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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Disclaimer: All the Pretender characters are the sole property of “The Pretender” creators Steve Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle. All other characters are created by the author of this work with no correlation to anyone living or diseased. This written work is produced solely for recreational purposes, to honor “The Pretender” series and to entertain its fans.
A past becomes present.
The present becomes cloudy.
The future has infinite possibilities.
Thus goes the game of life.
************************
Angels Hope
Resurgence
And in her mind, Lily came face to face with the child. The child full of anger, rage, fright; who had been taken by Raines and thrown into a world of darkness. Taught to hate, to fight, and to destroy. Lily could feel her heart break. She now knew that this darkness was inside herself, had always been. Personality traits that had been created by Raines so long ago, but buried in her subconscious. Lily walked over to the little girl and embraced her.
Lily opened her eyes. The room was in shadows except for a small light on her mirrored dresser. No one was in the room as she scanned around. She looked up at the IV line running into her arm and reached over and pulled the needle from its resting place. Lily carefully sat up, her head swirling a little, and swung her feet to the floor. She pushed herself up off the bed and steadied herself. She walked over to the mirror and looked at her reflection.
“I decide who lives or dies.” Lily turned to the stereo sitting next to the dresser and looked through the CD’s. She picked one out and placed it in the CD player. Rock music came on as she pushed the play button and she made the volume louder.
The door opened to the room and the nurse entered. Lily turned and was looking at the woman sternly. “Miss Lily. What are you doing out of bed? And you have removed your IV line. Let’s get you back into bed and we’ll get that line back in.” The nurse had been moving closer to Lily.
Lily, seeing her movement, countered by moving to the bed and rolling over the bed and landing on her feet. She steadied herself with the bed. “I’m not going back on it. No one is sticking me with any more needles. Get out of here.”
The door buzzed again and an orderly came in. “Do you need help Claudia?”
“Bruce, Miss Lily has decided that she doesn’t want to have the intravenous anymore and I was trying to convince her that it would be in her best interest to…”
“Yes she does Bruce. I think you better take her to see Dr. Stedman.” She glared at them both as they whispered to each other. “Stop talking about me like I am a mental patient. I’m getting out of here.” Lily started moving quickly for the door, but was blocked by Bruce. “You really don’t want to do that.”
The door buzzed and Mark came in. “Honey, you’re awake. Are we having a problem Claudia?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Will everyone stop talking like I’m a damn five year old. I’m fine. I woke up, I didn’t want that stupid IV in so I took it out, and now I would like to leave my room. IS there a problem with that?” She tried to get past Mark, but Bruce backed him up. Lily threw her hands up in the air. “Am I a prisoner now? I can’t even leave my room.”
Mark still spoke in a monotone voice. “Lily, honey, we are just trying to do what is best for you. You just had surgery and need to rest. And I would like to know what is aggravating you?” Claudia had moved to the phone and was speaking in hushed tones.
“Who is she calling? I want all of you to leave me alone. And I want the cameras out of here. I don’t want to be watched or recorded anymore. Why do you have to have my every movement documented? I am not an animal. I decide what I do and don’t do. And right now I am not going back into that bed. Or back on that IV. I have had enough drugs pumped into me and I’m not taking any more.” Lily’s voice was rising as she made her points.
There was a knock on the door and a buzz for the door to open. Jarod came in smiling until he saw everyone’s expression in the room. “What’s going on?”
Mark allowed Jarod to come past him. “Lily is just expressing her desire to not go back on the IV and that she is distressed….”
“Will you stop the bullshit and just tell him that you are keeping me here when I really want to leave. Jarod understands that. Being kept a prisoner.”
Jarod quickly picked up on that something was wrong and cut in. “Lily. I was hoping to have some time just for the two of us to talk.” Jarod turned to Mark. “Could you leave us alone for a while, if Lily’s up to it?” Jarod looked at Lily.
Lily kept her guard up, but eased a little when Jarod asked her if he could talk to her. “I’m fine.” Looking at Claudia, Bruce, and Mark. “I would like to talk to my brother – alone.”
