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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 9 - Mezzo Forte
"Daddy here," Angelo murmured.
Jarod stared at Broots. "If that's true then her father is one of two people."
"And not Ben Miller."
"How do you know about Ben?"
"I... Sydney and I found out something a few years ago."
"So that makes it Sydney himself... or my dad..." Jarod found himself feeling slightly sick at the thought of what he and - he refused to let himself be drawn further down that mental path.
"Lyle... Mr Parker. Miss Parker... me."
Broots' jaw dropped. "But I... I ordered those tests. I..."
"And Lyle obviously managed to manipulate them to his own ends, Broots. He knew that it would be beneficial for him to be back in the Centre - especially as it would help to protect him from the Yakuza." Jarod turned back to the computer as he spoke. "Every person who has been involved with the Centre has their DNA recorded on file. I found out about it when I first got out, but it took a while before I could work out the significance of it all. However it certainly makes it easier for us now."
He typed for a moment and brought up what he needed. "Bingo." He turned the screen around to show the broken-down results of the DNA tests and began, at the same time, to print them out.
"He's going to flip."
Jarod grinned. "So is she."
Jarod glanced across the room at Broots, the two of them barely able to contain their amusement. It hadn't been difficult for the pretender to Persuade him to come down and Steven had been left in the room for the time being.
"Son, have you come up with anything?"
Miss Parker looked up from her seat on the other side of the room as Major Charles asked the question.
"We think we might have - something."
"We?"
"Broots and I were doing some work this morning and found a couple of things of significance." Jarod reached into his back pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers that he handed around. "More DNA test results." He paused. "But not, thankfully, for me this time."
"For whom, Jarod?" the psychiatrist asked.
Jarod met his mentor's eye. "For you, Sydney."
There was a collected gasp but Jarod pressed on, regardless. "For you, your daughter and her mother."
"What?!" Sydney leaped up from his chair as though he had been stung. "A daughter? What daughter?"
"You don't know?"
"Jarod," Sydney calmed down slightly and reseated himself. "I have no daughter."
"Just like you didn't think you had a son, either." Jarod grinned. "But I am in the position to assure you that most definitely do have a daughter." He dropped the bombshell. "And she's in this room, right now."
He met his sister's eye and shook his head slightly. Then he looked over at Miss Parker. Standing up, he held out a hand to her. "Come with me, Maleah."
"Where?"
"Just to the other side of the room - to sit next to your real father."
Jarod finished his explanations of the situation, constantly glancing across at the woman he loved and the man who had been like a father to him.
"Parker, I have something else you need to know."
"There's more?"
"Sydney, you have a second son as well. Have you forgotten - Parker is a twin."
"Not Lyle?" The whisper came from both of them.
Jarod shook his head and smiled. "No, not Lyle. Angelo."
The empath had been quietly creeping close to his family and now they found him sitting on the ground at their feet. Miss Parker reached down and put both her arms around him.
"I hate to interrupt the Happy Families," Jarod interposed, "but there are a few more things that I need to tell everybody and they aren't as pleasant as what I just revealed."
"What is it?" Sydney detected the note of seriousness in Jarod's voice. With the hand of his uninjured arm wrapped in both of his daughter's, he looked over at the Pretender.
"Parker, this could be difficult for you."
"Try me." Her voice was firm and Broots raised an eyebrow, noting the similarity to the way she often spoke to him.
Turning, Jarod picked up the computer and opened it. He gestured for his sister, brother and father to move over so that they could see and then activated the DSA that Angelo had found. There was a silence in the room as the occupants watched the Chairman of the Centre gunned down in his office.
"He wasn't found for eight hours, until the cleaning staff came in to the office next morning." Jarod rapidly snapped shut the machine as he spoke. "There was nothing that anybody could have done - even if Lyle had let them. But he insisted that the body be cremated immediately. His assassin didn't escape either. Cox received a message saying that he was needed in the Washington office. The jet blew up on take-off."
"So Lyle is now the head honcho." Miss Parker's voice was bitter and Jarod nodded slowly.
"With a partner," the Pretender reminded them.
"Raines." The word was quietly spoken but only Jarod saw the word form on his father's mouth and the facial expression that accompanied it.
"Correct. And they're making a dangerous pair."
"With a lot of power?"
"More than we can imagine. Although," Jarod's lips twitched, "I think that will be a fairly tense partnership. And possibly quite short term."
