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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.
Regeneration
part 1
by Gizmo
He blinked, trying to open his eyes which seemed glued shut. Reaching up with one arm, he wiped and opened them. His hand came into focus and he stared at the blood on his fingers. Hearing voices, he gingerly lifted his now throbbing head from the ground and peered into the dusty tunnel.
Miss Parker was pulling Ethan to his feet when she heard the maintenance door bang open. She reached for her gun but couldn’t find it. Three sweepers rushed them and she protested loudly as they were hustled out the tunnel and into the maintenance duct. She glanced back down the tunnel briefly, wondering if Jarod was still alive.
Jarod waited until the footsteps had receded before getting a look at his surroundings. He found himself laying on his side against the wall of the tunnel, hidden from view by a piece of sheet metal. A searing pain in his right leg got his attention and he looked down at the piece of rebar sticking through it. He screamed and bit his lip as he pulled his leg away from the bar that had impaled him against the wall. After a moment, he pushed the metal away and limped to the maintenance door the sweepers had used.
***
The Centre
Miss Parker’s fingers itched to shoot someone. Since arriving back at the Centre, she had been ‘escorted’ to the infirmary. They had left her locked in a room waiting for the doctor. Now, an hour later, she was boiling. When the door clicked open, she sat back and waited for her first visitor.
“Hello Daddy.”
“Angel, I came as soon as I heard. What is going on?”
“Yes, Daddy, I’m hurt and I need a doctor to stitch up my arm. So glad you asked.”
“Oh, yes, well, the Centre doctor is busy with Ethan right now. What were you doing there?”
“How is my half-brother?”
Mr. Parker stared at his daughter. So she knows, he realized. He considered her carefully.
“Ethan is going to recover. He has a broken collarbone and some ribs needed taping. They’re checking to make sure there’s no internal damage. Now, Angel, you need to tell me what you were doing there. There’s a board meeting in two hours. They’re very concerned about where your loyalties are.”
“Trying to decide what to do with me, hmmm, Daddy? What do you do with bad daughters that don’t play your Centre games? Kill them off like you do with inconvenient wives? Just for the record, Daddy, is your little son really yours or is he another Centre creation?”
Mr. Parker grabbed his daughter and shook her.
“Now, you listen here. I didn’t raise you to be a weakling like your mother. You knew when you came to work here what we do. You’re just as involved in the Centre’s schemes as I am. You’re a Parker – act like one!”
She shoved her father away and glared.
“You’re right, Daddy. It is time to start acting like a Parker. Where’s my gun?”
“It’s safe. I’m going to tell the tower that you followed Ethan in hopes that Jarod would show up. Now that Jarod knows about Ethan, we can use Ethan to capture him. Jarod will probably contact you. Our deal still stands, Angel. Can I count on you to bring Jarod in?”
Miss Parker couldn’t believe her father’s audacity. Did he think she was stupid? They were never going to allow her to go free. Somehow, it all came back to Jarod. She needed time – time to get the answers and find that disk her mother had made.
“I don’t know Daddy. How can I trust you to live up to your end of the bargain?”
Mr. Parker glared at his daughter. He had protected her many times from the Centre’s wrath and this is what he gets? Perhaps it was time to end their relationship. But she has the best chance of capturing Jarod, he thought.
“I’ll give you Ethan. You get me Jarod and I’ll give you both yours and Ethan’s freedom.”
“Deal. I’ll want it in writing.”
“It’ll be on your desk in an hour.”
****
Miss Parker considered the computer monitor. She had been shocked when, after the doctor sewed her arm back together, she had been allowed to visit with Ethan. Her half-brother had been under the drugs they had given him and a little banged up but otherwise seemed fine. Now, she sat at home, trying to decipher the Centre’s ultimate motives.
“It’s simple,” a voice said from behind. “They’re setting you up.”
Miss Parker spun around and stared at Jarod. A large gash oozed above his right ear. He took a limping step towards her and she glanced down at his legs.
He watched as she stood up and came towards him. Her face was bruised along one side and she held her arm gingerly.
“Are you okay?” he asked with concern.
“I will be,” she replied. “When my father is dead and the Centre is a hole in the ground.”
She walked around him, inspecting the damage. He glowered at her and she grinned. It was making him uncomfortable – her careful perusal of his body. She smiled.
“We need to find that disc your mother left.”
“No shit, sherlock. Sit down before you fall down. You’re bleeding on my floors.”
He limped to the sofa and sat. She sat across from him and they stared at each other.
“Ethan?”
“A couple of broken bones and some stitches. Daddy renegotiated with me. I get Ethan too when I turn you over.”
She knows, he thought. Daddy won’t give her freedom – even for me. They had to come up with a plan and she was asking for his help.
“Do you believe it, Jarod?” she asked quietly. “Will the truth finally set us free? Or will we end up more twisted and ensnared in that place?”
“I believe it. The only way to be free of the Centre is to be free of its lies. We have to find your mother’s DSA.”
“I know. I can only stall my father for so long. What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to sim your mother.”
“The HELL you are! First you have me dig up her grave. Now, you want to dig up her mind? No way.”
“It’s the only way we’ll be able to determine possible locations of the DSA. If I can get into her mind, become her, I’ll be able to see what places she would have considered safe for putting the DSA.”
“NO!”
“You’re not being reasonable. Listen to your inner voices. We don’t have a lot of time. They’ll find me here.”
Miss Parker stood up and began pacing, her shoulders heavy. She was still reeling from the discovery of her father’s complicity in her mother’s death.
“You don’t have to stay,” he said quietly.
