... whatever.”  She was getting more agitated with every word.  What did she mean, ‘your whatever’?  “Wants us at the CMH to deal with the anomaly and the things with teeth that usually come through them!”

“Nick....  Is he okay?”

“What?  Stephen, where are you?”

She wasn’t the only one getting angry.  “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine!  He just wants us all-”

“-at the CMH, I heard.  It’s just... I’m in Brentwood, and I’ve lost the truck.”  She hung up on him.


He called Jenny and half an hour later, one of Lester’s soldiers picked him in and sped him to the hospital where reports from Connor suggested they had a Diictodon infestation.  They were from the Permian; herbivores, Connor had assured them, small and cute, but they had a taste for anything they could chew on including, it seemed, power cables and blankets.  The current sit rep seemed to be that Connor and Becker were trying to find Abby and Cutter who’d somehow gotten themselves locked in an operating room with a woman about to give birth.

Just listening to Connor talk about Nick in the present tense was enough to keep the butterflies in Stephen’s stomach flapping incessantly and he was already feeling sick.  He’d called Lester as soon as Abby had hung up on him and over his frustrated queries regarding first Stephen’s whereabouts and then the whereabouts of the truck Stephen had mentioned losing to Abby, he’d warned him that the ARC might come under attack, that security should be put on full alert around the perimeter and that Nick shouldn’t be allowed in the building without absolute confirmation of his identity by another member of the team.  Lester had made some sarky comment about Nick not being allowed inside full stop, which Stephen had ignored, but he’d promised to do what Stephen asked because life was already way beyond normal and sometimes even just gut feeling had to be taken seriously.

By the time they reached the hospital, it was over.  Stephen didn’t miss the Toyota he thought he’d lost parked out front at an angle with its nose to the steps amongst the black 4x4s.  He was relieved to see it but had no idea what he was going to tell Abby or Lester.  He jogged up the concrete steps, following his military chauffeur, and was just inside A&E reception when a tired but smiling Nick Cutter emerged from the lift with Abby at his side and a chattering Diictodon in his arms.  Stephen’s eyes widened, his heart in his throat, yet more tears in his eyes.  He watched Nick look up, see him, smile, lighting up Stephen’s whole world.  “I delivered a baby!”

“Excuse me,” Abby protested, “I thought that was me!”

Stephen bit his lip, wiped his eyes and couldn’t find his voice to respond.  Nick saw it, apparently, because he came forward and with such sincere concern, asked, “Stephen, are you okay?” 

He reached out, hand landing on Nick’s shoulder briefly.  “God, Nick... I never thought I’d see you again.”

Nick smiled, “It’s okay, they’re only Diictodons.  I think we were relatively safe.  They can only reach ankle height.  I was more frightened of the woman giving birth.”  His eyes twinkled and dropped to the creature in his arms.  He tickled its head.  Stephen took his hand from Nick’s shoulder, swallowing relief so intense it threatened to close up his throat, and petted the dinosaur in Nick’s arms, briefly brushing Nick’s fingers.  Nick made no attempt to move away.

“Look, sorry I missed all the fun.  Car trouble.”  He thought he’d be given hell for it; he certainly would have been before he’d left for South America.  But it didn’t come.  Nick just glanced up at him and asked cautiously,

“Sure it wasn’t another kind of trouble?”

Stephen knew exactly, immediately what he meant.  “Definitely not.  And about that – we really have to talk.”

In the past Nick would have put it off, put him off.  If he hadn’t maybe things wouldn’t have fallen apart between them, maybe he would never have left.  But he said, “Okay.  Let me hand this little guy over to Abby and we’ll get a coffee.  There’s a place over the road.”


Stephen grabbed a corner table next to the window, away from the two other couples, while Nick bought two mugs of what passed for coffee and took them over, grabbing two spoons on the way.  He sat at the table and Stephen watched him dump four heaped teaspoons of sugar into his mug.  Despite that, he looked younger, looked great; looked amazing to Stephen’s eyes.  He was very much alive, longer hair a mess from the morning’s excitement, looking not like he hadn’t been eating but like he’d been to a gym on a regular basis; more toned, less soft.  Stephen wasn’t sure it was a good thing – something in Nick had been lost over the years, but then they’d all been changed by what they knew.

“You saw her again?”  It was the tone of Nick’s voice that stunned him.  The last time he’d set eyes on Nick, the last time they’d spoken, the trust had been eroded away, his tone had been brittle, he’d been defeated and angry and Stephen knew most of it had been his own fault.  After feeling the grief, knowing what it was like to lose Nick, Stephen wasn’t interested in walking that path any longer, he’d planned to beg forgiveness, planned to promise to do whatever it was Nick needed him to do to fix things, and to keep that promise.  But Nick’s tone held affection, as if the promise had already been made and kept.  It was something he hadn’t heard beneath that Scottish accent in a very long time.

“Yes, but not how you think.  Nick... I want to say I’m sorry, for Helen, for... hurting you.”

Nick shook his head.  “It’s over, Stephen, it’s in the past.  Forget it.”  That affection was still there, and blue eyes met his and held.  He remembered the clone.

