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Disclaimer: I do not own them. Owned by MTM and NBC. No infringement intended.
Beta-read by Wolfangel. Thanks so much, girl. :-)
Heart of Darkness
A Pretender Fan Fiction by Mareen
"We all are caught in the middle
of one long treacherous riddle
of who trust who.
Maybe I'll trust you
but can you trust me?"
The Riddle, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Part 1: Detour Ahead
She sat down in front of him without giving him even a glance.
"Hello, Parker", he said.
"Hello", she answered.
The subway started with a little jerk that made her jump forward on her seat. Their knees touched and she immediately put some space between them again.
"I'm glad you came", he said.
She ignored the remark and looked around in the subway instead. "Why here?"
"I don't know. It seemed fitting."
"Now that you say it... We are more than two feet under ground. I'm sure that's just were Raines always wished both of us to be."
He couldn't resist the urge to laugh. She smiled grimly and looked at him for the first time.
He looked bad. There were dark rings under his eyes and he'd lost a lot of weight. There wasn't even any brilliance in his hair left and she could be wrong, but she thought she could make out some grey in it, too.
"He looks worse than I do", she thought.
"I'm glad you didn't bring any sweepers", he said and she realized that even his voice sounded different than usual, tired somehow.
"I promised not to, didn't I?"
"Yeah. - And you always keep your promises."
"One of my many qualities" she answered dryly. "Why are we here, Jarod?"
"I needed to talk to you."
The subway stopped in the next station and some people stepped into their compartment. For a few minutes, Jarod looked nervous and gave every single one of the people a searching glance.
"I promised I'd be alone", she said.
"I know", he said and shrugged. "It's worse now. Before, I could even forget that someone's after me now and then. Now... I just can't. I hope it'll get better soon. I'm only out for a few weeks..."
He shrugged again and she held her breath when she realized how slim his shoulders actually were now.
"You can't flee from your demons", she said, "like you have the Centre."
"No."
The compartment's doors closed and the subway started to move again.
"How's your back?" he asked.
"I'll survive. It could be worse. I had bullet wounds before, you know. The worst thing is I still don't this weather-feeling scar I've always wanted. And I thought, a bullet to the back would leave me with that gift at last."
She glanced at him and was awaiting at least a smile, but he looked at her with a sad expression in his eyes instead.
"I was afraid", he said. "When I saw you fall...and the blood..."
"Don't, Jarod. I told you I'll survive. - And why do you even care?"
She immediately was sorry about saying that when she saw him twitch. He turned his face away from her and stared out of the window. The only thing he could see was his own reflection in the glass and for a second he was startled by how tired he really looked, but it was still better than looking at her. He could hear her taking a deep breath.
"Look, Jarod, I'm... okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
He gave her a glance.
"Then why did you say it?"
"I don't know. It's like one of those old habits you can't get rid of."
"Yeah, I know some of these. They can be quite annoying."
They both kept silent for a moment and she was surprised by how comfortable it was, to just sit with him like that.
"I want you to help me", he said at last.
"What did you just say?"
He looked at her.
"I said, I want you to help me. Against the Centre. You and me. On the same side at last."
"You can't be serious." She tried a laugh - until she realized that he was deadly serious. "You are crazy, Jarod!"
"Why?" he answered. "Because I'm asking you to do the right thing?"
Some of the people sitting around them were starting to stare at them. She gave them one of her expressions and smiled grimly when she realized, that she still had the "Do you want me to hurt you?"-look if she wanted to. She hadn't used that one for a long time now. Maybe it was about time to practice it a bit again?
She brought her attention back to the man opposite of her.
"The right thing?" she said. "You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no idea. You want me to help you fight the Centre?"
Her voice sounded like acid when she said that and everyone else would at least have been impressed by the sound alone. But she was talking to Jarod. He never was impressed when she sounded like that. He just sat there and looked at her and awaited for her to be done with it.
"This is just the typical thing for you, Jarod. Everything is just so damn easy for you. You want my help? Yes! You'll get it! I'll just send my life and my father and everything I have ever worked for to Hell. But who cares? It all gets meaningless in the shadow of the Goal of the King of all Lab Rats himself."
She turned to the people in the compartment who were looking at the two of them with interest.
"And would you all mind your own business? What is this for you? Some kind of TV show?"
Everyone in the compartment immediately looked into another direction.
"After everything you saw and heard and everything that happened to you", he said at last, "the truth about Raines and your mother, the cloning, the boy, the bullet in your back, all the children's lifes the Centre destroyed ... and Thomas Gates' life, too",
she gave him a deadly look when he mentioned Gates, but he ignored that and kept on talking instead,
"You still want to stay with them? You still want to help them with what they are doing? Tell me why? One good cause. I want one good cause. And don't tell me anything about saving your father, because your father is damn well capable of saving himself, because that's exactly what he's been doing for 30 years now!"
"He's trying to save me!"
"I know. Whatever the price may be", he hissed. "But what if the price is becoming just too high?"
"I don't have to listen to this!"
She got up angrily but he grabbed her wrist and held her back before she could turn around and walk away.
"You are running again! Like you always did! You are always running away from the truth! But now it's finally time to stop running and have a good look around and tell me if it's worth the price. Tell me, Parker!"
"Leave me alone", she hissed. "I shouldn't have come here in the first place. You have no idea about how my life is like and how I feel about it."
She grabbed the hand around her wrist and forced him to let her go. He looked up at her.
"I am a Pretender. I know exactly how you feel", he answered calmly. "What I don't understand is, why you don't do what your feelings are telling you."
"And what are they telling me?" she hissed. "Come on, Jarod! Fill me in! What are my feelings telling me?"
He stood up from his seat and brought them face to face.
"Look at me", he said. "Look into my eyes."
"Why? You believe I can't resist the puppy dog look?"
"No. I want you to look into my eyes because it's still there."
"What do you mean?"
"The sadness you told the boy about. The one you saw in my eyes when you were a child. You told him you won't ignore the sadness again."
She stared at him and he could see the expression in her eyes change until there was only pain left.
"That was unfair, Jarod, has always been" , she whispered at last. "Why can't you just leave me alone? What have I ever done to you, that you won't leave me alone?"
"You exist", he whispered back. "I can't leave you."
The small sob escaped her before she was able to bury it, so she looked at the ground to hide it instead. He grabbed her hand and held it.
They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity to him and he was holding her hand, absently caressing it with his thumb. When she finally looked up at him again, he was even surprised himself by the strength and sudden determination in her eyes.
"Looks as if we are on the same side now", she said.
"I am glad."
She looked at him in surprise. "You trust me just like that? After everything that had happened?"
"Yes. I trust you just like that." He looked at her questioningly. "Are you afraid?"
"Afraid? Just why should I be afraid? Because the last time I was in the middle of one of your little games I got shot and I nearly died? I am more afraid than you will ever be able to even pretend to imagine, Jarod. Believe me that."
"Good", he said, "Because I am afraid, too. Not being afraid when you are about to start a war with the Centre would have been incredible stupid."
"But?" she said. "There is a `but` here, isn't there? There's always a `but` with you."
He smiled. "Yes, there is a `but`. - You may be afraid but you won't be alone with it anymore, with your fear, I mean. I'm with you now."
"Great. Just what I've always wanted, Jarod. Being with you."
She tried to sound annoyed, but he didn't buy it.
"Next stop is my station", he said instead.
"How do I get in contact with you?"
"Don't call us, we'll call you", he answered with a smile.
"I thought so", she said.
"Are you sure about it?" he asked."About betraying the Centre?"
"No. But that won't stop me now that I made my decision. But if this gets me killed, me or my father, I promise I`ll be back to kill you."
"You won't get killed. I won't allow that to happen. I promise."
"And Jarod always keeps his promises, too, doesn't he?"
"Exactly. - Thank you, Parker. - For making that decision."
She didn't want to hear it.
The train stopped.
"My station", Jarod said. "I have to go."
"You have to let go of me", she said and looked down at their still bound hands.
When he'd stepped out of the train, he turned around and looked back at her. She was still standing where he had left her, staring after him. He saw her nodding at him and he gave her one last short smile as a good-bye.
"I will never let go of you", he thought and he knew she had heard him somehow, for she suddenly smiled back at him, with hope in her eyes for the first time since a long time.
The subway left the station and vanished into darkness.
Part 2: Survival
He received the call in the middle of the night and it shattered his life forever and although he had lived in Hell for most of his life, his past hadn't prepared him for that specific moment.
It was strange that besides everything he had went through, dying had never been an option to him. Like a child he had always seen himself and the people that meant something to him, as immortal.
That belief was something like the last piece of innocence he had saved inside himself. But it was gone now, after that call, gone forever, like most of his will to fight was.
Maybe he wouldn't feel like that, if it wasn't be his fault, her death.
But it was. He had pushed her into it, he had promised to protect her. But he couldn't protect her. Protecting her would have meant staying at her side day and night, day after day. He couldn't do that, so he had convinced himself that she was well and good, and more than capable of taking care of herself.
She had always been like that, a survivor. Cockroaches and Miss Parker... They would even survive Armageddon.
Armageddon. Yes. But not the Center's wrath.
He never should have forced her into this.
You can't fight the Centre. She had told him that the day when they had met in the Subway. You can never fight the Centre. It will kill you sooner or later. But he had pushed her into fighting the Centre and it had killed her. Actually, he had killed her. He hadn't pulled the trigger, but he had pulled the strings.
When he had received the call, it was Angelo who told him. He must have stolen the cell phone, maybe from Sydney. „Daughter hurt. Daughter dead.“ He would never forget the frantically spoken words. He would never forget the sudden feeling of dizziness and cold and numbness and pain when acceptance tried to take over at last.
He had felt dead too, at first, until he realized that it must be a ploy of the Centre. They must have found out that he and Parker were working together and they were trying to make him believe that Parker was dead to catch him. Or Parker was in this, too. She had changed her mind and she was working with the Centre again. Everything was possible, just not her death.
But when he tried to prove his suspicion, all he found out was that Parker had been killed in an "accident". Her killer had escaped, what a surprise.
And there were witnesses and pictures of her dead body. She was lying on a street on these pictures, on her stomach, surrounded by blood, her long dark hair around her head like a veil he was grateful for, because it prevented him from having to look at her face. At her hateful eyes because he hadn't protect her, because he had failed.
He had waited till the last minute before deciding to go to her funeral, which is two days after Angelo's call. He had spent the last 48 hours alone in his bed, sleeping and staring at the ceiling and if he had been hungry within that time, he hadn't realized it and it didn't matter to him. He had some beer instead which didn't do him any good because he wasn't used to drinking. He wasn't like Parker. He had always known how much alcohol she was drinking when she was alone at home. Something else he hadn't been able to save her from. Being alone and drinking too much.
But maybe there was something he could do in spite of all his failures: Paying his last respect to her, no matter what the risk may be.
Once, between sitting in his plane to Delaware and driving to the cemetery, he had this thought in his head, that what he was doing was obviously suicidal. He knew they were probably just waiting for him at her grave and he would either end up dead or back at the Centre and he didn't know what would be worse, which one of the two possibilities would be the better punishment for his failure. But the truth was, that he didn't care at all. Both would do for him.
When he arrived at the cemetery, everyone was already gone and all that was left, was her coffin over the open grave, awaiting to being buried. He had a single red rose in his hand when he stopped in front of it and couldn't take his eyes off the darkness that seemed to surround the place where Parker was supposed to be buried. Jarod stretched out his hand and let his fingertips trail over the black coffin. He closed his eyes and tears started to run down his cheeks.
Denial came up again and he shook his head and tried to find an explanation, a way out of this. But there wasn't one. There was just death.
„Parker“, he whispered. „I am so sorry.“
„Hello Jarod.“
He didn't turn around. He already knew who was talking to him.
„I told you I am in charge now. I still am.“
„I do not care“, he answered. Jarod placed the rose on the coffin, then turned around and looked at Lyle. There were at least four sweepers, but he looked at Lyle only, who was smirking back at him.
„I know“, Lyle said. „You must be devastated. Parker dead. And you responsible for it. What about this `protecting the weak and abused` thing? Didn't that count for my sister?“
Lyle looked at him with an expression that was supposed to be sad, but the obvious falseness of it only made Jarod furious. With a scream, he pounced on Lyle and hit him into the face. He could hear the cracking when the other man's nose broke. Blood smeared all over Lyle`s face and his nice new black suit and Jarod’s clothes, too. He could hear Lyle screaming something at the sweepers and then felt strong arms grabbing him from behind and pulling him back.
Jarod was able to punch Lyle in the stomach one last time. Then he had to let go of him. Jarod screamed angrily. The Sweepers, surprised by the sudden release, stumbled backwards. Jarod could hear someone screaming a loud „Damn it.“ Then there was just a crashing sound. When they fell against the coffin that hard, it had turned over and was lying on its side. The lid had popped open.
Jarod moaned and closed his eyes. The sweepers had let go of him, so, after a deep breath, he turned around and looked at Parker. And started to laugh hysterically.
Newspapers.
The coffin was full of old newspapers. The Blue Cove Gazette.
Part 3: Home
It was absolutely dark in his cell and he could see nothing at all, except of three little red lights, blinking down from above him. Surveillance cameras, that watched everyone of his moves and everything of him, too. Jarod was shivering and he didn't know if it was from the feeling of being watched or from the cold. The sweepers had stripped him naked before bringing him down into the cell. He supposed Lyle had ordered it, probably to take away everything that was left of his dignity. Jarod looked up at one of the lights and pulled his legs up to his body to leave at least something to himself.
After all, getting caught at the cemetery hadn't been quite a real surprise.
He knew the Centre, what they were capable of, and now he supposed that it must have been the shock that had made him run into it with his eyes wide open. Or maybe he had fallen for the ploy, because in a way, he had wanted to get caught. Her death had been the right answer to his bad conscience, that was telling him over and over again, that what he had done was the wrong thing.
It had looked like a good idea when he had asked her to help him. And it had felt good inside, to have her with him at last. It had brought an end to the loneliness he was feeling. But the truth was, that he had lied to both of them about being able to protect her. No-one would have been able to do that . They had both known it had been a lie, and in a way, they had only accompanied each other in believing the lie.
It wasn't a surprise either, that Lyle`s sweepers were able to bring him down. He hadn't even been able to give them a real fight. He was too shocked, to do anything else but surrender to them.
He was back at the Centre again. Beaten from the sweepers, hurting and bleeding, in a cell in SL-26. No lights. No hope. Just darkness around him and the realization that he had no idea, what was really going on.
Lyle had refused to answer his questions about what had happened to Miss Parker. Jarod still didn't know if she was dead or alive.
He could cope with her death somehow. He could accept it then and try to somehow live with it. But if she was alive somewhere, needing his help, waiting for it... Hating him because he wouldn't come... The thought alone was destroying him from the inside and was preventing him from thinking about anything but her. What was probably the only cause why no-one was telling him anything. It was nearly funny that the Centre seemed to have finally actually realized what his weak point was.
It had always been the strange thing about the Centre. It was a think tank, full of geniuses. But no-one in the Centre seemed to know anything about what made other people really tick. They didn't know anything about emotions. Or about friendship. Or love. Instead of that, they knew about money and business and betrayal and murder.
Jarod had always been well aware that his emotions were his weak point. The fact that the Centre never really tried to use that against him, had always been a mystery to him. But whoever the new player in the Game was, he (or she) knew damn well about it. Actually, that person was a master of the Game. They wouldn't have realized without the new player, that Miss Parker was one of the few ways to get through to his soul and make him prisoner of his own emotions.
What Jarod really needed right now, was meeting this person. He couldn't fight anything he didn't know. He couldn't start planning his and Miss Parker's escape without knowing their enemy.
He looked up into one of the blinking red lights.
"I want to talk to the one!" he screamed. "Get him here! I won't help you with anything if I can't talk to the person who came up with the ploy!"
