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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
The Players - Fate, Truth, Trust, and Hope With Truth comes pain. With Fate come decisions. With Trust comes allegiance. With Hope comes the future.
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Angels Hope
Ties That Bind
"Fate seems to keep drawing us together." Jarod thought about what Lily asked and decided to take a chance. "Too bad we can't ever seem to stay that way."
Parker looked at Jarod. "We've already been through this. You run, I chase. That's our lives."
"OK. Then I'll run to SL6 and you'll chase?" Jarod got to his knees and leaned onto the desk. "Take a look around Parker. There's nowhere to run to anymore. It's just you and me here alone now. No Centre Sweeper Teams, no Raines, no Lyle. Just you and me. The chase is over. It's a stalemate."
"It'll never be over Jarod, not until Raines and the Centre are gone. Raines will have Lyle looking for us." Parker retorted knowing that what Jarod said was right. Where were they going to go?
Jarod got to his feet. "This place has been hidden from the Centre for over thirty years. Do you think that Lyle is going to be able to find it? I'm going to go check on Lily." He started walking towards the door and turned around. "Just ponder this Miss Parker - now who is running and who is chasing?" Jarod turned back around and left the room. He had left the seed. Now it was time to see if it would grow.
Parker watched the door close behind Jarod. "Damn I wish I had a cigarette and a drink. I wish Sydney were here." She was subconsciously running her palm and fingers over the files on the desk. She looked down at the files when she realized what she was doing. "Do these hold the truth mother? All my life I have been told one thing and now everything turns out to be the opposite. You trusted him. You tried to save him and you told him your secret about Ethan. That should be enough, but it isn't. I feel like.I don't know how I feel."
"Maybe because you don't allow yourself to feel." Came a voice from beside Parker.
She turned her head and saw Becky standing in the doorway of Lily's office. "What would you know about how I feel?"
"I've felt it ever since I met you. You have all these feelings locked inside you, eating you from the inside out." Becky retaliated holding her ground. "I have a gift for knowing things that people are feeling. And your emotions radiate off you like a flare, though you hide them magnificently."
Parker stared Becky down, but decided that it would accomplish nothing. "I have no feelings. They were burned out of me long ago. I live to survive."
"A lonely place to be, I would say." Becky knew that she was navigating on treacherous territory. "You can survive and have feelings. Life is just juggling what you need to do with what you want to do and finding a balance."
Parker looked at Becky in shock. "Are you a damn philosopher?"
"No, just lucky enough to be empathic." She smiled at Parker trying to break the barrier that Parker had put up the minute she walked into the room.
"Did you come here for a reason or do you just lurk in doorways as a hobby?" Parker retorted not letting her defenses come down.
"I was sitting in Lily's office looking at a picture of the two of us. And I started to wonder about something that you may know the answer to and then I felt that you needed someone to talk to."
"I don't need to talk to anyone. So what do you need to know?" Parker asked trying to be polite.
"In those stacks of files, does it say who my brother is?" Becky looked at the files on the desk. "I mean if one of the files said that Jarod and Lily were brother and sister, then I should be in there too. Right?"
Parker remembered that they had found the list of siblings. She had suspected from the minute she heard that Becky was empathic, who her brother was. She picked up the file that they had earlier found. Becky pulled up a chair from around the front of the desk. Parker opened the file and handed it to Becky.
"His name is Timmy. We don't have a Timmy my age here, so he must be at the Centre. Have you met him Miss Parker?" Becky asked with excitement in her eyes.
Parker thought for a moment before answering. "Becky, there is something you need to know. Raines did some horrible things to the children of the Centre. One of those things was drug therapy. He tried to strip the children of their humanity and in some cases he succeeded. Like in Jarod's brother Kyle's case. And another Pretender named Alex."
"I can feel that you are keeping something from me. Something you don't want to tell me." Becky handed back the file and touched Miss Parker's hand. Images flooded into her. Parker watching the DSA of what Raines did to Timmy. Timmy becoming Angelo. When Parker thought Angelo might be her brother. Angelo working with Parker on images for a hidden secret. "Angelo. You thought the name Angelo. That's the man we met when we met Jarod. He's empathic like me. And Raines hurt him badly. Took away part of his mind."
Parker shook her head in agreement. "He's a very nice person."
"You called him Mush Brain. For years you used him." Becky retorted now angry at her brother's treatment. "But let me tell you, he's smarter than you give him credit for." She got up out of the chair and walked towards the door of Lily's office.
"I'm sorry Becky. You don't understand what it was like growing up in the Centre's shadow. You were taught to use people, no matter what the outcome. When I started to get to know him... when I thought he was my brother, I got to know him. He helped me to find the Island of Carthis and the truth about my family. I know that he is smarter than Raines gives him credit for."