“I know. I’m not going to wimp out now. But you’re not in any shape to sim anyone right now. First, we do your leg. Then my mother.”
“I’m fine. We don’t have time…”
“Then I’ll make the time. Give me my phone.”
Jarod handed her the phone and listened as she called Broots and asked him to arrange a diversionary tactic. After Broots had obviously agreed to help, she hung up and went into her bathroom.
“Take your jeans off,” she told him.
He looked down at his pants then back at her with a shake of his head.
“Give me some scissors. I’ll do it,” he told her.
“We’re not arguing about this. Take the @#!$@ jeans off.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear.” It was an excuse, he knew, but hopefully good enough to deflect her determination.
“I’ll give you a pair of Tommy’s jeans.”
He stood and unbuttoned the pants. Looking up at her, he scowled at her smirk as he pushed the jeans down. When he pushed the jeans past his wound, he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
The pants landed in a heap at his ankles. Blood had soaked up and through the material and his entire right thigh as well as a portion of his briefs was smeared with red.
“Now sit back on the couch and let me look at it,” she told him. He kicked off his shoes and complied. Besides, he was too tired to argue and his leg hurt like blazes. He had to save energy to do this sim. She gasped when she got a close look at the wound.
“How the hell were you able to talk on this?”
“I just tuned it out.” He glanced down at the wound, bending his leg at the knee to get a better look. “I hit the wall and it tore downwards when I fell to the ground. It needs some internal stitches. Have you got a kit?”
“Actually, I do. I kept it from my days as a sweeper. My stitches might not be up to your standards anymore but they’ll have to do.”
He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Just do it fast. We’ve got work to do.”
***
Mr. Parker’s office
“Jarod will go back to Sydney temporarily,” Mr. Parker explained to his son. “Once things have settled down some, you can resume Project Regeneration. Of course, without Raines, you will be reporting directly to the new project leader. I expect you to get results. This project is the basis of the Centre.”
“Of course. I appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate my unwavering loyalty. You can count on me.”
“I’m relying on it. No screw ups this time, Lyle. This is your last chance. After 7677’s failure, you are going to need to pull this off.”
“I will not disappoint you,” Lyle said with feeling. “What about my darling sister?”
“She and Ethan will be assigned to Mr. White. He has some ideas for using their special abilities. Now, when do you think Jarod will be contacting her?”
The phone rang and Mr. Parker answered. After he spoke with whomever was on the phone, he turned back to his son.
“That was Broots. He has a lead on Jarod somewhere in North Carolina. I want you to get a team together and get down there right now!”
“And my sister? Should I call and invite her?”
“No. She’s not going anywhere as long as we have Ethan. Just go.”
***
Miss Parker looked up at Jarod’s face as she snipped the last stitch. He was pale and breathing harshly with both eyes squeezed tightly shut. She had offered him pain medication but he refused it – stating simply that he couldn’t perform a sim with his mind drugged up.
“Okay, I’m done. What do you need me to do?”
He opened his eyes, swung his legs gingerly back over the edge of the couch and sat up. The world spun and he waited until the feeling had passed before looking up at her.
“I could use those pants.”
She went to get the pants. He was more injured than he was letting on, she thought. Time to put a stop to the heroics. She took Tommy’s pants back to the injured pretender and watched as he pulled them up to his knees. She smiled and waited.
He frowned as he felt her watching him. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself to a standing position. Too quickly, he thought as the world went dark.
She grabbed his arms and shoved him back down on the couch. Standing back, she waited while he fought for consciousness. When he had won the battle, he scowled up at her.
“Done playing tough guy?” she quipped. “If you’re done, we can get back to business.”
He sighed and lifted his hips from the couch, pulling the pants up. Even moving his leg sent waves of pain shooting up his body.
Miss Parker returned from her kitchen with a tray. She set the tray on the table in front of him.
“Eat this. It’ll help with the dizziness.”
He picked up the sandwich and ate slowly. While he ate, she cleaned up the first aid kit supplies and blood soaked clothing. He finished and leaned back against the couch, closing his eyes.
“How long has it been since you’ve slept?” she asked.
“Awhile. I just need to rest my eyes for a minute…” he mumbled.
She watched for a moment until his breathing had deepened and evened out. Grabbing an afghan from the chair, she tossed it over him. When he began slipping to the side, she took hold of his shoulders and lowered him so he lay flat. She took off his shoes, draped his legs across the couch and then sat in the chair across from him, watching him sleep.
***
Sydney watched as Lyle became increasingly angry.
“Where is he, Sydney?” Lyle demanded. Failure was not something he wanted to report to his father. An anxiousness crept into his mind when he thought of failure.
“I don’t know. Perhaps someone leaked to him that you were setting up at trap. Or perhaps he was injured in the explosion and he can’t make it. I don’t think he’s coming.”
“If I find out this was some sort of setup on your part, Sydney, there’ll be hell to pay.”
***
Ethan shuddered. Since being dumped in this cell, he had seen no one other than the man who brought his food. He stood and began pacing. After a moment, he tilted his head to one side.
“I know they’re coming for me and I’m trying to be patient,” he said. “But I don’t like it here.”
After a moment, Ethan nodded his head and went back to pacing. Yes, it was definitely better to spend his time contemplating what it would be like to spend time with his siblings rather than worrying.
***
Jarod spun around and ran towards the elevator. The sound grew louder, harsher instead of fading. He looked back over his shoulder expecting to find Raines there, wheezing behind him. Instead, he saw Lyle with the scalpel and thumbs littering the floor. He reached the elevator and it opened. Inside, stood Sydney – blocking his only exit.
“It’s time for your next sim, Jarod.”
