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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 9
Jarod
They were only ten minutes away from landing on Carthis, and the atmosphere on the boat was tense.
“Do we really know what we’re looking for?” Emily demanded in soft tones.
“The Vespusians,” her brother replied, similarly quietly. “Catherine Parker used the paper with the watermark to show that there was a connection between them and the scrolls.”
“And we have to beat the Centre to them,” Nat added grimly.
“We’ve been outrunning the Centre for years,” Cici reminded him gently. “We can do it again.”
Jarod felt that Joshua, squashed in between him and the side of the boat, was trembling, his eyes on the small amount of water at their feet, and placed his hand over that of his clone, squeezing gently. It had taken quite a lot of persuasion to convince Nat to leave Shannon, but Jarod felt that it was important for the boy to be there, so eventually they had taken Shannon and Sofia back to Shannon’s house, chartered a plane and headed for Carthis.
A moment later, the boat pulled into a protected harbor and the guide they had hired managed to toss a mooring rope over one of the few anchoring joists.
“Good luck, folks,” he said meaningfully. “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for the world.”
Charles tucked a folded monetary note into the pilot’s hand as he jumped off the boat and accepted the bag that Nat handed him before the young technician leapt ashore, the others following. Jarod hauled the rope off the mooring point and tossed it back onto the boat, where the man received it with thanks and then started his engine again.
“So what now?” Nat asked.
“One thing we don’t do,” Charles replied authoritatively, “is mention the Vespusians, the scrolls or the Centre. To anyone. Clear?”
The group nodded and then headed for the old-fashioned town, with its cobblestone streets and horse-drawn carriages.
“We know the Ves – they are a religious sect,” Nat offered in a low voice, “so let’s try churches or religious centers of some description.”
“Like the monks,” Emily remarked, nodding at the cowled figures walking through the streets.
“If we seek help from them, we’ll probably have to tell them why we’re looking,” Jarod suggested. He had no idea why he so desperately wanted to keep their hunt as secret as possible, only that it seemed urgent for it to happened that way.
“Then we’ll look for ourselves first,” his father replied. He nodded at a nearby signpost. “There’s a chapel. We might as well start there as anywhere.”
Further signs directed them to a ‘footpath to the Chapel’. Silence had fallen over the entire group and they hurried along, single file.
Then Charles, who was leading, stopped abruptly.
The others gathered around to find him looking down at a stone column, which stood about waist-high. Climbing plants had obviously once covered it, but these had been cleaned off. Jarod saw his father’s mouth move, but no sounds came out as he dumbly waved a hand at it.
The image on the marker was the octagon with the eight skulls.
A combination of hope and fear gripped Jarod's heart. He reached out to touch the engraving, quickly realizing that the stone was solid, and nothing could have been hidden inside the column. He looked up at those around him, glanced at the chapel and spoke only one word.
“Inside.”
Nat opened his bag and pulled out two guns, handing one to Jarod and flicking the safety off the other, before slipping it into the holster hanging at his side. “It’s loaded,” he warned the Pretender. “So be careful.”
The building loomed in front of them, and in the twilight, the name of the chapel, was difficult to read. They only glanced briefly at it before hurrying inside.
Movement in one corner drew Jarod's eye there, and he hurried towards it, the gun held out in front of him, safety off, even as the others entered and fanned out around the room.
Jarod stopped in front of a door, hesitated for a moment, and then reached out to open it.
A figure cringed inside, then looked up at him, and he gasped. The woman tried to brush past him, but he grabbed her arm in a crushing grip.
“M… Mom?”
She stopped fighting, looked up at him, and then stared wildly around at the others in the chapel, who had ceased to search and had turned to see what was going on. Out of the corner of his eye, Jarod saw his father bound forward, beside them in an instant.
“Margaret!”
The woman stared blankly at him for an instant, before a sound like a suppressed sob escaped from her mouth and she pulled herself away from Jarod's grasp to fall into her husband’s arms. Emily, Jarod suddenly realized, was standing beside him, and Margaret released an arm from her husband’s hold to stroke the girl’s face. Her daughter clutched her hand and held it tight.
“Oh, Emily.”
Charles looked down at his wife, his brown eyes glowing. “Don’t you recognize our boy, Meg?”