Mark looked at Jarod and he acknowledged the look. Turning to escort everyone out, “Mark, let me talk to her for a little while.”
“Jarod, she’s not talking rationally.” Mark tried to say under his breath.
“I am as rational as you are.” Lily retorted angrily as she stood by the stereo listening to the music play.
Mark looked at Jarod and he motioned for Mark to leave and escorted him out the door. “We’ll be fine. Just let us talk.” Jarod closed the door with Mark trying to say something.
Lily went over and tried the doorknob. Finding the door locked, she leaned her back against it and kicked the door. “Locked.”
Jarod stood in the middle of the room. “OK. What’s going on Lily? What has you so upset?”
**************************
Mark went to the office where they were monitoring Lily’s room. Joan was already standing there watching the monitor. “She woke up agitated?”
“Yes. She had been tossing and turning in her bed Claudia reported prior to her waking up. When I came down and viewed what was going on, I viewed the footage of her waking up. I believe we have a problem.” Mark went to the console and typed on the keyboard. The footage rewound and then started to play.
Joan watched as Lily pulled the IV line out and went unsteadily to the mirror. “Mark. Did you listen to what she was saying?”
“I didn’t notice that she was speaking.” Mark typed on to the keyboard again and manipulated the volume controls.
“Dr. Stedman. We’ve lost visual in Lily’s room. Jarod pulled out the cables.” The tech said.
Joan thought for a moment. “That’s OK. Give them a while and switch to camera 2. They won’t notice that one.”
Mark had finished rewinding the footage again and hit play.
“I decide who lives or dies.” Came over the audio and then the loud rock music.
“I think that it has begun.” Joan stated as Mark shook his head in agreement.
************************
Broots had spent all day trying to access Lyle’s files. He had been unsuccessful at home. He hated tapping into Lyle or Raines’ computers. He always had a mental image of an axe coming down on his head when Miss Parker had asked him to do it. But now it was personal. He knew that Debbie wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. He was also running a search for companies that manufactured statues.
Sydney came into the office. “Broots. Have you been able to locate the angel statue yet or see if Lyle had any more information about Miss Parker’s disappearance? Broots.” Sydney went and tapped Broots on the shoulder. “Broots.”
Broots jumped in his chair. “Sydney.” He spilled out as he tried to hide what he had been working on.
“Is there something wrong? You jumped almost to the ceiling.”
“Sydney, if I tell you something do you promise not to mention it to anyone?” Broots looked around the room.
“Of course. Anything you say to me is confidential. What’s wrong? Did you find out something about the angel figure or the project that Jarod interrupted?”
“Sydney. Debbie thinks she is being followed. Now I took her to school this morning and didn’t see anything, but she’s not one to make things up. She described the car that she thought was following her in detail.”
“And you think the Centre has something to do with it?” Sydney questioned.
“I’m not sure. What if the people that took Jarod and Miss Parker have some kind of vendetta against the Centre and they are targeting Centre personnel. Or it’s the Centre itself. It’s not the first time I have been targeted. I think I’m getting an ulcer.” Broots held his stomach.
“Broots. You have to keep your wits about you. You will do Debbie no good if you lose your head. Now you’ve told her to stay in large groups, right?”
“Yes. I told her to stay in large groups and to never leave herself open. I was just about to leave to pick her up after I ran this last search. I don’t want her to walk home right now.” Just then the computer beeped, it had finished its search. Broots looked over at the screen. “Sydney. Sydney look. A match. A pair of statues were made to that specification at a company in California.”
“Then that’s our lead. Maybe if we contact the company, they may still have a record of where they were shipped. But that will have to be tomorrow. You go and get Debbie now. She’s more important.”
“OK, but don’t you want to know where they were shipped? It might tell us where Miss Parker would be.”
“No. It can wait till tomorrow. You go and pick up Debbie. I’ll close your computer down.” Sydney offered.
“Oh. Thanks Sydney. I am running late. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Broots got up, picked up his jacket and went out the door.
