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Chapter or Story
Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc.and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM, TNT and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
Summary: It has long been known that there is little of which they are not capable, for both good and ill, among the peoples high and low. Yet even knowing this so well as she does, the depths to which they have stooped in the name of their twisted agendas and ideas has seldom shocked, amazed, and frightened her as it did when that boy climbed in through her window one suitably dark and stormy night...
Precious Blood
Part IV: Mother, Behold Your Son
Matrea Nara
Agent Mulder had known Jarod for only a few weeks, yet in that short time he had learned enough about the man to harbor a profound respect for him, and to trust his word explicitly, without reservation. So what Jarod had told Mulder they would find Ryker with her, if they were to find him at all, Mulder had not questioned the likelihood of it, whether or not a boy of thirteen years would seek safety among people who had brought him up like a lab rat, to go to a woman he had only ever heard about in the presence of those he knew well and hated bitterly. Mulder had simply nodded and gone, leaving his friend in his partner’s capable hands.
The hotel where the Centre crew was staying was an older building, but did not lack in style for its age. It presented a dignified appearance rather than a run down, the weight of the years in no way diminishing its appeal. After obtaining Miss Parker’s room number from a desk clerk more thoroughly cowed by Mulder’s confident, no nonsense demeanor than the badge the agent flashed at him, he strode purposefully to the elevator and punched the button for the fifth floor, lost in thought.
The day Jarod, known to him then as Special Agent Jarod Wolfe, had joined their division they had viewed him with suspicion, distancing him as much as possible from themselves and the true nature of their work. The first time they had accepted another agent into their trust, that man being Alex Krycek after the X-Files were terminated the first time and Mulder and Scully were split up, he had betrayed them so thoroughly it would still be some time before either Mulder or Scully could put much faith in anyone outside their inner circle.
Jarod had accepted their reservations and stiff professional courtesy will light-hearted quips and a professional courtesy all his own. Mulder’s first evidence of the true depth and brilliance of Jarod’s mind had come when Mulder had proposed his first working theory on a case they were working on, a case toward which Jarod displayed an unusual level of personal interest. Instead of shooting it down outright or failing to comprehend it, Jarod had debated with Mulder for nearly a half hour, presenting logical arguments and proving to be as much a plethora of otherwise useless information as Mulder himself was. He missed no single detail, weighed ever fact and opinion, and displayed a photographic memory akin to Mulder’s own. Not only that, but he managed to impress Scully more than most people ever did with his vast knowledge of science and his flawless comprehension of the medical records of the case.
Mulder remembered when they had first brought the new agent to the scene of the crime, smiling to himself as he recalled the nature of his second intimation that Jarod Wolfe was not at all what he seemed or claimed. Jarod’s method of examining the scene was unique to say the very least. It had been as though the other two agents weren’t even there. He moved around the alley, lay his hand on the wall and closed his eyes, cocked his head to one side as if listening to something no one else could hear, turned, walked to the place where the victim had been found and knelt, though he had scene no crime scene photos before hand and had no way of knowing where the dead girl had been. He had laid his hand on the ground there as well, closed his eyes, and started shaking. Scully had asked him if he was alright but he ignored her. Finally, when at last he rose, there was such a look of brooding rage on his face it was as if he had been in the mind of the killer.
Throughout the entire investigation Jarod’s methods had been unusual. Every time Mulder or Scully were on the verge of a major breakthrough he would negate the merest possibility with such an air of certainty it was as if he had already been over all their possible explanations in his mind, found them wanting, and moved on long before his companions even considered them. When another victim was found Jarod had almost taken it personally. He had insisted on being present for the autopsy and even picked up on a few things Scully had missed. His profile for the killer was on a par with Mulder’s, if not better. As the days passed his patience stalled, and all the while Mulder got the impression that Jarod was taking ever action of the killer as a personal attack, so total was his determination and single mindedness. After the killed had been caught, found beaten, naked, and hogtied in the alley where the first girl had died (and staring at Jarod with wide-eyed fear all the while), Jarod had disappeared. Mulder and Scully had caught up with him just as he and his three kids were about to skip town.