Margaret looked up at the man standing beside them, and then tears filled her blue eyes. “Jarod,” she whispered. “Oh, my baby Jarod.”
She stepped away from her husband and into his arms, reaching up to stroke his face and hair, planting kisses on his forehead and cheeks. His arms wrapped around her, feeling her heart beating in her chest under her cape. Her red hair, containing strands of gray, was pulled back in a tight knot, and lines creased her face, but otherwise she looked little different from the way she had in photos Charles had shown him. Jarod felt as if his heart would burst at the knowledge that he had found her at last, and tears pricked his eyes as he tried to speak but found himself unable to do so.
Suddenly, a dull roar that Jarod realized he had heard in the background for the past few minutes became louder. Nat dashed to the entrance of the chapel and then looked back, his loud cry full of panic.
“The Centre!”
Abandoning the reunion, the group raced to the door, looking up to see a helicopter hovering over the island. It gradually came in to land, some distance from the chapel.
“Now what?” Charles yelled over the noise.
“The crypt,” Margaret exclaimed. “We have to get there before they do!”
Panic urged everyone to instant flight, and Margaret led them through the grounds and across to a door hidden by ivy, which she swept aside, ushering them in. They all hurried after her.
No, not all.
Jarod, missing something, turned back to see Joshua stumble along the path and fall. He dashed towards the door, only to find his way blocked by a monk in a dark brown cowl.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the man snarled. “What do you want? This is sacred ground.”
A feeling of power surged through Jarod, and he stood straighter, meeting the man’s gaze. He recalled a snippet of information that Nat had found about the Vespusians: that many monks were strong believers in magic. Over the monk’s shoulder, he met his clone’s eyes. Joshua had found his feet again and was only a few feet behind the two people, hesitating.
“I am here to guard the tomb,” Jarod proclaimed, thankful that he had slid the gun into his pocket, having flicked the safety off, before embracing his mother. “I have the power to protect those within. You must leave.”
“What power?” the monk snapped, taking a step closer.
“I can alter my form at will,” Jarod intoned, feeling like he was involved in a complicated sim. He waved a hand behind the monk to where Joshua stood, and saw understanding flash in the boy’s eyes. Joshua straightened and, being dressed in a black outfit similar to Jarod's, the two looked remarkably alike. “Behold.”
The monk glanced over his shoulder and gasped at the sight of the boy behind him. Jarod took instant advantage of the moment to slam the butt of his gun against the man’s head. Even as the limp body slumped at his feet and Jarod returned his gun to his pocket with one hand, Jarod held out his other hand to his clone and together they ran into the crypt.
“Here!” Margaret’s voice exclaimed aloud, and the whole group ran over to her.
She had cleared the dust off a stone coffin that stood in the middle of a circle of others and now the seven people leaned over to read the inscription.
“I tego arcane dei,” Jarod pronounced. “Be gone, for I conceal the secrets of God.”
“Perfect for the Centre,” his mother declared. “This would be the ideal place for the scrolls to be hidden.”
Somehow it didn’t seem strange to Jarod that Margaret, too, would be hunting for the scrolls. That she was here seemed like pure fate, and he wasn’t going to argue. Instead, he put all his weight behind the stone lid and, aided by Josh, Nat and Charles, got it to move aside.
Inside, lying on the bones, were two bundles. Margaret grabbed them with a sigh of relief. “I was so afraid the Centre would get here first.”
“Who says we didn’t?” a new voice demanded, and the group spun around as one.
Mr. Parker stood in the doorway of the chapel, half a dozen sweepers behind him, all of whom were armed and pointing their guns at the fugitives.
“Put the scrolls back,” Mr. Parker ordered, “and move away from the coffin.”
Jarod felt something sharp poking into his back and, partly hidden, as he was, behind his father and Emily, he risked putting his hands behind him to feel the scrolls loaded into them. Then Margaret took a step towards the coffin and placed two large, wrapped parcels onto the skeleton, before moving back to rejoin the group. Then, as they shuffled around the room, Jarod managed to slip one of the scrolls into Nat’s bag and the other into the bag his mother carried, from which she had apparently taken the parcels that she had put into the coffin.