Jarod didn't even really believe anyone would come down to talk to him, but it was worth a try. Actually, it only was better than doing nothing.
"I need to talk to him!" he screamed again. "You hear me?"
If anyone did, the person didn't answer.
He fell into an exhausted sleep after waiting for what seemed like to be hours and probably even were hours. He was dreaming something that frightened him more than anything ever before, but when he awoke with a scream, he couldn't even remember what the dream was all about. He was glad about that. Sometimes, it was better to not remember. He knew that much too well.
When the door to his cell was suddenly opened, the light coming from the outside momentarily blinded him. Jarod lifted his hand and covered his eyes with it. The visit surprised him a bit. He hadn't awaited anyone to come that soon. On the other hand, he didn't even know how long he was in his little dark cell by now. Time seemed to have lost its continuity. It always did inside the Centre.
Jarod finally got used to the bright light and blinked at the figure in the open door. He would recognize these legs everywhere.
"Parker!"
He wanted to jump up and embrace her, do anything to show her how he felt like to see her here, alive and well, but then remembered his current state of nakedness. Jarod`s face went bright red.
"I...", he stuttered.
Parker's voice was strange when she talked to him and Jarod frowned. She obviously held back something. She sounded cold, unmoved. There were people behind her, some sweepers, who watched everything, both of them were doing. So he supposed she held back because of them.
"I brought you something", she said, when she came nearer. He still couldn't see her face because Parker held it in the dark, away from him and he felt the urge to ask her to look at him, to ask her what was wrong with her voice.
"What is it?" he said instead.
"A cover."
She let it fall down into his lap.
"Thanks", he said with a smile. "It was already getting embarrassing."
The cover was finally warming him a bit. The feet were still cold, but he could live with that. He could live with everything now that she was standing in front of him. Alive. He held the cover with clammy fingers and finally stood up to stand in front of Parker.
"They made me believe you were dead", he whispered so she alone could hear what he was saying. "What happened? Did they found out?"
Her body was like a statue. Jarod hadn't realized it before, but she was standing like a statue. Unmoving and hard. Her eyes had always betrayed her but he couldn't see her eyes in the darkness. He suddenly was very frightened.
"Parker..." he urged. "What's going on? - I am going to get both of us out of here. I promise."
When she finally talked to him again, all he wanted to do was throwing up. "Don't try to save me, Jarod", she said with that new cold voice of hers. "I can't be saved. I am lost far too long for that."
"Parker, there's still a chance. We will..."
"Jarod. I am the one. You wanted to talk to me and here I am. I am the one who set it all up. I came back to my mind. The Centre is the place where I am at home but you just never accepted that. I finally did."
He stumbled backwards against one of the walls of his prison, shaking his head. No word was coming from him, not even a single sound. But inside his head there was this rhythmical repeating of the single word "No". Over and over again.
"You never got it, Jarod. And you never will", he could hear her saying with an acid sound in her voice. "But I am telling you now. The truth is, no-one will catch you if you fall. They are just going to wait till you are lying in the dirt and they will stomp on your back to take care you won't get up again so easily. Life is a jungle and there are no friends out there. And all you can do is fighting back at them with all the power you have. And sometimes you even have to fight yourself to prevent your
emotions to take over against your own better knowledge. Love? Or friendship? It's a chemical reaction in the brain, misleading us with nice words and false hopes. Do you think I'm a cynic?" She gave a humorless laugh. "I am not. I'm a realist. I have opened my eyes and realized that I fell for all the lies again when we were in that Subway and that realization finally opened my eyes forever. You should try it once, too. Open your eyes and take a good look at the world around you. The effect will do you good. Good-bye LaLa-Land, Jarod. And welcome to Reality. Because Miss Parker is back to her own self. And you are lost."
Part 4: The beginning
The Centre
June, 1974
"Daughter sad."
The simple words made Jarod twitch.
He had been so deep in thought whiles looking at Miss Parker from his secret place it the vent, that he somehow had totally missed Angelo's apperance right beside him.
After a moment Jarod tore his eyes away from Miss Parker, who was sitting in a chair at the other end of the room and was reading a book, and looked at his friend instead.
"I know, Angelo", he whispered. "She is always sad."
She was like that since her mother's death. Jarod was trying to help her, he did everything he could to make Miss Parker smile or just keep her from thinking about that picture of her mother, dead in the elevator. But sooner or later, she always came back to that moment. He could see it in her eyes then. They became dark and deep like the ocean and far away. She was slipping away from him. He could feel that, too, somehow, but couldn't stop it either. And whenever he asked her about it, Miss Parker always just said: "You do not understand, Jarod."
And he was starting to believe, that she was right. That he couldn't get through to her because he couldn't even remember his mother. So he couldn't say how it felt like to lose a mother. So he couldn't help Miss Parker the way he wanted to.
But he was a Pretender, too. Sydney always told him that. A Pretender and "very special", although to Jarod, that only meant he had to do the sims and that he could feel other people's emotions, usually their pain. And that he could understand them by that.
Understanding was the whole point in pretending.
He had thought about the plan for a long time before actually deciding to do it. This time would be different than usual. First of all, he did it without anyone telling him to do it. He would be alone, without Sydney at his side. Secondly... It was Miss Parker. His friend. The only person in his life only thinking about her made his heart beat faster.
Besides that, he wasn't even sure she would appreciate his effort. Since her mother's death she was hiding her feelings. She didn't like anyone near to her anymore, sometimes not even him. Miss Parker suddenly was using words like "privacy" and she was angry at him, if she thought he broke into that "privacy". No, she wouldn't like it if she'd know that he intended to pretending to be her, but he also knew, that he just had to understand her, so he could finally really help her. He couldn't afford to lose her.
Pretending always felt like falling into a light sleep at first. Everything seemed to blur and his head seemed to get very light. He always took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and took another deep breath, concentrating on the person he intended to become. He would always start to loose his own self then, slowly at first, then faster and even faster until everything on his mind were the other person's emotions.
Jarod started to forget about where he was and that Angelo was beside him and when the first impressions of being Miss Parker floated through his mind, he only wanted to cry from the sadness he felt. But he couldn't cry. He was Miss Parker now, and Miss Parker never cried anymore.
The Centre
Now
He couldn't cry. He was just sitting on the floor of his cell, shivering, staring at nothing and couldn't cry. He wanted to, but couldn't.
Parker had left in silence. He couldn't talk to her and she wouldn't talk to him. Everything was broken, tumbled down. He didn't believe anything would ever be like it had been before. She had betrayed him. Strange, that she had hunted him for more than three years but he never saw it as betrayal. But this was different. She had lied to him. She had destroyed his life willingly. She had used his feelings for her against him. She knew how he felt like...She had to know it. They had never actually said it, but he had always been sure that she had always known. Like he had always thought he would know about her feelings for him, although she always hid them so well.
But now he realized that he had known nothing at all. At one time in his life, he had pretended to be her. Since that day, he had always thought he could never lose her, that something of her would always be with him. A mistake. And even one capable of destroying him from the inside. He probably had never known her.
Jarod looked up into one of the blinking lights.
"So this is it then", he whispered. He spit on his cell's floor. He knew she was watching.
Parker turned away from the video screen. She was tired of watching Jarod for it wouldn't make a difference to what had happened to both of them. Instead, it was time to come face to face with Sydney and Broots.
Parker tried to fight the feeling of sickness in her stomach. Her ulcer was coming back. She could feel it, so she went into her office first and had a wodka to drown the sickness. She couldn't afford getting sick now. There were things to take care of first.
She closed her eyes for a second and then went to see the tribunal to let herself be condemned.
Whether Sydney nor Broots were looking at her when she met them and she realized, that being an outcast with these two people was more than strange. It was devastating. Or it would have been devastating, if she can't fight her emtions, like she had told Jarod she could.
Broots was avoiding her eyes. Sydney just pretended he hadn't seen her come in. She didn't care. She couldn't right now.
"Now that we have Jarod back where he belongs, we are after Major Charles and the clone", she said coolly. "Broots, work isn't over."
Broots glanced at her, then looked away immediately. In his eyes, she had seen that he didn't understand her anymore. It didn't matter. He was never supposed to understand her.
"Broots!" she hissed at him. "Get going!"
He immediately slipped away, head down, unable to look at her. But Sydney looked up at her at last and opened his mouth to say something.
"Don't you even try, Syd", she warned. "What did you expect from me anyway? I am a Parker."
"I obviously forgot that for a moment", he answered. "It won't happen again." He angrily stood up from his chair and left. She still didn't care. She still had other things to take care of first.
It was time to start the Game.
They brought him clothes and something to eat and he put on the clothes and pretended he had eaten something. He felt too sick to truly filling his stomach. But he should have known that they hadn't
brought him clothes just to make him feel comfortable. The door to his cell was opened again and Lyle smirked down at him.
"Get up and shine, Jarod", he said. "It's time to play."
Part 5: Michael
"I am proud of you, sis."
"Spare me, Lyle."
Parker frowned at him, then she stared down at the wodka in her hand. The ice in it was slowly moving around. She found a surprising interest in watching these movements.
"No", he went on, "I really am. Actually, we were starting to believe you were betraying the Centre. - You were that near to having a real `accident`, you know that?"
"No", she answered with a surprised sound in her voice. "I can be quite glad then, that I told you about my plan before I ended up with a bullet to my head. Like Thomas did."
"Exactly", he smiled.
They had the perfect place to watch, behind a false mirror. Not that either of them truly believed they could fool Jarod with the mirror. But it was nice though, to be able to watch but not to be watched.
There was a small room at the other side of the `mirror`, with only two chairs and one small table in it. Two sweepers entered it then, with Jarod between them. They were more dragging him in there than he was walking on his own feet and she realized that he obviously refused to help the Centre in any kind of way. He wouldn't even walk for it.
They forced him onto one of the two chairs in the room and left. Jarod turned his head towards the false mirror and seemed to look directly at Lyle and Parker.
Parker took a deep sip from the wodka in her hand. She froze when she saw the man who entered the room then. He was young, maybe 25-years-old, with too long blonde hair, a pair of glasses on his nose and nice and expensive, but unwashed looking clothes.
He was looking at a file in his hand which read "Subject: PP01" and sat down on the second chair, right opposite Jarod, without giving him even a glance. They just sat like that for around five minutes, none of them saying a word. The man just went on reading the file, while tapping on the table between them with his fingertips. Jarod stared at him, obviously bored after a while.
"This is nice", he said at last. "Is this supposed to make me nervous? Coming in here, ignoring me, reading in a file which is obviously about me? Don't try. I'm the King of the Mind Games. I know all the tricks."
The man finally looked up at him and smiled. "Sure", he answered. "However, I thought it would be worth a try in spite of that. I apologize. - My name is Michael."
He held his hand to Jarod, who refused to shake it.
"I am Jarod", he just said dryly. "But you already know that, don't you?"
"Of course I do." Michael took his hand away. "You are Jarod", Michael smiled and scrawled something into his file. "Jarod`s your name." He stayed silent for a second. "Of course that's your name", he suddenly stated while writing.
Jarod frowned. "What do you mean?"
Michael gave him a surprised look but shook his head then. "Never mind", he answered and made a `Forget it`-gesture with his hand. He gave Jarod an intense look and wrote something in his file again.
"What do you mean?" Jarod repeated. He was still frowning, the only visible sign of what he was feeling.
Michael stopped writing and smiled at Jarod. "I told you. Never mind. Nothing worth to feel troubled about." He made another waving gesture with his hand and dismissed the subject with that.
Jarod pressed his lips together.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"Just talking to you. Getting to know you. You are a legend, Jarod." He smiled brightly, then looked down into his file again for a second. "Well, getting to know you... Where do we start with that? Ah, here we go." He looked back into Jarod's face again. The smile vanished from one second to the next. His face was cold now. "How do you feel like, Jarod, now that your childhood friend betrayed you? That must feel terrible. You know, something tells me, it feels especially terrible. After all, it's
your childhood friend... Your first love. Someone you always tried to save."
Jarod didn't answer.
"I assume you feel hurt? Betrayed? Like you want to smash something into a wall. Or maybe even into her face. - But", he looked down into the papers on the table, "your file here says, you hate violence. That is not exactly something that's in your family, is it? After all... Let's remember your late brother, Kyle. Quite a murderous hobby he had. Or your father..."
"My father is not a murderer", Jarod pressed out from between clenched teeth.
"You mean Major Charles... yes, yes..." Michael was waving with his hand again and scrawled something down into the file.
Behind the mirror, Miss Parker lit a cigarette, her first one since nearly a year. "I don't know what this is all about", she hissed at Lyle. "I thought you wanted Jarod to do sims again? Not talk him to death."
Lyle never took his eyes off Jarod's troubled looking face. "Michael is only making him a bit nervous", he answered.
"And who is this Michael anyway?" Miss Parker added silently and took a deep breath from her cigarette. Lyle didn't answer.
"Well, what's left now", Michael went on. "We had Miss Parker, who betrayed you... Your family... well, let's forget about that... Oh yes... Pretending. Protecting the weak and abused. Trying to save the world. Tell me about that, Jarod. How does it feel... Helping people... Day in, day out. You were out of the Centre for three years... But... No life. No home. No-one who loves you. For three years, you did nothing but pretending. I am wondering..." He suddenly gave a loud laugh. "Ooh!
There's even sex in your file, Jay. Congrats... However, I'm wondering... Do you feel fulfilled in any kind of way? Are you happier now with all these experiences you made while in the outside world?"
Jarod clenched his teeth together. "Stop it."
"Are you threatening me, Jarod? I was of the opinion you don't like violence?"
Miss Parker ordered her hands to stop shaking. They disobeyed.
Michael suddenly stood up and gathered his file together.
"I have everything I need now, Jay. It was nice to meet you."
He went to the door and knocked on it. The sweeper on the other side opened it immediately.
"Who are you?" Jarod suddenly asked.
Michael turned around. "The second generation, Jarod", he said. "The second generation."
Michael left Jarod with a smile that was still there when he accompanied Miss Parker and Lyle behind the mirror.
"Nice to see you again, Miss Parker", he said and nodded into her direction. She didn't react.
"Well?" Lyle asked.
"Give me 24 hours", Michael answered. "I'll have all the answers you need till then." He gave Miss Parker a nice smile before leaving.
"What did he mean by `the second Generation`, Lyle?" Parker said and took another sip from her wodka.
"Michael is a second generation Pretender", Lyle said. He gave her a short look before looking back at Jarod again. "Believe me, I was as surprised as you are now. - Michael wants to know the person he's going to pretend to be if possible. - Motumbo sent him. He wants answers."
Miss Parker's head suddenly felt very light, when she remembered her conversation with Michael that morning. He had forced it on her inside the elevator her mother was killed in. Michael had asked her where the bullet holes in it originated from. She had threatened to rip something off his body and stuff it down his throat.
"Getting to know your pretend", she whispered. "I understand."
Part 6: Final Decision
Parker had another drink after entering her office. And a third one right after that. She knew very well, that she was drinking far too much for far too long. Sometimes she even wondered if she would be still able to stop drinking even if she wanted to. It would be worth a try. But right now, the whiskey was the only thing between her and a hysterical breakdown, so she decided to save the thought for another time.
She smiled grimly. All of these has put a wrinkle in her plans, it was nearly funny. Not that she could afford to start laughing right now, not knowing if she would ever be able to stop then. But it was funny somehow though.
Parker let herself fall into her chair. Her heart was beating violently and she put her hand on it, as if she would be able to calm it down by doing that. She had to relax, because if she didn't, she would never be able to find a way out of this.
Her mother was staring at her from the picture on her desk. She let her finger trail over the smiling face of the woman she had loved so much, her death had nearly destroyed her.
"And when I finally become myself again, Momma", she whispered at the picture, "it will get me killed."
