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"Diacetylmorphine," he said instantly, before H could. "Or at least a percentage of it is. The rest of it, who ******** knows. You never really do. It's nothing," he said flatly. "It's a big ******** myth in an itty-bitty piece of paper."

How long had it been? A year and a half, maybe--closer to two. And he'd done so well. His skin crawled with the irrational fear that somehow the girl from the nearly-disastrous leave trip had phoned H up as soon as he'd left.

He suspected that H merely wanted to see him struggle. For a few more seconds, at least, he'd given him the pleasure. For a big ******** myth it was visibly causing Taym plenty of distress, the shaking of his hands amplified, his movements, restless and agitated, matching those of Canary's, and maybe it would have been better in the long run if he'd noticed that, but he didn't.

"...uh huh. And how exactly is that going to make you less human?" He licked his lips, settling back into his skin: past his faux pas, now, especially since H hadn't seemed to mind it. He rolled his shoulders, eyes flashing into H instead.

"I mean, it might do something to him, but I think it'll do perfectly human things to him, no?"

The doctor didn't answer until Taym finally began to move, to show that he was not about to opt out. "We aren't so much less, Mr. Ambrodial, as somewhat other. Certain drugs so not work quite the same as they would on a normal human. And considering the context of our island, our purpose, and our enemies, the consequences of letting him run about working after this not at all perfectly human things."

He lifted his eyebrows at the younger man, "We're exercising caution. It's hardly a matter for debate."

This made Taym laugh, a dry little bark.

Moving around the clones made Taym uneasy at the best of times and now he found himself pointedly ignoring them, H's conversation with Ever largely drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. Leaving the copies in the other room was a relief, but not enough to uncoil the ratcheting tension playing havoc with his usual talent for keeping his voice level. He opted for silence.

"So are we gonna play find the vein again here?" Sunny demanded as Taym, now trembling from head to foot (he thought of America, shivering and shaking against him uncontrollably in the moments he snatched that Konstantin was not there) took a seat behind the provided table. He recognized the contents immediately, the cheery Harm Reduction labels, the sterile but well-meaning satire of what his life had been for eight years.

He spared one final glance at Ever, defiant, daring him to say something, and then pointedly kept his eyes on H as he began unsealing laughably-sanitary packets, his hands, despite their trembling, moving with the ease of old, old habit.

He wanted to disgust all of them. He wanted to see them recoil. But it didn't seem likely that he'd succeed with H, and so he put on a show for Ever by addressing Sunny as matter-of-factly as though they were discussing where to get lunch afterwards. "Well, sweetheart, I'd gotten into the habit of using the femoral vein towards the end, but I feel like I'd have to at least buy you dinner first and maybe ask the spectators to step outside." A pause while he tore open a packet with his teeth, and another, separate pause while he examined with vague curiosity the tourniquet, the first real one he'd ever seen in his life, and handed it to her. "You can hold my hand, though. There's probably some good ones left in it."

Even hampered by his shaking it doesn't take him long. The familiarity of the ritual (that is what it is; it is a ritual, apotropaism, he thinks) detaches him a little from what's happening to him, until the moment that he's giving Sunny his hand and apologizing for the tattoo obscuring things a little because, well, he wasn't exactly banking on that ever being an issue again.

"For science," he told Ever with a grin, flicking the needle a few times before handing it over. "You might want to get me something to puke in," he added pragmatically.

All vicious-cheery bluster. All barely-repressed anger and a half-dozen moments of second-guessing, and Fionnghal silent and heavy in the back of his head. He nearly changed his mind three times, but his hands had moved uninhibited. He nearly changed it again now, but instead, defiant, stupid, furious, baring his teeth in a feral grin, he leveled a stare at H, meeting his eyes save for an instant of glancing away at the cinching of the tourniquet around his forearm more violently, he suspected, than strictly necessary. When he did this he found himself looking at Sunny instead, and if she was looking--if she wasn't yet engaged in searching--maybe she'd see the moment that it all slipped, and through to all the animal fear and hate behind it, all the despair and resignation, all the things that contributed to his low-level trembling under her hands, before the mask went back up, before his eyes traveled back to H.

It was, in the end, brief and professional. Neither H nor Sunny offered further goading or smart a** commentary. Through them, Taym became not a ********, not a series of poor choices taking a turn for the worse, but instead a particular set of measurements and numbers. A body of responses to compare to three other such bodies.

Observe. Record. Next.

The bucket proved necessary. They used a second for Canary and their contents were set aside for later study. The other two didn't need it.

When they were done, they left him in the reading room, where he was soon joined by his copies. Ezekiel and 7 were strange and unsettled, and near them Canary seemed more real, more fully and completely a person rather than a fraction of one. Counter to the sluggishness of his movement, the clone's heavy-lidded eyes spoke of someone who was very much awake.

It's interesting how you can watch someone so closely all while completely ignoring them. Perhaps it helps to ease the invasive nature of such scrutiny.