Sydney sat down at Broot’s computer and started writing down the address to where the statues were made. He took out his cell phone and dialed. “Yes, I’d like to book a flight to California. I’d like to leave this evening.”
************************
Jarod went over to Lily. “OK. What’s going on Lily? What has you so upset?”
Lily pushed off the door and started pacing around the room. “They’re treating me like a caged animal. First off – I’m tired of being watched.” She pointed to the camera in the corner of the room.
“I can rectify that.” Jarod moved under the surveillance camera and pulled the wires out. “OK. So now they are not watching.” Jarod saw Lily sway a little as she paced around the room. He went to sit on the bed and then decided to prop the pillows up and lay down. Lily saw what he did and stopped pacing.
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” Lily said sharply.
“Why don’t you come here and we can lay down and talk. You look tired.”
“I’m fine.” She said as she felt a wave of dizziness.
“Please. I don’t want to have to pick you up after you pass out on the floor.” Jarod smiled.
Lily was going to snap back, but decided that Jarod was right. She did feel drained. She went and laid down on the bed next to Jarod. They were both looking at the ceiling. “You know they are going to come buzzing in any minute like the Three Stooges because you unhooked the camera.”
“I know. Now what’s really bothering you?” Jarod made sure that he kept his face up so that Lily would not feel self-conscious.
“Maybe nothings wrong with me. Maybe I’m better now than before.”
“Who said that there was anything wrong. I asked what was bothering you?” Jarod quipped back.
Lily didn’t answer right away and gave a big breath out. “I’m remembering things. About being at the Centre. I had a whole….. existence there. It was……”, she hesitated.
“Pretty bad. I know what they did to our brother Kyle. They burned the humanity out of him. And another Pretender named Alex. He ended up having no soul. Not even the Triumvirate could control him.
“What the hell is the Triumvirate? I know that it is part of the Centre, but who really are they?”
“They are a group out of Africa who work in conjunction with the Tower at the Centre. They make overall decisions, though the Parkers seldom play by their rules. So the Triumvirate got a hold of Alex and created a perfect sociopath; he had no remorse for anything that he did.” Jarod could feel Lily stiffen next to him. “You could never be like them. You escaped. Came here. You helped save people. You countered what they did with my simulations.”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” Lily tried to go on. “Have you ever seen the movie Star Wars?”
Jarod smiled, “Yes, my young Jedi.”
Lily smiled. “OK. So you’ve discovered Star Wars. You know how they kept talking about the dark side. Well I know things now. How to hurt people, make them suffer, and how to kill. I’m not going to let anyone hurt me anymore. I remember all the things that Raines taught me. It’s a part of me, of who I am.”
Jarod was quiet for a moment and then decided to open up. “When I first escaped from the Centre, I was curious, excited, and willing to do anything to atone for what the Centre had done with my simulations. I wanted to help people whose families were in danger or people that had been separated from their family because of someone else’s wrongdoing. But then things started happening. I didn’t know the real world and I didn’t know who I was. I started finding out information about the Centre and about our family. For a while it looked like our father had killed Catherine Parker.”
Lily turned her head with her eyes wide open. “Had he?”
“No. Raines committed that act. And then along came Mr. Lyle and Mr. Cox. There were two times that I thought our brother Kyle had died. First was when a van we were in rolled and the FBI fired on the van and it blew up.”
“But he was still alive?”
“He came back later, to save me. But Lyle shot him because he was trying to shoot me. Kyle threw himself in front of me, took the bullet. He died in my arms. I donated his heart to a boy that was a blood match.”
“And you didn’t kill Lyle?” Lily said with disbelief in her eyes.
“I had to get Kyle out of there. Making the donation saved that boys life and gave purpose to Kyle’s death. After that, I started to change. I realized that the world was different than I had seen it before. That there were a lot of people that had hate in their hearts. And I realized that I had begun to have hatred in my heart. I wanted revenge for the people that had been killed or hurt by these evil people. Then the Centre caught me.”
“The Centre caught you? How?” Lily asked shocked.
“I found out that they had made a clone of me.”
