Last Requests 
Part 6

The night had been a long, difficult, and at times awkwardly silent one. It was only when Jason – his name seemed more appropriate, the longer she spent with him – began a whimper, which only reduced in volume when he was handed back to her by the older woman, whose eyes and smile reminded Andrea almost painfully of Jarod, that Patrick suggested they leave. As it was obvious to the child’s mother that Jason would only sleep when he was tucked up in his new bed in the room beside hers, Andrea willingly agreed, starting to collect her son’s things. Ryan brought her the toys he and the baby had been playing with and packed them into the carry bag Andrea had had the foresight to bring. His genetic similarities to the man they had lost was obviously difficult to more than just her, and the pain in Ryan’s eyes on the single occasion they had mentioned Jarod showed that the clone was finding it as difficult as any of the others to cope with his loss. 

Fresh snow had covered the tracks the two adults and the stroller had made between the houses earlier in the evening, but it wasn’t deep enough to hinder their progress.

“Christmas next week,” Patrick said suddenly, his breath coming in white clouds from his mouth, and she turned a startled gaze on him.

“So it is.” She looked down at her son to find him gazing up at her out of his dark brown eyes and suddenly smiled. “We might have to go shopping for gifts in the next few days.”

“Should we invite the neighbors for Christmas dinner?” the man proposed as he unlocked the door, nodding in the direction from which they had come.

“Maybe,” she murmured, wanting more time to mentally evaluate the evening before committing herself one way or another to the idea. 

Finally maneuvering the stroller into the house, the two adults closed the door behind them and Andrea immediately leaned over her son, cradling him against her shoulder and smiling as he snuggled up to her with a satisfied ‘Mama’. 

“Take him to bed,” Patrick suggested, pushing the stroller into the free corner that was set aside for it, “and I’ll bring you something hot to drink.”

“Tea, please,” she responded somewhat absently. “Black, with no sugar.”

“I do remember,” he chuckled. “It hasn’t been that long since we were at the Centre.”

Smiling acquiescence, she carried Jason into his room and changed him into a sleeping suit. His big brown eyes were already drowsy when she picked him up again, carrying him into her room and sitting down on the sofa facing the window. Through the massive window, she could see the outline of the mountains against the cloudy sky and the occasional light from a house in the city below. 

Her son was a warm, heavy weight in her lap, and she suddenly bent her head to kiss the top of his head, feeling his breath, warm and regular, against her throat. A footstep in the doorway made her look up to find Patrick with two steaming mugs in his hands, one of which he put on the small table beside the sofa. 

“I’m going to bed,” he told her quietly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “See you then.”

As she stretched out an arm for her mug, her movement disturbed Jason, who wriggled slightly before settling again. A soft rustle of paper in her shirt pocket as he did so reminded her that, just before Marcus had arrived in her room at the hospital that morning, she had been about to read the note Jarod had included with the information about this hideaway and how she was to get there. She hadn’t even had a chance to get the note out of the envelope, and had put it in her pocket when Marcus had announced his arrival, feeling that it was private. 

She cast an eye at the drawer in which she had placed the rest of the package’s contents, gently laying her sleeping son against a sofa cushion and, after switching on the lamp on her bedside table, getting up to rescue the rest of the objects, with her own addition, carrying them back to the lounge and gently sitting down. 

Jarod's face smiled at her from the photograph and she managed a smile in return, feeling a pain in her chest that forced her to inhale deeply before averting her eyes. Picking it up, she carried it to the bookcase and reached for one of the boxed frames that Patrick told her had come with the house when he had been allocated it for the three of them. A picture of Catherine was already housed in one, and now she found another in which Jarod's photo would fit and carefully inserted the rectangle of photographic paper. Standing the frame on the shelf, she lightly touched the frame containing Catherine’s photo before returning to the sofa.

The folder that had held her airplane ticket was empty, but a feeling approaching sentimentality stopped her from throwing it and the sheet containing her address and new identity details away. Tucking the paper into the folder, she stood up again and returned to the bookcase, sliding the thin booklet under Jarod's framed photo. Turning, she saw the last two items lying on the cushion beside her son. 

