fredbassett | Fic, Silk and Steel, Part 92

Title : Silk and Steel, Part 92
Authors : fredbassett & munchkinofdoom
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Nick, Helen, Lester, Ryan, Connor, Thomson, Leek, Lyle
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not ours, no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None
Summary : Helen gets a surprise and so does everyone else.
Warning : Slave!fic.
A/N : The links to all previous parts can be found HERE. Captain Thomson appears by courtesy of

deinonychus_1. For those who like to know such things, this is the penultimate chapter. The final one will be posted next week. The shiny new icon is courtesy of

lsellersfic.

“Hello, Nick.”

Despite Helen Cutter’s apparent calm, Connor could see the lines of pain furrowing her face. On the floor in front of her, a fatally wounded predator inched towards her over the mess of blood, feathers and body parts strewing the tiles. She stared down at it and watched as the creature slumped forward and didn’t rise again.

Gunshots still echoed inside the interior of the ARC, some close, some distant, but amidst the chaos and destruction, it was as if time had stood still, isolating the protagonists in this particular battle from everything happening around them.

“You never did do things by halves, did you, Helen?”

She smiled at him, looking like a cat about to play with a particularly juicy mouse. “It has to be done, Nick. I couldn’t let your little protégé and Lester’s tame physicist get together and create any more havoc. I’ve seen the future, Nick, and it isn’t pleasant.”

“And you think that by destroying the ARC you can change the future?” The voice of the man that Connor had worked with for the past two years was loaded with scorn. “You really do have an awfully high opinion of yourself. Helen Cutter, saviour of humanity. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not convinced.”

Cutter’s laughter echoed in the midst of a sudden silence. He glanced around him at the chaos and destruction, his gaze lingering on the black-clad soldiers, all identical to each other, all dead, and shook his head slowly.

“So which one are you, Helen? The woman I married, or someone else entirely?” As he spoke those last words, Cutter looked up at his counterpart and gave a small nod of his head.

Helen smiled in response, but Connor was close enough to see the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. For once, Helen Cutter wasn’t in control of a situation and that was a feeling she didn’t like.

“Can’t you tell, Nick?” The look she gave him was provocative, almost challenging, and despite the number of weapons now trained on her from all sides, Helen’s confidence appeared to be growing.

“You know what, Helen?” Cutter said, a note of weariness creeping into his voice. “I don’t think it matters that much and I can’t bring myself to care.”

The pistol shot exploded in Connor’s ears and he watched as a bloodstain appeared on Helen’s chest and she staggered backwards as the anomaly flared around her, sucking her into its midst before imploding and leaving nothing but empty space behind.

Cutter lowered the weapon, his eyes falling on Connor, crouched by the ADD. “Hello, lad.”

“Hello, Pr… Professor,” Connor stuttered.

Cutter smiled and looked up at the first floor. “I think there’s someone I need to meet.”

And with that, he stepped over the body of a dead clone and made his way slowly up the ramp.

* * * * *

Lester watched from the ramp as the limp form of Annie Morris was carried through the atrium on a stretcher, flanked by her bodyguard and Lieutenant Owen.

At his side, Ryan said quietly, “Ditzy says she’s got a good chance.”

Lester gripped the rail hard, his knuckles white. “That’s more of a chance than some poor sods got. That bloody Cutter woman was insane.” He was still reeling from the extent of the havoc she had managed to cause.

From what he’d been able to ascertain, the Home Secretary was dead, killed in the explosion at Marsham Street, there had been another bomb blast in Downing Street, but that had detonated prematurely, before the clone had managed to get into the same room as the Prime Minister. The worst loss of life had been in the Cavendish labs in Cambridge, something that would no doubt leave a legacy of guilt with Annie Morris if his old friend survived her own injuries.

The soldiers were still sweeping through the ARC, dealing with any remaining creatures and clones. The bodies were being dragged out into the garage to await disposal. Without Helen to provide direction, her creations had simply attempted to turn their weapons against anyone they met, but their reactions had been too sluggish to enable them to prevail over the soldiers and security guards once they had lost the element of surprise.

As Annie was carried out to a waiting ambulance, her bodyguard detached himself from her side long enough for a hurried conversation with Connor. A few moments before, Lester had seen the surprise in Blade’s intense green eyes when he had seen the two Nick Cutters side by side. But that had been in marked contrast to the total lack of surprise he had evinced on seeing Ryan. The soldier’s surprise had quickly been replaced by a speculative look in the direction of the ADD, which Connor had been doing his best to bring back on line and that appeared to have been the cue for whatever Blade had wanted to talk about. The screen showed the active anomaly in the Forest of Dean but that was all. Lester watched Connor shoot a quick look at Ryan and nod rapidly.

It was obvious that both Blade and Ditzy had been involved in the conspiracy to save Ryan’s life, unlike Lyle. The lieutenant had sworn almost as luridly as Stringer on seeing his former commanding officer and had then grinned broadly and declared that he was going to murder Ditzy when he caught up with him.

Lester turned away from the rail and walked slowly back to his – or rather Leek’s – office. Inside, two Professor Nick Cutters were engaged in a lively discourse. As they talked, each equally as intense as the other, the only way of telling the two men apart was by their hair. The Cutter Lester had worked with for several months had short hair that looked like it was in a perpetual state of shock, whilst it seemed that the Cutter he had known the longest had failed to find the time recently to have his hair cut.

Lester held his hand out. “Welcome back, Cutter.”