“Get out of here. No one has made a successful human clone.” Lily looked into Jarod’s eyes. “You mean Raines actually created a viable human clone?”
“He’s with Dad now. I kidnapped Mr. Parker to exchange him for our father, but Raines showed up with a sharp shooter. He was trying to shoot Mr. Parker and hit Miss Parker instead. I told Dad to go and take the boy to safety.”
Lily was still concentrating on Jarod’s eyes. “You couldn’t leave her behind. Shot. Could you?”
Jarod bit his lip. “No. I couldn’t leave her behind bleeding and possibly dying. So I tried to stabilize her wound and in trying to escape on a motorcycle, they caught me.”
“But you’re here. You escaped again?” Jarod shook his head in agreement. “Oh I would have loved to had seen Raines’ face when he found that out.”
“But I didn’t escape before Mr. Lyle tortured me. He used a battery and cables to shock me. This went on for more than a month. I used a technique I developed when I was a child. I use to go to a special place in my mind where they couldn’t find me, where I couldn’t feel the pain.”
“But it doesn’t totally work. The aftermath is still there. The hatred is still there for having to go through it in the first place. It ends up that you can’t stay there forever. Eventually you have to come out and face reality.” Lily was looking back up at the ceiling.
“How did you know?” Then Jarod thought about what Sydney told him about Jacob and how they knew things about each other at times. “I think that maybe we have been able to feel each others pain and sorrow. It probably didn’t help that we were going through similar circumstances.”
“I don’t know about that. I just know that’s how I dealt with what Raines’ was doing to me.” Lily pushed herself up on her arms and looked at the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Lily got off the bed and started looking around the room.
“What’s wrong Lily?” But Jarod already knew what she was looking for.
After Lily had spun around the room a few times concentrating on the walls and furnishings, she stopped dead in the middle. “I know you are watching and listening. So hear this. I am not a lab rat! You will let me out of here. And if it’s the last thing I do, I am going to make William Raines pay for what he did to me!”
************************
The Game of Life
Your car must travel a winding road.
Full of pitfalls and prosperities.
At some time you will come to the end of the road.
But only if you can keep from crashing and burning.
A past becomes present.
The present becomes cloudy.
The future has infinite possibilities.
Thus goes the game of life.
************************
Resurgence
And in her mind, Lily came face to face with the child. The child full of anger, rage, fright; who had been taken by Raines and thrown into a world of darkness. Taught to hate, to fight, and to destroy. Lily could feel her heart break. She now knew that this darkness was inside herself, had always been. Personality traits that had been created by Raines so long ago, but buried in her subconscious. Lily walked over to the little girl and embraced her.
Lily opened her eyes. The room was in shadows except for a small light on her mirrored dresser. No one was in the room as she scanned around. She looked up at the IV line running into her arm and reached over and pulled the needle from its resting place. Lily carefully sat up, her head swirling a little, and swung her feet to the floor. She pushed herself up off the bed and steadied herself. She walked over to the mirror and looked at her reflection.
“I decide who lives or dies.” Lily turned to the stereo sitting next to the dresser and looked through the CD’s. She picked one out and placed it in the CD player. Rock music came on as she pushed the play button and she made the volume louder.
The door opened to the room and the nurse entered. Lily turned and was looking at the woman sternly. “Miss Lily. What are you doing out of bed? And you have removed your IV line. Let’s get you back into bed and we’ll get that line back in.” The nurse had been moving closer to Lily.
Lily, seeing her movement, countered by moving to the bed and rolling over the bed and landing on her feet. She steadied herself with the bed. “I’m not going back on it. No one is sticking me with any more needles. Get out of here.”
The door buzzed again and an orderly came in. “Do you need help Claudia?”
“Bruce, Miss Lily has decided that she doesn’t want to have the intravenous anymore and I was trying to convince her that it would be in her best interest to…”
“Yes she does Bruce. I think you better take her to see Dr. Stedman.” She glared at them both as they whispered to each other. “Stop talking about me like I am a mental patient. I’m getting out of here.” Lily started moving quickly for the door, but was blocked by Bruce. “You really don’t want to do that.”