Miss Parker stared as Jarod thrashed in the throes of his nightmare. She caught snatches of the people populating his nightmare world through his disjointed mumbling. She had never seen this – the real results of the Centre’s lifetime of terror on its inhabitants. It had always seemed like whining and complaints. Grow up, she had told him.
He sat up suddenly, his eyes panicked and terror stricken. She stood and went to the kitchen – giving him time to collect himself. She smiled sardonically to herself. Was she giving him time to collect himself or giving herself time? His dreams had affected her more than she was ready to acknowledge.
He put his feet on the floor, elbows on knees and lowered his head to his hands. The last thing he had wanted to do was fall asleep and give Miss Parker a demonstration of his inability to handle what had happened to him at the Centre. He looked down and realized someone had taken off his shoes and covered him with an afghan. It seemed the ice queen has melted, he thought with a slight grin.
“How long was I out?” he asked without raising his head when she returned.
“About two hours.” She held out a cup of coffee and waited until he raised his head and took the cup. He leaned back against the couch and sipped at the steaming cup – still not looking at her.
She knew he didn’t want to discuss the dreams. She had given him his dignity by leaving the room when he awakened – knowing he wouldn’t want her to see his fear. But she needed to know everything. It was time to stop hiding from the painful truth.
“I used to envy you. Everyone always took care of you. You were their prize – treasured and watched over. I felt invisible at times. I thought you had a great life. You had Sydney to take care of you and you never had to worry if someone would remember to give you something to eat or not. I would have gladly traded all my toys and pretty bedroom for that kind of security.”
He glanced at her – saw her determination that this conversation would take place – and sighed. He had tried, so many times, to have this conversation with her. It was what he had wanted – to get her to admit her feelings and to finally see that the Centre’s security blanket it wrapped its inmates in was actually not the sweet comfort she imagined. He shook his head at himself. This is what he had fought for and now he didn’t want it. For some reason, this conversation had lost its appeal.
“Let’s not do this now,” he said quietly, his eyes pleading. “We’ve got to make plans…”
“Stalling, labrat?” She knew he was too vulnerable, too close to it, right now. But she needed him weakened.
“Why is this suddenly so important to you?”
“It’s the only way to stop their lies. And…stop my lies – to myself. I need to feel that guilt. It’s the only way I can save that little part of me that still has a conscience.”
“I can’t do this right now,” he whispered.
“Yes, you can. I’ll help you.” She put her hand on his knee. “You were taken as a child from your family…”
He stood up and limped away from her. Standing by the window, he spoke quietly.
“I was jealous of you too. Your mother was so…perfect. After I had been there awhile, I couldn’t remember my mother’s face anymore. I’d imagine that your mother was mine too. Then I’d feel guilty for not remembering my mother – for not wishing for my mother anymore. Sometimes it got so confusing that I’d look forward to the sims. I wanted to be someone else.”
“What were your days really like?”
“The days were okay. It was the nights. Then when Raines started to…I didn’t know when he’d be coming for me.”
“Started to what, Jarod? How old were you when he first got his hands on you?”
“I don’t know. The memories are really fuzzy. It wasn’t the same as what he did to Kyle and Angelo. I remembered the heart drug/cryogenic experiments about two years ago. But there’s more – or maybe those experiments just go further back. I’m not sure. I just remember fear and pain.”
“Did you ever learn what those experiments were really about? And why did they use you?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping your mother’s DSA will tell us. This secret – it’s essential. It’s the string we’re missing to unraveling the Centre.”
***
Mr. Parker’s Office
“You do realize what is going to happen if we don’t get Jarod back?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Project Regeneration will not be shutdown,” Lyle said evenly. “We will get him back. I’m sending a team over to my sister’s house even as we speak. If this was some type of diversionary setup by Jarod, he’ll be there.”
“Good. What about Sydney? How much is he involved?”
“Sydney’s loyalties have always been in question. He’s been playing both sides of the field for too long. I think it’s time we played our trump card with the good doctor.”
Mr. Parker considered Lyle’s suggestion. They had one ace up their sleeve when it came to manipulating the doctor. He had been reluctant to use it up to now. But they were getting desperate.
“I agree. Sydney needs to be brought back under our control. Do it.”
“I’ll contact you as soon as I get back.”
***
Miss Parker’s House
Jarod had slipped into the pretend fairly easily. Knowing the person who he was simming made it easier. But feeling these emotions – her fears and pain – when he knew and cared about the person , made the pretend more draining emotionally and physically. By the time he was done with the list of her three possible locations, he was exhausted.
Miss Parker took the list and wiped the tears from her face. Her mother had suffered for them. It was there in Jarod’s drawn face, weary eyes.
“We don’t have much time,” he told her. “They’ll be coming for me soon. You’re going to need time to search those places for the DSA. There’s something I want you to do.”
“What? Kill my father?” she asked it half seriously.
“No. Take me back to the Centre. Go through with the deal you made with your father.”
“Are you crazy? That’s exactly what they want! Giving you back to them would just keep the place going!”
“I didn’t say I was going to stay. But as long as they have me – they’ll leave you and Ethan alone. Take Ethan to my father, then find the DSA. How much time do you need?”
“No. I am not doing this. You’re going to help me take down the Centre. I need you alive. There’s got to be another way.”
“Don’t you think I’ve considered all the possibilities? This is it. I can help from the inside. They won’t kill me. I’m too important to them. But they will kill you or Ethan to get to me.”
She stared at him. She knew they were running out of time. The Centre sweepers would arrive any minute. If they found them here, like this, she would find out just how little ‘Daddy’ really cared.