“You’ve said that before and you don’t mean it.  You still carry it with you and it’s going to drive us further and further apart!”

“Stephen....”  Putting down his mug, Nick stunned him into silence by sliding his hand against Stephen’s hand, brushing his thumb over Stephen’s palm, wrapping long fingers over his fingers.  He was warm.  Stephen could feel the pulse in his wrist, heart beating steadily.  “We talked about this last week.  Forget it, it’s over.  We’re okay.  I thought... we were more than okay.”  His mouth fell open but he couldn’t find the rights words to say.  Nick’s eyebrows rose slightly and he started to pull back his hand, Stephen immediately gripped it hard with his thumb.

“If we’re okay, better than okay, that’s...” he couldn’t help the smile breaking out across his face, “that’s good, that’s very, very good.”

Nick was staring at him, and he could see the moment when he worked it out.  “You don’t remember?”  Stephen shook his head.  “Why?  What happened?”

Stephen gently pulled back his hand with a meaningful sideways glance into the cafe, wrapping both around his mug, still feeling Nick’s heat on his skin.  Nick nodded with a smile which faded when Stephen confessed, voice just a murmur.  “I’ve changed things.  I went through an anomaly and I changed things.  You’re here and before... you weren’t.”

He wasn’t sure if Nick would believe him but he’d hoped, after all that insane nonsense he’d been spouting last year about Jenny being someone called Claudia, that maybe he would.  And Stephen was more than willing now to believe that Claudia Brown had existed.  “Where was I?”

“You were dead. When I got home from South America, you’d been killed.”

He saw the momentary fear in Nick’s eyes.  “How?”

“Helen.  She got into the ARC with her soldiers, detonated a bomb, they say you got out but you went back in to find her and... she shot you.  Connor went in, found you, and sat with you, just a few minutes – you died with your head on his shoulder.”  He pinched the bridge of his nose, lifting his head.  Nick was staring at him, his expression a mix of fear, shock, and unexpectedly, sympathy. He looked pale and Stephen knew, without a doubt, that he believed him.

“What did you do?”

“I went back.  I worked out where Helen had been hiding.  I just wanted to confront her.  She murdered you!  But I found... something else.”

“What?”

“A clone.  She’d... cloned you.”  His eyes went wide.  “It wasn’t... right, wasn’t you.  It just kept saying its name – like it was programmed.”

“But... why?  Why would she...?”

Stephen caught his expression and shook his head.  “Nothing like that.”  No way was he about to repeat Helen’s offer to him.  “She used it to get into the ARC – your fingerprints, your retinas, your face, your voice... all the security measures covered.”

“What did you do?”

“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.  I put a bullet in its brain.”  He lowered his voice to a whisper.  “It had your eyes, so expressive even if it didn’t know what to express.  I’m sorry.  When I got back... the Toyota was gone and when I called Abby, she was talking about you in the present tense.”

“Seems like an okay swap.”   Nick was smiling and Stephen felt relief flood him.  “You did what you thought you had to do.”  And Stephen wondered what he’d said last week because even when things were at their best between them Nick would have ripped him a new one for doing what he’d done.  Still, he imagined he could see the alternative words resting on his lips and to tease them off he repeated,

“Did what I thought I had to do?” 

Nick quietly exploded.  “You could have changed everything, Stephen, for God’s sake!  Did nothing we said last week sink in?”

“I don’t know what we said last week,” he reminded gently, “I wasn’t there.”

The reality of it seemed to only just be sinking and Nick sat back, hands clamped around his white mug, eyes dropping to stare into the depths of it.  “Of course you weren’t.”

Stephen leaned over the table.  “Nick, when they told me you were dead, the bottom dropped out of my world.  I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.  You have to tell me what happened last week, what we said and what...” the corners of his mouth turned up, “what we did.”

Nick glanced up as he spoke.  “You’re sure you want to know?”

“Yes.  Absolutely.  I went after Helen because I had so many regrets.  She’d stolen my chance to make things right with you and I was so angry.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

“No, although she might make me wish I had.   Killing her –“

“-would make you no better than her.”

“And you deserve better than that.”

Nick’s expression threatened to melt him, and he suddenly, desperately needed to know what had happened between them in the past of this timeline.  “I’ll tell you,” a naughty gleam settled in those bright blue eyes, “and I’ll show you.  But not here.”

~

Stephen lifted Nick’s unresisting hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles, sliding his fingers over his palm.  “You’ve joined a gym.”

Nick laughed out loud and Stephen felt his body vibrating under his head where it was pillowed on a hard, bare thigh.  “There’s one at the ARC, as you well know.  I can’t get away from the place long enough to get to a real gym!”

“You work out at the ARC?  Jesus... prior warning will be required, Nick, because I can’t promise to be responsible for my actions if I find you hot and sweating and lifting weights at work.”

“Worse still, naked and dripping wet in the shower.”

Stephen closed his eyes and groaned. 