Jarod, both amused and impressed by the agents’ perceptiveness and persistence, commended Mulder, describing him as “sub-power” and telling him he should be more guarded with his brilliance. He had said he admired the way Mulder and Scully worked, their open-mindedness and attention to detail was a rare find and their ability to solve such difficult, improbable cases were a tribute them. “Almost as good as me,” he had said, “and that says something.” Apparently he was impressed enough by them to take him in to his confidence as he had taken a choice few others, and that day he had sat them down and told them the long, twisted story of his life and the Centre.
For the agents, who had had enough experience with sinister conspiracies to last two lifetimes, the atrocities of the Centre did not come as as much of a shock as it might have for most people. Still, they were struck dumb by it. For Scully, the truth of Jarod’ children hit especially close to home. Her empathy was welcomed and reciprocated by Jarod, while the pain in her eyes when she heard tell of it ripped through Mulder’s heart. Mulder and Scully had found as close to a kindred spirit in Jarod as they were likely to kind, and the reverse seemed to be true as well.
Now, riding up this elevator on his way to search for Jarod’s son, his heart bled for his friend. If it was true what Jarod had told us this afternoon after telling him where he might find Ryker, then not only were the kids in danger but Jarod was as well. The Centre sounded to him disturbingly like the people he lived and worked in fear of, and if the two, Centre and Syndicate, were in any way similar a “shoot to kill” order was a deathly serious thing.
He walked up to the hotel room door with his heart on his sleeve, all his hopes and wishes lying beyond that door. If Ryker was not there, if Mulder had to drive back to Maggie Scully’s and tell Jarod all three of his children were now in the hands of the people they feared and hated the most…he didn’t even want to contemplate it. He knocked.
“Open the door Miss Parker,” he called. “FBI.”
><
Parker and her companions moved fast, Sydney and Broots carrying the boy into the bathroom and closing the door at their backs while Miss Parker herself went to answer the summons at the door. She knew who it was, and steeled herself outside and in for the confrontation likely to follow. It had been clear to her from the start that this Agent Mulder knew more then he was letting on, and if he had decided to challenge them in regards to Jarod deflecting him would be no easy task.
She opened the door.
He stood in the doorway, face nearly impossible to read with the merest hint of desperation in his eyes. He was tense, carrying himself like a man preparing for the sky to fall at any moment.
“Can I help you Agent Mulder?” she deadpanned. He was looking over her shoulder, into the room beyond. What was he hoping to find, she wondered? The window was open. He smiled, drowned in quickly.
“I hope so Miss Parker,” said he, in a tone of professional detachment characteristic of doctors and government officials. Well, characteristic of most of them. Jarod had been both, and never quite managed it. “Have you seen this boy?”
The picture Mulder held out to her was the face she had seen moments before being pulled through her window. The boy was about thirteen or fourteen, with chin length auburn hair, lightly sun-browned skin, hazel eyes and fine features. He dressed in dark colors, wore a black leather jacket and a devilishly charming grin as he leaned with his shoulder propped against a tree, his arms folded across his chest and his legs crossed at the ankles. There was a look about him, a depth in his eyes reminiscent of Jarod, but more of this man before her. His were softer, less calculating, but unlike Agent Mulder’s this boys’ eyes were scarred with the torture of a pretender’s life.
“Who is he?” she asked. Anger or annoyance flashed briefly in Mulder’s eyes as she answered a question with a question, but he surrendered the picture when she reached for it and replied politely enough.
“His name is Ryker.”
“No last name?”
“Just Ryker.” Like Jarod was just Jarod. Interesting. “Have you seen him?” Something in the desperate note he carried in his voice set bells and whistles blaring in her mind. This boy was important. He had pretender eyes too and this man had, presumably, just come from Jarod. So was Mulder asking after the boy because he wanted to know or because Jarod had sent him?
“Come in Agent Mulder.”
As soon as the boy Ryker had laid eyes on Mulder he had run to the older man’s embrace, weeping and babbling incoherently words the agents seemed to understand perfectly. Ryker was now either asleep or unconscious under Mulder’s arm, mumbling restlessly in his fevered dreams.