“If you’re not out in three weeks, I’m coming in after you,” she warned him.
“Three weeks. I’ll meet you here. You’ll take Ethan to my father?”
“Yes. How will Major Charles know to trust me? He’ll believe I took you in unwillingly.”
“You’ll just have to make him believe you.”
“Oh, I can see this is going to be a lot of fun. Okay, let’s do this.”
***
The Centre
“She wasn’t there,” Lyle told his father over the cellphone. “It looks like he probably showed up. We found a pair of jeans. Oh, and here’s the kicker. The jeans were soaked with blood.”
“So he’s injured,” Mr. Parker replied. The door to his office swung open and slammed into the wall. He jumped up at the intrusion.
“Lyle, it looks like your sister has come home,” Mr. Parker said into the phone. “And she’s brought us an early Christmas present.”
He disconnected the call and approached his daughter. She stood with her gun pointing down – placed directly at the back of Jarod’s skull as he stood in front of her, handcuffs restraining his hands behind his back.
“Get Ethan up here now,” she snarled. “Or I blow this key to the Centre away.”
“Angel, you caught him. I’m so proud of you. Now, put the gun away. Don’t you trust me?”
Jarod snorted. “There’s a good one. She’s not a complete idiot.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to spit on me if I was on fire. I’ll give you exactly one minute to get Ethan up here before I blow Jarod’s brains out. And don’t think I won’t do it. After all the trouble he’s given me for the past four years, I would only be too happy to splatter these super brains all over your office.”
Mr. Parker fumed for a minute, then relented. After all, he really didn’t mind letting her go. Killing his own daughter would seem extreme – even to the Centre. He buzzed for Willie to bring Ethan up to his office. Once Ethan was delivered, Miss Parker demanded Willie’s gun. Turning the gun over to Ethan, she looked one last time at her father.
“I hope you rot in hell,” she told him before spinning on her heel and marching out with Ethan.
***
Major Charles watched as his daughter laughed with the boy. JJ, as he preferred to be called now, kept his daughter entertained during her convalescence. It was so good to be with Emily again. Now, if only he could find out what had happened to Jarod. After Jarod left to find Ethan, they heard about the explosion on the news. When the news reported no bodies had been found, he had felt joyous relief. But Jarod hadn’t returned and he quickly realized that they weren’t safe at the convent anymore. If the Centre found Jarod, they would find ways of digging their whereabouts out of his son. He couldn’t risk Emily – she was too weak still. He opened up his e-mail account and scowled at it.
“Emily, JJ, come over here. What do you make of this?”
“It’s from Miss Parker!” the boy said happily. “Open it!”
“I’m not sure I should. I don’t know if I’m willing to risk losing this place. We’ve been safe here for a year.”
The boy pushed his father’s hands aside and fiddled with the computer controls. Emily watched amazed as windows popped open, commands were entered, changed and read lightening quick.
“It’s okay, Dad,” JJ said. “It’s just a regular e-mail. They won’t be able to trace anything.”
Major Charles opened the mail and they scanned the contents. She wants to meet, he realized. Ethan is with her. When he read that she had turned Jarod over to the Centre as part of Jarod’s plan, he frowned.
“Jarod would never give up his freedom. This has got to be some kind of setup.”
“He would for us,” Emily disagreed. “He’d do it to save his family.”
“I’m still not sure about this. I’ll need some time to consider it. JJ, send her a reply telling her to give me a week. That should be enough time.”
“Time for what?”
“I’m going to Blue Cove. I’ll contact Sydney and find out if they’ve really got him. If they do, then we can probably trust her. If they don’t, then this is some kind of trap to get him.”
“How do you know you can trust Sydney?” Emily asked.
“I don’t. But he’s our best chance. I’ve got to risk it.”
****
Sydney watched through the two way glass. Jarod hadn’t moved from the corner where he huddled since they had dumped him in the cell four hours ago. The past three days of being in the Centre had obviously taken their toll on the pretender. He pressed a button and the two-way glass changed so that Jarod could see him.
“Hello Jarod. How are you feeling?”
Jarod looked up and Sydney felt the twinge blossom into a full- bodied guilt attack.
“I’ve been better,” Jarod responded. “Sydney, have you heard anything from Miss Parker or my father?”
“Actually, I do have news for you.” Sydney checked to ensure Broots had switched the cameras off. “Your father contacted me today.”
Jarod waited – trying to suppress his anxiousness.
“Your father wanted to know if the Centre had recaptured you. So, it seems, Miss Parker has not contacted him after all. That was your plan – wasn’t it? Send Miss Parker to your father with Ethan.”
“Yes.” He worried over that for a moment. “What did you tell my father?”
“I told him that you were back here. He…”
“Asked for your help getting me out.” Jarod smiled slightly. “Sydney, there’s something I have to tell you. Remember those experiments I told you about …”
“The ones where Raines was stopping your heart?”
“Yes. Syd, there’s some other reason why they’re doing this.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying that they’ve been doing it again? But Raines is dead…”
Sydney’s phone rang and he answered it.
“Jarod, that was Broots. I have to go. I’ll try to help but they’re…well, there’s something you don’t know about me that we need to talk about later. I’ll come back when it’s safe.”
With a last smile for his protege, he pressed a button and left Jarod to darkness.
***
Major Charles didn’t trust the psychiatrist. Sydney had told him that yes, Jarod was back at the Centre and reluctantly agreed to meet. He watched as the psychiatrist approached.
“Good location,” Sydney said as he looked around the deserted parking lot. “Did the boy sim this location for you?”