The door buzzed and Mark came in. “Honey, you’re awake. Are we having a problem Claudia?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Will everyone stop talking like I’m a damn five year old. I’m fine. I woke up, I didn’t want that stupid IV in so I took it out, and now I would like to leave my room. IS there a problem with that?” She tried to get past Mark, but Bruce backed him up. Lily threw her hands up in the air. “Am I a prisoner now? I can’t even leave my room.”
Mark still spoke in a monotone voice. “Lily, honey, we are just trying to do what is best for you. You just had surgery and need to rest. And I would like to know what is aggravating you?” Claudia had moved to the phone and was speaking in hushed tones.
“Who is she calling? I want all of you to leave me alone. And I want the cameras out of here. I don’t want to be watched or recorded anymore. Why do you have to have my every movement documented? I am not an animal. I decide what I do and don’t do. And right now I am not going back into that bed. Or back on that IV. I have had enough drugs pumped into me and I’m not taking any more.” Lily’s voice was rising as she made her points.
There was a knock on the door and a buzz for the door to open. Jarod came in smiling until he saw everyone’s expression in the room. “What’s going on?”
Mark allowed Jarod to come past him. “Lily is just expressing her desire to not go back on the IV and that she is distressed….”
“Will you stop the bullshit and just tell him that you are keeping me here when I really want to leave. Jarod understands that. Being kept a prisoner.”
Jarod quickly picked up on that something was wrong and cut in. “Lily. I was hoping to have some time just for the two of us to talk.” Jarod turned to Mark. “Could you leave us alone for a while, if Lily’s up to it?” Jarod looked at Lily.
Lily kept her guard up, but eased a little when Jarod asked her if he could talk to her. “I’m fine.” Looking at Claudia, Bruce, and Mark. “I would like to talk to my brother – alone.”
Mark looked at Jarod and he acknowledged the look. Turning to escort everyone out, “Mark, let me talk to her for a little while.”
“Jarod, she’s not talking rationally.” Mark tried to say under his breath.
“I am as rational as you are.” Lily retorted angrily as she stood by the stereo listening to the music play.
Mark looked at Jarod and he motioned for Mark to leave and escorted him out the door. “We’ll be fine. Just let us talk.” Jarod closed the door with Mark trying to say something.
Lily went over and tried the doorknob. Finding the door locked, she leaned her back against it and kicked the door. “Locked.”
Jarod stood in the middle of the room. “OK. What’s going on Lily? What has you so upset?”
**************************
Mark went to the office where they were monitoring Lily’s room. Joan was already standing there watching the monitor. “She woke up agitated?”
“Yes. She had been tossing and turning in her bed Claudia reported prior to her waking up. When I came down and viewed what was going on, I viewed the footage of her waking up. I believe we have a problem.” Mark went to the console and typed on the keyboard. The footage rewound and then started to play.
Joan watched as Lily pulled the IV line out and went unsteadily to the mirror. “Mark. Did you listen to what she was saying?”
“I didn’t notice that she was speaking.” Mark typed on to the keyboard again and manipulated the volume controls.
“Dr. Stedman. We’ve lost visual in Lily’s room. Jarod pulled out the cables.” The tech said.
Joan thought for a moment. “That’s OK. Give them a while and switch to camera 2. They won’t notice that one.”
Mark had finished rewinding the footage again and hit play.
“I decide who lives or dies.” Came over the audio and then the loud rock music.
“I think that it has begun.” Joan stated as Mark shook his head in agreement.
************************
Broots had spent all day trying to access Lyle’s files. He had been unsuccessful at home. He hated tapping into Lyle or Raines’ computers. He always had a mental image of an axe coming down on his head when Miss Parker had asked him to do it. But now it was personal. He knew that Debbie wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. He was also running a search for companies that manufactured statues.
Sydney came into the office. “Broots. Have you been able to locate the angel statue yet or see if Lyle had any more information about Miss Parker’s disappearance? Broots.” Sydney went and tapped Broots on the shoulder. “Broots.”