Mulder had tried to leave as soon as he had the boy, but Parker refused to let him. She would know all he knew to tell her about this boy and why he was so important to Jarod. She had determined that it was in fact Jarod who had sent after the boy. While Ryker had been relieved to see Mulder he had been most reassured when Mulder told him that Jarod was fine and would survive the wounds he had suffered in the fighting. Parker was more relieved that she wanted to admit on that account as well, but hid her feelings beneath a patented icy mask. She asked about the boy, what he meant to Jarod, why they were attacked, and why the boy had come, of all places he might have gone, here to her hotel room. Halfway through Mulder’s explanation she was sorry she had.
Ryker, Mulder said, and the two other children who had been living with Jarod were his genetic children, created with his seed and the ova of a sub-power pretender, planted in the womb of a surrogate mother. Jarod had discovered them three months ago, at had at that time dropped off the Centre radar, which was why no one at the Centre had *seen * Jarod since then. He had continued to call them, for reasons that didn’t need to be delved into, but had carefully avoided any action that would bring the kids to their attention. Of course the Centre had known that Jarod had stolen his children, and the Tower had issued a “shoot to kill” order the very day Jarod had broken in and pulled the kids out. Parker, Sydney, and their closest team members like Sam, Broots, and any staff they had frequent contact with, were carefully insulated from knowledge of that order. Now Jarod had been shot, nearly killed, and the twins taken back to the Centre for reeducation.
As to why Ryker had come here of all the other places he could have gone…firstly there weren’t a hell of a lot of places he could have gone in the first place. Second, he had often heard his father speak of Miss Parker and Sydney, and had been told that in the event of an emergency they were to be trusted. When Miss Parker asked why she got an response that would have knocked her off her feet had she not been sitting down.
“Because,” Fox Mulder said, “the sub-power pretender they used to create the children was you, and a kid instinctively trusts his mother.”
“Jarod knew?” she demanded. “Jarod knew about this and didn’t tell me?”
“The Centre has been hunting him, trying to kill him now for three months because he found out about them. He didn’t want that for you.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because, Miss Parker, your son and daughter are currently residents of the Centre’s renewal wing, and as deep as Jarod’ feelings for you run he does have his priorities.”
“Shit,” said Miss Parker.
“Yeah.”
Summary: It has long been known that there is little of which they are not capable, for both good and ill, among the peoples high and low. Yet even knowing this so well as she does, the depths to which they have stooped in the name of their twisted agendas and ideas has seldom shocked, amazed, and frightened her as it did when that boy climbed in through her window one suitably dark and stormy night...
Precious Blood
Part IV: Mother, Behold Your Son
Matrea Nara
Agent Mulder had known Jarod for only a few weeks, yet in that short time he had learned enough about the man to harbor a profound respect for him, and to trust his word explicitly, without reservation. So what Jarod had told Mulder they would find Ryker with her, if they were to find him at all, Mulder had not questioned the likelihood of it, whether or not a boy of thirteen years would seek safety among people who had brought him up like a lab rat, to go to a woman he had only ever heard about in the presence of those he knew well and hated bitterly. Mulder had simply nodded and gone, leaving his friend in his partner’s capable hands.
The hotel where the Centre crew was staying was an older building, but did not lack in style for its age. It presented a dignified appearance rather than a run down, the weight of the years in no way diminishing its appeal. After obtaining Miss Parker’s room number from a desk clerk more thoroughly cowed by Mulder’s confident, no nonsense demeanor than the badge the agent flashed at him, he strode purposefully to the elevator and punched the button for the fifth floor, lost in thought.
The day Jarod, known to him then as Special Agent Jarod Wolfe, had joined their division they had viewed him with suspicion, distancing him as much as possible from themselves and the true nature of their work. The first time they had accepted another agent into their trust, that man being Alex Krycek after the X-Files were terminated the first time and Mulder and Scully were split up, he had betrayed them so thoroughly it would still be some time before either Mulder or Scully could put much faith in anyone outside their inner circle.