Still facing the doorway. "I'm learning more and more what the Centre is about. I think Lily is right, it needs to be destroyed." Becky walked into Lily's office and closed the door.
"Great. Another friend made." Parker slammed the file on the desk.
************************ Lily had fallen into a deep sleep after taking the medication. She had almost hoped that it would be strong enough to keep the demons away, but the memories were not going to let her evade them. She started to remember a two-story house, she could see a small girl opening the front door and going up the stairs. Opening a bedroom door. It opened to a scarcely decorated room with a few stuffed animals and dolls on the twin bed. The little girl was sitting on the bed, when a woman entered the room.
"It's time to go Lily, our appointment is at 4:00." The woman said loudly pulling the child off the bed.
"I don't want to go." Lily saw that it was she again as a young girl and she was trying to pull her arm away. "That place is scary and that man is creepy. I think he is the Boogeyman."
"Lily this is nonsense! Dr. Raines is a fine doctor and has known you since you were born. If you weren't being such a troublemaker in school, then you wouldn't have to be going to see him." She grabbed hold of Lily again and roughly pulled her off the bed.
"I don't want to go! I don't want to go!" Lily screamed as the woman picked up the child and threw her over her shoulder.
"Every time the same thing, I am getting sick and tired of this young lady!" The woman smacked Lily in the rear end.
Older Lily looked on and wanted to scream for the woman to put the child down, but she was a spectator and could do nothing. The next image she saw was a medical office. There were parents and children sitting in chairs around an office waiting room. There were children playing with various games and puzzles on a small table in the middle of the room. They looked complex, yet the children were breezing through them. Lily and the woman were sitting in the chairs.
"Mother, can I please go play with a puzzle?" Lily asked politely.
"Certainly, you asked so nicely." The woman replied. Lily connected with the fact that younger Lily had called the woman Mother. Very formal and not with much feeling. This must be the woman who raised her as a child, though inside all she could feel was loath when she looked at her.
Young Lily approached one of the puzzles. She pulled out a chair and sat next to a skinny boy who was also playing with a puzzle.
"I almost thought you weren't coming today Lily." The boy said in a hushed tone so that only the young girl could hear him.
"I gave my mother a hard time coming. It made us late. Boy was she mad." She whispered back and smiled.
"You're going to get in trouble with Dr. Raines if you keep this up. He's mean enough without making it worse."
"What do you think they would do Bobby if we just ran away?" Lily asked still playing with her puzzle.
"Don't you remember what happened to Timmy when he tried? Those two big men carried him away and we haven't heard from him since. Do you really want to?" Bobby asked concerned.
"Just dreaming I guess. Where would we go anyway?" Lily asked and was going to add that she had read a book about a place called New York City that had a lot of museums, when the nurse came out through the doorway. "Bobby Bowman." She called.
Bobby looked at Lily as his mother led him from the table and through the doorway. Lily could see the fear in his eyes and knew exactly why it was there. She went back to mastering her puzzle and hoping that some disaster would happen to make them have to leave the building before her name was called.
But after a half an hour Bobby came through the door and Raines stopped his mother to say something in private. Lily could see Bobby was upset. Then Raines looked in Lily's direction. "Mrs. Davidson, you can bring Lily in now."
Mrs. Davidson got up from her chair and had to semi pull Lily out of hers. "See Dr. Raines. This is what I am talking about. The child is obstinate." She led Lily through the doorway and past a smiling Raines. Lily really didn't trust him when he smiled that fake smile. They entered his office.
"I believe you will be happy to know that we have started a new program where we take the children out of public school and put them in a curriculum at a place called the Centre."
Lily got alarmed. "I don't want to leave my school."
"Lily. Don't you feel outcasted in your school? You are more advanced than those students are and you will be with children your own age with the same caliber of intelligence." Raines tried to coerce her.
"I like my friends and I like my teachers. I don't want to go to any new school!" Lily yelled back.
"There is no reason to get upset. I think we are done for this session." He led Lily and her mother to the waiting room door. They let Lily proceed through the door and Raines stopped her mother and whispered something to her. Lily turned in enough time to see her mother nod to something in agreement.
Her mother then proceeded to grab her hand and lead her to their car. They drove home in silence and she went straight to her room when they got home. She didn't like the feeling she was getting that something was going to happen.