In exactly 24 hours dear Michael would report to Lyle and Mutombo and she had absolutely no doubt about what he would tell them. He had his finger in all of Jarod's sore spots only minutes ago. And he had done the same to her, earlier that morning. Getting to know your Pretend... He would be doing pretends on her and Jarod. The outcome of that would definitely be that she had betrayed the Centre. Michael was a Pretender. He would know.
And in case she and Jarod were still inside the Centre when Michael made his report, she was as good as dead. About Jarod's future in that case, she wasn't sure. But she would be dead.
For a second she considered to just kill Michael. But she didn't think it wouldn't make a difference. The Centre would believe that someone definitely had something to hide. Considering the fact that she would probably be the only suspect in that case, killing him wasn't exactly the best plan.
So, the only thing left to do, was escape. Run and hide. Or maybe just hide. Under her desk maybe.
She smiled again. Not exactly an amused smiled. But who cared?
Parker took another sip from her vodka. She had to talk to Jarod. It was the first thing on her "To-do to save your neck"-list. He would know a place to hide, once she had brought them out of the Centre safely. A laugh came out of her mouth again. She wondered if laughing hysterically would become one of her new habits.
Bring them out of the Centre safely. She didn't even know how to talk to Jarod yet.
"Too many eyes everywhere", she whispered to herself. "Too many damn camera eyes."
Would they even let her talk to him? They considered her a possible traitor. Maybe they would let her talk to him just because of that? To see what would happen maybe. They had the cameras inside his cell, so they would be able to hear and see everything they said and did.
She just couldn't talk to Jarod without getting caught. So she wouldn't be able to tell him that they need to escape now.
Or maybe she could?
Miss Parker starred at her office's door and thought about it. If Broots would be able to turn off the camera's in SL-26 she might be able to get down there and talk to Jarod so they would be able to discuss their escape.
It could work.
The question was, if she wanted to take the risk to endanger Broots like that if she wouldn't be there to protect him later. Parker absently shook her head. She couldn't allow that to happen.
There was another possibility... It was in her head very suddenly, from one second to the next. A possibility that crazy, no-one would probably ever expect her to even try.
Why did she even need to talk to Jarod? As soon as she showed up in his cell to talk to him, the Centre would know about it and listen to their conversation because they didn't trust her. Michael didn't have talked to her in the elevator if they would. So if the Centre were to listen into their conversation... and found out that they were trying to escape... she and Jarod would be stopped.
And that made talking to Jarod before trying to escape a pretty stupid idea.
As a matter of fact, the possibility left was as stupid as that. She could just go down there and fight the one or two sweepers who watched Jarod and free him then. Then they could escape together through Jarod's secret exit...wherever it was.
It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than just sitting here waiting for Michael to make his report. Better than being killed like lambs in a slaughterhouse, without even putting up a fight.
But if she were to do it, she has a few things to take care of first. She needed a few hours to gather more weapons, she had to store a car near to the Centre, find a secure place for the next few days, get some things from home...
There was a sudden determination in her face when she suddenly put her glass on her desk and stood up from her chair. She was about to do the most stupid thing she had ever done in her life, and it felt like Heaven.
Parker took a deep breath and turned towards her office` door. SL-26 was waiting for her.
She was startled when she found Broots looking at her form the doorframe. He was always standing as if he was wearing a too heavy weight on his shoulders. They always were slumped down somehow and for the first time, Miss Parker wondered, if they had always been like that or if the Centre had done it to them. But it was worse than usually today, so she considered it to be her fault, too. She did that to him. She thought a silent "I'm sorry." but didn't say it loud.
"Miss Parker ", he said. He looked at her from half closed eyes, barely able to meet her eyes. "I... Lyle told us you... he said you promised Jarod to help him...but you gave him to the Centre then...Lyle said, you are the Centre`s...that you always were and will be."
She watched him swallow nervously.
"I can't believe that, Miss Parker. I can't. Whatever Lyle said or what others believe...I know you...You wouldn't...You wouldn't, would you? You couldn't bring Jarod back into the Centre. We hunted him, but you couldn't do that, could you? I can't believe it's the truth, Miss Parker. Please..."
"It is, Broots. It's the truth", she answered. He took a step back from her and it was one of the most terrible things she'd ever seen in her life. Broots` eyes and the disappointed look in them.
"You will understand, Broots. Very soon", she added. But he had already turned around and left her alone.
Miss Parker swallowed hard and had a good look around one last time.
"Good-bye", she whispered and surprises even herself when a smile formed and light up her eyes.
She was already turning around to leave the office, when the phone's sudden ringing startled her. The smile on her face became a short hysterical laugh and against better judgement she went back to the phone and took the receiver. An soon-to-be old habit. Picking up the phone when the Centre called. She grinned. It would be over soon. Her days in the Centre were finally over. One way or the other.
"What?" she said. Her voice sounded calm, as if already being freed, now that all decisions had been made.
Lyle`s voice. "Mutombo wants us to get Jarod and bring him into the Tower. Now. See you down in SL-26."
The world started moving around her. Her office's walls were moving, her legs hardly held her upright anymore.
"I`ll be right there", she whispered.
It clicked, when Lyle hung up. Miss Parker starred at the receiver in her hand for a moment and then let it slowly drop back onto the cradle.
She had a stupid smile of desperation on her face while taking her gun out of its holster, checking the bullets and putting it back into the holster then. There was no time for preparations anymore.
The war would start right now.
Part 7: Beirut
"You having a nice vacation in Beirut?"
The prison guard
Alan Browne, Beirut
The Centre
June, 1974
"...gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly."
Miss Parker`s eyes came back to the start of the sentence to read it again.
It was the third time now that she read it, but whenever she came to its end, she had already forgotten what the start of the story was all about. So she has to go back to the beginning, to read it all over again.
It is useless. When her mother died, her world was shattered. She couldn't concentrate on anything, it`s like her whole life is now shrouded in a daze, even her friendship to Jarod.
She couldn't explain it to him. Jarod just wouldn't understand that she was in a constant fight, every day of her life since her mother had killed herself. Miss Parker angrily frowned down on her book.
Her mother... Miss Parker had lost her mother. She intended to fight for her father, no matter what.
"Jarod sad."
Miss Parker twitched in her chair and turned towards the voice.
"Angelo", she hissed at the boy. Angelo took a startled step away from her and she immediately felt sorry about snapping at him like that. She put her hand on his arm and smiled. "I`m sorry, Angelo. I didn't mean it. You just surprised me."
Angelo gave her a shy smile, then his face became as expressionless as usual again, but he took a step back towards her, too.
"Jarod sad", he said again, more urgently this time. "Come."
Miss Parker put her book aside.
"Where is he?" she said. "Bring me to him."
To her surprise, Jarod was sitting in the room's vent. He must have been watching her read, but whatever had happened since then, it had turned Jarod into some kind of a statue. He was just sitting there, his long body cowered into the small vent and was staring into the nothingness. Tears were running down his face, more and more of them, and he was shaking violently.
Miss Parker fought down the sudden fear that was threathening to press down on her lungs, as she carefully put her hand on his arm.
"Jarod", she whispered. "What's wrong?"
He didn't move. He just kept on sitting like that, still shaking and crying.
"Pretending", Angelo said. "Pretending to be daughter."
Miss Parker starred at Angelo, who just nodded.
"Daughter sad", he repeated. "Jarod sad now."
Tears were starting to run down her face.
"Jarod", she whispered. "Just why did you do that?"
She held his hand, until he returned to reality.
Pretending to be angry at him later was easy, because in a way, she really was angry.
He had violated her privacy, seen into her most intimate thoughts, and she couldn't allow that to happen anymore.
But whatever he had learned about her during the Pretend, it made him keep on smiling at her, although she was screaming at him in anger.
He never stopped smiling. And it was making her crazy.
The Centre, SL-26
Now
Her high heels were annoucing her long before she actually came around the corner and, with that, in sight of Lyle. She tried to put confidence it her steps, if that was possible, but wished for nothing
more than a cigarette and a drink. Anything to keep her hands from shaking.
She had already released the safety-catch of her gun while in the elevator down to SL-26, silently hoping that she would be at Jarod's cell before Lyle got there so she wouldn't have to use the gun. But when she came around the corner and the cell was in sight, Lyle was already standing in front of its door. He hadn't waited for her to get Jarod. On the opposite, two sweapers were already in Jarod's cell and were dragging him out of it when Parker arrived.
She silently sweared.
"What's going on here?" she hissed at Lyle. "You said, Mutumbo awaits both of us to get him!"
She tried to avoid Jarod`s eyes when he came out of the cell, the two sweepers at his sides. But there was an unknown force that made her turn her head and look at him.
He looked so bad. Dirty and tired. But what struck her most, was the emptiness in his eyes, when he looked at her. There had always been some kind of admiration when he had looked at her. But there was nothing left of that anymore. Like he didn't care about her anymore.
"Where have you been?" Lyle only answered in his usual annoyed tone.
"I was in Kansas", she answered without taking her eyes off Jarod, "with my dog Toto." She took a deep breath, finally able to look away then. "Let's go now. Motumbo doesn't like to wait."
"You heard what she said, Jarod", Lyle grinned at the other man. "Get moving."
They started walking towards the elevator, Miss Parker first, to avoid Jarod`s eyes, then the two sweepers with Jarod between them and Lyle last.
Parker had some kind of plan now. They had to get into the elevator to get rid off Lyle and his two stupid gnomes. She and Jarod wouldn't be able to escape anymore as soon as they were all five stuffed in the elevator. They had to be in there alone to get away.
Her only problem was, how to tell Jarod that she was actually on his side, not on the Centre`s.
"Explain it to me, Parker!"
His sudden outburst surprised her that much, she actually winced.
Parker turned around and looked at Jarod.
"What?" she said, although she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"How could you betray me? Everything you believe in," he spit the words out at her and his face was so full of hate, it made her skin crawl.
"Shut up!" one of the sweepers shouted and shoved him so Jarod stumbled forward and nearly fell.
They had arrived at the elevator and Miss Parker hit the button to get it down to SL-26. She could feel the sweat in her armpits.
"I can't believe you would betray your own emotions!" Jarod kept on, as if he hadn't heard the sweeper. "I want to know why!"
Nearly there. The elevator was nearly there. Just seconds. She turned around to face Jarod.
"You are a Pretender", she snapped at him. "You know exactly how I feel, don't you? Well, what I feel has never changed. Not since that day when you pretended to be me. Open your damn eyes to the damn truth, Jarod! Now!"
Her own breathing was loud in her ears, rushing like the Niagara Falls. Except of that, time seemed to stand still. Please, she thought, pleasepleasepleaseplease.
Jarod looked at her. Their eyes met. The next moment, his knee crashed into the groin of the sweeper who was nearest to him, then his fist ended up in the other sweeper`s stomach. Both men went to the floor, groaning, while Jarod already turned towards Lyle. He was about to pull his gun, when Jarod swung at him and hit him into the chest. Lyle stumbled backwards, crashing to the ground hard.
The little beep of the elevator when its doors opened made Parker flinch. She glanced at Jarod who looked back at her and seemed to get what she was thinking. He turned towards her to get into the
elevator.
Time seems to have slowed down.... everything is unfolding as though in a silent movie, and events are happening in slow motion... Everything in her life seems to be moving in slow motion lately... When Parker met Jarod's eyes and saw the relief in them, she wanted to smile. But there was something else, something she hardly realized consciously, just unconsciously. Maybe it was just a slight movement she saw from the corner of her eye.
Parker turned her head left. Just a little bit, a few centimeters, but it was enough for her to realize that Lyle had gotten his gun free while falling to the ground and he was aiming it at Jarod, already about to pull the trigger.
She grabbed Jarod by the arm by instinct, pulling him aside and behind her by that. Why, she couldn't say. The loud sound when Lyle pulled the trigger filled her ears and made her want to close them with her hands. She didn't feel any pain. Jarod's scream alone told her, that she'd been hit by the bullet. She was falling... falling... then someone grabbed her, held her in his arms and pulled her with him backwards into the elevator, pressing her against a wall then and protecting her with his own body.
Someone shot. The person who held her in his arms was shooting with a gun and she realized, that it must be her gun. Screaming and shooting, the person held her in his arms and protected her with his own body.
A beeping sound when the elevator`s doors closed. It started to move upwards.
Tiredness flowed through her. She was starting to hurt.
Quote taken from "Jonathan Livingston Seagull - A story" by Richard Bach.
Part 8: Up
"One is the loneliest number
Even worse than two."
Filter, One
"Open your eyes, Parker! Open your damn eyes!"
Jarod's terrified voice brought her back into reality with a vengeance. Parker groaned.
The first thing she realized was, that the elevator wasn't moving anymore. Jarod must have hit the emergency halt, just like she had planned to do. They were just thinking too alike. The second thing was the feeling of Jarod's hands cupping her face. She was lying on the elevator`s floor, her pants slowly being soaked with her own blood. It hurt.
She looked up into Jarod's face and saw the relief in his eyes. No time for that now. She shook her head to get rid of the dazed feeling in her head and to be able to get back to business.
"Lyle shot me!" She grimaced out of anger and pain. "How bad is it?"
"It's your right thigh", he answered. "Just a flesh-wound. You'll survive. I took a piece of my shirt to stop the bleeding."
"Thanks." She groaned again, but sat up nonetheless. Of course she had realized that he was staring at her. There was a searching look in his eyes. Jarod was searching for answers. But she couldn't start giving them now. They didn't have the time for it. "Help me up. We've got to get out of the elevator and the Centre, before Lyle gets everything surrounded by his sweepers."
Jarod nodded and took her by the arms to lift her up. The moment, she was standing on her own feet, she screamed out of pain. Her right leg gave way under her and she would have fallen if Jarod hadn't caught her.
"Damnit!" she hissed between clenched teeth. The dizziness came back. She didn't feel well.
"Just sit down for a second", Jarod said. "I'll open the elevator`s emergeny exit and then I'll lift you up."
Parker didn't have time to answer. Jarod had already gently put her down on the floor again and then stretched himself up and opened the exit at the elevator`s roof. She watched him, his suddenly urgent, even hectically, movements, his shaking hands. She became aware, that he knew the truth as good as she did.
When he was done, he smiled down at her, a somehow frightened expression on his face.
"Come on now. We'll get out of here."
"Jarod..." she started.
"Come on." Jarod took her by her arms again and tried to lift her up. She was a dead weight in his arms.
"Jarod", Parker said again, urgently this time. "Stop it."
"You've got to help me a bit here", he answered and pulled her up even more.
"Jarod! Stop it! I can't walk! I can't even really stand."
He stopped in the middle of trying to lift her up.
"Jarod, I'm too slow. I would only hold you back."
"You would not, damnit!" He was pulling on her with so much strength it hurt and she struggled against him, against his hands holding her. Suddenly, she was free and fell down on the ground with a hiss of pain. The blood was still soaking her pants and her leg hurt. Jarod looked down at her with so much desperation, it made her angry. He was shaking his head, then bend down again and tried to grab her. She struggled against his hands again.
"Leave me alone, Jarod. You will go without me. I will give you to Lyle myself if you don't!" she snapped at him.
"No," he answered, as angrily as her now. "I won't leave you. I can't..."
"You are still hiding behind your feelings, Jarod. Good-bye LalaLand. Remember that?" She took a deep breath. "I will follow you later", she continued. "Believe me. I promise."
He just stood there, unmoved, at her side, just staring down at her. They don't have time for that.
"You stupid lab rat!" Parker screamed at him. "You will go now! You understand me?"
She saw him wince at her words and is fighting hard to keep his tears from falling by angrily blinking his eyelashes.
"Please", she tried to whisper. But he couldn't hear her.
He had suddenly swung himself up the emergency exit and vanished into the darkness behind it without looking back at her. Miss Parker closed her eyes for second.
The elevator started moving again. It was going up.
Hardly ever in her life, had she felt as alone as this moment, in the elevator. There wasn't anyone left.
