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 Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 12:41 am
Back to BasicsThere are kennels, more than ten in total. He's seen them in pounds and pet stores before, but never ones quite so big. Kostya shepherds them in, one by one, leashes held taut in his dominant hand. They are capricious and some of them bite, and already he's formulating a list of requests for the one who wears Sasha's skin. They bay and howl and do not enjoy the confinement, and some of them rattle the bars. He cannot tell them apart, not truly. They need identifiers. Later, in pen, he jots down on a pad of paper (he always comes prepared): Quote: 10x Dog Tag - #1-10 10x Leash - thick leather 10x Toothbrush 10x Toothpaste, any 10x Comb 15x Hand towel 10x Bath towel 20x Shampoo, any 20x Razor, disposable 10x plain shirts 10x plain jeans 20x boxers Without a word of warning or a knock, Kostya slides it under her door, hurrying past the main walkway that leads to something nefarious. (A throne, he knows. It is a throne. Does it look the same? Would it feel the same, beneath him, would it--) There is work to do. Kostya returns to his room.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:09 am
Hygiene
Their kennels are clean, but they are not, still filthy from the desert. Sand in their hair and their gums and beneath their nails. One by one, Kostya stands in the water with each of the clones (they are numbered, now, from 1 to 10 in order of kennel arrangement, although he toyed with the idea of a dynamic numbering system based upon their behavior), and one by one cleans them like an owner does their dog.
"Do you know your name?" he asks, to each of them, and there is no response. "You are Obadiah Thompson, but your name is Taym." Kostya has always had a rough grip, and so some twist disapprovingly at the way he washes their hair. It is efficient, though, and a thorough scrub takes approximately seventeen minutes and twenty four seconds apiece, not including the wrangling.
(The wrangling does, for the first few days, take significantly longer than the bath.)
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:18 am
Hunger
Kostya learns the hard way that they do not consume anything out of design, rather than any sort of illness. Oh, they eat: with gusto. He first tries to feed them the rich scraps of French cuisine-- that he does not, in fact, appreciate-- and they are sick shortly afterwards, the food coming up whole except for the biting and tearing they'd done. The real Obadiah would never pass up such quality dining, and the thought of him being here would be funny if it were not vaguely a Gordian knot to unravel.
He tries a bit of everything: leftover granola bars, caviar, salad. In this alien place, Kostya realises he is surrounded by things that truly aren't human: the one who wears Sasha's face, the clones, the castle itself.
(It knows him, this place. It knows the pattern of his mind, and if he were paranoid he might think of it as watchful.)
Over the week and some that follows, Kostya develops a tolerance for the food. He will never be fond of French cuisine, not all of it, but succulent roast lamb and fresh peaches with mascarpone are hard to be hateful towards.
(They watch him eat, and he finds he does not mind. 3 likes to beg, and Kostya notes it for extra discipline. Thompson didn't beg unless it was the last possible option, and only after denying himself. He thinks of a body pushed to its limit and frowns. Distasteful.)
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:30 am
Speech
The first one to produce words is 6, who is quickly becoming Kostya's favourite out of efficiency. He is also the first one to learn to hold a comb, and he finds they are related. He doesn't know if it would be best to train a few excellent clones, or equally mediocre ones.
(Kostya asks the not-Sasha, sliding the question under her door as he had the other requests, hoping for an answer. He doesn't like the answer: "They are ugly and smell and have the stupid faces. Improve upon those.")
As a reward for being able to say "Taym" and "Hello", 6 gets to go for a walk. He stays on the leash, but Kostya sets a timer for 15 minutes and makes sure that the others see his reward: a taste of freedom, and positive reinforcement.
Together, they wander the halls, exploring the wings and all the crevices 6 can stick his fingers into. It is a thoughtless wander, and without realising it, he's taken them towards the throne room. 6-- poor, well-behaved 6-- shrieks in terror and drops to his hands and knees to stop himself from crossing the invisible threshold. In a daze, Kostya lets the leash slip from his fingers, crossing over the line and falling to his knees.
It is a compulsion, this.
It is a worship, a prayer to a god that listened and had no softness left within him. An honoring without a sacrificial lamb until Kostya realises that he might very well be there for the slaughter. While he is here, in this room, he would do anything and it fills him with a sense of purpose: decisive, ferocious, cunning.
(The nightmare before, he thinks, the words rolling over his tongue because they've escaped, a hoarse whisper: the nightmare to come.)
When he emerges-- seconds, hours, years later, he cannot tell-- 6 has retreated to the kennel room, sitting next to his cage, pawing at it. He is smart enough to know where Kostya has been, what he has seen. Enough to know that he hates it more than the blunt side of Syntax when summoned. He undoes the latch to the kennel, patting 6's head before closing it.
Kostya intends to give the throne room the widest berth possible, from here on out.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:49 am
Buttons
They hate clothing. They don't like the way it looks in the mirror, the way it feels on their skin, the way it chafes and fits. They are skinny, still, the almost skeleton thin that Obadiah was, but not quite. Kostya does't know how they get their nourishment (do they need to sleep? Do they need to breathe?) and isn't sure he'd truly understand it if he did.
The obvious answer is that they are comprised of fear, and so Kostya sticks with that, feeling ridiculous as he has 3 raise its arms up so that he can slide a shirt on easier. It makes it easier to see that they don't have any of the same scars, the same tattoos. They are tabula rasa, really and truly: completely blank slates.