When they were halfway between the door and the coffin, Mr. Parker stepped forward to the ring of stone coffins. The sweepers spread out, still training their guns on the seven people. Jarod felt he could barely breathe, and reached out to take his mother’s hand. Even if they were all going to die here, together, at least he would know what it felt like to touch her. Her fingers slid between his and held tightly.
Mr. Parker lifted the two bundles out of the coffin and sighed, “Long live the Centre.” Then a grin crossed his face. “And as soon as we destroy this garbage, we’ll never have to worry about any stupid prophesies ever again.”
A sudden burst of sound from outside the crypt made him look up quickly to see a large group of monks running towards the underground room. Before anyone could move, the first of them burst in at the door, shouting protests. It was then, and for the first time, that Jarod noticed the absence of the monk he had knocked out, and guessed that he had gone for help.
“The tombs!” one of the monks cried. “They have desecrated the tombs.”
“And they have the scrolls,” another screamed in protest. “The sacred scrolls. No one may take them. They belong here.”
The sweepers were instantly distracted from their duties, being confronted by a group whom they had no orders to kill. The scrolls were torn violently from Mr. Parker’s hands, and a group of men in dark cowls surrounded him. A group of angry men.
Jarod poked his father’s back and nodded in the direction of the door, which was now clear for them to get out. Silently, unseen by the furious monks and fearful Centre employees, the group slipped out of the crypt.
“How do we get away?” Emily begged.
“Their helicopter,” Nat suggested with a grin. Then, nodding in the direction of the crypt, “They won’t be needing it again.”
“Can you fly it, Jarod?” Charles begged as they ran through the empty streets to the place where the machine had landed.
“We’ll soon find out,” his son replied grimly, and put on an extra burst of speed.
He had found time to finish the book he had begun reading on his first night of freedom, and now only hoped that this helicopter would be the same as the one he had read about then. He sighed with relief when the instrument panel looked familiar, and barely waited for the others to climb in before he pressed the button that started the rotors spinning, putting on his headphones with his other hand.
Thankfully for his interest in new things, Jarod felt the helicopter lift off the ground and checked the level of fuel in the tank, hoping it would be enough to get them to Glasgow airport, where their plane was waiting. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw his parents and Emily sitting on the bench that ran along one side of the interior, Margaret in the middle, in her husband’s arms and with her arms around Emily. Nat and Cici sat opposite, and Joshua was in the seat beside Jarod. As the helicopter turned towards Glasgow, Josh gave his progenitor a grin.
“We sure tricked that monk,” the boy gurgled, his voice coming clearly through the headphones, and Jarod grinned in response.
“Yes, we did,” he agreed. “Great job, Josh.”
The boy gazed out through the Perspex for a moment, before looking up again. “What do you think will happen to them?”
Jarod didn’t answer that. He couldn’t bring himself to tell the boy that, from what Nat had found, those who were discovered with the scrolls by the monks were often found dead in the woods, several days later. Jarod doubted they would be able to return to the Centre to tell people there what had happened, and, briefly, he wondered how Miss Parker would feel about her father’s disappearance.
The sun was setting now, the sky streaked with red, and Jarod saw Josh settle back against the co-pilot’s seat, staring blankly out at the hazy horizon ahead of them. Jarod understood how he felt, as the adrenalin faded and he also began to tire. He hoped that, for the flight home, he could get a few hours’ sleep before taking over from his father as pilot.
They were flying over the Atlantic, the east coast of America a vague blur on the horizon, when Jarod woke. He and Charles had alternated the flying between them, in two hours shifts, but as they were so close to landing, Charles had told his son to sleep for the rest of the flight. Now, however, at the end of a two-hour nap, Jarod was awake again.
He looked lazily around himself at the plane’s interior. The seats could be folded down into beds, which sufficed for five of them, Jarod and Charles alternating the use of a pile of pillows in one corner of the plane.
Jarod lifted his head from the pillows, and then felt that someone was sitting on the floor beside him. Looking up, he found his mother next to him, her eyes fixed on his face, and smiled, moving over to rest his head on her lap. Immediately, she began stroking his hair.
“Oh, Jarod.” The whisper was full of longing. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
He rolled over to look up into her blue eyes, which, only just visible in the dim light, were shining with happiness and unshed tears.