Picking up the videocassette and removing the paper cover, she gasped as she saw the note attached to the case, which was in Jarod's familiar handwriting. ‘For my son’, it said, and Andrea felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes at the realization that Jarod knew about Jason, able to guess how much the knowledge of that project would have hurt him. She would show it to Jason when he woke up the next day, she decided, looking down at his baby features. Gently lifting him into her arms, she carried him into the next room, managing to turn back the covers and place him on the smooth sheet, his teddy bear tucked in beside him. Leaning over the bed, she placed a gentle kiss on his cheek before switching on the small nightlight and leaving the room. 

She found herself breathing slightly faster as she returned to her room, leaving her son’s door a little ajar so that she would hear if he woke up. Returning to her seat on the sofa, she saw that her name adorned the envelope, in Jarod's script, and turned the cream object over, loosening the flap and raising it to reveal a folded piece of paper. Gingerly extracting it, she found that it was written on both sides in handwriting that, at times, became increasingly shaky, and guessed that it had taken Jarod several sessions to complete. It was dated almost a week before his death and she half-smiled at the realization that he had prepared for the time after he was gone in so far as he was able. Knowing him as well as she did, that preparation didn’t come as a surprise. Closing her eyes briefly to compose herself, she opened them once more, gazing blankly at her reflection in the window, before turning to the letter she held.

‘Dear Miss Parker,

I’ve tried to start this several times, using your first name or the name we – that is, Sydney and I – decided was the most appropriate for you, but ‘Miss Parker’ is the name I’ve used for forty years, and somehow it fits now. Force of habit, I guess.

If you’re reading this, you’ll already know what it means. Although I can’t be sure, I’d guess that you waited until you were safe in the home Marcus provided for you, Sydney and Angelo before reading it. If not, I’d suggest that you wait to read further until that happens. There will be things there that you need to confront, and any advice I have to offer before you know the truth will only confuse things. I know that confusion is not something you need in your life right now.

I don’t like goodbyes, as you might have noticed, but I can’t slip away without one last chance to say some things to you that I’ve held off saying for a long time. I hope to see you once more, and maybe tell you them in person, but I can’t guarantee that that’s going to be a realistic possibility, so this is the most reliable form of communication.

If you don’t already know, now is the time to ask Marcus about Project NG – New Generation. Although it was only activated four years ago, it’s been in the planning for decades – ever since they first tested both of us as Red Files. Then it was temporarily put on hold. They, Raines, Mr. Parker and the Triumvirate, had to wait until the technology was at a level that they could guarantee the result. That happened four years ago. To ensure that it was a success, they impregnated Bridget, and Jason, our son, was the result.

I’ve known about Project NG ever since I escaped. It took me a week to work out all the details, and was the main reason I didn’t immediately begin my pretends in the real world. As much as anything, I had to cope with what they’d done to me. To both of us. I have to confess that it was hard not to immediately expose the Centre, but that would have threatened too many people I loved there. I will confess that you weren’t one of those people at the time, but discovering you were the mother of my son rapidly changed my views.

I tried to stop NG, but various projects were set up as methods of distraction, transferal orders were faked, and security was tightened to an incredible level, beyond anything you would ever have seen. If I’d known that Bridget was to be such a vital part of it, I would never have allowed her to gain the power she did after Mr. Parker disappeared the first time, a year after my initial escape. She was always the weak link in the chain of command, and everyone involved was aware of that fact. Her marriage to Mr. Parker tied her to the Centre, and she knew it.

The reason I’ve spent so long discovering the truth about your family and feeding it to you in the way I did for the previous six years was because I felt I had to prize your loyalty away from the man you believed was your father. I don’t flatter myself that it was painful for you: I can guess how much it would have hurt you, and for that I’m sorry, but I was thinking mainly of our son and the fact that I might not be around to help him get away from the Centre and grow into the man he deserves to become. I knew the Centre would be unlikely to let me live for too long. I was always a liability while I was free, and if the virus hadn’t killed me, I have no delusions that I could have permanently avoided a fatal bullet. Now, they have succeeded.

This leaves you to give our son everything he needs. Please, help him grow into the man he has the potential to be. As the Centre planned, he’s likely to develop not only my skills as a pretender, but also the inner sense you inherited from your mother. All you can do is help him learn how to deal with the information that will provide him with. Sydney and Ethan will be able to help him learn the basics, and you can provide him with the love he will need. 