Broots jumped in his chair. “Sydney.” He spilled out as he tried to hide what he had been working on.
“Is there something wrong? You jumped almost to the ceiling.”
“Sydney, if I tell you something do you promise not to mention it to anyone?” Broots looked around the room.
“Of course. Anything you say to me is confidential. What’s wrong? Did you find out something about the angel figure or the project that Jarod interrupted?”
“Sydney. Debbie thinks she is being followed. Now I took her to school this morning and didn’t see anything, but she’s not one to make things up. She described the car that she thought was following her in detail.”
“And you think the Centre has something to do with it?” Sydney questioned.
“I’m not sure. What if the people that took Jarod and Miss Parker have some kind of vendetta against the Centre and they are targeting Centre personnel. Or it’s the Centre itself. It’s not the first time I have been targeted. I think I’m getting an ulcer.” Broots held his stomach.
“Broots. You have to keep your wits about you. You will do Debbie no good if you lose your head. Now you’ve told her to stay in large groups, right?”
“Yes. I told her to stay in large groups and to never leave herself open. I was just about to leave to pick her up after I ran this last search. I don’t want her to walk home right now.” Just then the computer beeped, it had finished its search. Broots looked over at the screen. “Sydney. Sydney look. A match. A pair of statues were made to that specification at a company in California.”
“Then that’s our lead. Maybe if we contact the company, they may still have a record of where they were shipped. But that will have to be tomorrow. You go and get Debbie now. She’s more important.”
“OK, but don’t you want to know where they were shipped? It might tell us where Miss Parker would be.”
“No. It can wait till tomorrow. You go and pick up Debbie. I’ll close your computer down.” Sydney offered.
“Oh. Thanks Sydney. I am running late. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Broots got up, picked up his jacket and went out the door.
Sydney sat down at Broot’s computer and started writing down the address to where the statues were made. He took out his cell phone and dialed. “Yes, I’d like to book a flight to California. I’d like to leave this evening.”
************************
Jarod went over to Lily. “OK. What’s going on Lily? What has you so upset?”
Lily pushed off the door and started pacing around the room. “They’re treating me like a caged animal. First off – I’m tired of being watched.” She pointed to the camera in the corner of the room.
“I can rectify that.” Jarod moved under the surveillance camera and pulled the wires out. “OK. So now they are not watching.” Jarod saw Lily sway a little as she paced around the room. He went to sit on the bed and then decided to prop the pillows up and lay down. Lily saw what he did and stopped pacing.
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” Lily said sharply.
“Why don’t you come here and we can lay down and talk. You look tired.”
“I’m fine.” She said as she felt a wave of dizziness.
“Please. I don’t want to have to pick you up after you pass out on the floor.” Jarod smiled.
Lily was going to snap back, but decided that Jarod was right. She did feel drained. She went and laid down on the bed next to Jarod. They were both looking at the ceiling. “You know they are going to come buzzing in any minute like the Three Stooges because you unhooked the camera.”
“I know. Now what’s really bothering you?” Jarod made sure that he kept his face up so that Lily would not feel self-conscious.
“Maybe nothings wrong with me. Maybe I’m better now than before.”
“Who said that there was anything wrong. I asked what was bothering you?” Jarod quipped back.
Lily didn’t answer right away and gave a big breath out. “I’m remembering things. About being at the Centre. I had a whole….. existence there. It was……”, she hesitated.
“Pretty bad. I know what they did to our brother Kyle. They burned the humanity out of him. And another Pretender named Alex. He ended up having no soul. Not even the Triumvirate could control him.
“What the hell is the Triumvirate? I know that it is part of the Centre, but who really are they?”
“They are a group out of Africa who work in conjunction with the Tower at the Centre. They make overall decisions, though the Parkers seldom play by their rules. So the Triumvirate got a hold of Alex and created a perfect sociopath; he had no remorse for anything that he did.” Jarod could feel Lily stiffen next to him. “You could never be like them. You escaped. Came here. You helped save people. You countered what they did with my simulations.”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” Lily tried to go on. “Have you ever seen the movie Star Wars?”