Jarod had accepted their reservations and stiff professional courtesy will light-hearted quips and a professional courtesy all his own. Mulder’s first evidence of the true depth and brilliance of Jarod’s mind had come when Mulder had proposed his first working theory on a case they were working on, a case toward which Jarod displayed an unusual level of personal interest. Instead of shooting it down outright or failing to comprehend it, Jarod had debated with Mulder for nearly a half hour, presenting logical arguments and proving to be as much a plethora of otherwise useless information as Mulder himself was. He missed no single detail, weighed ever fact and opinion, and displayed a photographic memory akin to Mulder’s own. Not only that, but he managed to impress Scully more than most people ever did with his vast knowledge of science and his flawless comprehension of the medical records of the case.
Mulder remembered when they had first brought the new agent to the scene of the crime, smiling to himself as he recalled the nature of his second intimation that Jarod Wolfe was not at all what he seemed or claimed. Jarod’s method of examining the scene was unique to say the very least. It had been as though the other two agents weren’t even there. He moved around the alley, lay his hand on the wall and closed his eyes, cocked his head to one side as if listening to something no one else could hear, turned, walked to the place where the victim had been found and knelt, though he had scene no crime scene photos before hand and had no way of knowing where the dead girl had been. He had laid his hand on the ground there as well, closed his eyes, and started shaking. Scully had asked him if he was alright but he ignored her. Finally, when at last he rose, there was such a look of brooding rage on his face it was as if he had been in the mind of the killer.
Throughout the entire investigation Jarod’s methods had been unusual. Every time Mulder or Scully were on the verge of a major breakthrough he would negate the merest possibility with such an air of certainty it was as if he had already been over all their possible explanations in his mind, found them wanting, and moved on long before his companions even considered them. When another victim was found Jarod had almost taken it personally. He had insisted on being present for the autopsy and even picked up on a few things Scully had missed. His profile for the killer was on a par with Mulder’s, if not better. As the days passed his patience stalled, and all the while Mulder got the impression that Jarod was taking ever action of the killer as a personal attack, so total was his determination and single mindedness. After the killed had been caught, found beaten, naked, and hogtied in the alley where the first girl had died (and staring at Jarod with wide-eyed fear all the while), Jarod had disappeared. Mulder and Scully had caught up with him just as he and his three kids were about to skip town.
Jarod, both amused and impressed by the agents’ perceptiveness and persistence, commended Mulder, describing him as “sub-power” and telling him he should be more guarded with his brilliance. He had said he admired the way Mulder and Scully worked, their open-mindedness and attention to detail was a rare find and their ability to solve such difficult, improbable cases were a tribute them. “Almost as good as me,” he had said, “and that says something.” Apparently he was impressed enough by them to take him in to his confidence as he had taken a choice few others, and that day he had sat them down and told them the long, twisted story of his life and the Centre.
For the agents, who had had enough experience with sinister conspiracies to last two lifetimes, the atrocities of the Centre did not come as as much of a shock as it might have for most people. Still, they were struck dumb by it. For Scully, the truth of Jarod’ children hit especially close to home. Her empathy was welcomed and reciprocated by Jarod, while the pain in her eyes when she heard tell of it ripped through Mulder’s heart. Mulder and Scully had found as close to a kindred spirit in Jarod as they were likely to kind, and the reverse seemed to be true as well.
Now, riding up this elevator on his way to search for Jarod’s son, his heart bled for his friend. If it was true what Jarod had told us this afternoon after telling him where he might find Ryker, then not only were the kids in danger but Jarod was as well. The Centre sounded to him disturbingly like the people he lived and worked in fear of, and if the two, Centre and Syndicate, were in any way similar a “shoot to kill” order was a deathly serious thing.
He walked up to the hotel room door with his heart on his sleeve, all his hopes and wishes lying beyond that door. If Ryker was not there, if Mulder had to drive back to Maggie Scully’s and tell Jarod all three of his children were now in the hands of the people they feared and hated the most…he didn’t even want to contemplate it. He knocked.
“Open the door Miss Parker,” he called. “FBI.”
><
Parker and her companions moved fast, Sydney and Broots carrying the boy into the bathroom and closing the door at their backs while Miss Parker herself went to answer the summons at the door. She knew who it was, and steeled herself outside and in for the confrontation likely to follow. It had been clear to her from the start that this Agent Mulder knew more then he was letting on, and if he had decided to challenge them in regards to Jarod deflecting him would be no easy task.
She opened the door.