“Yes,” he replied cautiously. “I’ll need your help to get Jarod out of there. Details on where he’s being held. I need your help to get him out.”
“Major, I’d love to help you get your son out of there. But I can’t. And it’s too dangerous for you to try it. If they capture you…”
“They would use me against Jarod. I know.” Major Charles ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know who else to turn to. Please Sydney, you’ve got to help us.”
“I can’t.” Sydney sighed and turned away. “I have someone to protect too.”
Two cars screeched around a corner and approached the parking lot. Major Charles shot the shrink an angry look just as the Centre cars ramped over the curb. He ran towards his escape vehicle. Using the boy’s escape plan, he pressed a button and the board studded with spikes popped up. Tires blew and one of the black cars swerved and hit Sydney’s car.
***
Lyle frowned as he yanked a strap tighter. Jarod struggled on the table before giving up. His chest heaved up and down as he tried to control his fear. The coldness would seep into his bones quickly as the chamber filled with ice cold air, he knew. One of the sweepers stepped forward and Jarod flinched as the syringe was injected.
The door to the cylinder was opened and he looked down at his feet as they shoved him into it. At the last moment, he twisted his head back to get a glimpse of it. Those eyes held the deepest sickness he had ever witnessed.
Cox watched, feeling the excitement building. When Jarod’s lips turned blue and the thermometers inside the chamber read below zero temperatures, he bent to the window. Pressing a button, he leaned in.
“Tell me what you see Jarod. Tell me how you feel.”
Lyle turned to his father in disgust. In the past, he had participated eagerly. But now, he felt sickened by the whole thing. And there was something bothering him – a feeling he couldn’t identify – something inside his mind that pressed down heavily. It felt familiar somehow .
“This is disgusting,” Lyle commented. “Can we get the sicko out of here so I can get some work done?”
“Now Lyle, Cox’s fascination with death has been very useful to us. Let him play his game. It won’t interfere with the results. Now, who are we attempting to regenerate today?”
“How about Raines?” Lyle asked. He immediately wanted to withdraw the suggestion but decided to play it out.
“Hmm. Interesting. But I’m not sure I want Raines back. But nothing else has worked so I’m willing to try it. If this doesn’t work, we may have to get Sydney’s cooperation.”
“I don’t know how we’ll get Sydney to force Jarod into pretending to be whoever we’re regenerating.”
“The way we always get Sydney to do anything.”
***
Miss Parker smiled at Ethan. The young man smiled back at her. In the past week, they had gotten to know each other. Her brother was a lot like Jarod, she thought. He cared about other people. But he was also like her too. He knew how to play dirty.
“Are you ready for this meeting? Your father is very eager to meet you but if you need more time…”
“No. I can handle it. Maybe he’ll know where the DSA is.”
“I doubt it.” She sighed. “All these mysteries… hopefully, I’ll be able to find that DSA and everything will become clearer.”
“I know how disappointed you were that it wasn’t at the first place on Jarod’s list. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to look for it?”
“No. You need time to get to know your father. I’ll be back as soon as I find it.”
They stopped at the designated meeting spot. Major Charles stood waiting for them. Ethan got out of the car and walked towards him. They stared at each other for a minute before Major Charles grabbed the young man and pulled him into a tight hug. After a moment, Ethan hugged him back.
***
Jarod shivered in his corner. He wasn’t sure what day it was but it didn’t really matter. He was too weak to explore and find what he had come to get. He suspected that about two weeks had gone by. But at least they hadn’t been successful in their latest attempts at their sick experiments.
It was the combination – drugs and physical torture – that had him worried about his ability to withstand it much longer. But he couldn’t give in – even if he thought the experiment would fail. There was no way to sim it to know for sure. If the experiments were successful, he would disappear. When they brought his body back to life, someone else would inhabit it.
He tried to reason it out but his exhaustion was too heavy. He knew that if he tried to sleep, they would come for him. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
“Crew craw, toad stools, geese walking barefoot…”
Cox watched the pretender as he sang quietly. That damn song – he hated that song. He knew he used it to protect himself – as comfort. But he didn’t want Jarod feeling comfort – only fear and anxiety.
Lyle came up behind him and looked in the cell at the pretender.
“I think you should reconsider your methods,” Lyle advised. “The jumper cables were extremely effective. No blood and mess to clean up afterwards.”
“Most of us don’t abhor blood or messiness as much as you do, Mr. Lyle,” Cox replied.
“Perhaps. But the point is that you haven’t been successful in gaining his cooperation. He still absolutely refuses to perform the simulation. My methods were cleaner.”
“Clean torture? How dull.”
“I once said that diagnosis of mental illness is highly subjective. But seeing what you’ve done with the pretender…well, I think that no one would disagree with my diagnosis. I may be sick but I can be cured. You’re just plain evil..”
What is happening to me? Lyle wondered as he walked away. He shook his head wondering if Raines’ death had something to do with these strange feelings. Did Raines somehow have more control over me than I realized? Lyle looked back at the door to the observation room. Jarod would know, he realized. Jarod could sim it
***
Miss Parker shook her head. It was impossible, she thought. There had to be some other reason why Sydney had set up Major Charles. Sydney adores Jarod. There’s no way he would do anything to hurt his protégé. But the Major had been convinced. After Ethan and the Major left to rejoin Emily at their hiding spot, she had returned home and thought it through. There was nothing left to do but call and get the truth from the source.
“Sydney here,” he answered.
“A friend tells me that you aren’t playing by the old rules. What’s really going on Syd?”
“Hello Miss Parker. I assume you’ve talked with Major Charles?”
“You can assume anything you want. Been spending too much time in the renewal wing, have we Syd?”