“I missed you,” he told her softly, before honesty forced him to add, “for as long as they’d let me remember you.”
“I know, baby,” she crooned. “I know what they do. I know what they’re like.”
“Did Catherine tell you?”
“Yes.” Margaret sighed. “She told me what they would do to you.”
“Why, Mom?” He captured her free hand and held it against his chest. “Why did they take me away from you? What did they really want?”
She looked up, and Jarod followed her gaze to the two bags that lay on the floor of the plane. “I don’t know, Jarod. I suppose we’ll find out when we read them. Catherine said that, whenever I found the scrolls, then I’d know everything.”
“How did you meet? What did she tell you?”
Margaret smiled tenderly at him. “She told me what a beautiful, intelligent, wonderful son I had. I knew it already, of course,” she added, in a teasing tone, “but it was nice to have it confirmed by someone else.”
He grinned, glad that the darkness hid the flush of embarrassment in his cheeks. “Was that all?”
Her smile faded. “No, baby. It wasn’t. She told me about some of your sims. Some of hard ones.” Margaret’s voice filled with pain. “All I’ve wanted to do, ever since you were born, was protect you, Jarod, but I couldn’t.”
Jarod pulled himself into a sitting position, putting his arm around his mother and holding her close. There were no words he could offer that would comfort her, but he hoped that the simple act of holding her would persuade her that he was really there and that now she could protect him as much as she wanted.
Charles
The apartment block that housed Cici and Nat’s homes was closest to the airport, so the group went there. Charles, his wife in the seat beside him, and able to see his son and daughter in the rearview mirror, sighed in satisfaction. This was the way his life should always have been, with his children teasing each other, and his wife laughing at them, but with the love they felt for each other almost palpable. Margaret placed her hand on his knee, squeezing gently, and he knew that she felt the same. He never imagined that he would find her on Carthis, and was yet to find out why she had gone in search of the scrolls, but that could wait. Everything could wait while he relished this moment.
All too soon, however, he pulled up in front of the nondescript building in which Nat and Cici lived and got out. As always, the Centre, in one form or another, ruined the few special moments that he managed to spend with his family.
“Soon, Dad,” Jarod murmured. “We’ll be able to have that time again soon.”
Charles looked up at his son with a smile “Are you always going to do that to me?”
Jarod chuckled softly. “Only if you always make it that easy for me.”
Nat unlocked the door as the others approached and they hurried inside, as if suddenly urgent to get a proper look at the scrolls inside the two bags. Nobody bothered about drinks or food; they quickly gathered around the low coffee table and the large bundles were carefully extracted from the bags.
Suddenly Cici looked at Margaret. “Obviously you brought fake scrolls with you. Why?”
The redhead smiled. “From what I knew of the scrolls, I guessed that nobody had read them, so I thought, if I replaced them with gibberish that at least looked like them, no one would ever need to know I’d done it.”
“Did Catherine tell you what they looked like?” the doctor asked.
“She did describe them to me once, yes,” Margaret agreed, glancing at her daughter. “She was taking Em and me to another place she hoped was safe when she first mentioned them to me, but she couldn’t give me many details about where they were because she was still trying to find them herself. She’d seen them once, though, and knew what they looked like.”
“Why now?” Charles asked, watching his son gently undo the tie around the rolls, which suddenly fell apart between his fingers. “What made you go and look for them now?”
“I don’t know, really.” His wife shrugged. “It just seemed right, somehow. Everything fell into place – the weather, having the money to pay for the journey, it having been so long since the Centre caught up with me.”
Nobody responded to this, as Jarod had begun to unroll the first of the scrolls and they all leaned over eagerly to read what it said.
“The Centre shall rise,” Jarod read aloud, his eyes widening. “The Chosen will be found, a boy named…”
He broke off, sitting back on his heels and staring at the scroll.
“Go on, son,” Charles said, his voice cracking.
Jarod
It took a nudge from Nat before Jarod seemed to hear. He cleared his throat, nodded slightly, and leaned over the table to continue. “The Chosen will be found, a boy named Jarod. He shall rule the Centre and shall be reborn with many names but always the same face.” Jarod shot a glance at Joshua, who was listening in silence, his mouth open. “He shall lead the greatest minds in the world, to the benefit of many, and the detriment of few. His wisdom and knowledge shall guide them along the proper path. On this scroll, his best and brightest acts shall be recorded for all time.”
