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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 3
Jarod
The Boss shut the living room door and sat down in the armchair, waving at the sofa. “Sit down, Jarod. I just want a chat.”
Sitting down, the younger man looked up expectantly but saw, to his surprise, that the other man was hesitant. Finally, however, he spoke.
“Jarod, I’d like you to tell me what you know about your parents.”
Jarod hesitated, about to refuse, but something in the eyes of the man opposite convinced him to speak, swallowing a lump in his throat before he began. “They were killed in a plane crash, but I’m not sure exactly when. I was told that they were coming to visit me and they died.”
The older man nodded slowly, his expression suggesting that this news was unsurprising to him, before producing a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolding it and passing it over the table. “I ran a diagnostic on your blood from a sample I took last night, while you were still unconscious, Jarod, and we’d already done one for the people who lie in the graves marked with your parents’ names. These are the results.”
Jarod looked down at the page, picking out the various notations and seeing almost at once the major contradiction. “Are you sure?” he demanded, eyeing the identification notes. “You might have made a mistake. The drug Shannon gave me could have…”
A black and white photo appeared in his line of vision a second later, showing the image of a boy identical to the picture Jarod had seen earlier of his clone, riding on the shoulders of a man who, Jarod realized with a feeling of shock as he studied the facial features, was a younger version of the man sitting opposite him.
“I’m so sorry, Jarod,” the man stated softly, his voice cracking with emotion. “Sorry it took so long for me to realize who you were, and where you were. Sorry I didn’t get you out first. But most of all, I’m sorry that I didn’t stop them from taking you in the first place.”
Jarod looked up in disbelief to see that tears were pouring down the cheeks of the man opposite. Brown eyes, painfully familiar, suddenly taunting him from his memory, met his, and Jarod could see agony reflected in them.
“My son,” the man whispered. “I’ve waited so long to see you again. You can’t imagine…”
“Dad,” Jarod murmured, knowing now why the man had been familiar to him. It never occurred to him to doubt what he was being told; everything fitted together too perfectly to be wrong. He rose to his feet and felt himself pulled into a warm embrace, returning it with equal vigor and feeling tears running down his own cheeks. “I never thought I’d see you again,” he sobbed, his emotions so confused by the events of the day that he was unable to hold back the tears.
“Neither did I,” his father responded brokenly, pulling back slightly so he could look into his son’s face. “I’ve been trying to find you for so long, Jarod, but they kept the information about you too well hidden.”
“Is that why you started getting people out of the Centre?” his son asked eagerly, as the thought occurred to him. “Were you hoping one of them would know about me?”
“Exactly.” Both men sat down on the sofa, his father’s arm still around Jarod's shoulders. “We first heard about the Centre when a woman called Catherine Parker found your mother and me a safe place to live.”
“Mom!” Jarod's eyes glowed. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know, son,” his father admitted with audible reluctance. “We got separated a few years back. I’ve been looking for her as hard as I was working to find you.” He smiled faintly. “I have to tell you, Jarod, you also have a sister. Emily. She was born five years after you were taken from us.”
“A sister.” Jarod stared blankly at the floor, struggling to take all this in. “I have a sister. A family.”
“And I swear to you, Jarod, we’ll do everything we can to put it back together,” the older man said softly, his voice full of determination.
Jarod looked up. “Why didn’t know about me? I mean, this is my proper name, isn’t it? Didn’t you just have to look it up somewhere?”
“It’s not quite that easy,” the other man confessed. “Yes, Jarod is the name your mother and I gave you, but the Centre kept your details well hidden, and any reference to you came under one of two project names - Prodigy or Proteus. It wasn’t until I overheard the name Raines used when he was talking to Shannon that I thought it might be you.”
“You were listening?”
“We have people wired during rescues,” his father stated, “so that we know what’s going on.” He stood up and walked over to the door, beside which stood a bag. Taking out a folder, he returned to the sofa and sat down, opening it. “We knew you were one of a specific class of subjects, but we couldn’t be sure which, because nothing, like your birth details or any other identifying data, was accessible.”