Cutter shook his hand. “Hello, Lester. It looks like I arrived back at the right time.”

“Well, you certainly saved several other people the trouble of putting a bullet in the wretched woman.”

Cutter glanced at his counterpart and commented, “If it’s any consolation, I’m certain it was my ex-wife I shot, not yours.”

“I notice you say shot, not killed,” Lester commented. “Is it too much to hope that she really is dead?”

Cutter shrugged. “I have no bloody idea, but if she isn’t, I suspect she won’t want to show her face around here for a while.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Lyle muttered from his customary place at Leek’s shoulder.

“Much as I applaud your actions, Cutter, why did you decide to put her out of our misery quite so quickly?” Lester asked.

“I’d been listening to the news on the way back here,” Cutter remarked. “Finding her in the middle of complete chaos wasn’t that much of a surprise. She always did have a tendency to go over the top.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Leek said heavily. “It looks like she’d decided to wipe out just about anything and anyone she could that was connected with the anomaly project. The PM isn’t going to be pleased.”

“The PM is bloody lucky to be alive,” Lester said. “I imagine that will put things into perspective for him. The whole thing is going to be blamed on terrorists and the ARC can take the credit for dealing with the Wicked Witch of the North while everyone else is licking their wounds. And you have the proof of her involvement, remember that, Oliver.” He hesitated and added, “I presume you have still got the notebook?”

Leek nodded and drew the battered leather-bound book from his pocket. Lester was certain that the loss of her notebook was what had prompted Helen to move quickly to initiate her own rather imaginative version of a final solution. That same notebook would also provide the final proof – if any was still needed – that he had been in no way involved in the sabotage at the ARC.

There were things that would need to be removed from the book before anyone in Downing Street was allowed to be privy to its contents, but it appeared that Captain Thomson held much the same opinion. The sort of technology that Helen Cutter had used to create her clone army was not something that anyone, not even Section 42, wanted the politicians to have access to. The same was true of the means by which she had been able to open and close anomalies at will, sending her creatures into the very heart of her targets and ruthlessly using them to deliver her bombs.

It would be a struggle for the ARC to remain operational, but Lester was sure the men and women who made up the anomaly project would do their utmost to ensure that it was business as usual so far as they were concerned. And without Helen Cutter to sabotage their efforts things would eventually return to what passed for normal.

“I would appreciate your help in dealing with the fall out from this, Sir James,” Leek said quietly. “And there are still some… ah, loose ends… to resolve, I believe.”

Lester nodded. One of those loose ends was currently at work helping to rid the building of anything that shouldn’t still be there, working side by side with the man who had been instrumental in his torture, which wasn’t something he had ever thought to see. He summoned up what he hoped was a suitably casual smile in the direction of the two Nick Cutters and remarked, “Has anyone yet seen fit to remark that this town ain’t big enough for both of them?”

“Lyle has, at least twice,” Leek said, a tired smile quirking his thin lips.

“Someone had to say it,” Lyle remarked.

A rap on the open door heralded the arrival of Captain Thomson, still armed to the teeth and covered in an unappetising mixture of blood and plaster dust, coupled with something that was almost certainly intestinal in origin. “Unless there is still something lurking in the rubble somewhere, I think we’ve swept the building clear, Mr Leek. My men are getting a casualty list together. The injured are now on their way to hospital. Ryan has gone to your rooms, Sir James. We’ve now got civilian fire fighters and paramedics crawling over the building and I don’t want to take the risk of him being seen by anyone who can’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut afterwards.”

Lester couldn’t help his eyes widening slightly. The Section 42 captain had surprised everyone over the past few days. No one appeared to be wholly sure where his loyalties lay and the man played his cards very close to his chest, but he appeared to have no intention of betraying Ryan and for that, Lester was thankful. The cynical part of him wondered if that was simply because he didn’t want any questions raised about his own competence if word leaked out that Ryan’s death had been an elaborate charade. But whatever the reason, Thomson was now as complicit as anyone else in the cover up.

“Thank you, Captain,” Lester said. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen…”

Lester made his way through the ARC, noting evidence everywhere of the attack. Bloodstains on walls, gouges on walls and doors from teeth and claws and, in one spot, the mangled body of a massive centipede that he was glad he hadn’t encountered when it had been alive. He shuddered as he stepped over the corpse.

He opened the outer door to his rooms and stepped inside, closing it softly behind him. The fears of the last few days fell away as he saw Ryan standing in the middle of the room, a look closely akin to uncertainty on his face.

“Jesus, Tom, I… “

Ryan closed the distance between them in the space of a heartbeat and pulled Lester into his arms. “I’m sorry, James. I had no idea what the hell they were up to.”

“They were certainly inventive, I’ll give them that,” Lester said, surprising himself by how steady he was managing to keep his voice, even though his heart was beating uncomfortably fast in his chest. He took hold of Ryan’s left hand and turned it over so he could see the dark burn on the inside of his wrist. “This was the only thing that made me think you were still alive.” He drew Ryan’s wrist to his mouth and pressed a gentle kiss to the scar.

Ryan bent his head and kissed away the tears that had started to track down Lester’s face and then his lips covered Lester’s and all conscious thought was banished.

For now, it was simply enough to know that Ryan was alive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nietie.livejournal.com

Eep! The clash of the Cutters! I'm glad the right one won (so far).

*sniffs at the last paragraph* At last!

From:

Fic, Silk and Steel, Part 92

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