"And then one of them will have all the power to themselves - and we're dead."
Jarod nodded tersely at his father's comment. "We need to come up with some way of stopping that, and of somehow neutralizing the Centre. There has to be something we can do. We just have to find it."
Jarod walked into the room where his brother was lying in bed finishing off one of his other books. "And I thought I liked reading."
Steven glanced up with a grin. "I would expect you to."
"Do you speed-read or do it the old-fashioned way?"
"Depends on the book - and the amount of time I have. If there's a black sedan around, then I speed-read."
The Pretender threw back his head and laughed as he curled himself up on Ethan's bed.
"Did you tell Sydney about Miss Parker?" the boy pursued.
Jarod nodded. "I would have loved you to be there, but somebody had to stay with Debbie. She's doing well, but not that well."
"It's okay. I didn't mind."
For several moments, Jarod watched his brother, until finally the boy broke the silence. "What is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I look at somebody like that, it's usually because I want to know something that they know and I don't think they're going to tell me unless I break down their defenses first."
"So are you broken?"
"Why don't I just say yes so that you'll get on with it?"
Jarod laughed again, but remembered the reason for coming and stopped. He rolled over so that he was lying on his stomach and propped his chin up on his hands. "I was looking after Debbie this morning after you went to bed. You had another nightmare, didn't you?"
The boy examined the bed cover for several moments but finally looked up and nodded. "Ever since we started talking about taking on the Centre, I have them more and more."
"If Debbie hadn't needed me, I would have come in. Luckily the others were downstairs and I don't think anyone else noticed."
"On the contrary, someone else did notice."
The occupants looked up to find Sydney in the doorway. He walked in and shut the door. "I came up to get a clean handkerchief and heard the noise. I was about to come in when you woke up." He looked at Steven as he sat down on the edge of the bed upon which Jarod was curled up. "The only other person I know who has nightmares that bad is your brother." Sydney glanced over at the pretender and then back. "I could help him, sometimes, and I know that yours are to do with the Centre as well. Do you want my help?"
The boy remained silent, looking down for several moments while both Sydney and Jarod watched him. His eyes, when he looked up, were wet.
"I can't deal with them any more. They always get worse and I can't tell anybody about them. When I wake up, I can never really remember what they were about, and that's what really scares me the most. I can only ever remember parts of them: faces and sounds. Never what really happened."
Jarod stood up and walked over, gathering the figure of his brother in his arms and holding him for a moment. The boy clung to the older man, allowing several tears to slip unseen down his cheeks. Then he looked up at Sydney.
"Yes - I do want your help. Please."
The boy lay motionless on one bed, Sydney sitting on the other and Jarod standing in the doorway to prevent any intruders. He wasn't fully hypnotized, but relaxed enough to stop his conscious mind from blocking the memory of the dreams that were haunting him.
"Tell me where you are."
"Donoterase. No, not there. I'm at The Centre now. I was just moved there. The door of my room opens and she walks in."
"Who?" Sydney's voice was calm.
"Miss Parker."
Jarod smiled gently but refrained from comment.
"She talks to me for a few minutes and says that she will get me out. I'm about to leave when the door opens again. Two other people come in - you and the other man, the one that was on the DSA Jarod showed me." The boy paused and swallowed painfully. "The younger man pulls out a gun, grabs you and says that, unless Miss Parker moves away, he'll kill you." Steven opened frantic eyes and stared at Sydney. "I know it never really happened like that but it's what I see. He pulls the trigger and then turns and shoots Miss Parker as well. Then he pushes me in front of him, out of the room. I know he's going to kill me too, but I always wake up before that happens."
Steven's chest heaved with dry sobs and Jarod once more moved over to the bed, sitting next to the boy and gently stroking his hair. Sydney also got up and came to sit next to him.
"Steven, take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. Anything I tell you now won't be effective until you do that."
Jarod gently shook the boy. "Come on, Steve. I told you we were going to get rid of these. And we will." He looked up at Sydney, who nodded an answer to the pretender's unspoken question. After several moments, the boy rolled over so that his head was resting against Jarod's leg and looked up.