The man pointed to a sheet of DNA results at the front of the folder and Jarod could see all of the identical genetic markers, before his eyes flicked up to the names printed above the columns of marks, seeing that the word ‘Margaret’ was typed above one and ‘Charles’ above the other. “Is that Mom’s name?” he asked, pointing to the first, and the older man nodded.
“When did you start getting people out of the Centre?” Jarod asked curiously. “It’s obviously been going for a while. You’re pretty organized.”
“I got the first person out about eleven years ago,” Charles told him. “That was Cici - Cecilia,” he corrected, obviously seeing slight confusion on his son’s face. “I was going to focus all my energy on finding you and your brother, but…”
“Brother?” Jarod stared at him in disbelief. “I have a brother, too?”
“You never met Kyle?” The older man sent him a somewhat confused look. “Cici said that you two worked together for a while. She remembered treating a bad burn on Kyle’s hand, which he said you caused during one of the sims you did together.”
Jarod's gaze sank in the direction of the floor as the memory slammed back into his head, before he looked up at his father again. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered painfully. “I didn’t know that was real. I thought it was fake. I didn’t usually work with real things.”
“It’s all right,” his father assured him, sliding an arm around his shoulder and squeezing gently. “I understand, and I don’t blame you for anything you did in that place, just like I’m sure Kyle won’t, whenever we find him.”
“He’s not at the Centre?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell. Look at this, Jarod.” Charles produced a sheet of paper and placed it on the table in front of them. “This is a list of subjects I believe need to be rescued as quickly as possible.”
“Going on what criteria?”
“The sims that are planned for them. I try to stop the most damaging, and information about sims is easier to find than details about the subjects.”
Jarod ran his eye down the list of project names and accompanying information, realizing that it was impossible even to tell if they were male or female, and understood his father’s dilemma. He remembered what the older man had been saying and looked up again.
“So what were you concentrating on then, if not just finding us?”
“I looked at the sims they were going to be given when those details were sent to their handlers, and I tried to stop those that might result in killing or injuring other people. Or, if someone’s life was at risk, like with Cici, then I’d try to get them out. When I had a group of about a dozen people who were willing to work with me, I could sort them into groups to look at other things, like deals the Centre planned.”
“What was mine?” Jarod asked curiously. “What was I going to have to do?”
Charles sighed deeply before producing a page from the folder. “Shannon told me just how bad it might have been. That’s why we got you out, son. There were other times when we came close to rescuing you, but other projects or other subjects always seemed to get in the way.”
Jarod only half-heard this, reading through the details of the sim, his eyes widening as he took in the full magnitude of it and, with what he had learnt of the Centre, even in half a day, understanding the many ways in which it could have been misused.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he stated eventually. “It’s too dangerous. I would have had to make the virus so I could create a vaccine to protect against the genetically enhanced smallpox. There’s too many ways it could have gone wrong.”
“You wouldn’t have had a choice,” the older man retorted, giving his son’s shoulders a last gentle squeeze before letting go. “They don’t accept ‘no’ as an answer in that place. If you hadn’t done it, they probably would’ve killed you.”
Nodding slowly, wondering idly if this was true, Jarod ran his eyes over the list of the sims in front of him, not recognizing any of the names but able to guess their contents by the titles. Then his eyes swiveled back to where his father sat beside him. “So what role do I play in all this?”
“Nothing, yet.” Charles gathered the pages together. “Experience has shown me that it takes time for people to recover from the regimented atmosphere of the Centre, so I don’t ask any of those we rescue to make decisions about their future for at least a week or two. And you have a greater number of pressures than the normal subjects, trying to deal with me and the other members of our family, whenever we find them, as well as Josh.”
The Pretender’s thoughts swung back to the boy, to whom he had paid no conscious attention since Nat and Shannon had begun preparing lunch, although he realized that knowledge of his existence had been randomly circling in his head since he had first learnt about him.
“What does he know?” he demanded. “Shannon said he knew about me, but how much?”
“I’m not sure exactly what Prodge told him,” Charles confessed. “Nor in what way Josh thinks of you. He knows you exist, and that you created the technology to make him, but it was when they were using your DNA to make him that they changed your codename, which was why we never realized that it was you. I had my suspicions, of course, but I could never be sure. And then I also thought that there might be two projects – Prodigy and Proteus – which added even more to the confusion.”