Later that night they had dinner and Lily had gone to bed after finishing her homework. She had been very polite and cooperative as to not give her mother any reason to send her to this new school. She was startled awake by a noise and opened her eyes to see two men standing over her. She tried to scream for her my mother and father, but they were standing at the doorway. They knew the men were going to take her. "NO. NO MOMMY! I don't want to go. Please." But the men grabbed her and pulled her kicking and screaming into the hallway, as her parents did nothing.
"Now." The one man said to her mother and she took a piece of cloth and held it over Lily's nose and mouth.
Lily could smell a sweet sickening odor and then everything went black. Lily went limp in the man's arms. The next thing Lily remembered was waking up in a dark van. She was laying in the back and someone was stroking her hair. She pulled herself away, trying to get her bearings and looking for an escape route.
"There's no way out. I've already tried."
Lily focused on the voice as her eyes focused on the image. "Bobby? I can't believe my parents did this. Mother helped them hold the rag over my mouth with that horrible smell." Tears started to swell in her eyes.
"Guess we didn't have a choice in going to that new school." Bobby said moving closer to Lily. He put his arm around her shoulders and could feel she was trembling. "I heard the men talking about the Centre. We'll be OK. We have each other. Nothing will separate us." The van came to a stop. The two children scrambled to the back of the van wall.
"Stay put you two." The man said as he placed another unconscious child in the van and closed the door again. In a few minutes the van started again.
Lily looked at Bobby. "Somehow I have a feeling we're not the only ones not wanting to go to the Centre."
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Jarod was just about to enter Lily's room when Becky came up behind him. "I guess we had the same idea." Becky said.
"We're both worried about her. I don't think it will do any harm for both of us to be in there." The guard opened the door to the room. Jarod immediately could see that Lily was in the midst of yet another dream. Both Becky and Jarod went to the bed. Becky went to shake Lily when she got images of Lily being taken from a house and put in a van. In pulling her hands back from the fear she was feeling, she accidentally put her hand on Jarod's hand.
Suddenly she found herself connected to Angelo. She could see him at his computer.
He looked up and it was like he could see her. "Sister?" Angelo asked confused. He could see the woman with curly blonde hair that was with Jarod the night he went away. "With the angels." The image shook her head yes. "Need Jarod's help........"
Jarod pulled his hand away from Becky, which broke the connection. "Becky, what happened?"
"I saw Angelo. I think he has been trying to get in touch with you. There's something wrong, terribly wrong."
Jarod looked at his sister. How was he going to help both?
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Fate runs lives. Truth opens doors. Trust is revealed. Hope is in question.
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Ties That Bind
"Fate seems to keep drawing us together." Jarod thought about what Lily asked and decided to take a chance. "Too bad we can't ever seem to stay that way."
Parker looked at Jarod. "We've already been through this. You run, I chase. That's our lives."
"OK. Then I'll run to SL6 and you'll chase?" Jarod got to his knees and leaned onto the desk. "Take a look around Parker. There's nowhere to run to anymore. It's just you and me here alone now. No Centre Sweeper Teams, no Raines, no Lyle. Just you and me. The chase is over. It's a stalemate."
"It'll never be over Jarod, not until Raines and the Centre are gone. Raines will have Lyle looking for us." Parker retorted knowing that what Jarod said was right. Where were they going to go?
Jarod got to his feet. "This place has been hidden from the Centre for over thirty years. Do you think that Lyle is going to be able to find it? I'm going to go check on Lily." He started walking towards the door and turned around. "Just ponder this Miss Parker - now who is running and who is chasing?" Jarod turned back around and left the room. He had left the seed. Now it was time to see if it would grow.
Parker watched the door close behind Jarod. "Damn I wish I had a cigarette and a drink. I wish Sydney were here." She was subconsciously running her palm and fingers over the files on the desk. She looked down at the files when she realized what she was doing. "Do these hold the truth mother? All my life I have been told one thing and now everything turns out to be the opposite. You trusted him. You tried to save him and you told him your secret about Ethan. That should be enough, but it isn't. I feel like.I don't know how I feel."
"Maybe because you don't allow yourself to feel." Came a voice from beside Parker.
She turned her head and saw Becky standing in the doorway of Lily's office. "What would you know about how I feel?"
"I've felt it ever since I met you. You have all these feelings locked inside you, eating you from the inside out." Becky retaliated holding her ground. "I have a gift for knowing things that people are feeling. And your emotions radiate off you like a flare, though you hide them magnificently."
Parker stared Becky down, but decided that it would accomplish nothing. "I have no feelings. They were burned out of me long ago. I live to survive."
"A lonely place to be, I would say." Becky knew that she was navigating on treacherous territory. "You can survive and have feelings. Life is just juggling what you need to do with what you want to do and finding a balance."