I have made him a video, with a personal message for him, so that he at least knows what I look like. Believe me, it’s agony that I will never see him, beyond the photos that Marcus brought to show me, but I couldn’t let him see me the way I am now. I wouldn’t want his only memory of his father to be the image of me as I see myself today. I’m only grateful that he has the chance to grow up out of the shadow cast by the Centre. 

I know that my family want to be a part of his life, and I can imagine that any meetings that might occur between you and them could be somewhat tense. I wouldn’t expect either you or them to act in ways that go against your inherent natures. All I would ask is that you give them a chance to get to know Jason. My death will leave a gaping hole in their lives, and I hope that my son will, in some way, fill that empty space. 

Miss Parker, I’m not going to burden you with any of my emotions – your own will be enough. All I ask is that you don’t let my son forget me. If the dead watch over the living, be sure that I will do my best to always take care of my son, the rest of my family, Sydney, Angelo and you. I don’t know whether you consider that to be a comfort or a burden. 

Have a good life. Be happy. Love our son. Goodbye.

Jarod.’

Andrea blotted away the tears that had dimmed her eyes and reverently returned the letter to the envelope, rising to tuck it under the man’s photo. Switching off the light, she lay on the sofa, one of the cushions held against her chest, gazing out over the city below, seeing as lights were switched off one by one, leaving whole areas dark, apart from the occasional streetlight. Only the section of the city in which the security building was located remained illuminated. She would work there in a few months, once she had become used to having a son and adapted to the many changes that her new environment would present. 

But for now, in company with the others who had lost such an important figure, she would mourn: for the son whose father had been taken before he could know him; for the mother and father who had regained their son, only to lose him again; for Sydney, who had lost the person in whom he had put so much of his life and energy, and who he had loved like a son; for Jarod's sister, brother and clone, who would never really know the person they had lost; and for herself who had spent so long denying Jarod a place in her life, only to discover what she had lost when it was too late. 

Going over to the wardrobe, she chose a nightgown from the selection that had been delivered to the house during her first afternoon there, and which a team had apparently taken from her home in Delaware, and headed into the bathroom for the long soak she had promised herself earlier that day. Half filling the tub, she thankfully shed her clothes and was about to slip into the faintly scented, steaming water when she heard a voice calling from the next room. 

“Mama!”

Sighing, she took the robe off the hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around herself as she left the room. Jason was standing in the doorway of his room, rubbing one eye as he looked around. When she appeared, he held out both hands, and she picked up him. Her son snuggled against her, looking up at her out of his dark eyes, so like those of his father.

“Mama, can I have a baff with you?”

She looked down at him in astonishment. “How did you know what I was going to do, baby?”

He giggled, clutching at her robe. “Daddy telled me.”

Andrea froze, staring at him, and then saw movement at the end of the hallway, looking up to find Patrick standing there. The man’s expression told her that he had also heard what the boy had said. The psychiatrist moved to stand beside them and looked down at the child.

“What do you mean, Jason?” he queried gently, seeing that Andrea was still too shocked to talk. “How did Daddy tell you that?”

The small boy beamed at them and tapped the side of his head. “In here,” he stated proudly. “He talks to me all de time.” His smile dissolved into a sad expression as he looked up at his mother. “Ever since he goed far away.”

“When was that, baby?” Andrea prompted. 

Jason thought for a few seconds, before replying. “Free sleeps ago.”

“The day Jarod died,” Patrick murmured, half to himself. 

Andrea nodded curtly. Silence extended for several moments, before the psychiatrist spoke once more. 

“Have your bath,” he suggested. “Then we can talk about this.”

She turned into the bathroom, adding some cold water to the bath so that it would be safe for her son, and removed his sleeping suit before taking off her robe. Jason squeaked with delight as she lowered him into the warm water and began to splash vigorously. She got in beside him and he immediately climbed onto her lap, continuing to gurgle happily as he splashed water onto the cream tiles. Andrea made a mental note that she would have to buy some bath toys when she went shopping, before soaping the soft loofah and rubbing it over Jason’s body. When he was clean, she scrubbed her own skin and then got out of the tub, taking the child with her. Wrapping herself in her robe, she dried and redressed her son before attending to her own needs and then carrying him out into the living room.