“No. Was there something you wanted?”
“Why did you set up Major Charles?”
“Why do you think I set him up?”
“Cut the shrink crap and answer the question!”
“Miss Parker, the choices I make… you don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me!” she demanded.
“I can’t.” He flicked off the phone.
She hung up the phone and sat down. The disc, she thought. There was only one more place on Jarod’s list to search. She needed it now more than ever.
****
Five Days Later
Miss Parker peeled the back of the picture off. She smiled. Her mother was ingenious. The last place on Jarod’s list had been right. The disc was in her father’s office. Sneaking into the office had been the most difficult part. But, like Jarod, she knew the Centre inside and out. She pocketed the disc and turned to leave.
“Hi sis. Going somewhere?”
Miss Parker jumped. Lyle stood in the doorway grinning at her.
“Just thought I’d take one last look around,” she lied.
“Was it here?”
“What?”
“Don’t play games with me,” Lyle whispered angrily. “She was my mother too. I have a right to see it.”
“A right? Why so you can go tell her murderer everything.”
“Dad didn’t kill her.”
“He ordered it. Get a clue.”
Lyle stepped up to her.
“You’re telling me to get a clue? Do you have any idea what is going on here? Do you know what they’ve been doing to your favorite labrat?”
“They? Aren’t you forgetting that you’re a part of it?”
“Yes. That’s the problem. I seem to have all these big gaps in my memories. I don’t know if they made me forget or if it’s just stuff that I’ve blocked. That disc – it’s the only way I’ll know. My answers are on it too.”
Shock hit her. This one went off the Richter scale, she realized. Finding out Sydney had setup Major Charles was a big one but this hit her harder. Lyle was doing the same thing she was – looking for answers – looking for the truth.
“I don’t know if I can trust you. How do I know you won’t have me killed?”
He considered her sadly. He knew she was his only chance at learning the truth to his life. But what would his life be worth if he helped her? The Centre would hunt him down as ruthlessly as they hunted Jarod. It all came back to Jarod, he realized. Jarod is the key to everything – including my life, he thought.
“Give me an hour and I’ll show you that you can trust me. We need to work together on this Parker. Meet me at your house in an hour. Will you do that?”
She saw something different about Lyle. Always, she had felt that he had a hidden agenda behind every move. There was calculation in his eyes. Tonight, there were questions there.
“If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” she told him. “There is too much at stake here.”
“Yes, Parker, there is too much at stake.” He leaned in to whisper it. “It’s not about money and power anymore. They want to be gods. We’ve got to stop them.”
***
Miss Parker paced anxiously. Going to the DSA player, she picked up the disk and held it to the light.
“I hope it was worth it, Mom,” she said.
“We’ll know in a minute,” Lyle replied. He stepped into the light and smiled at her. “I’ve got something for you but I need your help getting it out of the car.”
She frowned at him wondering what he could be up to as she followed him to his car. He had parked it around the back of her house. He opened the passenger door and the light went on. Whatever had been in the passenger seat had fallen out when he opened the door and she couldn’t see what he was manhandling out the door.
“I could use some help here,” he called to her.
She went around to the passenger side and gasped. Lyle had his arms under Jarod’s armpits and was dragging the unconscious man out of the car. She rushed forward and grabbed Jarod’s legs, hefting them up. They carried him into the house and she jerked her head towards her bedroom. Dumping him onto the bed, she stood back – the shock evident on her face.
“Damn, he’s heavier than he looks,” Lyle told her.
“You got him out? I can’t believe you did this. What happened?”
Lyle smiled at her as he bent over the unconscious man.
“Have you got a first aid kit? I’ll tell you what happened while we get him cleaned up some.”
When she returned with the kit, she found her brother peeling the shirt off Jarod. She gazed down at the pretender’s body.
“Is he going to live?” she asked.
“What do I look like, a doctor? Cox doesn’t believe in clean torture. Get some towels and warm water.”
The basin of warm water sloshed as she almost tripped over the dirty, bloody shirt tossed on the floor. Lyle was putting pressure on a bleeding wound. She soaked a towel and picked up one of Jarod’s arms. Some of the wounds were older, encrusted with blood and dirty while the inside of the elbow contained track marks. She watched her brother as she washed these.
“They won’t trace me here, if that’s what you’re worried about. They don’t suspect a thing. Who would believe that I sprung the pretender? You were even in shock when you saw him. But I needed something to help persuade you that my loyalties are not where they used to be and he’s the only thing I could think of.”
She considered him for a moment. “Your loyalties have never been in question. You’re loyal to Lyle and only Lyle.”
“That’s why I’m still alive. The Centre doesn’t exactly have a good retirement program.”
“No, they don’t. But I can’t believe you sprung him just to use him as a demonstration to me. You could have forced me to show you this DSA. You didn’t need my trust. You got him out because whatever they were doing to him didn’t agree with you.”
Lyle looked up at her uncertainly – wondering if she could read his mind. It had been an impulse – to get Jarod. But once it came into his mind, he couldn’t stop it. And it had felt so right. Like he was completing something that he was meant to do.
***
Two hours later
“It’s late. Perhaps we ought to wait until morning,” Miss Parker said quietly.
“No. Let’s do it now. One of us is going to have to stay up and keep an eye on him. His body temperature is still too low. We need to get some warm fluids in him when he wakes up. Do you have any soup?”
“Yes. The sedative you gave him – how long will he be out for?”
“I’m not sure. If I could have done it without drugging him…”
“You’d still be hassling with him at the Centre. He’ll get over it.”
“Assuming he lives. Where’s the DSA?”
