CELL

/ THIRTY SEVEN /

Ryan dropped to his knees beside the body, careful, even in shock, not to kneel in the slowly expanding pool of blood around its head.

The person's head was facing away from him, and he could see brain remnants through the mess of a hole in the back of the skull. Small fragments of bone were scattered in the blood. Some still had hair stuck to them.

Ryan didn't feel nauseous. He wasn't repulsed. He was simply shocked. There had been no one and nowhere there. Now, there was. He'd been in the room the whole time. If the cabinets had moved, he'd have heard it. If someone had brought a body in, or shot someone, he'd definitely have heard it. Had it been there the whole time and he'd somehow missed it?

No. Not a chance.

He should turn the body over. See who it was. Check it for identification or a weapon. He wouldn't know the person, but they deserved to be seen. This random, brutal murder was the result of the machinations of Bradley. It should not go unnoticed. They'd been killed for his benefit, he was sure. If so, that meant it was his fault. He didn't believe that, not really, but couldn't help the unpleasant sting of guilt. OK, then.

He placed a hand on the corpse's shoulder and pulled. With a sickening slurp as congealing blood was drawn apart, the body rolled over.

Ryan was staring at himself.

Suddenly, all the doubts about what he was told and what he was disappeared. His head felt as if it was about to explode with the cascade of realisation, coupled with knowledge. Not everything. There were still gaps. Areas of darkness blacker than the permanent night of the cells. Fractures concealing important memories he now accepted might never return. That was incidental, however. Bradley had been telling the truth. He'd seen her shoot herself and now he was looking at himself, killed in exactly the same way.

The dead Ryan's eyes were, thankfully, closed. He couldn't bear to look into them, knowing they would be lifeless. The hole in the centre of the forehead was small. It had a blackened rim and seemed too perfectly round to have any connection to the expansive exit wound. The face was definitely his. He recognised the shape of the nose and the thinness of the lips. He knew the scar just under the left eye where a mole had been for years before his old boss told him he thought it was growing, so it had been cut away.

He laid his hand on the chest. There wouldn't be a heart beat or any movement of the chest from the inflation or deflation of lungs. Still, he had a brief burst of futile hope.

"Bang, bang, you're dead," Clara said, laughing.

Ryan stood abruptly and turned on her, but she was no longer in residence. She'd returned to the floating voice form, haunting him. Mocking him.

"Fuck off," he said.

"I think it's about time you do," she replied.

Her voice was hovering over Ryan's body. Gritting his teeth, he said:

"You first."

"I can't go anywhere. I'm a part of you, Daddy."

"I'm not your 'daddy'. You're not my daughter."

"THEN FUCK OFF! IT'S NOT SAFE!"

"I know! But where the hell do I...?"

Shit. How had he missed that? The mystery of who had actioned the appearing of him would have to wait. His turning of the body had revealed something it had been covering. Still without any feelings of disgust, he took a hold of his doppelganger's ankles and pulled.

Once moved, he let go of the ankles. They dropped heavily, hitting the floor loudly. He ignored the sound. It wasn't him, not really. He was him. This was an earlier version, or perhaps a later one prematurely dispatched. Either way, there was a necessary mental distance. An enforced envisioning of the dead version being nothing more than a mannequin.