Jarod smiled, “Yes, my young Jedi.”
Lily smiled. “OK. So you’ve discovered Star Wars. You know how they kept talking about the dark side. Well I know things now. How to hurt people, make them suffer, and how to kill. I’m not going to let anyone hurt me anymore. I remember all the things that Raines taught me. It’s a part of me, of who I am.”
Jarod was quiet for a moment and then decided to open up. “When I first escaped from the Centre, I was curious, excited, and willing to do anything to atone for what the Centre had done with my simulations. I wanted to help people whose families were in danger or people that had been separated from their family because of someone else’s wrongdoing. But then things started happening. I didn’t know the real world and I didn’t know who I was. I started finding out information about the Centre and about our family. For a while it looked like our father had killed Catherine Parker.”
Lily turned her head with her eyes wide open. “Had he?”
“No. Raines committed that act. And then along came Mr. Lyle and Mr. Cox. There were two times that I thought our brother Kyle had died. First was when a van we were in rolled and the FBI fired on the van and it blew up.”
“But he was still alive?”
“He came back later, to save me. But Lyle shot him because he was trying to shoot me. Kyle threw himself in front of me, took the bullet. He died in my arms. I donated his heart to a boy that was a blood match.”
“And you didn’t kill Lyle?” Lily said with disbelief in her eyes.
“I had to get Kyle out of there. Making the donation saved that boys life and gave purpose to Kyle’s death. After that, I started to change. I realized that the world was different than I had seen it before. That there were a lot of people that had hate in their hearts. And I realized that I had begun to have hatred in my heart. I wanted revenge for the people that had been killed or hurt by these evil people. Then the Centre caught me.”
“The Centre caught you? How?” Lily asked shocked.
“I found out that they had made a clone of me.”
“Get out of here. No one has made a successful human clone.” Lily looked into Jarod’s eyes. “You mean Raines actually created a viable human clone?”
“He’s with Dad now. I kidnapped Mr. Parker to exchange him for our father, but Raines showed up with a sharp shooter. He was trying to shoot Mr. Parker and hit Miss Parker instead. I told Dad to go and take the boy to safety.”
Lily was still concentrating on Jarod’s eyes. “You couldn’t leave her behind. Shot. Could you?”
Jarod bit his lip. “No. I couldn’t leave her behind bleeding and possibly dying. So I tried to stabilize her wound and in trying to escape on a motorcycle, they caught me.”
“But you’re here. You escaped again?” Jarod shook his head in agreement. “Oh I would have loved to had seen Raines’ face when he found that out.”
“But I didn’t escape before Mr. Lyle tortured me. He used a battery and cables to shock me. This went on for more than a month. I used a technique I developed when I was a child. I use to go to a special place in my mind where they couldn’t find me, where I couldn’t feel the pain.”
“But it doesn’t totally work. The aftermath is still there. The hatred is still there for having to go through it in the first place. It ends up that you can’t stay there forever. Eventually you have to come out and face reality.” Lily was looking back up at the ceiling.
“How did you know?” Then Jarod thought about what Sydney told him about Jacob and how they knew things about each other at times. “I think that maybe we have been able to feel each others pain and sorrow. It probably didn’t help that we were going through similar circumstances.”
“I don’t know about that. I just know that’s how I dealt with what Raines’ was doing to me.” Lily pushed herself up on her arms and looked at the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Lily got off the bed and started looking around the room.
“What’s wrong Lily?” But Jarod already knew what she was looking for.
After Lily had spun around the room a few times concentrating on the walls and furnishings, she stopped dead in the middle. “I know you are watching and listening. So hear this. I am not a lab rat! You will let me out of here. And if it’s the last thing I do, I am going to make William Raines pay for what he did to me!”
************************
The Game of Life
Your car must travel a winding road.
Full of pitfalls and prosperities.
At some time you will come to the end of the road.
But only if you can keep from crashing and burning.