She plugged the DSA into the recorder and they sat down to watch their mother.
Catherine Parker sat quietly looking into the camera. Her life was almost over. She knew it and it showed in her eyes.
“Hello darling. There are so many things I have to tell you. I can only hope that you’re not watching this alone. I hope that one of your brothers is there with you. You see, you actually have a twin brother and soon, a half brother. They told me your twin died when he was born. But lately, the voices have been telling me that Lyle actually lived. Lyle, if you are there, your mother loved you very much. You were taken away from me to fulfill a purpose in life. I know it will take you a long time to find that purpose – but understand that it’s not the one the Centre plans for you.”
Lyle felt something change inside. He smiled. Although Cox would never get the answer to one of life’s most important questions, he had just found the answer to the other question. Yes, he thought, people can change.
“By now, you probably know that the Centre was a good place originally. We wanted to study behavior and genetics – hoping to find cures and understanding. Doctor Raines was our specialist on extreme violent behavior and near-death experiences. At first, I thought it was a purely scientific fascination. After Jarod came to us, I realized that the doctor was obsessed. But it took me nine years to discover just how obsessed and sick he really is.
He is using Jarod to study death. No one can simulate death. From near death experiences, we know that it is different for every person. Jarod is capable of becoming many people. Do you see what he intends to do? Also, there is also a theory that a pretender can be used to ‘regenerate’ a dead person by becoming that person at the moment before death. When the pretender is revived, the regenerated person inhabits his body….
“Jesus,” Miss Parker whispered. “Those experiments where you stopped his heart…”
“Cryogenic research,” Lyle interrupted. “We were killing him, freezing him and then attempting to revive him as someone else.”
“And that’s what they’ve been doing to him these past two weeks?”
“Yes. Jarod wasn’t cooperative the last time we did these experiments. Sydney was out of town that time and Jarod wouldn’t do the sim. We knew he wasn’t going to cooperate this time either. I wanted to use the jumper cables but as you saw Cox had other plans to gain his cooperation.”
“How did they manage to hide this from me all these years? Why didn’t I know?”
“You didn’t want to know. Neither did Jarod. We blocked Jarod’s memories but even without the drugs, he probably wouldn’t have remembered it,” Lyle responded.
When I discovered how Raines was using Jarod, I knew my days were numbered. I ‘pretended’ to trust Raines to keep this baby safe. I tried to tell Sydney – but he doesn’t want to hear. I don’t think he could live with the guilt if he accepted what I told him. But he has someone he has to protect…
I never wanted this to come to this point - where I would leave my children in their hands – without a loving parent. But I had to try to stop them. We cannot let them do this. They have even tried to clone Jarod so that they’ll have a perpetual supply of pretenders to use for this experiment. But I failed.
Here’s my plan: Raines has devised a new method of mind control. I discovered that he has hidden your twin brother with a family. When Lyle reaches maturity, Raines will implant a device in his brain. He’ll have control over your brother – use him to carry out his dirty work and divide the Parkers. Raines knows that together – you and Lyle would make a team that could bring the Centre to its knees. You must find your brother and work together to get that device out of his head. Use Jarod to get it out. Then, once Lyle is free from the Centre’s control, the two of you…
Miss Parker was crying. As her mother finished describing her plan to wipe the Centre from the face of the earth, she smiled a little. The plan was deviously simple. She waited until the screen went blank before turning to Lyle. There was amazement and joyous wonder in her twin’s eyes.
“There’s something in my head,” he whispered. “They made me do those things. I can’t explain it but I couldn’t stop. I never wanted…”
Tears had come to Lyle’s eyes. Real tears, she thought. She reached for his hand. A jolt went through her and they sprung apart.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
“Yes. What was it?”
“I don’t know. But it was like I could feel you in my head.”
He grinned. “So maybe Sydney was right but it just took us longer to feel it. Twins do have a special bond.”
Jarod slowly became aware of the softness of the surface he was laying on. He fought through the fog in his brain to open his eyes. Yes, he was actually on a bed. Pillows were tucked in around him, keeping him on his side. His wrists were bandaged rather than shackled. He raised his head from the pillow. How the hell did I get in Miss Parker’s bedroom, he worried. The last thing he could remember was Lyle with a syringe. He heard footsteps and closed his eyes – feigning sleep. Something was inserted in his ear and when the ting sounded, he realized that whoever was in the room was taking his temperature.
“Any better?” Jarod heard Miss Parker ask from the doorway.
“It’s gone up to 97.” Jarod almost jumped out of his skin when he heard Lyle’s voice. He felt Lyle pick up his wrist.
“He’ll be waking up soon. His pulse has increased some. We should try and get some food into him. It’s been awhile since he’s eaten.”
He heard them leave the room, discussing him as they went down the hallway. Using his elbow, he levered himself up. He looked down at himself. Bandages swathed most of his upper torso where the majority of the damage had been inflicted. Grabbing the end of the blanket, he went to pull it back but discovered his lack of clothing. Looking around, he saw his clothing piled in a heap on the floor. He steeled himself for the pain and sat up slowly.
***
After pouring the soup into a bowl, she opened her mouth to call for Lyle when she heard a thump. Then she felt something – in her head, she heard Lyle.
She rushed down the hallway. Inside the bedroom, she found Lyle in a heap. The bedroom window was open, the smashed ear thermometer littered the floor and the bed was empty.
“Lyle!” She bent down to her twin. His pulse was strong and he moaned as she felt along his skull. He blinked and opened his eyes.
“He jumped me when I came in,” Lyle told her. “I didn’t think he’d have the strength to even stand. We better find him before he collapses somewhere and the Centre finds him.”
