Scaramouche's body lay on the metal table, his pale skin reflected in the cold lamplight that quivered like a dying candle. His breath was labored, not because he might die—he was merely a puppet who failed to be called “human”—but because pain was being instilled into his system, deliberately, so he could feel it.

Silver needles dug into his chest, pulling at the delicate joints of mechanism and artificial flesh. The artificial heart beat slowly, half organ, half machine. But for Dottore, that wasn't enough. He wanted more.

“Do you know, little puppet,” Dottore's voice was soft yet piercing, “I want to see how far this creature, not born of a human womb, can scream like a human.”

Scaramouche opened his hazy eyes, their blue ones cracking like glass. He didn't scream—his voice was choked by digital blood, fragments of memory, and strange glitches vibrating from his core. Every tug of the shadowy hand that dug into his chest felt like something was tearing apart not just his body, but his very being.

Amidst the pain, something else grew: hatred.

No affection greeted him from the moment he opened his eyes. No hands cradled him like a child. Only the gaze of a scientist weighing him like a failed experiment.

Dottore smiled faintly as he watched the body persist. “How beautiful. You are not human, yet I will make you suffer more than they do. Because from suffering comes something powerful.”

Scaramouche, his lips stained red, could only raise his eyes to the ceiling. Behind his blank stare was a cold oath he had carved himself: if he were ever freed, the world would know the bitterness of revenge born from a doll forced to become human.

And in that room, amidst the screeching sound of metal and the vibrating red glitch in his chest, Harbinger was born, who would later be known by another name—not just a doll, not just an experiment. But a fragment of hatred given form.