“Why does Shannon use the same codename?”
“I don’t know,” the older man admitted. “You’d have to ask Raines that. I believe she might have worked with Sydney for a time, as well, so you might be able to ask him.”
“Sydney!” Jarod's eyes widened in horror. “I hadn’t even thought about him! Won’t he be blamed for my disappearance?”
“I doubt it. Other subjects have disappeared and their handlers weren’t blamed. If Parker or Raines had a personal grudge against him, it might cause more problems, but even at the Centre, death can’t occur without serious consideration. If we think he’s going to be harmed, we’ll get him out.” He placed his hand over those of his son and squeezed gently. “Don’t worry about Sydney, Jarod. I won’t let the person who’s protected my son for so long come to any harm, if I can help it. He’s blocked sims that might have resulted in physical injuries to you. I owe him something for that.”
Sydney
Sydney's arms were folded across his chest, the phone in his hand, and his little finger beating an irregular tattoo on the hard plastic as he paced the length of his office. As the door opened, he turned to see a sweeper standing there, who offered an envelope.
“This is the DSA you asked for, doctor.”
“Thank you.” He accepted the envelope and eased the silver disk out as he approached his desk, sitting down and putting down the phone.
Sliding the disk into the machine, he rolled the trackball to the start, keeping his eyes fixed on the woman who entered the room with Raines and walked over to the desk where he and Jarod sat. He increased the volume as the woman spoke, mentally comparing her accent with those other native speakers of Italian that he had known, unable to pick a flaw. Her skin tone, too, matched that of other Italians from the south of the country, where such hair and eye coloring as she had, although unusual, were not unknown.
He watched closely as the woman on screen shook his hand, suddenly stretching out a hand to pause and then slowly rewind the DSA, zooming in on her sleeve to see a patch of skin that was lighter in color than the rest of her arm. Zooming in further showed him a line that suggested the application of a fake tanning product, but this information, although it suggested the woman was a fraud, didn’t provide any more information to him, although he guessed that her hair and eyes had also changed from their natural coloring.
Sighing, he returned the view to its original perspective and allowed the disk to continue, seeing as Jarod presented the results of the simulation on which he had worked. His eyes narrowed as the woman removed a case from her pocket and opened it onto the table, extracting the syringe. Reaching out, he pulled over the folder with which he had been provided and which contained the details of the simulation Senora Lanzano planned to have Jarod complete in her presence. In it, there was no indication of a drug, but had there been, the products would have been taken from the woman on her arrival and tested. Only by failing to mention them could she be assured that such a thing wouldn’t happen.
The footage flowed smoothly, the woman standing by the table. She remained there, apparently checking over the objects she had brought with her for the simulation, but Sydney zoomed in on the footage, watching without surprise as her hands, which under normal viewing conditions, appeared to be making minor changes, were actually jumping from one object to the next, before suddenly hovering back over the first one with no obvious sign as to how they got there. So the original supposition from the technical experts working in security had been correct – the system had been infiltrated and footage looped. A small smile curled Sydney's lips as he recalled a sim Jarod had performed in which he had predicted such a capability if the whole system were not redesigned, which it then had been.
This realization brought Sydney's brows together. After the system had been redesigned, or so a young technician had told him after examining Jarod's simulation results, such penetration would be impossible. Sydney racked his brains to remember what he could about that discussion and recalled his initial surprise at seeing one so young in charge of such a highly complex system. But the youth had demonstrated his abilities, and his confidence had been strikingly similar to Jarod’s. Raines’ constant presence in the background also forcibly returned to Sydney's mind, and he rolled his chair back towards the filing cabinet behind him and reached in, flipping through the list of sims in the first file and then extracting the relevant folder.
Opening it on the desk, he read quickly through the results and then looked at the page on which he had noted down the intended source of the results. A project number stared back at him in his own handwriting, and he swallowed hard at the realization, which had never occurred to him until now, that the person with whom he had spoken had not just been another employee. Reaching over to the computer on his desk, he hunted for the project number, his eyes widening in surprise when it failed to provide any results. A check of the list of those released showed that the number was not among them. That left only two possibilities, and Sydney had a strong suspicion that the youth would not have died. Although deaths of employees often passed without notice, those of subjects usually caused more of an uproar. Escapes, however, only seemed to concern those most directly involved, as he could witness from the grilling he had received from Mr. Parker only that morning.
