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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 14
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."
Raymonde Uy
Awakening
September 11, 2000
26 weeks to go.
Four years.
And now another important date. Jarod hadn't slept the previous night, but that was no great surprise. He could never sleep on the anniversary of his escape from the Centre, reliving everything he had gone through on that night. But now, his simmed escape complete, he couldn't avoid thinking about the coup. One of his sims in the Centre had focused on D-Day and he couldn't help thinking that this event would be equally as catastrophic.
Sitting in the chair, his mind traveled back to the day, only twenty-four hours before his arrest, that he had found the first hints of the impending disaster. Only a few hints but it wasn't difficult to put all of the pieces together and work out the full picture and then Jarod's only surprise had been that it hadn't occurred earlier.
The way things had fallen into place had been sudden but total, and now other factors showed how complete the picture would be. The poisoning of Sydney - somehow Jarod knew what had been done, and the sickness and weakness he had felt could be traced back to Sydney, he was certain.
Since finding out about the link that Miss Parker had with her mother, Jarod had tried to cultivate a similar feeling. What he had first understood to be feelings emanating from his father had eventually resolved themselves into the emotions that were washing over Sydney.
He could remember the first day, when Sydney had tasted the slight soapiness in his food, which he had attributed to poor rinsing in the dishwasher but now resolved itself into something more devastating.
And the helplessness that Sydney had felt echoed itself in Jarod, but Jarod's feelings came as much from the thought that he could do nothing for the people he had tried so desperately to warn. At the memory, Jarod's eyes moved to the phone card that lay on his bedside table, and which was one of his only links to the outside world.
September 11, 2000
D-Day. Zero hour. Brigitte waited outside the door to the small room. This was the best part of the plan and one that she was thrilled he had come up with. It would be so much fun. His calmness and insistence on knowing better had been the most irritating thing in her years of working in the Centre and now he would be destroyed.
Already weakened from overdoses of sodium, one final dose of acetone would be enough. And it wasn't even a big dose. Just a small shot and he would fade before her eyes. Or he would. If she had the time to stay around and watch.
It was so delicious that she could hardly keep the smile from her face. But she couldn't smile. The person she was impersonating never smiled. A complete and total Ice Queen - the epithet was particularly accurate and Brigitte had the greatest enjoyment out of pretending to be her.
Pretending. She had never realized what fun it could be and she wondered that Jarod wouldn't return to the Centre where they would let him pretend all he wanted.
She clutched the syringe somewhat more tightly and suddenly seemed not to be seeing the wall of the Centre in front of her but instead the wall of a cabin as she went through the last few stages of giving birth. The pain had seemed to tear her in two but there was the comfort of what was coming. Death had been easy, when she knew that it wasn't real death. Only a few minutes and she had heard the voices of the people who would save her from death.
After Miss Parker and her father had left with the baby, she recalled the twisted smile on Cox's face as he helped her up and out of the cabin to a waiting car, before the building went up in flames.
Of course she hadn't seen the baby since then but it didn't matter to her. She had no feelings for it and it was something she was rather proud of. Suddenly shaking her head, she broke away from the memories, wondering what had prompted her to think of it at all.
Entering the room, she was unaware of the several pairs of eyes that watched her through the air vent.
September 11, 2000
Raines waited for the hands on his watch to reach a prearranged point, even as his hand tightened on the gun. This was the part of the plan he liked least and the one he hated to participate in. He wished that there was some way to just walk in once the coup was accomplished and take his place as head. So his co-conspirator thought he was weak. Of course he hadn't pulled the trigger. He needed the man for this stage, and then there would be no weakness and no trembling, only servitude and terror.
Just as he liked it.
And so he would continue to rule over the Centre, which should have belonged to him for so long and finally would. The Triumvirate would have no part in the new order, except as he chose to allow them, and now he looked forward to watching them bow to his orders, rather than he to theirs. And if they thought that he had been bad before, it would be nothing to what he would manage once he had complete control. And anyone who got in his way would be erased, starting with the pretender, and Raines had no doubt that his compatriot would find the runaway and his family. What happened then would be completely up to them both. And once that was complete, the other member of the pair would vanish for good. Raines smirked as he looked down to see that, finally, time had come.