Jarod had always been with her, one way or the other, since that day when he had pretended to be her. He had always known who she really was, no matter how hard she'd tried to hide behind her bitch-image. In a way she had even come to believe, that he was protecting her, that he was watching over her. It may be a watching from far away, but he was watching over her nonetheless. But right now, Jarod was on the run, just like she was.
Her father was gone. Sydney and Broots had lost their faith in her. There was no-one left at her side.
For a moment, she wished she could just lie back and await them to come for her. But she wouldn't give up the fight. She just couldn't. She had promised Jarod to follow him. And she had always kept her promises.
Agonizing slow, she lifted her hand and held on to the wall, then pulled herself up. Her teeth clenched together to stop her from screaming. The pain in her leg when she tried standing on it was murderous.
"I'm going to kill you, Lyle", she whispered. "I'm going to kill you for this." Anger was good. Anger stopped her from loosing conscience.
There was a little beeping sound that told her the elevator had arrived in the Centre's main lobby.
Miss Parker fought to keep an angry Ice-Queen look on her face.
There were sweepers standing in front of her, pointing their weapons into the elevator. Someone must have alarmed them and she asumed that someone to be Lyle. "Just be very impudent", the little voice in her head whispered.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed at the sweepers. "Jarod escaped. Search the area! GO!"
The sweepers stared at her for a moment, then actually turned around and started running around, searching for Jarod. They seemed to loose interest in her. Maybe Lyle hadn't told them that she had helped Jarod. Whatever the cause may be, she intended to take the time it had bought her.
Miss Parker allowed herself to grin a bit.
Walking towards the Centre`s main exit was hard and it hurt like hell. She took one slow step after the other, hissing out of pain everytime she had to move her hurt leg. Blood was running down on it and now and then she had to press her eyes together to fight the dizziness. But she was getting nearer to her goal. Her car is outside in the parking lot.
Jarod must have left the Centre by now and she smiled at that. She was sure he would find her as soon as she was out of the Centre. However he may do it, he'd always found her.
Nearly there. She was nearly there and she got bolder, tried to move faster than she already did. She wondered how her life may be, now that she was free from the Centre. Maybe she could help Jarod `protecting the weak and abused`? She grinned again. What a ridiculous thought, wasn't it?
Her hand grabbed the Centre's main door and she opened it. Outside, the sun was shining. She could feel its heat on her hand.
"Going somewhere, Parker?"
She didn't need to turn around. She'd recognize that voice everywhere.
Lyle.
"Nowhere", she answered. "Looks as if I'm going nowhere."
Part 9: State of Flux
"Well, this day was a total waste of makeup."
A one-liner
Time is not as constant as clocks usually try to make us believe. 24 hours have the ability to feel like months in cases where the situation warrents it, and to Miss Parker, the current situation definitely warrents it.
She was in custody. Not officially of course. No-one had told her she was. But the first thing she saw when looking at the door of her room in the Centre's infirmary, were the backs of two sweeper's who wouldn't let her leave the room, even if she tried. So she was in custody of the Centre, at least until Michael had made his report. Then she would be dead.
A doctor had removed the bullet in her thigh and told her she'd survive because it was just a flesh wound. He had ordered her to lie in the bed in the infirmary and not to move her leg too much. She obeyed, because there wasn't much else she could have done.
Lyle had visited her once. He had suddenly showed up at the open door of her room and was just standing there, looking at her.
"What do you want from me?" she'd asked him.
"Isn't that what people usually do? Visit sick family members?" he had answered, smirking.
She had taken the offline telephone on her night stand and throw it after him. He had left then, looking a bit hurt. She had just snorted about that.
That had been 7 hours ago. She had slept for a while during that time but was woken up by a nightmare that had helped her decide to stay awake rather then to try to go back to sleep again.
Jarod had been in that nightmare and a lot of blood, Jarod's blood. So she was just lying in her bed now, staring up at the ceiling.
Her leg hurt, a steady unpleasantly throbbing pain. And she couldn't get over the thought, that Jarod would try to help her escape, that he would come back into the Centre to get her. The thought frightened her more than she had ever thought possible. She didn't want him to come back for her. It would only lead to his re-capture. They would both suffer then. And she didn't want that. She'd rather suffer alone, like she always did.
"Miss Parker."
She had been deep in thoughts, so the voice surprised her. Parker turned her head and looked at the person talking to her.
Mr. Lyle and Mr. Cox. And Michael, standing a bit behind them, as if he only intended to watch and listen.
"What do you want?" she asked them.
"Answers", Cox said.
She smiled. "About what?"
"About what happened in SL-26 and the elevator", Cox answered.
Miss Parker managed to leave her face expressionless although she was more than just a bit surprised.
"What do you mean? You know what happened in the elevator. There are surveillance cameras in there, remember that?"
Both men just looked at her and she suddenly realized that they were trying to fool her somehow. She just couldn't say with what.
"Jarod escaped", she answered slowly and carefully. "I was shot. What else do you expect me to tell you?"
"Why did you protect Jarod down in SL-26?" Lyle said. "You pulled him away when I..."
"I did that because you were trying to shoot him", she answered. Of course that was the truth. She wasn't lying, yet. "You do know that the Centre wants Jarod alive?" she went on. Still the truth. Parker was looking from Lyle to Cox and back again. Something was strange here. Definitely very strange. They were trying to hide something from her. The question was just, what exactly are they trying to hide. And why did they ask her what had happened?
They did know that, didn't they?
Didn't they?
Mr. Cox was looking at her with an intense expression in his eyes. As if he was trying to find out what she was thinking. She starred back at him.
"Is that all?" she asked at last. "Because I really don't feel well. I got shot again if you may remember.“
Mr. Cox nodded at her and left. Lyle followed him after one last look at Parker. When she wanted to have a look at what Michael was doing, she became aware, that Michael seemed to have the strange ability to vanish without letting anyone realize it until it is too late.
She was alone again, and after re-thinking what had just happened, she was even more nervous than before the three men had shown up.
What was that strange conversation telling her?
That they wanted to test her again? Because of what?
Because someone had told them she was innocent? Because Jarod had come back to get her and the Centre had caught him and to save her, he had told them she had never tried to help him?
But what about the camera's in the elevator? Wouldn't they talk a very clear language?
It wasn't making sense. Nothing of this was making any kind of sense.
She wished for nothing else but a large drink. Or maybe more than just one.
The rest of the 24 hours went by feeling like weeks. After a while she had decided that she couldn't lie in her bed anymore and so she called for the doctor and forced him to get her some crutches. It hurt like hell to get up and try to walk, but she did it in spite of that. Because of the crutches, she managed to walk without putting her weight on her injured leg. She even put on her old clothes, the one that was soaked with her own blood, and decided to just wait to be called in front of Mutumbo.
Lyle didn't surprised her this time. She had waited for him to show up.
"Parker", he said, "you maybe want to hear Michael's report."
She followed him into his own office on weak and hurting legs after resisting his offer to get her a wheel chair. She didn't intend to face her last moments from a sitting position, looking up at Mutumbo and Lyle.
Lyle brought her into her father's office.
Mr. Cox was sitting on the sofa at the right site of the room, Mutumbo was at her father's desk, going through the few things left of her father. Like the picture of her mother holding her in her arms. Mutumbo looked down at it with an expressionless face.
Miss Parker already opened her mouth to hiss at Mutumbo about daring to touch the picture...as one last nail to her already waiting coffin. But Michael stopped her by entering the room with a cheering: "A wonderful day to all of you."
"You little prick", she whispered that soft, no-one even heard it. Lyle only seemed to wonder about the strange grim smile suddenly playing on her face.
"Your report, Michael", Mutumbo said. He let go of the picture in his hand by just letting it slip out of his fingers.
Miss Parker turned towards Michael.
It felt like watching herself from beside her own body, as if she wasn't really there. She wasn't able to do anything or move anything or say anything. She was suddenly wondering how Syd and Broots would feel about her death. Would they be at her burial? What about Jarod? He couldn't come again. He probably was down in SL-26 again, or even worse... She was sorry, that she hadn't told him some things she should have told him. Or maybe he knew? He was a Pretender. She hoped he knew, more than anything else.
The strange words coming from Michael brought her out of her thoughts. She starred at him in disbelief, only getting half of what he was saying.
"... regarding Miss Parker's loyalty ... no indication of betrayal ... Miss Parker is absolutely loyal to the Centre ... SL-26 was a sign of that loyality ... protecting the Center's property ..."
"You are sure about that?" Mutumbo voice.
"Of course I am." Michael's voice again.
Mutumbo left wordless, with Mr. Cox following him slowly. Lyle seemed to be dumbfounded for a minute, but he recovered quickly and gave Michael a slicky smile.
"It was nice working with you, Michael", he said. "I hope to see you again some day?"
"Count on that", Michael answered.
The young man was just standing there and smiled, then nodded to both of them one last time and left before she was able to say a thing.
Miss Parker turned towards Lyle. "What about Jarod?" she brought out.
"Did you catch him?"
"I thought you know about that?" he shook his head in disbelief. "No. He's gone. And we have no indication of where he went. The moment you came down to SL-26 everywhere in the Centre the surveillance cameras just decided to stop working. What a coincidence, isn't it?" He smirked. "So someone in here is helping Jarod. And I intend to find out who that someone is. - See you later, sis. Oh, and I'm sorry about...you know...your leg."
He left and she was finally, finally, able to breath again.
"I am going home", she whispered to herself.
And did just that.
Part 10: I`m on your back
She answered the phone in her usual shiny tone not just because it was an old habit, but because she felt terrible. Her leg hurt, her back hurt and she wanted Jarod to call her to tell her he was okay. Two hours had went by and he hadn't called and she was afraid...even if she didn't admit it to herself. There was this little voice in her head because of that, telling her, that she was on her way to LaLaLand herself if she wouldn't stop right now.
So when the telephone rang her glas full of vodka ended up on her table with a clinking sound, and she grabbed the phone and hissed into it.
"What!"
"Whew!" the person on the other end of the line said. "I heard about that `What` but I hadn't imagined it to be so...loud."
"Michael?" she whispered. "I can't believe it!"
"Is your telephone clean?"
"I check it everyday", she answered. "Hell, I check my whole house for bugs every day. There were none. Today."
"Talking about paranoia", he smirked.
They fell both silent for a moment.
"Why?" she finally brought out.
"Why what, Miss Parker?"
"Cut the crap, Michael."
"Why I lied to them? I have spent my life inside the Centre, too", he said that soft, she could hardly hear him. "Not here in Delware, but the Centre stays the Centre, everywhere. I know exactly how you and Jarod feel. No family. No past. No hope. - Isn't it strange, that the Centre just never gets how people tick? How they feel about certain things?"
"Then why don't you try to escape?" she said.
"Maybe I just decided that it's easier to destroy something from the inside, instead of from the outside. Besides that: The Centre is my home. I like it here somehow. Crazy, isn't it? And, you know, I could ask you the same question. Why don't you try to escape? After all, at least you would have someone to go to." She could hear his smile but she just knew that it was a sad smile. "I have to go now, Miss Parker. Mutumbo is waiting for me. Just one more thing. Please try to be more careful when making your agreements with Jarod. I wouldn't want anything need to happen to both of you. I like you. But nevertheless I can't always send you little notes to warn you. I am not suicidal. And don't try to contact me."
He hung up before she could even feel surprised about that revelation.
"Why?"
Just that word. No greeting or anything at all after she had picked up the phone for the second time that day. Just "Why?" from the other end of the telephone line.
She had fallen asleep after a while. The pain killers had made it possible for her to forget the fact that she had been shot in the leg. And they had made her sleepy, too. Or maybe it had been the combination of pain killers and too much alcohol again. She wasn't even really interested in finding out.
"Jarod?" she asked with a sleepy voice.
"Why?" he said again.
Miss Parker lifted herself up on the sofa and gave a deep sigh. "I got a note from a `friend", she answered. "Suddenly, it was there, on my desk.. A warning. I didn't know who sent it then. But the note said, that the Centre knows about us and that they intended to catch you by using me. They had already formed a plan, so I had to come up with something fast. I couldn't leave the Centre to warn you. They had me watched. They had my phone bugged. So I went to Lyle and let them use me to catch you. I intended to help you escape later somehow. I couldn't have done that if they'd caught both of us. But then there was Michael. And my whole so-called plan just went to hell."
"You believed in a note you didn't even know who sent it?"
"Stranger things happened in the Centre than someone helping you. Or me."
"That's true." She heard him chuckle.
Silence. She listened to his breathing, too happy about it than it did her any good.
"So who sent it then?"
"What?" she asked, a bit surprised.
"The note. You said you didn't know then who sent it."
"Michael. It was Michael. He's fighting the Centre, just like we do. Imagine my surprise when he told me... Jarod, we may have a real chance with him on our side. He's..."
"How do you feel?" he suddenly brought out, a bit harsher than probably intended.
"What? Don't you want to know about Michael?"
"Later", he said. "Right now I want to know how you feel."
"I'm fine."
"You got shot again. And I just left you behind. Aren`t you angry at me? I would be angry at me. I am angry at me."
"Jarod, please leave it."
"I can't. I ... I thought about all this. How it worked out. You nearly got killed because I forced you into helping me."
"You will never be able to force me into anything. I made the decision on my own. Jarod, I am save. Everything is fine now."
"You`ve never been a good liar. You are not fine. - We should stop this. You should go back...to where you were. Hunt me. Or try it. Pretend to do it if you have to. But we will forget the whole thing. Our meeting in the subway never took place."
"You little coward." She was so angry, she was hardly able to press it out. "You. Little. Coward. So something goes wrong and you step back? You just give up! And you use me as an excuse! Your..."
"Don't tell me that crap about LaLaLand again, Parker! This isn't LaLaLand. It's just a plain sense of reality. You nearly were killed!"
"Don't try to save me, Jarod. I`m a grown up. I won't give up now. And if you don't help me with it, I'm going to fight my own fight. I don't need you, Jarod. I never did. I can do this alone, too."
He laughed a very humorous laugh. "Oh yeah!"
"Oh yes. Don't you underestimate me, Jarod!"
"I wouldn't dare", he spit at her sarcastically. "Not after what you told me down in SL-26. You `acted` pretty well then."
Miss Parker pressed her lips together for a moment.
"Don't you dare to turn hero on me, Jarod", she said.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Oh yes, you do. You are trying to make me angry, so I'd step back from our agreement, and you can go on fighting your little war alone and feel good about leaving me out off this. But I wouldn't fall for it. I'm on your back now. You won't get rid of me again so easily. I've already risked too much for that. I was ready to free you down there yesterday. I had my gun ready. Do you think I'd done that if..."
She stopped again. She couldn't say it. It was just too much.
"Does that mean you were ready to start a shoot-out? Down in SL-26? To save me?" he asked softly. "Does the phrase `Absolutely crazy` mean anything to you, Parker?"
There was still just silence at the other side of the line.
"You are stunning", she heard him murmur.
"Why?" she whispered back. "I thought I'm crazy."
"You are crazy. But you are more stunning than crazy. You just are."
She felt herself slowly caressing the receiver in her hand. Insane. Totally insane.
"You intended to come back to help me, didn't you?" she replied.
This time, he was the one who didn't answer.
"You are stunning, too. But much crazier than I am."
"Two of a kind", he answered softly.
"Yes", she whispered back. "Two of a kind."
"I missed you. All those years that went by without you at my side ... I missed you so much."
"Then why do you want to get rid of me again now?"
He had no honest answer for that question.
"You have to trust me, Jarod. We can do this together."
"I do trust you."
Miss Parker let go a sigh of relief. She just hoped he hadn't heard it.
"Then when will we meet again?"
"Just catch me if you can", he said.
"I can", she whispered. "I will. - One day you'll turn around and I'll be there. You can't run from me anymore."
"I hope so", he answered softly. "I will catch you, too. I will catch you if you fall. Because actually I like living in LaLaLand."