He sat back again with a sigh that hissed from between his clenched teeth and seemed to echo around the room.
“That’s it?” Nat asked, leaning over to roll the scroll out further, but it moved only an inch or two, and it was obvious that the rest was blank, leaving space for the predicted acts.
“What about this?” Emily asked, holding up the second scroll.
Jarod held out his hand for the wrapped parcel and Joshua moved the first scroll off the table, beginning to roll it up, as Jarod opened the second, the tie disintegrating, as it had on the first scroll. The group groaned when they saw that the majority of the scroll was blank.
“This scroll shall record the names of those who work with the Chosen to overcome the struggles that shall be presented to him. It shall be a roll of honor for those who come after.”
“But there’s no names on it,” Joshua complained.
“It’s for our names,” Cici told the boy gently. “And for all those who help Jarod – and you.”
“You see, son,” Charles said suddenly. “I said it was you.”
A moment of silence passed while the group stared at Jarod, waiting for him to respond, but the Pretender seemed unable to move, staring blankly at the carpet. But when, finally, he lifted his head, his eyes were burning with a determined light.
“You know what this means,” he said softly. “For anyone who believes in these scrolls, we would be seen as the rightful leaders of the Centre.”
“We are,” Cici corrected. “You are.”
“But only to those who believe in the prophecy,” Jarod told her. “Think about it. Remember what Mr. Parker said. He called them garbage. He wouldn’t have said that if he really believed in them. If other people feel the same way and we march up there one day, demanding to be recognized as leaders of the Centre based on what these say, we’ll be locked up, or gunned down, before we can say another word.”
Another long silence followed this, before Charles nodded.
“You’re right, son. To do that would be suicide.”
“But how do we find people who believe in it?”
Emily’s question remained unanswered, being the verbalization of what they were all pondering.
“You know what I wonder,” Charles said eventually. “I wonder why the Centre left them unharmed for so long, only to go after them now.”
“We must have alerted them to the fact that someone was searching for them, when Jarod and Shannon opened that document,” Nat suggested. “Don’t forget, we took a few hours to arrange for the plane and everything, and then we had to wait until someone was willing to take us over to Carthis on the boat. And remember how the guy who took us went into the shed? And when he came out, he didn’t say anything, so I’ll bet…”
“Nat,” Charles interrupted sternly, “will you explain yourself properly?”
The young technician sighed with obvious impatience and resettled himself in the armchair in which he was now sitting. “Okay, I’ll start at the beginning and set the scene. It’s three o’clock on Friday morning when the alarm goes off in the Centre’s mainframe, telling them that somebody tripped a wire on a file about the scrolls. They don’t know who it is, but they do know that the scrolls are on Carthis somewhere. It’s a big island, and they haven’t wanted the monks to know they’re hunting for it, so they’ve never instigated a full-scale search before. But maybe, every time someone gets close to the scrolls, Mr. Parker and a team fly over to Glasgow to wait.”
“We know they hired the helicopter from Glasgow,” Charles agreed. “So it sounds good so far. Go on, Nat.”
Nodding, the young man continued. “So they fly over while we’re still arranging for the plane and working out exactly where we’re going. We take off at about six o’clock and it’s an eight-hour flight. I’d guess the Centre has a two-hour start on us. Maybe more, depending how powerful their jet is. So they sit around in a cushy hotel room in Glasgow until we get there and try to get a boat. Maybe they’ve paid or threatened the people who hired the boats to contact them as soon as we asked about going to Carthis. And so we’re being taken over there, while they give us an hour or so to arrive and start looking, and then take off in their helicopter from Glasgow. They figure, if we don’t find the scrolls, no harm done. They’ll catch us and take care of us so that we don’t go looking again.”
“So you’re suggesting it’s not the monks who were responsible for people dying,” Cici interrupted in her turn. “You’re saying its sweepers?”
“It’d hardly be the first time they’ve killed people,” Nat said drily, before picking up where he left off. “And if we do find them – as we did – then they’ve got them at last.”