Rumors of escapes were widespread, and he wondered now exactly how many were true. Several groups were already involved in pursuing subjects who, for one reason or another, had either been removed from the Centre and disappeared into the mass of humanity beyond the front door, or had somehow managed, as Jarod had apparently done, to get out, either under their own steam or with assistance.
Mr. Parker had demanded that Sydney provide his own analysis of what had occurred, including any reasons that Jarod might have had for wanting to escape. As yet, he had found nothing, but he hoped that the information he had gathered from the security DSA might be helpful.
The sudden ringing of the phone made him jump, and he reluctantly answered it, expecting it to be one of the members of the Triumvirate.
“This is Sydney.”
There was a moment of silence, with only light, frequent breaths on the other end, before the man spoke again, somewhat impatiently.
“Hello?’
“S… Sydney?”
“Jarod?!” The psychiatrist sat bolt upright, staring blankly at his desk. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I don’t really know,” the Pretender admitted softly. “Where I am, I mean. But, yes, I’m okay. Are you?”
“Yes, of course,” Sydney responded in surprise. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, I… I thought…” Jarod's voice trailed off, and Sydney raised an eyebrow, surprised at the obvious uncertainty in his tones.
“Jarod, are you sure you’re all right?” he demanded.
“Yes,” the younger man retorted. “I just… never mind.”
“What happened?” Sydney demanded.
“I guess I was sort of kidnapped – again,” Jarod added, after a moment of thought. Then a note of defiance came into his voice. “And I won’t be coming back.”
“But you belong here,” the psychiatrist protested. “You work is here.”
“My family is out here,” the younger man shot back. “And at least, out here, my work won’t be made into something negative that kills people. Did you know that, Sydney?” he demanded. “Did you know what they did with my sims?” There was a soft rustle of paper, as if pages were being turned. ”South Pacific Fleet simulation 118,” Jarod began. “You took my results and blew a ship out of the water. 133 people were on board. My outbreak simulation. You used it in the field. 46 people died from the Ebola virus, Sydney! Simulation 27. Simulation 16. Simulation 42!”
Sydney rose from his chair and began to pace. “Jarod, these were military contracts. I had no way of finding out about their ultimate application.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen again,” Jarod spat furiously. “I’ll do whatever I can to stop my work killing people, and I’ve got people to help me!”
The dial tone sounded abruptly in Sydney's ear, and he replaced the phone on the cradle, feeling himself trembling slightly. In all the years they had worked together, he had never heard Jarod as angry as he had been on that call. The Pretender might have had no choice about being removed from the Centre, but clearly he had been shown proof of the aims of the work he had completed, aims that Sydney himself had never known.
“Sydney?”
He turned to find a man in the doorway. “Mr. Parker.”
“We heard it all.” The man entered the office. “We tried to trace the call, but something blocked us. We’re going to have to change tactics. We can’t afford for the work Jarod did to be undone, by him or anyone else. We’re going to put together a team to find him. I want you on it.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to bring Jarod back where he belongs,” the psychiatrist swore fervently, and saw a smile appear on the other man’s face as he turned.
“Yes,” Mr. Parker agreed. “I thought you would.”
Jarod
Jarod sat staring blankly at the phone for a moment, before picking up the receiver again to look at the device attached to it, which would prevent the call from being traced. The whole house was scattered with tiny objects like this, intended to make it impossible for the occupants to be found by the Centre using technological means.
“Here,” a voice offered, and Shannon put a glass of dark liquid down on the table in front of him.
He held the glass up to the light and examined it, intrigued by the tiny bubbles that covered the sides. “What is it?”
“It’s an aerated, cola-flavored drink,” she explained. “It’s called Dr. Pepper.”
He arched an eyebrow. “A drink with a medical degree?”
Shannon giggled. “No. I guess they wanted to make it sound a little more intelligent, so they added the ‘doctor.’”
Jarod took a cautious sip, his eyes widening as the drink fizzed in the back of his mouth, and then suddenly sneezed as it ticked his nose.