He stood in the doorway, face nearly impossible to read with the merest hint of desperation in his eyes. He was tense, carrying himself like a man preparing for the sky to fall at any moment.
“Can I help you Agent Mulder?” she deadpanned. He was looking over her shoulder, into the room beyond. What was he hoping to find, she wondered? The window was open. He smiled, drowned in quickly.
“I hope so Miss Parker,” said he, in a tone of professional detachment characteristic of doctors and government officials. Well, characteristic of most of them. Jarod had been both, and never quite managed it. “Have you seen this boy?”
The picture Mulder held out to her was the face she had seen moments before being pulled through her window. The boy was about thirteen or fourteen, with chin length auburn hair, lightly sun-browned skin, hazel eyes and fine features. He dressed in dark colors, wore a black leather jacket and a devilishly charming grin as he leaned with his shoulder propped against a tree, his arms folded across his chest and his legs crossed at the ankles. There was a look about him, a depth in his eyes reminiscent of Jarod, but more of this man before her. His were softer, less calculating, but unlike Agent Mulder’s this boys’ eyes were scarred with the torture of a pretender’s life.
“Who is he?” she asked. Anger or annoyance flashed briefly in Mulder’s eyes as she answered a question with a question, but he surrendered the picture when she reached for it and replied politely enough.
“His name is Ryker.”
“No last name?”
“Just Ryker.” Like Jarod was just Jarod. Interesting. “Have you seen him?” Something in the desperate note he carried in his voice set bells and whistles blaring in her mind. This boy was important. He had pretender eyes too and this man had, presumably, just come from Jarod. So was Mulder asking after the boy because he wanted to know or because Jarod had sent him?
“Come in Agent Mulder.”
As soon as the boy Ryker had laid eyes on Mulder he had run to the older man’s embrace, weeping and babbling incoherently words the agents seemed to understand perfectly. Ryker was now either asleep or unconscious under Mulder’s arm, mumbling restlessly in his fevered dreams.
Mulder had tried to leave as soon as he had the boy, but Parker refused to let him. She would know all he knew to tell her about this boy and why he was so important to Jarod. She had determined that it was in fact Jarod who had sent after the boy. While Ryker had been relieved to see Mulder he had been most reassured when Mulder told him that Jarod was fine and would survive the wounds he had suffered in the fighting. Parker was more relieved that she wanted to admit on that account as well, but hid her feelings beneath a patented icy mask. She asked about the boy, what he meant to Jarod, why they were attacked, and why the boy had come, of all places he might have gone, here to her hotel room. Halfway through Mulder’s explanation she was sorry she had.
Ryker, Mulder said, and the two other children who had been living with Jarod were his genetic children, created with his seed and the ova of a sub-power pretender, planted in the womb of a surrogate mother. Jarod had discovered them three months ago, at had at that time dropped off the Centre radar, which was why no one at the Centre had *seen * Jarod since then. He had continued to call them, for reasons that didn’t need to be delved into, but had carefully avoided any action that would bring the kids to their attention. Of course the Centre had known that Jarod had stolen his children, and the Tower had issued a “shoot to kill” order the very day Jarod had broken in and pulled the kids out. Parker, Sydney, and their closest team members like Sam, Broots, and any staff they had frequent contact with, were carefully insulated from knowledge of that order. Now Jarod had been shot, nearly killed, and the twins taken back to the Centre for reeducation.
As to why Ryker had come here of all the other places he could have gone…firstly there weren’t a hell of a lot of places he could have gone in the first place. Second, he had often heard his father speak of Miss Parker and Sydney, and had been told that in the event of an emergency they were to be trusted. When Miss Parker asked why she got an response that would have knocked her off her feet had she not been sitting down.
“Because,” Fox Mulder said, “the sub-power pretender they used to create the children was you, and a kid instinctively trusts his mother.”
“Jarod knew?” she demanded. “Jarod knew about this and didn’t tell me?”
“The Centre has been hunting him, trying to kill him now for three months because he found out about them. He didn’t want that for you.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because, Miss Parker, your son and daughter are currently residents of the Centre’s renewal wing, and as deep as Jarod’ feelings for you run he does have his priorities.”
“Shit,” said Miss Parker.
“Yeah.”