Charles pulled himself up onto the sofa, his expression thoughtful. “I can’t believe anyone’s read these for years – maybe decades.”
“Because of the fact that the things tying them together just fell apart?” Josh suggested from his place on the floor beside Jarod, leaning against his progenitor’s shoulder, and the Boss nodded.
“So,” he continued, ”if that’s the case, how did Mr. Parker know what they really said?”
“Why would he have?” his wife asked curiously.
“Well, he knew they had something to do with Jarod,” he replied, even as Nat fished around in his bag for the copies of the letters he had found and printed out, handing them to the older woman. “The question,” Charles went on, seemingly oblivious to this, “is how might he have found out?”
“Catherine thought she knew what they said,” Margaret offered. “She told me they had something to do with my family, but she didn’t want to tell me what it was, in case it put me in danger.”
“And how did she find out?” her husband prompted. “I can only imagine that there’s someone who does or did know what they say – apart from us, I mean – and believes in it, too. Otherwise, why would the prophesy on the scrolls seem so powerful to a man like Mr. Parker, who doesn’t believe in it?”
“I… I don’t understand,” Cici offered hesitantly. “Can you make it clearer?”
Charles sighed impatiently, but Jarod, who had begun to recover from his shock enough to listen to what was being said, jumped in ahead of his father.
“From what he said, Mr. Parker obviously thinks the scrolls and the prophecy are worthless,” he explained to the blond woman. “But, if they’re really unimportant, why would he waste so much time and energy trying to find them? The only reason he’d do that was if someone was urging him to do so – someone more important than he is. If they had less power, he wouldn’t bother. The fact that he had bothered suggests that the person wanting them must be pretty important.”
“Oh, I see.” The doctor sat back in her chair. “So what was he going to do with them?”
“Remember what one of the sweepers was holding?” Josh remarked. “A roll of paper. Old-looking paper, too. Maybe he was going to make his own scrolls.”
“And I’ll bet they were probably going to put Mr. Parker at the top of the power tree,” Nat burst out eagerly. “It’d look pretty good for him if he presented the scrolls to those who wanted them, and then they have to turn around and worship him. Worth the time and energy.”
“But the only people more important than Mr. Parker are the Triumvirate,” Cici said thoughtfully. “I remember hearing him say that to Raines once.”
“The Triumvirate,” Charles breathed. “Oh, Lord. I’ve never come up against them directly before.”
“You might not have to,” Margaret pointed out. “If they believe in the scrolls, they’ll work with us, not against us.”
“What was on your scrolls?” Cici asked the older woman curiously.
“Nonsense,” the redhead smiled. “I made up my own little silly language and wrote a whole lot of meaningless drivel on that. If they do manage to decipher it, the last line tells them that I took the scrolls.”
Jarod smiled appreciatively at his mother. It was exactly the sort of thing he would have done in the same situation, and he could see from the sparkle of her eyes that she had enjoyed it as much as he would have.
“So what do we do now?” Emily asked wearily. “Waltz up during a Triumvirate meeting one day and hope for the best?”
“Not if I have any say in it,” her father said firmly. “We only go back to the Centre again when we can be fairly sure of the outcome, and I wouldn’t be, without knowing more about the situation.”
“Why don’t we take some time to think it over?” Jarod suggested, remembering the time when he had asked Sydney for the favor of some thinking time and been summarily refused. Now that he thought about that time, he remembered that the man he now knew to be Raines had been hovering in the background, which might have explained it.
“We could probably all do with a break,” Charles agreed. “And we can keep an eye on the Centre to see if they’ve heard anything about Mr. Parker and the others yet.”
Nat got out of his chair, urging Josh with him into the kitchen, where sounds suggested that they were getting food and drink. Charles leaned over the low table and rolled up the scrolls, taking out a cloth bag and gently placing them inside. Emily moved up onto the sofa beside her mother, who put her arm around her and held her close, whispering in her ear.
Jarod watched as Nat and Josh carried in a tray of food and another of glasses and a large jug of something pink and cold, judging by the beads on the outer side of the glass, as well as a pile of small plates, which Nat handed around. Most of the food was strange to Jarod, but he had a taste of everything and privately rejoiced in the new flavors: the sweeter, the better.