Parker looked at Becky in shock. "Are you a damn philosopher?"
"No, just lucky enough to be empathic." She smiled at Parker trying to break the barrier that Parker had put up the minute she walked into the room.
"Did you come here for a reason or do you just lurk in doorways as a hobby?" Parker retorted not letting her defenses come down.
"I was sitting in Lily's office looking at a picture of the two of us. And I started to wonder about something that you may know the answer to and then I felt that you needed someone to talk to."
"I don't need to talk to anyone. So what do you need to know?" Parker asked trying to be polite.
"In those stacks of files, does it say who my brother is?" Becky looked at the files on the desk. "I mean if one of the files said that Jarod and Lily were brother and sister, then I should be in there too. Right?"
Parker remembered that they had found the list of siblings. She had suspected from the minute she heard that Becky was empathic, who her brother was. She picked up the file that they had earlier found. Becky pulled up a chair from around the front of the desk. Parker opened the file and handed it to Becky.
"His name is Timmy. We don't have a Timmy my age here, so he must be at the Centre. Have you met him Miss Parker?" Becky asked with excitement in her eyes.
Parker thought for a moment before answering. "Becky, there is something you need to know. Raines did some horrible things to the children of the Centre. One of those things was drug therapy. He tried to strip the children of their humanity and in some cases he succeeded. Like in Jarod's brother Kyle's case. And another Pretender named Alex."
"I can feel that you are keeping something from me. Something you don't want to tell me." Becky handed back the file and touched Miss Parker's hand. Images flooded into her. Parker watching the DSA of what Raines did to Timmy. Timmy becoming Angelo. When Parker thought Angelo might be her brother. Angelo working with Parker on images for a hidden secret. "Angelo. You thought the name Angelo. That's the man we met when we met Jarod. He's empathic like me. And Raines hurt him badly. Took away part of his mind."
Parker shook her head in agreement. "He's a very nice person."
"You called him Mush Brain. For years you used him." Becky retorted now angry at her brother's treatment. "But let me tell you, he's smarter than you give him credit for." She got up out of the chair and walked towards the door of Lily's office.
"I'm sorry Becky. You don't understand what it was like growing up in the Centre's shadow. You were taught to use people, no matter what the outcome. When I started to get to know him... when I thought he was my brother, I got to know him. He helped me to find the Island of Carthis and the truth about my family. I know that he is smarter than Raines gives him credit for."
Still facing the doorway. "I'm learning more and more what the Centre is about. I think Lily is right, it needs to be destroyed." Becky walked into Lily's office and closed the door.
"Great. Another friend made." Parker slammed the file on the desk.
************************ Lily had fallen into a deep sleep after taking the medication. She had almost hoped that it would be strong enough to keep the demons away, but the memories were not going to let her evade them. She started to remember a two-story house, she could see a small girl opening the front door and going up the stairs. Opening a bedroom door. It opened to a scarcely decorated room with a few stuffed animals and dolls on the twin bed. The little girl was sitting on the bed, when a woman entered the room.
"It's time to go Lily, our appointment is at 4:00." The woman said loudly pulling the child off the bed.
"I don't want to go." Lily saw that it was she again as a young girl and she was trying to pull her arm away. "That place is scary and that man is creepy. I think he is the Boogeyman."
"Lily this is nonsense! Dr. Raines is a fine doctor and has known you since you were born. If you weren't being such a troublemaker in school, then you wouldn't have to be going to see him." She grabbed hold of Lily again and roughly pulled her off the bed.
"I don't want to go! I don't want to go!" Lily screamed as the woman picked up the child and threw her over her shoulder.
"Every time the same thing, I am getting sick and tired of this young lady!" The woman smacked Lily in the rear end.
Older Lily looked on and wanted to scream for the woman to put the child down, but she was a spectator and could do nothing. The next image she saw was a medical office. There were parents and children sitting in chairs around an office waiting room. There were children playing with various games and puzzles on a small table in the middle of the room. They looked complex, yet the children were breezing through them. Lily and the woman were sitting in the chairs.
"Mother, can I please go play with a puzzle?" Lily asked politely.
"Certainly, you asked so nicely." The woman replied. Lily connected with the fact that younger Lily had called the woman Mother. Very formal and not with much feeling. This must be the woman who raised her as a child, though inside all she could feel was loath when she looked at her.
Young Lily approached one of the puzzles. She pulled out a chair and sat next to a skinny boy who was also playing with a puzzle.
"I almost thought you weren't coming today Lily." The boy said in a hushed tone so that only the young girl could hear him.
"I gave my mother a hard time coming. It made us late. Boy was she mad." She whispered back and smiled.