A little click told her that he had hung up the phone.
End.
Feedback addy: syad.nms@gmx.net
Beta-read by Wolfangel. Thanks so much, girl. :-)
A Pretender Fan Fiction by Mareen
"We all are caught in the middle
of one long treacherous riddle
of who trust who.
Maybe I'll trust you
but can you trust me?"
The Riddle, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Part 1: Detour Ahead
She sat down in front of him without giving him even a glance.
"Hello, Parker", he said.
"Hello", she answered.
The subway started with a little jerk that made her jump forward on her seat. Their knees touched and she immediately put some space between them again.
"I'm glad you came", he said.
She ignored the remark and looked around in the subway instead. "Why here?"
"I don't know. It seemed fitting."
"Now that you say it... We are more than two feet under ground. I'm sure that's just were Raines always wished both of us to be."
He couldn't resist the urge to laugh. She smiled grimly and looked at him for the first time.
He looked bad. There were dark rings under his eyes and he'd lost a lot of weight. There wasn't even any brilliance in his hair left and she could be wrong, but she thought she could make out some grey in it, too.
"He looks worse than I do", she thought.
"I'm glad you didn't bring any sweepers", he said and she realized that even his voice sounded different than usual, tired somehow.
"I promised not to, didn't I?"
"Yeah. - And you always keep your promises."
"One of my many qualities" she answered dryly. "Why are we here, Jarod?"
"I needed to talk to you."
The subway stopped in the next station and some people stepped into their compartment. For a few minutes, Jarod looked nervous and gave every single one of the people a searching glance.
"I promised I'd be alone", she said.
"I know", he said and shrugged. "It's worse now. Before, I could even forget that someone's after me now and then. Now... I just can't. I hope it'll get better soon. I'm only out for a few weeks..."
He shrugged again and she held her breath when she realized how slim his shoulders actually were now.
"You can't flee from your demons", she said, "like you have the Centre."
"No."
The compartment's doors closed and the subway started to move again.
"How's your back?" he asked.
"I'll survive. It could be worse. I had bullet wounds before, you know. The worst thing is I still don't this weather-feeling scar I've always wanted. And I thought, a bullet to the back would leave me with that gift at last."
She glanced at him and was awaiting at least a smile, but he looked at her with a sad expression in his eyes instead.
"I was afraid", he said. "When I saw you fall...and the blood..."
"Don't, Jarod. I told you I'll survive. - And why do you even care?"
She immediately was sorry about saying that when she saw him twitch. He turned his face away from her and stared out of the window. The only thing he could see was his own reflection in the glass and for a second he was startled by how tired he really looked, but it was still better than looking at her. He could hear her taking a deep breath.
"Look, Jarod, I'm... okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
He gave her a glance.
"Then why did you say it?"
"I don't know. It's like one of those old habits you can't get rid of."
"Yeah, I know some of these. They can be quite annoying."
They both kept silent for a moment and she was surprised by how comfortable it was, to just sit with him like that.
"I want you to help me", he said at last.
"What did you just say?"
He looked at her.
"I said, I want you to help me. Against the Centre. You and me. On the same side at last."
"You can't be serious." She tried a laugh - until she realized that he was deadly serious. "You are crazy, Jarod!"
"Why?" he answered. "Because I'm asking you to do the right thing?"
Some of the people sitting around them were starting to stare at them. She gave them one of her expressions and smiled grimly when she realized, that she still had the "Do you want me to hurt you?"-look if she wanted to. She hadn't used that one for a long time now. Maybe it was about time to practice it a bit again?
She brought her attention back to the man opposite of her.
"The right thing?" she said. "You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no idea. You want me to help you fight the Centre?"
Her voice sounded like acid when she said that and everyone else would at least have been impressed by the sound alone. But she was talking to Jarod. He never was impressed when she sounded like that. He just sat there and looked at her and awaited for her to be done with it.
"This is just the typical thing for you, Jarod. Everything is just so damn easy for you. You want my help? Yes! You'll get it! I'll just send my life and my father and everything I have ever worked for to Hell. But who cares? It all gets meaningless in the shadow of the Goal of the King of all Lab Rats himself."
She turned to the people in the compartment who were looking at the two of them with interest.
"And would you all mind your own business? What is this for you? Some kind of TV show?"
Everyone in the compartment immediately looked into another direction.
"After everything you saw and heard and everything that happened to you", he said at last, "the truth about Raines and your mother, the cloning, the boy, the bullet in your back, all the children's lifes the Centre destroyed ... and Thomas Gates' life, too",
she gave him a deadly look when he mentioned Gates, but he ignored that and kept on talking instead,
"You still want to stay with them? You still want to help them with what they are doing? Tell me why? One good cause. I want one good cause. And don't tell me anything about saving your father, because your father is damn well capable of saving himself, because that's exactly what he's been doing for 30 years now!"
"He's trying to save me!"
"I know. Whatever the price may be", he hissed. "But what if the price is becoming just too high?"
"I don't have to listen to this!"
She got up angrily but he grabbed her wrist and held her back before she could turn around and walk away.
"You are running again! Like you always did! You are always running away from the truth! But now it's finally time to stop running and have a good look around and tell me if it's worth the price. Tell me, Parker!"
"Leave me alone", she hissed. "I shouldn't have come here in the first place. You have no idea about how my life is like and how I feel about it."
She grabbed the hand around her wrist and forced him to let her go. He looked up at her.
"I am a Pretender. I know exactly how you feel", he answered calmly. "What I don't understand is, why you don't do what your feelings are telling you."
"And what are they telling me?" she hissed. "Come on, Jarod! Fill me in! What are my feelings telling me?"
He stood up from his seat and brought them face to face.
"Look at me", he said. "Look into my eyes."
"Why? You believe I can't resist the puppy dog look?"
"No. I want you to look into my eyes because it's still there."
"What do you mean?"
"The sadness you told the boy about. The one you saw in my eyes when you were a child. You told him you won't ignore the sadness again."
She stared at him and he could see the expression in her eyes change until there was only pain left.
"That was unfair, Jarod, has always been" , she whispered at last. "Why can't you just leave me alone? What have I ever done to you, that you won't leave me alone?"
"You exist", he whispered back. "I can't leave you."
The small sob escaped her before she was able to bury it, so she looked at the ground to hide it instead. He grabbed her hand and held it.
They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity to him and he was holding her hand, absently caressing it with his thumb. When she finally looked up at him again, he was even surprised himself by the strength and sudden determination in her eyes.
"Looks as if we are on the same side now", she said.
"I am glad."
She looked at him in surprise. "You trust me just like that? After everything that had happened?"
"Yes. I trust you just like that." He looked at her questioningly. "Are you afraid?"
"Afraid? Just why should I be afraid? Because the last time I was in the middle of one of your little games I got shot and I nearly died? I am more afraid than you will ever be able to even pretend to imagine, Jarod. Believe me that."
"Good", he said, "Because I am afraid, too. Not being afraid when you are about to start a war with the Centre would have been incredible stupid."
"But?" she said. "There is a `but` here, isn't there? There's always a `but` with you."
He smiled. "Yes, there is a `but`. - You may be afraid but you won't be alone with it anymore, with your fear, I mean. I'm with you now."
"Great. Just what I've always wanted, Jarod. Being with you."
She tried to sound annoyed, but he didn't buy it.
"Next stop is my station", he said instead.
"How do I get in contact with you?"
"Don't call us, we'll call you", he answered with a smile.
"I thought so", she said.
"Are you sure about it?" he asked."About betraying the Centre?"
"No. But that won't stop me now that I made my decision. But if this gets me killed, me or my father, I promise I`ll be back to kill you."
"You won't get killed. I won't allow that to happen. I promise."
"And Jarod always keeps his promises, too, doesn't he?"
"Exactly. - Thank you, Parker. - For making that decision."
She didn't want to hear it.
The train stopped.
"My station", Jarod said. "I have to go."
"You have to let go of me", she said and looked down at their still bound hands.
When he'd stepped out of the train, he turned around and looked back at her. She was still standing where he had left her, staring after him. He saw her nodding at him and he gave her one last short smile as a good-bye.
"I will never let go of you", he thought and he knew she had heard him somehow, for she suddenly smiled back at him, with hope in her eyes for the first time since a long time.
The subway left the station and vanished into darkness.
Part 2: Survival
He received the call in the middle of the night and it shattered his life forever and although he had lived in Hell for most of his life, his past hadn't prepared him for that specific moment.
It was strange that besides everything he had went through, dying had never been an option to him. Like a child he had always seen himself and the people that meant something to him, as immortal.
That belief was something like the last piece of innocence he had saved inside himself. But it was gone now, after that call, gone forever, like most of his will to fight was.
Maybe he wouldn't feel like that, if it wasn't be his fault, her death.
But it was. He had pushed her into it, he had promised to protect her. But he couldn't protect her. Protecting her would have meant staying at her side day and night, day after day. He couldn't do that, so he had convinced himself that she was well and good, and more than capable of taking care of herself.
She had always been like that, a survivor. Cockroaches and Miss Parker... They would even survive Armageddon.
Armageddon. Yes. But not the Center's wrath.
He never should have forced her into this.
You can't fight the Centre. She had told him that the day when they had met in the Subway. You can never fight the Centre. It will kill you sooner or later. But he had pushed her into fighting the Centre and it had killed her. Actually, he had killed her. He hadn't pulled the trigger, but he had pulled the strings.
When he had received the call, it was Angelo who told him. He must have stolen the cell phone, maybe from Sydney. „Daughter hurt. Daughter dead.“ He would never forget the frantically spoken words. He would never forget the sudden feeling of dizziness and cold and numbness and pain when acceptance tried to take over at last.
He had felt dead too, at first, until he realized that it must be a ploy of the Centre. They must have found out that he and Parker were working together and they were trying to make him believe that Parker was dead to catch him. Or Parker was in this, too. She had changed her mind and she was working with the Centre again. Everything was possible, just not her death.
But when he tried to prove his suspicion, all he found out was that Parker had been killed in an "accident". Her killer had escaped, what a surprise.
And there were witnesses and pictures of her dead body. She was lying on a street on these pictures, on her stomach, surrounded by blood, her long dark hair around her head like a veil he was grateful for, because it prevented him from having to look at her face. At her hateful eyes because he hadn't protect her, because he had failed.
He had waited till the last minute before deciding to go to her funeral, which is two days after Angelo's call. He had spent the last 48 hours alone in his bed, sleeping and staring at the ceiling and if he had been hungry within that time, he hadn't realized it and it didn't matter to him. He had some beer instead which didn't do him any good because he wasn't used to drinking. He wasn't like Parker. He had always known how much alcohol she was drinking when she was alone at home. Something else he hadn't been able to save her from. Being alone and drinking too much.
But maybe there was something he could do in spite of all his failures: Paying his last respect to her, no matter what the risk may be.
Once, between sitting in his plane to Delaware and driving to the cemetery, he had this thought in his head, that what he was doing was obviously suicidal. He knew they were probably just waiting for him at her grave and he would either end up dead or back at the Centre and he didn't know what would be worse, which one of the two possibilities would be the better punishment for his failure. But the truth was, that he didn't care at all. Both would do for him.
When he arrived at the cemetery, everyone was already gone and all that was left, was her coffin over the open grave, awaiting to being buried. He had a single red rose in his hand when he stopped in front of it and couldn't take his eyes off the darkness that seemed to surround the place where Parker was supposed to be buried. Jarod stretched out his hand and let his fingertips trail over the black coffin. He closed his eyes and tears started to run down his cheeks.
Denial came up again and he shook his head and tried to find an explanation, a way out of this. But there wasn't one. There was just death.
„Parker“, he whispered. „I am so sorry.“
„Hello Jarod.“
He didn't turn around. He already knew who was talking to him.
„I told you I am in charge now. I still am.“
„I do not care“, he answered. Jarod placed the rose on the coffin, then turned around and looked at Lyle. There were at least four sweepers, but he looked at Lyle only, who was smirking back at him.
„I know“, Lyle said. „You must be devastated. Parker dead. And you responsible for it. What about this `protecting the weak and abused` thing? Didn't that count for my sister?“
Lyle looked at him with an expression that was supposed to be sad, but the obvious falseness of it only made Jarod furious. With a scream, he pounced on Lyle and hit him into the face. He could hear the cracking when the other man's nose broke. Blood smeared all over Lyle`s face and his nice new black suit and Jarod’s clothes, too. He could hear Lyle screaming something at the sweepers and then felt strong arms grabbing him from behind and pulling him back.
Jarod was able to punch Lyle in the stomach one last time. Then he had to let go of him. Jarod screamed angrily. The Sweepers, surprised by the sudden release, stumbled backwards. Jarod could hear someone screaming a loud „Damn it.“ Then there was just a crashing sound. When they fell against the coffin that hard, it had turned over and was lying on its side. The lid had popped open.
Jarod moaned and closed his eyes. The sweepers had let go of him, so, after a deep breath, he turned around and looked at Parker. And started to laugh hysterically.
Newspapers.
The coffin was full of old newspapers. The Blue Cove Gazette.
Part 3: Home
It was absolutely dark in his cell and he could see nothing at all, except of three little red lights, blinking down from above him. Surveillance cameras, that watched everyone of his moves and everything of him, too. Jarod was shivering and he didn't know if it was from the feeling of being watched or from the cold. The sweepers had stripped him naked before bringing him down into the cell. He supposed Lyle had ordered it, probably to take away everything that was left of his dignity. Jarod looked up at one of the lights and pulled his legs up to his body to leave at least something to himself.
After all, getting caught at the cemetery hadn't been quite a real surprise.
He knew the Centre, what they were capable of, and now he supposed that it must have been the shock that had made him run into it with his eyes wide open. Or maybe he had fallen for the ploy, because in a way, he had wanted to get caught. Her death had been the right answer to his bad conscience, that was telling him over and over again, that what he had done was the wrong thing.
It had looked like a good idea when he had asked her to help him. And it had felt good inside, to have her with him at last. It had brought an end to the loneliness he was feeling. But the truth was, that he had lied to both of them about being able to protect her. No-one would have been able to do that . They had both known it had been a lie, and in a way, they had only accompanied each other in believing the lie.
It wasn't a surprise either, that Lyle`s sweepers were able to bring him down. He hadn't even been able to give them a real fight. He was too shocked, to do anything else but surrender to them.
He was back at the Centre again. Beaten from the sweepers, hurting and bleeding, in a cell in SL-26. No lights. No hope. Just darkness around him and the realization that he had no idea, what was really going on.
Lyle had refused to answer his questions about what had happened to Miss Parker. Jarod still didn't know if she was dead or alive.
He could cope with her death somehow. He could accept it then and try to somehow live with it. But if she was alive somewhere, needing his help, waiting for it... Hating him because he wouldn't come... The thought alone was destroying him from the inside and was preventing him from thinking about anything but her. What was probably the only cause why no-one was telling him anything. It was nearly funny that the Centre seemed to have finally actually realized what his weak point was.
It had always been the strange thing about the Centre. It was a think tank, full of geniuses. But no-one in the Centre seemed to know anything about what made other people really tick. They didn't know anything about emotions. Or about friendship. Or love. Instead of that, they knew about money and business and betrayal and murder.
Jarod had always been well aware that his emotions were his weak point. The fact that the Centre never really tried to use that against him, had always been a mystery to him. But whoever the new player in the Game was, he (or she) knew damn well about it. Actually, that person was a master of the Game. They wouldn't have realized without the new player, that Miss Parker was one of the few ways to get through to his soul and make him prisoner of his own emotions.
What Jarod really needed right now, was meeting this person. He couldn't fight anything he didn't know. He couldn't start planning his and Miss Parker's escape without knowing their enemy.
He looked up into one of the blinking red lights.
"I want to talk to the one!" he screamed. "Get him here! I won't help you with anything if I can't talk to the person who came up with the ploy!"