The group settled down around the table and, by unspoken consent, avoided anything to do with the Centre. Josh, Nat and Charles attempted to explain baseball to Jarod, with, admittedly, only limited success. The Pretender’s mind, in contradiction of his father’s orders, was engaged with the information he had just discovered, and he was unable to fully concentrate on what they were telling him. Cici gave Margaret and Emily some idea of the people who had been rescued by the Boss, particularly Shannon.
Suddenly, a ringing sound caused everyone to jump, but it took Jarod a moment to realize that it was a phone on a table in the corner.
“Let the machine get it,” Nat said carelessly. “It won’t be important.”
The answering machine, as Nat told Jarod it was called, beeped several time and a pre-recorded message announced that Nat was out but would call back later. Jarod eyed the device with some suspicion. It seemed strangely familiar to him. However, he forgot his surprise at finding one of his inventions being put to a positive use when he heard the voice on the message.
“Hi, Nat. It’s Prodge. I guess you’re still busy, but if you can grab a spare second from saving the world, would you mind coming around to visit? There’s something here I’d like to show you.”
The machine let out another cheerful beep, even as Nat leapt from his chair lunged for the phone, getting there a second too late. When he tried Shannon’s number, he listened for a second before putting the receiver back on the cradle.
“Busy.”
“Probably calling the rest of us,” Charles suggested, before draining his glass and then getting to his feet. “Who else is coming?”
“Me!”
The word was a chorus from everyone in the room, and they grabbed the bags that had earlier been dumped in the doorway as they entered. Within sixty seconds, the house was deserted and two cars were pulling away from the curb.
Jarod found himself in a car with Joshua, Cici and Nat, the young technician driving and Josh in the passenger seat. Glancing at the doctor, the Pretender spoke in a low voice.
“What do you think it is?”
She half-smiled. “I think I can guess, Jarod, but I won’t tell you. It can be a surprise.”
Turning to the window, she hummed softly as her fingers tapped on the glass, her green eyes gazing out at the lights that flashed past the car.
“Nat,” she said suddenly. “Slow down. You don’t need to hurry.”
The driver eyed her in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure?”
“Uh huh.”
She nodded, and Jarod felt the car slow immediately until it was going at the posted speed limit. A quick look over his shoulder showed Jarod his parents and sister in the car behind them, and he saw them also slow down to the same speed.
Jarod wondered at the anxiety he felt about Shannon. Logic told him that he hadn’t spent enough time with her to feel worried about her, but he knew that what he felt now was the same anxiety he had had about Sydney during his first discussion about his father, when it occurred to him that Sydney might be punished for his, Jarod's, disappearance. From everything he had read about relationships, it took time to build emotional connections between people. Yet, here he was, only a week after meeting these people and feeling as strongly about them as he had about anyone at the Centre.
Suddenly he felt Cici’s hand on his and turned his head to look at her. She smiled reassuringly at him.
“Don’t worry, Jarod. I’m sure she’s fine.”
He smiled in response, feeling his concern abate somewhat at her calm tone. “Surprises usually aren’t positive, in my experience,” he explained, feeling unable to put the truth of the matter into words that wouldn’t sound strange, and so taking refuge in a thought that had fleetingly crossed his mind when she had spoken earlier.
“Centre surprises,” she snorted, then, “There’s a big difference between in there and out here. I’d have expected you to have realized that by now.”
“It’s only been a few days,” he protested mildly.
“It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to see it,” she retorted, grinning, raising her hands, palm up, to shoulder height. “The Centre,” she said, lifting one briefly, “and the rest of the world,” she added, raising the other. “Apples and oranges. Chalk and cheese. Any fool should be able to tell that.”
Jarod grinned. “Guess I’m more than a fool, then.”
“I hope not,” she said, suddenly somber, “or else what’s going to happen to the rest of us?”
The meaningful tone of her voice caused him to stop short, his gaze sliding down to his feet, and his mind was suddenly crowded with images of his time at the Centre. Fear blossomed with terrifying suddenness and his hands tightened around the edge of the car seat. His heart fluttered in his chest and he felt strangely light-headed. Could he really bear to go back to that place now that he had experienced this brief and wonderful taste of freedom? At the mere idea, his mind seemed to go blank and thought became suddenly and horrifyingly impossible.