"This is slightly complicated," Sydney began, "but I'll try to clarify it a little. Just after Jarod escaped, I found a project that I had known nothing about called Substitution. On a hunch, I investigated it. It was a scheme Raines masterminded some years before and put into action. It involved the building up of a circumstance that would ensure a certain permanent, emotional attachment to the Centre. If the subject broke away from the strict regime and discipline, as well as specific mental stimuli that they were exposed to daily, they would begin to experience nightmares and very extreme emotions. These nightmares would reflect, but also magnify, events that had occurred within the Centre itself. When we found out about you, I went back to Substitution and found that you had been subjected to the same thing. The results of it are what's happened to both of you since you left." He paused. "Do you understand, Steven?"
The boy looked up at him and nodded silently. "Can you get rid of it?"
There was a plea in his voice that Sydney picked up on immediately. The psychiatrist looked away for a moment before returning his gaze to the two men. "I don't know about completely, but we can diminish the impact it will have on you. I can usually pinpoint the events that are triggering the nightmares in Jarod's case, but I don't know so much about your projects. It's only by learning more about them that the effect of the treatment Raines inflicted can be diminished."
"If we were to find something..." Jarod looked thoughtful and then eased his brother's head off his knee. "I'm going to go and see what Broots and I can rustle up between us. There has to be a record of it somewhere - Raines wouldn't let something like that go."
He got up off the bed and went over to the door. Glancing back, he saw Sydney bending down over the boy and smiled faintly before shutting the door.
Walking into Debbie's room, he found her father sitting beside the bed reading the paper and he looked almost guiltily across at the other empty chair.
"I'm sorry, Broots. I didn't even think about the fact that there wouldn't be one of us here."
The technician looked up with a smile. "Don't worry, Jarod. Sydney told me where he was and you would have heard me yell if there was anything wrong."
"How's Debbie?"
"Much better. How's Steven?"
"How did you know?"
"He fell asleep in that chair briefly last night and I watched him dreaming - and crying..." Broots paused for a few seconds. "I imagine it's the same kind of thing you go through."
Jarod nodded. "You're right. It is. But we're going to try and get rid of it for him."
"Can I help?"
"You want to...?"
"Jarod, he helped you save her life. Sydney told me how much damage had been done and that, if you hadn't worked together, she might have died. And he's here every night, watching over her." He paused and swallowed painfully. "I just want to the chance to pay back some of what I owe him."
The Pretender made a mental note to haul Sydney over the coals for telling Broots how much danger his daughter had been in and then and smiled. "Sure, if you want to." He sat down in a chair opposite the computer and rested his head on one hand. "And I promise not to make you go through Raines' office again. I'll leave you to perform that favor for Miss Parker next time she asks."
Broots gave a mock shudder. "I don't even want to think about it!" He grinned as he took the seat on the other side of the table. "So what are we looking for?"
"I need to get hold of the simulations that Steve performed when he was at Donoterase and the Centre. Or, if not the actual SIMs themselves then at least the results of them."
"You're going to show the boy the results of what he did? So that he'll feel the same way you do now?"
Jarod looked up, his mouth set in a firm line, and paused for a moment before he spoke. "Broots, I'm going to tell you something I've never even told Sydney. I'm only telling you so you'll understand what I mean, and I'd rather you kept it to yourself."
Broots nodded and glanced once over at his daughter to make sure she was still sleeping before he looked back.
"The first few days after I escaped, I didn't get involved in society at all. I sort of skirted around the edges of it, watching it. I couldn't bring myself to get drawn in because of a dream I kept having." Jarod's head sunk towards the desk but he forced it up. "Right away, I started to have nightmares about simulations that I had performed in the Centre. The dreams were terrible," Jarod's eyes darkened at the memory, "but the worst part was that I could never remember the details, only the faces and sounds that had been involved. They were to do with some plane that was constantly crashing and, in my dream, killing millions of people. One day, I picked up a newspaper and read about adjustments that had been made to an airplane in accordance with suggestions made by a corporation in Delaware and which had been responsible for the crash. Do you remember the newspaper clippings I showed you when we were involved with Damon?"
The technician nodded and Jarod continued.
"Of course, the adjustments weren't what I suggested - in fact they were the exact opposite. Still, this article said that, due to the skill of the pilot, the plane had made a case-book crash-landing into the ocean and everybody on board survived." Jarod swallowed hard and looked down at the tabletop. "That night I waited for that dream to come back, but it never did. Of course, others replaced it immediately, but it's the not knowing that makes them so bad. As soon as I found out about the details of the use of any of the simulations in the real world, I was able to stop dreaming about them."