Jarod didn't even really believe anyone would come down to talk to him, but it was worth a try. Actually, it only was better than doing nothing.
"I need to talk to him!" he screamed again. "You hear me?"
If anyone did, the person didn't answer.
He fell into an exhausted sleep after waiting for what seemed like to be hours and probably even were hours. He was dreaming something that frightened him more than anything ever before, but when he awoke with a scream, he couldn't even remember what the dream was all about. He was glad about that. Sometimes, it was better to not remember. He knew that much too well.
When the door to his cell was suddenly opened, the light coming from the outside momentarily blinded him. Jarod lifted his hand and covered his eyes with it. The visit surprised him a bit. He hadn't awaited anyone to come that soon. On the other hand, he didn't even know how long he was in his little dark cell by now. Time seemed to have lost its continuity. It always did inside the Centre.
Jarod finally got used to the bright light and blinked at the figure in the open door. He would recognize these legs everywhere.
"Parker!"
He wanted to jump up and embrace her, do anything to show her how he felt like to see her here, alive and well, but then remembered his current state of nakedness. Jarod`s face went bright red.
"I...", he stuttered.
Parker's voice was strange when she talked to him and Jarod frowned. She obviously held back something. She sounded cold, unmoved. There were people behind her, some sweepers, who watched everything, both of them were doing. So he supposed she held back because of them.
"I brought you something", she said, when she came nearer. He still couldn't see her face because Parker held it in the dark, away from him and he felt the urge to ask her to look at him, to ask her what was wrong with her voice.
"What is it?" he said instead.
"A cover."
She let it fall down into his lap.
"Thanks", he said with a smile. "It was already getting embarrassing."
The cover was finally warming him a bit. The feet were still cold, but he could live with that. He could live with everything now that she was standing in front of him. Alive. He held the cover with clammy fingers and finally stood up to stand in front of Parker.
"They made me believe you were dead", he whispered so she alone could hear what he was saying. "What happened? Did they found out?"
Her body was like a statue. Jarod hadn't realized it before, but she was standing like a statue. Unmoving and hard. Her eyes had always betrayed her but he couldn't see her eyes in the darkness. He suddenly was very frightened.
"Parker..." he urged. "What's going on? - I am going to get both of us out of here. I promise."
When she finally talked to him again, all he wanted to do was throwing up. "Don't try to save me, Jarod", she said with that new cold voice of hers. "I can't be saved. I am lost far too long for that."
"Parker, there's still a chance. We will..."
"Jarod. I am the one. You wanted to talk to me and here I am. I am the one who set it all up. I came back to my mind. The Centre is the place where I am at home but you just never accepted that. I finally did."
He stumbled backwards against one of the walls of his prison, shaking his head. No word was coming from him, not even a single sound. But inside his head there was this rhythmical repeating of the single word "No". Over and over again.
"You never got it, Jarod. And you never will", he could hear her saying with an acid sound in her voice. "But I am telling you now. The truth is, no-one will catch you if you fall. They are just going to wait till you are lying in the dirt and they will stomp on your back to take care you won't get up again so easily. Life is a jungle and there are no friends out there. And all you can do is fighting back at them with all the power you have. And sometimes you even have to fight yourself to prevent your
emotions to take over against your own better knowledge. Love? Or friendship? It's a chemical reaction in the brain, misleading us with nice words and false hopes. Do you think I'm a cynic?" She gave a humorless laugh. "I am not. I'm a realist. I have opened my eyes and realized that I fell for all the lies again when we were in that Subway and that realization finally opened my eyes forever. You should try it once, too. Open your eyes and take a good look at the world around you. The effect will do you good. Good-bye LaLa-Land, Jarod. And welcome to Reality. Because Miss Parker is back to her own self. And you are lost."
Part 4: The beginning
The Centre
June, 1974
"Daughter sad."
The simple words made Jarod twitch.
He had been so deep in thought whiles looking at Miss Parker from his secret place it the vent, that he somehow had totally missed Angelo's apperance right beside him.
After a moment Jarod tore his eyes away from Miss Parker, who was sitting in a chair at the other end of the room and was reading a book, and looked at his friend instead.
"I know, Angelo", he whispered. "She is always sad."
She was like that since her mother's death. Jarod was trying to help her, he did everything he could to make Miss Parker smile or just keep her from thinking about that picture of her mother, dead in the elevator. But sooner or later, she always came back to that moment. He could see it in her eyes then. They became dark and deep like the ocean and far away. She was slipping away from him. He could feel that, too, somehow, but couldn't stop it either. And whenever he asked her about it, Miss Parker always just said: "You do not understand, Jarod."
And he was starting to believe, that she was right. That he couldn't get through to her because he couldn't even remember his mother. So he couldn't say how it felt like to lose a mother. So he couldn't help Miss Parker the way he wanted to.
But he was a Pretender, too. Sydney always told him that. A Pretender and "very special", although to Jarod, that only meant he had to do the sims and that he could feel other people's emotions, usually their pain. And that he could understand them by that.
Understanding was the whole point in pretending.
He had thought about the plan for a long time before actually deciding to do it. This time would be different than usual. First of all, he did it without anyone telling him to do it. He would be alone, without Sydney at his side. Secondly... It was Miss Parker. His friend. The only person in his life only thinking about her made his heart beat faster.
Besides that, he wasn't even sure she would appreciate his effort. Since her mother's death she was hiding her feelings. She didn't like anyone near to her anymore, sometimes not even him. Miss Parker suddenly was using words like "privacy" and she was angry at him, if she thought he broke into that "privacy". No, she wouldn't like it if she'd know that he intended to pretending to be her, but he also knew, that he just had to understand her, so he could finally really help her. He couldn't afford to lose her.
Pretending always felt like falling into a light sleep at first. Everything seemed to blur and his head seemed to get very light. He always took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and took another deep breath, concentrating on the person he intended to become. He would always start to loose his own self then, slowly at first, then faster and even faster until everything on his mind were the other person's emotions.
Jarod started to forget about where he was and that Angelo was beside him and when the first impressions of being Miss Parker floated through his mind, he only wanted to cry from the sadness he felt. But he couldn't cry. He was Miss Parker now, and Miss Parker never cried anymore.
The Centre
Now
He couldn't cry. He was just sitting on the floor of his cell, shivering, staring at nothing and couldn't cry. He wanted to, but couldn't.
Parker had left in silence. He couldn't talk to her and she wouldn't talk to him. Everything was broken, tumbled down. He didn't believe anything would ever be like it had been before. She had betrayed him. Strange, that she had hunted him for more than three years but he never saw it as betrayal. But this was different. She had lied to him. She had destroyed his life willingly. She had used his feelings for her against him. She knew how he felt like...She had to know it. They had never actually said it, but he had always been sure that she had always known. Like he had always thought he would know about her feelings for him, although she always hid them so well.
But now he realized that he had known nothing at all. At one time in his life, he had pretended to be her. Since that day, he had always thought he could never lose her, that something of her would always be with him. A mistake. And even one capable of destroying him from the inside. He probably had never known her.
Jarod looked up into one of the blinking lights.
"So this is it then", he whispered. He spit on his cell's floor. He knew she was watching.
Parker turned away from the video screen. She was tired of watching Jarod for it wouldn't make a difference to what had happened to both of them. Instead, it was time to come face to face with Sydney and Broots.
Parker tried to fight the feeling of sickness in her stomach. Her ulcer was coming back. She could feel it, so she went into her office first and had a wodka to drown the sickness. She couldn't afford getting sick now. There were things to take care of first.
She closed her eyes for a second and then went to see the tribunal to let herself be condemned.
Whether Sydney nor Broots were looking at her when she met them and she realized, that being an outcast with these two people was more than strange. It was devastating. Or it would have been devastating, if she can't fight her emtions, like she had told Jarod she could.
Broots was avoiding her eyes. Sydney just pretended he hadn't seen her come in. She didn't care. She couldn't right now.
"Now that we have Jarod back where he belongs, we are after Major Charles and the clone", she said coolly. "Broots, work isn't over."
Broots glanced at her, then looked away immediately. In his eyes, she had seen that he didn't understand her anymore. It didn't matter. He was never supposed to understand her.
"Broots!" she hissed at him. "Get going!"
He immediately slipped away, head down, unable to look at her. But Sydney looked up at her at last and opened his mouth to say something.
"Don't you even try, Syd", she warned. "What did you expect from me anyway? I am a Parker."
"I obviously forgot that for a moment", he answered. "It won't happen again." He angrily stood up from his chair and left. She still didn't care. She still had other things to take care of first.
It was time to start the Game.
They brought him clothes and something to eat and he put on the clothes and pretended he had eaten something. He felt too sick to truly filling his stomach. But he should have known that they hadn't
brought him clothes just to make him feel comfortable. The door to his cell was opened again and Lyle smirked down at him.
"Get up and shine, Jarod", he said. "It's time to play."
Part 5: Michael
"I am proud of you, sis."
"Spare me, Lyle."
Parker frowned at him, then she stared down at the wodka in her hand. The ice in it was slowly moving around. She found a surprising interest in watching these movements.
"No", he went on, "I really am. Actually, we were starting to believe you were betraying the Centre. - You were that near to having a real `accident`, you know that?"
"No", she answered with a surprised sound in her voice. "I can be quite glad then, that I told you about my plan before I ended up with a bullet to my head. Like Thomas did."
"Exactly", he smiled.
They had the perfect place to watch, behind a false mirror. Not that either of them truly believed they could fool Jarod with the mirror. But it was nice though, to be able to watch but not to be watched.
There was a small room at the other side of the `mirror`, with only two chairs and one small table in it. Two sweepers entered it then, with Jarod between them. They were more dragging him in there than he was walking on his own feet and she realized that he obviously refused to help the Centre in any kind of way. He wouldn't even walk for it.
They forced him onto one of the two chairs in the room and left. Jarod turned his head towards the false mirror and seemed to look directly at Lyle and Parker.
Parker took a deep sip from the wodka in her hand. She froze when she saw the man who entered the room then. He was young, maybe 25-years-old, with too long blonde hair, a pair of glasses on his nose and nice and expensive, but unwashed looking clothes.
He was looking at a file in his hand which read "Subject: PP01" and sat down on the second chair, right opposite Jarod, without giving him even a glance. They just sat like that for around five minutes, none of them saying a word. The man just went on reading the file, while tapping on the table between them with his fingertips. Jarod stared at him, obviously bored after a while.
"This is nice", he said at last. "Is this supposed to make me nervous? Coming in here, ignoring me, reading in a file which is obviously about me? Don't try. I'm the King of the Mind Games. I know all the tricks."
The man finally looked up at him and smiled. "Sure", he answered. "However, I thought it would be worth a try in spite of that. I apologize. - My name is Michael."
He held his hand to Jarod, who refused to shake it.
"I am Jarod", he just said dryly. "But you already know that, don't you?"
"Of course I do." Michael took his hand away. "You are Jarod", Michael smiled and scrawled something into his file. "Jarod`s your name." He stayed silent for a second. "Of course that's your name", he suddenly stated while writing.
Jarod frowned. "What do you mean?"
Michael gave him a surprised look but shook his head then. "Never mind", he answered and made a `Forget it`-gesture with his hand. He gave Jarod an intense look and wrote something in his file again.
"What do you mean?" Jarod repeated. He was still frowning, the only visible sign of what he was feeling.
Michael stopped writing and smiled at Jarod. "I told you. Never mind. Nothing worth to feel troubled about." He made another waving gesture with his hand and dismissed the subject with that.
Jarod pressed his lips together.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"Just talking to you. Getting to know you. You are a legend, Jarod." He smiled brightly, then looked down into his file again for a second. "Well, getting to know you... Where do we start with that? Ah, here we go." He looked back into Jarod's face again. The smile vanished from one second to the next. His face was cold now. "How do you feel like, Jarod, now that your childhood friend betrayed you? That must feel terrible. You know, something tells me, it feels especially terrible. After all, it's
your childhood friend... Your first love. Someone you always tried to save."
Jarod didn't answer.
"I assume you feel hurt? Betrayed? Like you want to smash something into a wall. Or maybe even into her face. - But", he looked down into the papers on the table, "your file here says, you hate violence. That is not exactly something that's in your family, is it? After all... Let's remember your late brother, Kyle. Quite a murderous hobby he had. Or your father..."
"My father is not a murderer", Jarod pressed out from between clenched teeth.
"You mean Major Charles... yes, yes..." Michael was waving with his hand again and scrawled something down into the file.
Behind the mirror, Miss Parker lit a cigarette, her first one since nearly a year. "I don't know what this is all about", she hissed at Lyle. "I thought you wanted Jarod to do sims again? Not talk him to death."
Lyle never took his eyes off Jarod's troubled looking face. "Michael is only making him a bit nervous", he answered.
"And who is this Michael anyway?" Miss Parker added silently and took a deep breath from her cigarette. Lyle didn't answer.
"Well, what's left now", Michael went on. "We had Miss Parker, who betrayed you... Your family... well, let's forget about that... Oh yes... Pretending. Protecting the weak and abused. Trying to save the world. Tell me about that, Jarod. How does it feel... Helping people... Day in, day out. You were out of the Centre for three years... But... No life. No home. No-one who loves you. For three years, you did nothing but pretending. I am wondering..." He suddenly gave a loud laugh. "Ooh!
There's even sex in your file, Jay. Congrats... However, I'm wondering... Do you feel fulfilled in any kind of way? Are you happier now with all these experiences you made while in the outside world?"
Jarod clenched his teeth together. "Stop it."
"Are you threatening me, Jarod? I was of the opinion you don't like violence?"
Miss Parker ordered her hands to stop shaking. They disobeyed.
Michael suddenly stood up and gathered his file together.
"I have everything I need now, Jay. It was nice to meet you."
He went to the door and knocked on it. The sweeper on the other side opened it immediately.
"Who are you?" Jarod suddenly asked.
Michael turned around. "The second generation, Jarod", he said. "The second generation."
Michael left Jarod with a smile that was still there when he accompanied Miss Parker and Lyle behind the mirror.
"Nice to see you again, Miss Parker", he said and nodded into her direction. She didn't react.
"Well?" Lyle asked.
"Give me 24 hours", Michael answered. "I'll have all the answers you need till then." He gave Miss Parker a nice smile before leaving.
"What did he mean by `the second Generation`, Lyle?" Parker said and took another sip from her wodka.
"Michael is a second generation Pretender", Lyle said. He gave her a short look before looking back at Jarod again. "Believe me, I was as surprised as you are now. - Michael wants to know the person he's going to pretend to be if possible. - Motumbo sent him. He wants answers."
Miss Parker's head suddenly felt very light, when she remembered her conversation with Michael that morning. He had forced it on her inside the elevator her mother was killed in. Michael had asked her where the bullet holes in it originated from. She had threatened to rip something off his body and stuff it down his throat.
"Getting to know your pretend", she whispered. "I understand."
Part 6: Final Decision
Parker had another drink after entering her office. And a third one right after that. She knew very well, that she was drinking far too much for far too long. Sometimes she even wondered if she would be still able to stop drinking even if she wanted to. It would be worth a try. But right now, the whiskey was the only thing between her and a hysterical breakdown, so she decided to save the thought for another time.
She smiled grimly. All of these has put a wrinkle in her plans, it was nearly funny. Not that she could afford to start laughing right now, not knowing if she would ever be able to stop then. But it was funny somehow though.
Parker let herself fall into her chair. Her heart was beating violently and she put her hand on it, as if she would be able to calm it down by doing that. She had to relax, because if she didn't, she would never be able to find a way out of this.
Her mother was staring at her from the picture on her desk. She let her finger trail over the smiling face of the woman she had loved so much, her death had nearly destroyed her.
"And when I finally become myself again, Momma", she whispered at the picture, "it will get me killed."