"You have to be keeping it on," Kostya warns, strained because he's already dressed a handful for the day. "Or else."
He was not smart enough to train them in any other way but pain and encouragement. 3's hands shook-- just like Obadiah's, truly, down to the minutest of trembles-- and nodded.
"Good," Kostya said, patting his head once. "And vhat is your name?"
"Taym," it rasps, and the inflection isn't quite right. They repeat it, back and forth, walking back to the kennel, until it doesn't sound like a name anymore.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:03 am
Misbehavior
"This is vhat happen," Kostya explains, coolly, pinning down 10 with a steel-toed boot planted firmly over his back, "vhen you do not listen." He fires at the place where wrist and hand connect, searing it to pieces and sending a splatter of blood across 8 and 9's faces. 10 howled, scrambling, desperately trying to push himself up and off the ground to no avail.
"I said it vas time to be clean," he continued, firing at the other wrist, Syntax gleaming sharply with teal and crimson. "If I let you come together, vill you obey?"
"No," it hisses, "no, let-go, no, no, ********, no," in an uncanny modulation of his voice, the stressing all wrong, alien and immature.
"I see," Kostya said, leaning down to grip 10 by the hair at the base of his neck, fist clenched. "We can go to the throne room, then."
It works better than the threat of pain, eyes gone wide and stupid, pupils blown out. "No," the whole room chants, full of despair, "you cannot."
"Yes!" 10 screeches, again and again as they get closer, trying to cover his face with stumpy hands with no success, "clean! Cleancleanclean! Yes!" But, still, they walk. Close enough for Kostya to feel the haze of seduction washing over his mind, the sinewy blackness that resonates through his body from head to toe. Close enough for 10 to wail, hysterical, forgetting every word he's learned thus far in favor of shrieking like a banshee.
"Promise?" Kostya asked, brittle, standing at the treshold.
"Yes!"
"Good," he praises, cradling the thing close. "I hope you have learn the lesson."
"Yes," it says, broken, and Kostya approves of how familiar it sounds to his ears, the defeat.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:10 am
Progress
There they stand, in a line, carefully slouching in just the way that Obadiah does. Some better than others, of course: 6, is best in class, followed surprisingly by 2. They are wearing plain henleys, forest green jackets, and jeans. Between the 10 of them, about half can thoroughly dress themselves and the other half almost have it down except for the fly on the jeans and getting fingers tangled in belt loops. Each of the 10 are wearing shoes but Kostya had to tie the laces. They are holding still and it has been two weeks.
He's showed them pictures, on his phone, a scant few collected. The way he purses his lips, the way he knits his eyebrows, looks of vague irritation at the world around him. Shows them saved text-messages and a static twitter feed that's out of service here. Helps them try to imitate the cadence, and explains the words he knows. There are, unfortunately, a frightful number that he doesn't.
Each one of them can recite their name, can sit still without squirming or pissing themselves or getting naked. They do not put their fingers in their mouths or chew at their nails, but do have a practised tremble in their hands that is a little too obvious. They can comb their hair, but all their faces are covered in razor nicks, at least two a piece. They can laugh and it almost sounds right, but good god almighty are their faces all wrong when they do.
It's been two weeks of rich food and a veritable bounty of knowledge shared. (Two weeks of trying, desperately, not to stand so close to the line his heart wants to cross. His own desire scares him.) Sometimes it feels like a betrayal, to give up the way that Taym even smokes, nudging arms and tilting heads until the posture is correct, ensuring that the pedigree dogs are ready to be shown.
It is too much information, given away about his friend, and not enough at all to make any real progress in imitations. But they almost look people, and Kostya supposes that will have to be enough. Their language is stilted, and they take on a bit more of his poor grammar than he wishes, but they know the words for outside, pain, yes, no, and an assorted fifty or so others. He's quizzed them on it, with flash cards, and 10 is the most dutiful for learning words.
He supposes, as he waits for Jane to collect him, that he's grown almost fond of the creatures. If minipets had the same capacity for learning, perhaps he'd like them more.
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:41 am
NotSasha does not appear to say goodbye. Not even to open the sealed doors. Instead it is a hooded figure that opens the way and reveals Jane standing outside. She does not cross the threshold, but instead waits for him to join her. Eyeing the neat line of clones, now cleaned and clothed and passably human, if Thompson could be considered as such, Jane nods. "A vast improvement. You've done more for her than she's paid for, and there will be an accounting later to clear the deficit. Well done, Bashmet." Walking out into the desert, toward a portal standing free and natural, just a shimmering circle of air, the Hunter gave Kostya a pleasant smile, "We were not here. Your reports will be filed for you. It was a very boring few weeks in Antarctica."
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:31 am
"Thank you. Vithout rigid, not sure how much vill stick." Especially since a great deal of his tactics came from intimidation and pain, although they were tempered with a disarming kindness. He even smiled for 6, once. His shoulders sag-- just a little, just enough for someone like Jane to notice-- in relief. "I do not like this place," he says, eyes cast towards it, towards the throne room that had brought him to his knees on more than one occasion. "Antarctica is pleasant. Thank you, Jane." When he emerged through the other side, it was day, and the island was pleasant and boring and sunny without a cloud in the sky. Gone two weeks, and it's like nothing changed. He was home-- or would be, as soon as he made his way to America.
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