“Bless you,” the young woman stated, and he looked at her curiously. She explained the tradition of acknowledging sneezes, adding several more details about the niceties of life outside the Centre. When she was finished, he sat back in his chair and looked around.
“There’s a lot to learn out here,” he remarked quietly.
“Yes, there is,” she agreed. “But you’ve got plenty of time, Jarod. We’re all still learning. I don’t think it ever really stops, even if you spend your whole life out in the world.”
He looked thoughtful. “Yeah, I guess so. But I never even really imagined a world outside where I was. It just didn’t really seem to exist. I mean, I knew there were bridges and large buildings, but it never meant much.”
Shannon reached out for the book on the table and flipped through it, studying the various articles it contained. “One of these is nearby,” she said suddenly. “I can show you, if you want.”
He thought about this for a moment, looking down at the page she had open, remembering the sim and reading how it had been used for negative rather than positive purposes. The article told him that the bridge he had designed had collapsed as a convoy of army vehicles was crossing it, and that a group with connections to Afghanistan had claimed responsibility for it. Apart from the destruction of several new long-range missiles, which had been the group’s aim, it had also killed almost sixty people. He felt something squeeze tightly in his chest as he looked up.
“How many people died because of what you thought up?”
Shannon looked thoughtful, then sad. “A lot,” she admitted. “A lot more than I ever thought about when I was doing the sims. All I ever wanted to do then was to find the right answers, so I could go to my room. When I was there, I could do what I wanted, instead of what he did.”
“Which was?”
She sighed and stared at the surface of the table. “I used to work with another Pretender when I was in the Centre. He hadn’t been there that long, and one day, when I was about seven, Raines was called out of the room. My friend started talking about his family. I’d never even heard of the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ before that, but he described everything so well that I was really able to see it in my mind – a family sitting around a table together, mom, dad and a couple of kids. So every night, I’d come back to my room, lie on my bed and think about it. Sometimes, I’d dream about it. It was all I wanted, from that moment on. When the Boss got me out,” her eyes sparkled with tears, “the first thing I asked was if he was my dad. I had no idea what it really meant: that he was the person who had helped to make you in the first place.”
“You don’t know who your father is?”
“I was born in the Centre,” Shannon told him. “I was there for every single day of my life, until the Boss rescued me.”
“You all call him that,” Jarod remarked curiously. “Do you know his name?”
“Most people don’t, no,” she confessed. “If any of us are caught on a mission, there have been times when they’ve tortured people as a punishment for escaping in the first place, and in an attempt to stop the torture, the person let slip who they’ve been helping. That’s also the reason we only know the real names of a few people working for him. If all we know is nicknames, the Centre has nothing to search for.” She slid her right hand through her hair before sipping her drink and then putting the glass back on the table. “I know his first name is Charles, but that’s all.”
He nodded slowly before his eyes fell on the sling that supported her left arm. “What happened?” he asked, nodding at it.
“I got shot last night,” she responded succinctly. “Luckily, though, the bullet pierced the door of the car first, and that slowed it down enough that it didn’t do any serious damage.” She grinned. “My car looks like a sieve. We’re lucky that nobody else was hit.”
“So they know I’m missing?”
“And the entire place is running around in circles,” she chuckled. “You were one of their best-kept secrets, Jarod, and the bosses are furious.”
Jarod's tones were full of concern. “What about Sydney?”
“At this stage, he’s okay,” she replied quickly. “He was clearly out of the building by the time you were actually discovered missing.” Shannon dimpled at him. “That’s why we went through the results of that sim first.”
“You really thought that through, didn’t you?”
“It’s kind of like doing a sim,” she responded thoughtfully. “You get the problem and work out the best solution according to the limitations that the Boss sets down - but then you actually get to see your work put into practice and produce a result, which makes it a lot more worthwhile. That’s one of the reasons I decided to work with the Boss.”
Jarod remained silent for a while, before asking something that had been intriguing him for the whole day. “Will you tell me what happened last night?”
She laughed. “You mean before or after that drug took effect?’
He smiled faintly. “After. I think I can remember the ‘before’, or most of it, anyhow.”