In exactly 24 hours dear Michael would report to Lyle and Mutombo and she had absolutely no doubt about what he would tell them. He had his finger in all of Jarod's sore spots only minutes ago. And he had done the same to her, earlier that morning. Getting to know your Pretend... He would be doing pretends on her and Jarod. The outcome of that would definitely be that she had betrayed the Centre. Michael was a Pretender. He would know.
And in case she and Jarod were still inside the Centre when Michael made his report, she was as good as dead. About Jarod's future in that case, she wasn't sure. But she would be dead.
For a second she considered to just kill Michael. But she didn't think it wouldn't make a difference. The Centre would believe that someone definitely had something to hide. Considering the fact that she would probably be the only suspect in that case, killing him wasn't exactly the best plan.
So, the only thing left to do, was escape. Run and hide. Or maybe just hide. Under her desk maybe.
She smiled again. Not exactly an amused smiled. But who cared?
Parker took another sip from her vodka. She had to talk to Jarod. It was the first thing on her "To-do to save your neck"-list. He would know a place to hide, once she had brought them out of the Centre safely. A laugh came out of her mouth again. She wondered if laughing hysterically would become one of her new habits.
Bring them out of the Centre safely. She didn't even know how to talk to Jarod yet.
"Too many eyes everywhere", she whispered to herself. "Too many damn camera eyes."
Would they even let her talk to him? They considered her a possible traitor. Maybe they would let her talk to him just because of that? To see what would happen maybe. They had the cameras inside his cell, so they would be able to hear and see everything they said and did.
She just couldn't talk to Jarod without getting caught. So she wouldn't be able to tell him that they need to escape now.
Or maybe she could?
Miss Parker starred at her office's door and thought about it. If Broots would be able to turn off the camera's in SL-26 she might be able to get down there and talk to Jarod so they would be able to discuss their escape.
It could work.
The question was, if she wanted to take the risk to endanger Broots like that if she wouldn't be there to protect him later. Parker absently shook her head. She couldn't allow that to happen.
There was another possibility... It was in her head very suddenly, from one second to the next. A possibility that crazy, no-one would probably ever expect her to even try.
Why did she even need to talk to Jarod? As soon as she showed up in his cell to talk to him, the Centre would know about it and listen to their conversation because they didn't trust her. Michael didn't have talked to her in the elevator if they would. So if the Centre were to listen into their conversation... and found out that they were trying to escape... she and Jarod would be stopped.
And that made talking to Jarod before trying to escape a pretty stupid idea.
As a matter of fact, the possibility left was as stupid as that. She could just go down there and fight the one or two sweepers who watched Jarod and free him then. Then they could escape together through Jarod's secret exit...wherever it was.
It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than just sitting here waiting for Michael to make his report. Better than being killed like lambs in a slaughterhouse, without even putting up a fight.
But if she were to do it, she has a few things to take care of first. She needed a few hours to gather more weapons, she had to store a car near to the Centre, find a secure place for the next few days, get some things from home...
There was a sudden determination in her face when she suddenly put her glass on her desk and stood up from her chair. She was about to do the most stupid thing she had ever done in her life, and it felt like Heaven.
Parker took a deep breath and turned towards her office` door. SL-26 was waiting for her.
She was startled when she found Broots looking at her form the doorframe. He was always standing as if he was wearing a too heavy weight on his shoulders. They always were slumped down somehow and for the first time, Miss Parker wondered, if they had always been like that or if the Centre had done it to them. But it was worse than usually today, so she considered it to be her fault, too. She did that to him. She thought a silent "I'm sorry." but didn't say it loud.
"Miss Parker ", he said. He looked at her from half closed eyes, barely able to meet her eyes. "I... Lyle told us you... he said you promised Jarod to help him...but you gave him to the Centre then...Lyle said, you are the Centre`s...that you always were and will be."
She watched him swallow nervously.
"I can't believe that, Miss Parker. I can't. Whatever Lyle said or what others believe...I know you...You wouldn't...You wouldn't, would you? You couldn't bring Jarod back into the Centre. We hunted him, but you couldn't do that, could you? I can't believe it's the truth, Miss Parker. Please..."
"It is, Broots. It's the truth", she answered. He took a step back from her and it was one of the most terrible things she'd ever seen in her life. Broots` eyes and the disappointed look in them.
"You will understand, Broots. Very soon", she added. But he had already turned around and left her alone.
Miss Parker swallowed hard and had a good look around one last time.
"Good-bye", she whispered and surprises even herself when a smile formed and light up her eyes.
She was already turning around to leave the office, when the phone's sudden ringing startled her. The smile on her face became a short hysterical laugh and against better judgement she went back to the phone and took the receiver. An soon-to-be old habit. Picking up the phone when the Centre called. She grinned. It would be over soon. Her days in the Centre were finally over. One way or the other.
"What?" she said. Her voice sounded calm, as if already being freed, now that all decisions had been made.
Lyle`s voice. "Mutombo wants us to get Jarod and bring him into the Tower. Now. See you down in SL-26."
The world started moving around her. Her office's walls were moving, her legs hardly held her upright anymore.
"I`ll be right there", she whispered.
It clicked, when Lyle hung up. Miss Parker starred at the receiver in her hand for a moment and then let it slowly drop back onto the cradle.
She had a stupid smile of desperation on her face while taking her gun out of its holster, checking the bullets and putting it back into the holster then. There was no time for preparations anymore.
The war would start right now.
Part 7: Beirut
"You having a nice vacation in Beirut?"
The prison guard
Alan Browne, Beirut
The Centre
June, 1974
"...gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly."
Miss Parker`s eyes came back to the start of the sentence to read it again.
It was the third time now that she read it, but whenever she came to its end, she had already forgotten what the start of the story was all about. So she has to go back to the beginning, to read it all over again.
It is useless. When her mother died, her world was shattered. She couldn't concentrate on anything, it`s like her whole life is now shrouded in a daze, even her friendship to Jarod.
She couldn't explain it to him. Jarod just wouldn't understand that she was in a constant fight, every day of her life since her mother had killed herself. Miss Parker angrily frowned down on her book.
Her mother... Miss Parker had lost her mother. She intended to fight for her father, no matter what.
"Jarod sad."
Miss Parker twitched in her chair and turned towards the voice.
"Angelo", she hissed at the boy. Angelo took a startled step away from her and she immediately felt sorry about snapping at him like that. She put her hand on his arm and smiled. "I`m sorry, Angelo. I didn't mean it. You just surprised me."
Angelo gave her a shy smile, then his face became as expressionless as usual again, but he took a step back towards her, too.
"Jarod sad", he said again, more urgently this time. "Come."
Miss Parker put her book aside.
"Where is he?" she said. "Bring me to him."
To her surprise, Jarod was sitting in the room's vent. He must have been watching her read, but whatever had happened since then, it had turned Jarod into some kind of a statue. He was just sitting there, his long body cowered into the small vent and was staring into the nothingness. Tears were running down his face, more and more of them, and he was shaking violently.
Miss Parker fought down the sudden fear that was threathening to press down on her lungs, as she carefully put her hand on his arm.
"Jarod", she whispered. "What's wrong?"
He didn't move. He just kept on sitting like that, still shaking and crying.
"Pretending", Angelo said. "Pretending to be daughter."
Miss Parker starred at Angelo, who just nodded.
"Daughter sad", he repeated. "Jarod sad now."
Tears were starting to run down her face.
"Jarod", she whispered. "Just why did you do that?"
She held his hand, until he returned to reality.
Pretending to be angry at him later was easy, because in a way, she really was angry.
He had violated her privacy, seen into her most intimate thoughts, and she couldn't allow that to happen anymore.
But whatever he had learned about her during the Pretend, it made him keep on smiling at her, although she was screaming at him in anger.
He never stopped smiling. And it was making her crazy.
The Centre, SL-26
Now
Her high heels were annoucing her long before she actually came around the corner and, with that, in sight of Lyle. She tried to put confidence it her steps, if that was possible, but wished for nothing
more than a cigarette and a drink. Anything to keep her hands from shaking.
She had already released the safety-catch of her gun while in the elevator down to SL-26, silently hoping that she would be at Jarod's cell before Lyle got there so she wouldn't have to use the gun. But when she came around the corner and the cell was in sight, Lyle was already standing in front of its door. He hadn't waited for her to get Jarod. On the opposite, two sweapers were already in Jarod's cell and were dragging him out of it when Parker arrived.
She silently sweared.
"What's going on here?" she hissed at Lyle. "You said, Mutumbo awaits both of us to get him!"
She tried to avoid Jarod`s eyes when he came out of the cell, the two sweepers at his sides. But there was an unknown force that made her turn her head and look at him.
He looked so bad. Dirty and tired. But what struck her most, was the emptiness in his eyes, when he looked at her. There had always been some kind of admiration when he had looked at her. But there was nothing left of that anymore. Like he didn't care about her anymore.
"Where have you been?" Lyle only answered in his usual annoyed tone.
"I was in Kansas", she answered without taking her eyes off Jarod, "with my dog Toto." She took a deep breath, finally able to look away then. "Let's go now. Motumbo doesn't like to wait."
"You heard what she said, Jarod", Lyle grinned at the other man. "Get moving."
They started walking towards the elevator, Miss Parker first, to avoid Jarod`s eyes, then the two sweepers with Jarod between them and Lyle last.
Parker had some kind of plan now. They had to get into the elevator to get rid off Lyle and his two stupid gnomes. She and Jarod wouldn't be able to escape anymore as soon as they were all five stuffed in the elevator. They had to be in there alone to get away.
Her only problem was, how to tell Jarod that she was actually on his side, not on the Centre`s.
"Explain it to me, Parker!"
His sudden outburst surprised her that much, she actually winced.
Parker turned around and looked at Jarod.
"What?" she said, although she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"How could you betray me? Everything you believe in," he spit the words out at her and his face was so full of hate, it made her skin crawl.
"Shut up!" one of the sweepers shouted and shoved him so Jarod stumbled forward and nearly fell.
They had arrived at the elevator and Miss Parker hit the button to get it down to SL-26. She could feel the sweat in her armpits.
"I can't believe you would betray your own emotions!" Jarod kept on, as if he hadn't heard the sweeper. "I want to know why!"
Nearly there. The elevator was nearly there. Just seconds. She turned around to face Jarod.
"You are a Pretender", she snapped at him. "You know exactly how I feel, don't you? Well, what I feel has never changed. Not since that day when you pretended to be me. Open your damn eyes to the damn truth, Jarod! Now!"
Her own breathing was loud in her ears, rushing like the Niagara Falls. Except of that, time seemed to stand still. Please, she thought, pleasepleasepleaseplease.
Jarod looked at her. Their eyes met. The next moment, his knee crashed into the groin of the sweeper who was nearest to him, then his fist ended up in the other sweeper`s stomach. Both men went to the floor, groaning, while Jarod already turned towards Lyle. He was about to pull his gun, when Jarod swung at him and hit him into the chest. Lyle stumbled backwards, crashing to the ground hard.
The little beep of the elevator when its doors opened made Parker flinch. She glanced at Jarod who looked back at her and seemed to get what she was thinking. He turned towards her to get into the
elevator.
Time seems to have slowed down.... everything is unfolding as though in a silent movie, and events are happening in slow motion... Everything in her life seems to be moving in slow motion lately... When Parker met Jarod's eyes and saw the relief in them, she wanted to smile. But there was something else, something she hardly realized consciously, just unconsciously. Maybe it was just a slight movement she saw from the corner of her eye.
Parker turned her head left. Just a little bit, a few centimeters, but it was enough for her to realize that Lyle had gotten his gun free while falling to the ground and he was aiming it at Jarod, already about to pull the trigger.
She grabbed Jarod by the arm by instinct, pulling him aside and behind her by that. Why, she couldn't say. The loud sound when Lyle pulled the trigger filled her ears and made her want to close them with her hands. She didn't feel any pain. Jarod's scream alone told her, that she'd been hit by the bullet. She was falling... falling... then someone grabbed her, held her in his arms and pulled her with him backwards into the elevator, pressing her against a wall then and protecting her with his own body.
Someone shot. The person who held her in his arms was shooting with a gun and she realized, that it must be her gun. Screaming and shooting, the person held her in his arms and protected her with his own body.
A beeping sound when the elevator`s doors closed. It started to move upwards.
Tiredness flowed through her. She was starting to hurt.
Quote taken from "Jonathan Livingston Seagull - A story" by Richard Bach.
Part 8: Up
"One is the loneliest number
Even worse than two."
Filter, One
"Open your eyes, Parker! Open your damn eyes!"
Jarod's terrified voice brought her back into reality with a vengeance. Parker groaned.
The first thing she realized was, that the elevator wasn't moving anymore. Jarod must have hit the emergency halt, just like she had planned to do. They were just thinking too alike. The second thing was the feeling of Jarod's hands cupping her face. She was lying on the elevator`s floor, her pants slowly being soaked with her own blood. It hurt.
She looked up into Jarod's face and saw the relief in his eyes. No time for that now. She shook her head to get rid of the dazed feeling in her head and to be able to get back to business.
"Lyle shot me!" She grimaced out of anger and pain. "How bad is it?"
"It's your right thigh", he answered. "Just a flesh-wound. You'll survive. I took a piece of my shirt to stop the bleeding."
"Thanks." She groaned again, but sat up nonetheless. Of course she had realized that he was staring at her. There was a searching look in his eyes. Jarod was searching for answers. But she couldn't start giving them now. They didn't have the time for it. "Help me up. We've got to get out of the elevator and the Centre, before Lyle gets everything surrounded by his sweepers."
Jarod nodded and took her by the arms to lift her up. The moment, she was standing on her own feet, she screamed out of pain. Her right leg gave way under her and she would have fallen if Jarod hadn't caught her.
"Damnit!" she hissed between clenched teeth. The dizziness came back. She didn't feel well.
"Just sit down for a second", Jarod said. "I'll open the elevator`s emergeny exit and then I'll lift you up."
Parker didn't have time to answer. Jarod had already gently put her down on the floor again and then stretched himself up and opened the exit at the elevator`s roof. She watched him, his suddenly urgent, even hectically, movements, his shaking hands. She became aware, that he knew the truth as good as she did.
When he was done, he smiled down at her, a somehow frightened expression on his face.
"Come on now. We'll get out of here."
"Jarod..." she started.
"Come on." Jarod took her by her arms again and tried to lift her up. She was a dead weight in his arms.
"Jarod", Parker said again, urgently this time. "Stop it."
"You've got to help me a bit here", he answered and pulled her up even more.
"Jarod! Stop it! I can't walk! I can't even really stand."
He stopped in the middle of trying to lift her up.
"Jarod, I'm too slow. I would only hold you back."
"You would not, damnit!" He was pulling on her with so much strength it hurt and she struggled against him, against his hands holding her. Suddenly, she was free and fell down on the ground with a hiss of pain. The blood was still soaking her pants and her leg hurt. Jarod looked down at her with so much desperation, it made her angry. He was shaking his head, then bend down again and tried to grab her. She struggled against his hands again.
"Leave me alone, Jarod. You will go without me. I will give you to Lyle myself if you don't!" she snapped at him.
"No," he answered, as angrily as her now. "I won't leave you. I can't..."
"You are still hiding behind your feelings, Jarod. Good-bye LalaLand. Remember that?" She took a deep breath. "I will follow you later", she continued. "Believe me. I promise."
He just stood there, unmoved, at her side, just staring down at her. They don't have time for that.
"You stupid lab rat!" Parker screamed at him. "You will go now! You understand me?"
She saw him wince at her words and is fighting hard to keep his tears from falling by angrily blinking his eyelashes.
"Please", she tried to whisper. But he couldn't hear her.
He had suddenly swung himself up the emergency exit and vanished into the darkness behind it without looking back at her. Miss Parker closed her eyes for second.
The elevator started moving again. It was going up.
Hardly ever in her life, had she felt as alone as this moment, in the elevator. There wasn't anyone left.