Jarod sat back in his chair and looked over at the technician, who hadn't moved. "That's what I want the chance to do for Steve - help him confront the demons that he fights every night because of the fact that he doesn't know what really happened. Sure, it's terrible to have to deal with the fact that something you did caused a number of people to die, but it's worse when you have no idea of the real numbers involved, and if they did die." He heaved a deep sigh. "Does that make sense?"
The technician nodded. "Perfect sense." He sat back and thought for a moment before looking up. "Raines has a whole set of files and information, and I’d be willing to bet that the data will all be there."
"Can you find it?"
Broots pulled the computer over towards him and immediately began to type as Jarod thought back over the difficult time he had experienced during his first weeks of freedom.
"Okay, got it!"
"Already?"
"That password is a marvel. Even Mr Raines' and Mr Parker's most secret files all open up when it's used."
"And is there any trace of us being in the mainframe?"
"None whatsoever. That's the absolute beauty of it." He looked down at the computer and then up again. "Wait, it gets better. Even files that the Centre has deleted are still accessible with this magic word."
"Hmm."
Jarod sat back in his chair thoughtfully and studied the pattern of the floorboards without really seeing them. Broots, after a glance or two at him, concentrated on accessing the files of Steven's simulations and saving them onto Jarod's hard drive. After twenty minutes or so, the pretender came out of his trance-like state and looked up.
"What do you have?"
"Pure gold. Everything that the poor kid ever went through is here, as well as the practical uses of the simulations and their result. I only hope your drive has space enough."
"It does." Jarod nodded definitively and picked up the computer from under the hands of the technician. At the door he turned and looked back. "Thank-you, Broots. Thank-you very much indeed."
Miss Parker sat on the sofa and looked down to where her twin brother was staring into the fire. Her mind was still slowly absorbing everything with which it had been hit during the last few hours. As she sat there, Ethan entered the room.
"Indulging in some family bonding, Maleah?"
She smiled up at him. "Actually, just still trying to cope with everything."
"I can understand that." He sat down in a chair and watched her. "Are you happy with it?"
"I... I think so."
"Think?"
Heaving a deep sigh, she twisted in the chair, facing him. "Ethan, I've spent more than thirty years believing that the man who said he was my father actually was. And I've spent the last two years believing that I knew who my twin brother actually was. Then suddenly my world flips upside down and the man I thought was my father is shot dead on the orders of the man I thought was my brother." She shrugged slightly. "Do you see my problem?"
He nodded. "But you see no reason to disbelieve it?"
There was a hint of amusement in her voice as she responded. "Considering how much of an improvement it is, I'd be stupid not to believe it, wouldn't you say?"
Jarod silently entered the room and placed the computer onto the bed, standing back to watch the continuation of the session between his clone and Sydney.
"What's happening now?"
"I'm watching a train slam into an embankment. The suggestions I made about the brake system haven't been made, or were changed, and they couldn't brake at the curve."
Jarod turned to the computer and silently opened one of the files, his eyes rapidly scanning the pages of information that was provided with the DSA.
"The bodies... there must have been hundreds of people killed. I can't cope with it, Sydney." There was a painful break in the boy's voice and his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. "I can't deal with the fact that I killed hundreds of people."
"Nobody died in that train explosion." Jarod's voice was firm and allowed for no argument. "The emergency brake activated and derailed two carriages. Three people were treated for broken bones and eight for whiplash. But nobody was killed at all."
Sydney turned and stared at his former student, his mouth hanging slightly open in shock. On the bed, Steven remained perfectly still, his eyes focused on his brother. Jarod picked up the computer and carried it over to the bed, positioning it so that Sydney could see it and moving his clone's head so that it rested once more against his leg. A touch and the report about the train crash played in living color and sound. The boy watched the seven-minute report. Neither he nor Sydney made a sound until it was over. Then Jarod placed a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Steve, can you still see it in your mind? The carnage?"
His clone closed his eyes and remained silent for several minutes. Finally he shook his head. "It's gone. Somehow, all that's there is - that." He waved his hand in the direction of the screen and then opened his eyes and smiled up at Jarod with such warmth and affection that Sydney was forced to swallow a lump in his throat. "And this will work - every time?"
The Pretender stroked the boy's hair gently and smiled in return. "It's not that good every time, Steve. People have died due to the things we discovered and there's no way around that. But knowing is much better than not knowing, I promise you."