“Well, according to the plan of what was supposed to happen to you, after Dan escorted you from the room, you would have passed out just outside the door to your room. As that was happening, the security system was being looped with pre-taped footage, so it looked like you were in your room and I was setting up the sim lab for your return. Then Dan would have been met by another of our sweepers and put you on a trolley, which would have been taken to the northern service elevator and down to the ground floor, where Nat was waiting with the car.”
“And you?”
“I was creeping along the air vents to the southern service elevator. From the southern exit, I got to the car and the plan said we were supposed to creep out of the carpark and disappear, but it didn’t go quite that well.”
Jarod's eyebrows rose. “How come?”
Shannon grinned half-heartedly. “Josh figured out that this was one of our bigger projects, not just going to data storage facilities and helping ourselves to information stored there, which we do on a regular basis. When I wouldn’t let him come and help, he hid in the trunk of the car. While I was inside the Centre, he must have gotten out and tried to find me. It seems that he was still in the parking lot when Dan helped Nat get you into the car, and had just been spotted when I made it back. It kind of went downhill from there.”
“And how’s your car?”
“Well, it’s probably time for a new one,” she suggested. “It’s got a few holes here and there, and the front windows are both smashed. The roof had the paint stripped from it by the boom gate at the entrance, so it’s probably best to clean it of prints, dump it and get another one.”
“Can you afford that?”
She eyed him curiously. “Most people don’t have much idea of money when they first get out.”
He sighed. “Quite a lot of the sims I did recently had to do with finances. I spent a few months on one about the stock market recently.”
Shannon nodded. “Well, to answer your question, I don’t have a lot of my own money, although I do work, but if we need things like cars, or even this house,” with a gesture of demonstration, “ we use money from certain Centre bank accounts that Nat arranged access to, for replacing anything that might be destroyed or damaged during conflicts with the Centre, or buying things we couldn’t afford normally.”
“Isn’t that a little illegal?”
“Not considering that we worked for those people without pay for years. If you look at the sums of money they got for our results, it’s really only fair.”
“Who did you work with?”
“Raines, for a while. That bald man who came in with you last night,” Shannon added in explanation, before sighing, her usually pleasant expression dimming. “I don’t know if you can imagine what a relief it was when I found out that I never had to work with him again. It was hard enough just to have to talk to him yesterday. If he hadn’t left when he did, I think I would have had a screaming fit.”
“That wouldn’t exactly have given them the impression that you were a visiting Italian psychiatrist, would it?” Jarod suggested with a small smile, his confidence building as he became more used to being outside the Centre and not under anyone’s control.
“Well, maybe not.” She shrugged and grinned. “And it’s nice to know that I can even fool another Pretender, especially one of the Centre’s best.”
He turned away in embarrassment, unused to receiving compliments, but looked back when the phone rang. Shannon checked the small screen that showed the number and then grinned.
“Hey, Josh. Let me guess. You got a convenient invite to stay the night at Pete’s house.”
Jarod could faintly hear a voice speaking and saw the expression in Shannon’s eyes become a little tense, the grin slowly fading.
“You’ll have to come home one day,” she argued. “And Jarod won’t be going anywhere. Not yet.”
He saw her roll her eyes. “All right, just for tonight,” she finally agreed. “But promise me that you’ll be home tomorrow.”
Jarod guessed that he agreed, because she said goodbye and disconnected the call, putting the phone down on the table before looking up at him.
“Joshua’s a little nervous about meeting you,” she explained, and he nodded.
“I can understand that.”
“Yeah, I guess you can,” she agreed, smiling. “In the meantime, Nat wants you to go into some details for him about your current sims so that we can check we’ve got everything.”
“And you can get some rest, Prodge,” a female voice from behind Jarod suggested, and he turned to find his father and Cecilia.
“Do I have a new car yet?” Shannon demanded.
“That’s part of what we’ve got to do this afternoon,” Charles explained. “But you’ll have it when you wake up, if you have a nap now.”
“Love to,” she told him. “Can’t. I got another article this morning and the deadline for the editing is tonight.”
“So miss the deadline,” Nat argued, coming up behind the other two people.