Jarod had always been with her, one way or the other, since that day when he had pretended to be her. He had always known who she really was, no matter how hard she'd tried to hide behind her bitch-image. In a way she had even come to believe, that he was protecting her, that he was watching over her. It may be a watching from far away, but he was watching over her nonetheless. But right now, Jarod was on the run, just like she was.
Her father was gone. Sydney and Broots had lost their faith in her. There was no-one left at her side.
For a moment, she wished she could just lie back and await them to come for her. But she wouldn't give up the fight. She just couldn't. She had promised Jarod to follow him. And she had always kept her promises.
Agonizing slow, she lifted her hand and held on to the wall, then pulled herself up. Her teeth clenched together to stop her from screaming. The pain in her leg when she tried standing on it was murderous.
"I'm going to kill you, Lyle", she whispered. "I'm going to kill you for this." Anger was good. Anger stopped her from loosing conscience.
There was a little beeping sound that told her the elevator had arrived in the Centre's main lobby.
Miss Parker fought to keep an angry Ice-Queen look on her face.
There were sweepers standing in front of her, pointing their weapons into the elevator. Someone must have alarmed them and she asumed that someone to be Lyle. "Just be very impudent", the little voice in her head whispered.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed at the sweepers. "Jarod escaped. Search the area! GO!"
The sweepers stared at her for a moment, then actually turned around and started running around, searching for Jarod. They seemed to loose interest in her. Maybe Lyle hadn't told them that she had helped Jarod. Whatever the cause may be, she intended to take the time it had bought her.
Miss Parker allowed herself to grin a bit.
Walking towards the Centre`s main exit was hard and it hurt like hell. She took one slow step after the other, hissing out of pain everytime she had to move her hurt leg. Blood was running down on it and now and then she had to press her eyes together to fight the dizziness. But she was getting nearer to her goal. Her car is outside in the parking lot.
Jarod must have left the Centre by now and she smiled at that. She was sure he would find her as soon as she was out of the Centre. However he may do it, he'd always found her.
Nearly there. She was nearly there and she got bolder, tried to move faster than she already did. She wondered how her life may be, now that she was free from the Centre. Maybe she could help Jarod `protecting the weak and abused`? She grinned again. What a ridiculous thought, wasn't it?
Her hand grabbed the Centre's main door and she opened it. Outside, the sun was shining. She could feel its heat on her hand.
"Going somewhere, Parker?"
She didn't need to turn around. She'd recognize that voice everywhere.
Lyle.
"Nowhere", she answered. "Looks as if I'm going nowhere."
Part 9: State of Flux
"Well, this day was a total waste of makeup."
A one-liner
Time is not as constant as clocks usually try to make us believe. 24 hours have the ability to feel like months in cases where the situation warrents it, and to Miss Parker, the current situation definitely warrents it.
She was in custody. Not officially of course. No-one had told her she was. But the first thing she saw when looking at the door of her room in the Centre's infirmary, were the backs of two sweeper's who wouldn't let her leave the room, even if she tried. So she was in custody of the Centre, at least until Michael had made his report. Then she would be dead.
A doctor had removed the bullet in her thigh and told her she'd survive because it was just a flesh wound. He had ordered her to lie in the bed in the infirmary and not to move her leg too much. She obeyed, because there wasn't much else she could have done.
Lyle had visited her once. He had suddenly showed up at the open door of her room and was just standing there, looking at her.
"What do you want from me?" she'd asked him.
"Isn't that what people usually do? Visit sick family members?" he had answered, smirking.
She had taken the offline telephone on her night stand and throw it after him. He had left then, looking a bit hurt. She had just snorted about that.
That had been 7 hours ago. She had slept for a while during that time but was woken up by a nightmare that had helped her decide to stay awake rather then to try to go back to sleep again.
Jarod had been in that nightmare and a lot of blood, Jarod's blood. So she was just lying in her bed now, staring up at the ceiling.
Her leg hurt, a steady unpleasantly throbbing pain. And she couldn't get over the thought, that Jarod would try to help her escape, that he would come back into the Centre to get her. The thought frightened her more than she had ever thought possible. She didn't want him to come back for her. It would only lead to his re-capture. They would both suffer then. And she didn't want that. She'd rather suffer alone, like she always did.
"Miss Parker."
She had been deep in thoughts, so the voice surprised her. Parker turned her head and looked at the person talking to her.
Mr. Lyle and Mr. Cox. And Michael, standing a bit behind them, as if he only intended to watch and listen.
"What do you want?" she asked them.
"Answers", Cox said.
She smiled. "About what?"
"About what happened in SL-26 and the elevator", Cox answered.
Miss Parker managed to leave her face expressionless although she was more than just a bit surprised.
"What do you mean? You know what happened in the elevator. There are surveillance cameras in there, remember that?"
Both men just looked at her and she suddenly realized that they were trying to fool her somehow. She just couldn't say with what.
"Jarod escaped", she answered slowly and carefully. "I was shot. What else do you expect me to tell you?"
"Why did you protect Jarod down in SL-26?" Lyle said. "You pulled him away when I..."
"I did that because you were trying to shoot him", she answered. Of course that was the truth. She wasn't lying, yet. "You do know that the Centre wants Jarod alive?" she went on. Still the truth. Parker was looking from Lyle to Cox and back again. Something was strange here. Definitely very strange. They were trying to hide something from her. The question was just, what exactly are they trying to hide. And why did they ask her what had happened?
They did know that, didn't they?
Didn't they?
Mr. Cox was looking at her with an intense expression in his eyes. As if he was trying to find out what she was thinking. She starred back at him.
"Is that all?" she asked at last. "Because I really don't feel well. I got shot again if you may remember.“
Mr. Cox nodded at her and left. Lyle followed him after one last look at Parker. When she wanted to have a look at what Michael was doing, she became aware, that Michael seemed to have the strange ability to vanish without letting anyone realize it until it is too late.
She was alone again, and after re-thinking what had just happened, she was even more nervous than before the three men had shown up.
What was that strange conversation telling her?
That they wanted to test her again? Because of what?
Because someone had told them she was innocent? Because Jarod had come back to get her and the Centre had caught him and to save her, he had told them she had never tried to help him?
But what about the camera's in the elevator? Wouldn't they talk a very clear language?
It wasn't making sense. Nothing of this was making any kind of sense.
She wished for nothing else but a large drink. Or maybe more than just one.
The rest of the 24 hours went by feeling like weeks. After a while she had decided that she couldn't lie in her bed anymore and so she called for the doctor and forced him to get her some crutches. It hurt like hell to get up and try to walk, but she did it in spite of that. Because of the crutches, she managed to walk without putting her weight on her injured leg. She even put on her old clothes, the one that was soaked with her own blood, and decided to just wait to be called in front of Mutumbo.
Lyle didn't surprised her this time. She had waited for him to show up.
"Parker", he said, "you maybe want to hear Michael's report."
She followed him into his own office on weak and hurting legs after resisting his offer to get her a wheel chair. She didn't intend to face her last moments from a sitting position, looking up at Mutumbo and Lyle.
Lyle brought her into her father's office.
Mr. Cox was sitting on the sofa at the right site of the room, Mutumbo was at her father's desk, going through the few things left of her father. Like the picture of her mother holding her in her arms. Mutumbo looked down at it with an expressionless face.
Miss Parker already opened her mouth to hiss at Mutumbo about daring to touch the picture...as one last nail to her already waiting coffin. But Michael stopped her by entering the room with a cheering: "A wonderful day to all of you."
"You little prick", she whispered that soft, no-one even heard it. Lyle only seemed to wonder about the strange grim smile suddenly playing on her face.
"Your report, Michael", Mutumbo said. He let go of the picture in his hand by just letting it slip out of his fingers.
Miss Parker turned towards Michael.
It felt like watching herself from beside her own body, as if she wasn't really there. She wasn't able to do anything or move anything or say anything. She was suddenly wondering how Syd and Broots would feel about her death. Would they be at her burial? What about Jarod? He couldn't come again. He probably was down in SL-26 again, or even worse... She was sorry, that she hadn't told him some things she should have told him. Or maybe he knew? He was a Pretender. She hoped he knew, more than anything else.
The strange words coming from Michael brought her out of her thoughts. She starred at him in disbelief, only getting half of what he was saying.
"... regarding Miss Parker's loyalty ... no indication of betrayal ... Miss Parker is absolutely loyal to the Centre ... SL-26 was a sign of that loyality ... protecting the Center's property ..."
"You are sure about that?" Mutumbo voice.
"Of course I am." Michael's voice again.
Mutumbo left wordless, with Mr. Cox following him slowly. Lyle seemed to be dumbfounded for a minute, but he recovered quickly and gave Michael a slicky smile.
"It was nice working with you, Michael", he said. "I hope to see you again some day?"
"Count on that", Michael answered.
The young man was just standing there and smiled, then nodded to both of them one last time and left before she was able to say a thing.
Miss Parker turned towards Lyle. "What about Jarod?" she brought out.
"Did you catch him?"
"I thought you know about that?" he shook his head in disbelief. "No. He's gone. And we have no indication of where he went. The moment you came down to SL-26 everywhere in the Centre the surveillance cameras just decided to stop working. What a coincidence, isn't it?" He smirked. "So someone in here is helping Jarod. And I intend to find out who that someone is. - See you later, sis. Oh, and I'm sorry about...you know...your leg."
He left and she was finally, finally, able to breath again.
"I am going home", she whispered to herself.
And did just that.
Part 10: I`m on your back
She answered the phone in her usual shiny tone not just because it was an old habit, but because she felt terrible. Her leg hurt, her back hurt and she wanted Jarod to call her to tell her he was okay. Two hours had went by and he hadn't called and she was afraid...even if she didn't admit it to herself. There was this little voice in her head because of that, telling her, that she was on her way to LaLaLand herself if she wouldn't stop right now.
So when the telephone rang her glas full of vodka ended up on her table with a clinking sound, and she grabbed the phone and hissed into it.
"What!"
"Whew!" the person on the other end of the line said. "I heard about that `What` but I hadn't imagined it to be so...loud."
"Michael?" she whispered. "I can't believe it!"
"Is your telephone clean?"
"I check it everyday", she answered. "Hell, I check my whole house for bugs every day. There were none. Today."
"Talking about paranoia", he smirked.
They fell both silent for a moment.
"Why?" she finally brought out.
"Why what, Miss Parker?"
"Cut the crap, Michael."
"Why I lied to them? I have spent my life inside the Centre, too", he said that soft, she could hardly hear him. "Not here in Delware, but the Centre stays the Centre, everywhere. I know exactly how you and Jarod feel. No family. No past. No hope. - Isn't it strange, that the Centre just never gets how people tick? How they feel about certain things?"
"Then why don't you try to escape?" she said.
"Maybe I just decided that it's easier to destroy something from the inside, instead of from the outside. Besides that: The Centre is my home. I like it here somehow. Crazy, isn't it? And, you know, I could ask you the same question. Why don't you try to escape? After all, at least you would have someone to go to." She could hear his smile but she just knew that it was a sad smile. "I have to go now, Miss Parker. Mutumbo is waiting for me. Just one more thing. Please try to be more careful when making your agreements with Jarod. I wouldn't want anything need to happen to both of you. I like you. But nevertheless I can't always send you little notes to warn you. I am not suicidal. And don't try to contact me."
He hung up before she could even feel surprised about that revelation.
"Why?"
Just that word. No greeting or anything at all after she had picked up the phone for the second time that day. Just "Why?" from the other end of the telephone line.
She had fallen asleep after a while. The pain killers had made it possible for her to forget the fact that she had been shot in the leg. And they had made her sleepy, too. Or maybe it had been the combination of pain killers and too much alcohol again. She wasn't even really interested in finding out.
"Jarod?" she asked with a sleepy voice.
"Why?" he said again.
Miss Parker lifted herself up on the sofa and gave a deep sigh. "I got a note from a `friend", she answered. "Suddenly, it was there, on my desk.. A warning. I didn't know who sent it then. But the note said, that the Centre knows about us and that they intended to catch you by using me. They had already formed a plan, so I had to come up with something fast. I couldn't leave the Centre to warn you. They had me watched. They had my phone bugged. So I went to Lyle and let them use me to catch you. I intended to help you escape later somehow. I couldn't have done that if they'd caught both of us. But then there was Michael. And my whole so-called plan just went to hell."
"You believed in a note you didn't even know who sent it?"
"Stranger things happened in the Centre than someone helping you. Or me."
"That's true." She heard him chuckle.
Silence. She listened to his breathing, too happy about it than it did her any good.
"So who sent it then?"
"What?" she asked, a bit surprised.
"The note. You said you didn't know then who sent it."
"Michael. It was Michael. He's fighting the Centre, just like we do. Imagine my surprise when he told me... Jarod, we may have a real chance with him on our side. He's..."
"How do you feel?" he suddenly brought out, a bit harsher than probably intended.
"What? Don't you want to know about Michael?"
"Later", he said. "Right now I want to know how you feel."
"I'm fine."
"You got shot again. And I just left you behind. Aren`t you angry at me? I would be angry at me. I am angry at me."
"Jarod, please leave it."
"I can't. I ... I thought about all this. How it worked out. You nearly got killed because I forced you into helping me."
"You will never be able to force me into anything. I made the decision on my own. Jarod, I am save. Everything is fine now."
"You`ve never been a good liar. You are not fine. - We should stop this. You should go back...to where you were. Hunt me. Or try it. Pretend to do it if you have to. But we will forget the whole thing. Our meeting in the subway never took place."
"You little coward." She was so angry, she was hardly able to press it out. "You. Little. Coward. So something goes wrong and you step back? You just give up! And you use me as an excuse! Your..."
"Don't tell me that crap about LaLaLand again, Parker! This isn't LaLaLand. It's just a plain sense of reality. You nearly were killed!"
"Don't try to save me, Jarod. I`m a grown up. I won't give up now. And if you don't help me with it, I'm going to fight my own fight. I don't need you, Jarod. I never did. I can do this alone, too."
He laughed a very humorous laugh. "Oh yeah!"
"Oh yes. Don't you underestimate me, Jarod!"
"I wouldn't dare", he spit at her sarcastically. "Not after what you told me down in SL-26. You `acted` pretty well then."
Miss Parker pressed her lips together for a moment.
"Don't you dare to turn hero on me, Jarod", she said.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Oh yes, you do. You are trying to make me angry, so I'd step back from our agreement, and you can go on fighting your little war alone and feel good about leaving me out off this. But I wouldn't fall for it. I'm on your back now. You won't get rid of me again so easily. I've already risked too much for that. I was ready to free you down there yesterday. I had my gun ready. Do you think I'd done that if..."
She stopped again. She couldn't say it. It was just too much.
"Does that mean you were ready to start a shoot-out? Down in SL-26? To save me?" he asked softly. "Does the phrase `Absolutely crazy` mean anything to you, Parker?"
There was still just silence at the other side of the line.
"You are stunning", she heard him murmur.
"Why?" she whispered back. "I thought I'm crazy."
"You are crazy. But you are more stunning than crazy. You just are."
She felt herself slowly caressing the receiver in her hand. Insane. Totally insane.
"You intended to come back to help me, didn't you?" she replied.
This time, he was the one who didn't answer.
"You are stunning, too. But much crazier than I am."
"Two of a kind", he answered softly.
"Yes", she whispered back. "Two of a kind."
"I missed you. All those years that went by without you at my side ... I missed you so much."
"Then why do you want to get rid of me again now?"
He had no honest answer for that question.
"You have to trust me, Jarod. We can do this together."
"I do trust you."
Miss Parker let go a sigh of relief. She just hoped he hadn't heard it.
"Then when will we meet again?"
"Just catch me if you can", he said.
"I can", she whispered. "I will. - One day you'll turn around and I'll be there. You can't run from me anymore."
"I hope so", he answered softly. "I will catch you, too. I will catch you if you fall. Because actually I like living in LaLaLand."
A little click told her that he had hung up the phone.
End.
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