"You're going to get in trouble with Dr. Raines if you keep this up. He's mean enough without making it worse."
"What do you think they would do Bobby if we just ran away?" Lily asked still playing with her puzzle.
"Don't you remember what happened to Timmy when he tried? Those two big men carried him away and we haven't heard from him since. Do you really want to?" Bobby asked concerned.
"Just dreaming I guess. Where would we go anyway?" Lily asked and was going to add that she had read a book about a place called New York City that had a lot of museums, when the nurse came out through the doorway. "Bobby Bowman." She called.
Bobby looked at Lily as his mother led him from the table and through the doorway. Lily could see the fear in his eyes and knew exactly why it was there. She went back to mastering her puzzle and hoping that some disaster would happen to make them have to leave the building before her name was called.
But after a half an hour Bobby came through the door and Raines stopped his mother to say something in private. Lily could see Bobby was upset. Then Raines looked in Lily's direction. "Mrs. Davidson, you can bring Lily in now."
Mrs. Davidson got up from her chair and had to semi pull Lily out of hers. "See Dr. Raines. This is what I am talking about. The child is obstinate." She led Lily through the doorway and past a smiling Raines. Lily really didn't trust him when he smiled that fake smile. They entered his office.
"I believe you will be happy to know that we have started a new program where we take the children out of public school and put them in a curriculum at a place called the Centre."
Lily got alarmed. "I don't want to leave my school."
"Lily. Don't you feel outcasted in your school? You are more advanced than those students are and you will be with children your own age with the same caliber of intelligence." Raines tried to coerce her.
"I like my friends and I like my teachers. I don't want to go to any new school!" Lily yelled back.
"There is no reason to get upset. I think we are done for this session." He led Lily and her mother to the waiting room door. They let Lily proceed through the door and Raines stopped her mother and whispered something to her. Lily turned in enough time to see her mother nod to something in agreement.
Her mother then proceeded to grab her hand and lead her to their car. They drove home in silence and she went straight to her room when they got home. She didn't like the feeling she was getting that something was going to happen.
Later that night they had dinner and Lily had gone to bed after finishing her homework. She had been very polite and cooperative as to not give her mother any reason to send her to this new school. She was startled awake by a noise and opened her eyes to see two men standing over her. She tried to scream for her my mother and father, but they were standing at the doorway. They knew the men were going to take her. "NO. NO MOMMY! I don't want to go. Please." But the men grabbed her and pulled her kicking and screaming into the hallway, as her parents did nothing.
"Now." The one man said to her mother and she took a piece of cloth and held it over Lily's nose and mouth.
Lily could smell a sweet sickening odor and then everything went black. Lily went limp in the man's arms. The next thing Lily remembered was waking up in a dark van. She was laying in the back and someone was stroking her hair. She pulled herself away, trying to get her bearings and looking for an escape route.
"There's no way out. I've already tried."
Lily focused on the voice as her eyes focused on the image. "Bobby? I can't believe my parents did this. Mother helped them hold the rag over my mouth with that horrible smell." Tears started to swell in her eyes.
"Guess we didn't have a choice in going to that new school." Bobby said moving closer to Lily. He put his arm around her shoulders and could feel she was trembling. "I heard the men talking about the Centre. We'll be OK. We have each other. Nothing will separate us." The van came to a stop. The two children scrambled to the back of the van wall.
"Stay put you two." The man said as he placed another unconscious child in the van and closed the door again. In a few minutes the van started again.
Lily looked at Bobby. "Somehow I have a feeling we're not the only ones not wanting to go to the Centre."
************************
Jarod was just about to enter Lily's room when Becky came up behind him. "I guess we had the same idea." Becky said.
"We're both worried about her. I don't think it will do any harm for both of us to be in there." The guard opened the door to the room. Jarod immediately could see that Lily was in the midst of yet another dream. Both Becky and Jarod went to the bed. Becky went to shake Lily when she got images of Lily being taken from a house and put in a van. In pulling her hands back from the fear she was feeling, she accidentally put her hand on Jarod's hand.
Suddenly she found herself connected to Angelo. She could see him at his computer.
He looked up and it was like he could see her. "Sister?" Angelo asked confused. He could see the woman with curly blonde hair that was with Jarod the night he went away. "With the angels." The image shook her head yes. "Need Jarod's help........"
Jarod pulled his hand away from Becky, which broke the connection. "Becky, what happened?"
"I saw Angelo. I think he has been trying to get in touch with you. There's something wrong, terribly wrong."
Jarod looked at his sister. How was he going to help both?
************************
Fate runs lives. Truth opens doors. Trust is revealed. Hope is in question.
