He wakes up and he doesn't know what time it is.

Sometime early. The sun is hardly up, watery rays pushing incessantly through the wedge of window space not covered by the drapes; like a determined hand reaching through to shove him rudely from his dreams (nightmares, terrible, twisted, roiling nightmares of agony and darkness) and back into the waking world.

His head is spinning. Fritz rises from bed, staggers, and collapses onto the floor, breathing heavily, his legs lacking the strength to carry him. They feel weak and stick-like underneath him, and the stitches he has in his chest pull painfully, making him gasp. A wave of nausea has risen in his throat, and he gags, swallows hard and fast to keep it down, white-knuckled fingers gripping the bed sheets.

Fritz hauls himself back up, face pale, freckles standing out starkly against the white skin. He wants to throw up, but doesn't know if he can make it to the bathroom in time, sweat beading on his forehead, sliding down to pool in his collarbone.

He's still wearing the shirt he wore yesterday, because he fell asleep as soon as he came home from patrolling. He hasn't changed in a day, and the sudden thought makes him violently ill, his skin itching horribly, though there's no sign of a rash. Fritz has a terrible, awful desire to shower, to let the water run until it burns him, and he staggers to his feet with no other thought in mind except for this.

Clean. He has to get clean. He already contaminated Fiona's apartment, and then Elke and Carson's, and what has he done?

By the time he gets out of the shower, Fritz's skin is red, stinging from the heat and the scrubbing. He pulls on new clothes from his drawer, fixes a minutely moved pen holder back into place, and moves as though on autopilot, his exhausted body refusing to give in.

There are voices in his head, soft and quiet. The Code whispers to him, hisses through his thoughts like a snake, coiling slowly and steadily around each and everyone so that the air is squeezed out of them and so that his lungs feel as though each breath is like a dagger in his chest. Each slithering syllable breathed out into his mind reminds him of the fact that he is useless, that he is inadequate, that he is not worth anything.

Sometimes it makes him laugh at the sheer irony of it all. When he was first awakened as Celsus, in the middle of the Surrounding, in the middle of battle, he thought he was something special. He thought that he had been chosen, that he had been picked out of a great handful as someone who was meant to be more than what they initially wore.

It was a joke, he knew that now. A great, mocking, cosmic joke. He'd been a mistake.

The Code reminds him of this, daily. He can hear it as he reaches for the cabinet door in his kitchen, a tantalizing, teasing voice in his ear as he pulls down the box of tea. It shakes so badly that he drops it, and little packets spill out across the floor.

The tremors in his hands are too much now; he is as useless as ever.

Inadequate, whispers the Code. You were a mistake.

I was always a mistake, Fritz thinks, and his back hits the counter as he slowly slides down to the floor. His legs are bent up against his chest, and he leans over, arms folded across his middle, hugging himself tightly as though trying to give himself some small, idealistic semblance of comfort. His forehead presses against his knees, shoulders trembling.

The apartment is so very, very large. And so very, very empty.