“And get fired,” Shannon retorted, standing up as Jarod also rose to his feet. “I don’t know about you, but I like eating, and we won’t be doing much of that unless I keep working.”
“We can always borrow more from the Centre’s accounts,” Nat proposed, but Charles shook his head.
“We agreed a long time ago to limit what we took that for, and essentials like food weren’t part of the plan. That’s why we all work outside this, if you’ll remember.” He turned to Shannon. “We’ll be pretty late, but I’ve still got your spare key from last night, so I can let Jarod back in and you can have an early night. Deal?”
“Sure.” She grabbed the phone off the table and disappeared into her room while Jarod turned to his father, Cecilia and Nat, wondering what was going to happen now.
A car stood in the driveway and, at Nat’s invitation, Jarod got into the front passenger seat while his father drove and the others sat in the back.
“I haven’t told them the truth about who you are, Jarod,” the older man murmured as he started the ignition. “I think Prodge was going to tell you about our secrecy procedures.”
“She did,” he agreed in similarly quiet tones.
“It’s not because I don’t want to,” Charles assured him, casting a tender glance at his son that warmed the young man’s heart. “But I can’t risk their safety – or mine, or, more importantly to me, yours.”
“I understand, Boss,” Jarod agreed, careful to use the name the others did and seeing his father smile warmly, reaching over to gently squeeze his hand as they drove through the open gates.
Jarod stared incredulously at the world outside the gates, feeling almost overwhelmed at the variety of colors and shapes surrounding him. Leaning back in the seat, he briefly closed his eyes, wondering whether it would all have disappeared when he opened them again, but immensely relieved when it didn’t. He had never realized how many things there were in the world, and stared around in amazement, wondering if he would ever know the names of all these things he had never seen.
Seeming to understand how he felt, Nat leaned forward from the back seat and began to name some of the things they passed. Out of the corner of his eye, Jarod saw his father nod occasionally, as if in emphasis, and made more careful note of those items. He guessed that his father would make time for them to be alone so that they could talk, and Jarod wanted to ensure that he would know as much as possible of what was being discussed.
Shannon
Shannon finished the article she was correcting and sent it off before considering whether to make dinner for herself or order take-out. Eventually, she chose pizza and rang up to order something home-delivered, ensuring that she had a half made up almost plain so that Jarod could try it if he was hungry when he got home.
Paying for the pizza when it arrived, she took half of it and a can of Dr. Pepper into the living room and flicked on the TV.
After only two slices, she pushed the rest aside, somewhat surprised at herself, knowing that she could usually eat everything on her plate. Shrugging slightly, she put the slices into a container in the fridge, wrote a note for Jarod with heating directions and left it on the bench, sliding a tray, on which the other half of the pizza had been put, into the cold oven.
Suddenly exhausted, Shannon went into her room and turned back the covers, slipping off her shoes and snuggling in under the covers. She couldn’t understand what was making her so tired, but thought it might be a reaction to the previous night. When her stomach rumbled, she rubbed it with a weary hand, laying her aching head against the pillows, her eyes closing immediately.
Jarod
After a drive of several hours, Charles parked the car in front of a large house. It shared a front garden with the house next door, in the front garden of which Jarod could see several children playing. When the four people got out, the youngest girl shrieked and ran towards the gate. As soon as they were inside the property, she grabbed Nat’s hand and pulled him in the direction of the area in which they had been playing.
“Call me when you need me,” the young man directed as he sat down on the grass and four other children tumbled into his lap.
“Kids love Nat,” Cecilia explained, as Charles knocked on the front door. “And he loves them.”
The house, as Jarod looked around the entrance, was different from the apparently very modern building he had just left. This was grand, in a style that gave the feeling of age, and the furniture supported that, being mostly made of wood and looking heavy. Of the three occupants, two were women, one substantially older than the other, and the man was about the same age as the younger woman, with features similar enough to suggest a biological relationship. Jarod had the feeling he had met the younger woman, and, from the smile she sent in his direction, he thought she might have felt the same.
“This is Jarod,” the Boss introduced him. “Jarod, these are Tom, his sister Margaret, otherwise Meg, and their mother Lucy.”