The truth was he felt like all his Christmases had come at once, all his dreams – his fantasies – had come true.  Having Nick back was the greatest gift, having him in bed was the wrapping and the ribbon, and he wasn’t about to throw it away.  They were sprawled over Nick’s big bed; the one Stephen had spent three nights in, on his return from South America, or in Nick’s timeline, every night apparently.  He’d spotted Nick’s blue sweater on the floor when they’d burst in through the door two hours earlier.

Naked, content for now, Stephen lay at right angles to his best friend, head on his leg, hand in his hands, now and again turning to drop a kiss to Nick’s thick, sated cock.  Strong fingers were combing lazily through his hair, a sensation he could definitely get used to.  He lifted his head just slightly and smiled at the man who’d finally become his lover.  “I love you with the longer hair.”

Nick chuckled.  “That’s what you said to get us into this position in the first place.”

They hadn’t quite got around to what was said, they’d only covered what they’d done.  “Tell me.”

“Last week you turned up on my doorstep, the day you arrived back.  I opened the door and before I could get a word out you were apologising, taking the blame for everything, telling me how sorry you were about Helen, telling me... you cared for me... telling me you loved me.  Still standing there, on the doorstep.

“I invited you in when I got the chance, when I got a word in edgeways.  We talked, really talked; about Helen, about the University, about us, about everything that’s changed.  We both ended up crying like wee bairns!”  Nick smiled.  “I ordered a takeaway, we had a couple of beers and it was just like old times.  We got drunk.  Then out of nowhere you told me you used to watch me in the shower, after treks and digs, and I remembered the night we got back from Kenya, stepping out, dripping wet; seeing your eyes on me and the heat in them.

“I asked you straight out if you were attracted to me, and you told me I was – and I quote – ‘eminently fanciable’ – and that you loved the longer hair, wanted to get your fingers twisted in it while you fucked me into the next ice age.”

Stephen felt the blush rising.  “I said that to you?”

“Your exact words – the last nine anyway.  I might have paraphrased the rest but a guy doesn’t forget it when another guy says that to him, however much he’s had to drink.”

Turning, he climbed up Nick’s body, dropping to his side, leaning his head on his hand, hooking one foot over a hard shin, spreading his hand over Nick’s flat stomach.  “Did we... do that?  Did I miss it?”

Nick shook his head slowly, mouth inches from Stephen’s.  “Not yet.  Two anomalies, couple of late nights, a lot of paperwork...” his voice quietened, “a few nerves.  I’ve never done that.  I’ve topped but no one’s ever....   Not that I don’t want it, believe me, I just need to get used to the idea.”

“Would it help if I went first?”

Nick’s smile was just a little shy.  “We don’t have to take turns, Stephen.”

“Oh, I definitely want you inside me.  Been there, done that, want to do it with you.”

Tanned fingers brushed his cheek and pale fingernails ghosted across his lips.  “Now you’re just making me jealous.”

“You have nothing, no one to be jealous of,” he whispered in response.  “I won’t hurt you again, I promise.”

“Hey, we said that was in the past and this time, I promise you, I meant it.”

Leaning forward, Stephen touched his mouth to Nick’s, smiling into the kiss Nick encouraged by parting his lips.  Stephen’s hand skimmed along Nick’s side, down until his fingers were rising on the swell of his arse then falling to the crease with his thigh. He curled his hand, lifting Nick’s leg over his own as he shifted closer, chest to chest, and felt Nick’s hand settle against the small of his back, pressing them even closer, erections rising once again with the thrill of such sensitive, intimate contact.  Nick groaned into Stephen’s mouth, rocking his hips slowly, sliding them together.  Stephen shivered, toes curling against Nick’s shin, fingers clutching – a reflex - into a firm buttock.  He tried to speed up the rhythm, but Nick held firm, the hand at Stephen’s back keeping it slow and agonising.

Stephen tore his mouth away long enough to demand, “Faster!”

But Nick annoyingly shook his head.  “No.”

“Bastard,” Stephen breathed into the kiss. 

“Gorgeous bastard, according to you.”

“Ah,” catching his breath as his body jerked against Nick’s, he murmured, “ah, so... we’ve done this before.”

“Aye, but don’t worry, you don’t... have... too much more catching up to do.”

Reaching up, running his fingers through silky blond hair, he smiled.  “Shame, I’m... enjoying it.”

Nick brought them forehead to forehead, mouth to mouth, teasing the tip of Stephen’s tongue with his own, rocking against him, slowly but surely driving him out of his mind.

~

He woke to a heavy arm resting possessively over his chest, a snoring Scotsman at his side, and a mobile chirping amongst the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor.  He gently lifted Nick’s arm and started to slide out of bed but Nick stopped him without even opening his eyes.  “Leave it.”

“It could be important.”

“I’m sure it is.  But if we jump every fucking time Lester says jump, we’ll end up conducting this relationship in the store rooms at the ARC and that would be incredibly uncomfortable.”

“You make a very good point.”  Stephen settled back down, loving the way Nick plastered himself to his side, wrapping around him like an Anaconda.  “Last thing you need at the wrong moment is the butt of an AK-47 in the arse.”

“Absolutely, although with you up there too there wouldn’t be room.”

It took him a moment but when he got it he blushed.  “I love you, Nick.”

“I love you too.  Enough to want to make the future with you.”