Jarod shook hands all round, quick to note the subconscious possession that Lucy showed to her children and forced to wonder whether his own mother would treat him the same way if -- when they found her. Seeing the way in which Meg reacted to it, however, Jarod realized that neither minded.
“Welcome to the real world,” Tom greeted him. “And long may you be free to enjoy it.”
Flexing a polite smile, unsure of the correct way to respond to this, Jarod followed the others into the living room and through it into a smaller room with no windows. Several large photographs of the Centre interiors were stuck up on the walls, as well as a map of the area Cecilia told him was Blue Cove, where the Centre was located, and its surrounds. The room also contained a sofa, a number of armchairs and a large dining table with chairs. Lucy waved the group towards the comfortable seats and opened a white box that stood in the corner, which Cecilia murmured to him was called a fridge, taking out cans of drink and glasses. Jarod was given a can of drink called 7-Up as he sat down, and watched the others to see how to open it. The cold sweetness was a delight, and he eagerly took a larger mouthful before paying attention to the conversation that had begun.
Charles pulled a roll of paper out of the pocket of his leather jacket and unrolled it onto the table, using several people’s cans to hold it flat. In a corner of the map, Jarod could see a legend that provided symbols for trees, bushes, roads, railway lines and buildings.
“This is the next place,” he told the group. “The Centre is about 45 miles east, so even if they do get a chance to call for help, it’ll be a long time coming and we’ll be gone, with or without our unfortunate target.”
“Where will the person be supposedly sent?” Meg asked.
“Donoterase,” the Boss responded. “The paperwork’s already gone through. The van will leave the Centre the day after tomorrow at about 5am. We’ll be waiting for it.”
Tom groaned. “Couldn’t you have made it in the evening?” he complained.
Jarod saw his father arch an eyebrow and noticed that the sparkle had vanished from his eyes.
“Our last night raid outside the Centre was when we lost Peter,” Charles reminded him coolly. “Do you want those circumstances repeated?”
“Sorry,” the man muttered.
Ignoring this, Charles turned to Meg. “I want those shooting abilities you’ve been honing. I was going to put Shannon on this case, but I told you about what happened the other night, so I want you instead.”
The young woman nodded, glancing at the plan in front of them. “Where?” she asked.
Jarod saw his father point to an area thickly surrounded by bushes, some distance from the road. “The van will be here,” he explained. “The actual ambush site is only a short distance away, but far enough that it’ll be out of sight.”
“And I’ve got a new toy that will help,” Nat announced as he entered the room and sat down on the arm of the chair in which Jarod sat. “I hope it’ll scramble the sweepers’ radio signals. If it works outside the Centre, there’s a chance we might get it to work inside, too. I’m still playing with that part of it.”
“What else did you find out in your usual sweep of the security system last night?” Cici asked as she handed him a can from the small refrigerator.
“Jarod's pursuit team,” the young man announced with a grin, and reached into the pocket of his jacket, extracting three photos.
The Pretender tensed as he saw Sydney's face on the first picture that Nat placed on the table in front of him, eyeing the man’s familiar features.
“This is Mr. Broots,” Nat announced as he put down the second photo. “Married with one child: a ten-year old girl called Debbie. He’s just filed for divorce from his wife. He’s been working at the Centre for eight years, but this is his first break into the big league.” Nat looked up at his boss and grinned. “He’s taking over from Sandy in tech. The PTBs seem to think it was partly Sandy’s fault that we got Jarod out so easily.”
“Dead?” Charles asked tersely.
“She won’t be talking any time soon,” the technician assured him.
“So how good is this Mr. Broots?” Cici asked.
“One of the best in his class,” Nat replied. “I’m surprised they haven’t used him before. I’m going to enjoy matching wits with him. He came close to discovering my back door into the system, but luckily he didn’t.”
“If he gets close, crash the system,” Charles ordered. “We can’t lose that link.”
“We do have a backup plan for that,” the young man reminded him.
“And we can only use it once,” the Boss snapped. “Like I said, Nat, the system comes down if you think we’re going to lose our link.”
“Yes, sir,” Nat murmured, before looking at the last picture. “This is the third person on the team, and she’s probably the best hound-dog they’ve got.” He put the third photo on the table. “Ladies and gentlemen – Miss Parker.”