***
Four Hours Later
Jarod panted, holding his broken ribs, as he leaned against the wall to catch his breath. Adrenaline kept him vertical but he was quickly running out of that commodity. He heard Miss Parker and Lyle approaching and pushed himself off. Wincing, he stumbled down the littered alleyway bare footed.
Lyle turned the corner and saw the figure limping around the next corner. His feet crunched over broken glass as he followed Jarod. He skidded to a stop twenty feet from the pretender. Jarod was trapped. The alleyway was a dead end.
Miss Parker followed her brother. Jarod, looking like a caged animal, was warily watching them as he leaned against the far wall.
Let me handle this, she told her brother mentally. He nodded.
“Jarod, I don’t know what you’re thinking but we need to get you back to my house. You need to be in bed. Your body temperature isn’t back to normal yet and you’re wounded.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Get away from me!” he croaked out.
“We can’t do that. You’ll get caught! The Centre is already combing this town for you. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Time for what? What is going on?”
“Lyle got you out. It’s a long story. You’ve got to trust us.”
She took another step towards him and he moved to the right. She stopped and considered her options. Rush him, Lyle told her. She nodded and sprung.
Jarod waited until she reached him before bringing his hand around. He grabbed her and twisting her around, forced her into a head lock. The gun he put under her throat was her own.
“Stay back,” he warned Lyle. The de ja vu sunk in and he smiled at the irony.
Miss Parker groaned but thought quickly. He won’t kill me, she told Lyle. He’s hurt and sick, Lyle returned. I’m not risking you, he told her. You’ve got to, she pleaded. They can’t win.
“Put the gun down, Jarod,” Lyle warned. “I know you won’t hurt her. You can’t do this. It’s not in your makeup. I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What are you offering this time, Lyle? By now you should realize that I’m not interested in running the Centre with you,” Jarod asked.
“Raines put a device in my head twenty years ago. It made me do things. Your freedom for mine – it’s that simple. You get this thing out of my head and I’ll let you go.”
“You can’t believe I’ll trust you – not even you are that stupid. One step closer and you’ll be explaining to daddy dearest why you let his angel get her brains blown out.”
“The device - it’s on the DSA my mother made.”
“You found it?” Jarod asked his captive quietly.
“Yes,” she got out. “Come with us and we’ll show it to you.”
“How can you trust him? He’ll set us up.”
“I just know I can. Something inside me tells me to trust him.”
The voices, Jarod realized. Jarod turned the gun from his captive to her twin.
“If you try anything, I’ll hunt you down and I will kill you.”
“Understood.”
Jarod lowered the gun. Yanking the gun from Jarod’s grip, Miss Parker shoved the pretender hard and he fell back against the wall. She spun him around and roughly shoved him face first into the wall. Taking out her handcuffs, she secured his wrists before spinning him back.
He glared at her. “I should have known better than to believe in you.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.” She stepped up closer to him. “You belong to me now and you’ve got a job to do.”
“And what would that be?” he snarled.
“Take down the Centre. You’re going to help us carry out my mother’s plan.”
****
The Centre
“He’s gone – disappeared. There’s no sign of him anywhere in Blue Cove,” Cox told Mr. Parker over the cellphone.
“How the hell did he get out? He could hardly stand much less walk. Could he have been pretending?”
“The beatings were designed to keep him debilitated and too weak to escape. There is no way he did this on his own. Someone got him out.”
“Who? That idiot savant – Angelo?”
“No. Angelo was locked up. Someone else. What about your daughter?”
“She brought him in. Why would she get him out?”
“Perhaps Sydney persuaded her.”
“You should know better than anyone that Sydney isn’t going to take any risks.”
“Yes. But we’ve got to find him. I was so close during the last session. So close.”
“Let me talk to Lyle.”
“He’s not here. I haven’t seen him.”
****
Miss Parker’s house
“Did anyone ever tell you that for a genius you’re a real idiot?” Lyle asked. Jarod just stared.
Lyle sat at the foot of the bed, grabbed a piece of glass and yanked. Hearing Jarod’s sharp intake of breath, he grinned.
“Bet that hurts. Well, if you had stayed put we wouldn’t be doing this, would we?”
Miss Parker handed Lyle some gauze and he dabbed the wound. She wet some cotton balls with alcohol and watched impassively as Lyle pressed them to Jarod’s foot. Jarod clenched his teeth together and fisted his cuffed hands.
“Tell me about the DSA,” Jarod gritted out. He pulled a little on the cuffs attaching him to the headboard as Lyle picked out glass.
“According to my mother, Project Regeneration is the heart of the Centre,” Miss Parker told him. “Every five years, a project report is sent to the corporate sponsors. You are the main attraction of that report. After they review the report, they do an onsite evaluation. You can bet that they’ll fake the report and during the next couple weeks, you’ll become the hottest commodity on this planet.”
“So you plan on taking me back to the Centre,” Jarod surmised. He jerked his foot as Lyle pulled another piece of glass out. Lyle gave him a warning look and Jarod glared at him before concentrating on Miss Parker again. “You’ll get them when they’re all together – the sponsors and the Centre – when they come for their onsite evaluation. Take out the source of the money being funneled into the Centre.”
“Exactly. No money coming into the Centre means no Centre. We nail the corporate sponsors and we’ve got not only the Centre – but a guarantee that they won’t continue these experiments somewhere else. In two weeks, Lyle will return to the Centre with you and coordinate the final report.”
Jarod turned to look out the window. “And you need me to sim the whole thing. How you’re going to take the sponsors out, where, when, etc. ”
“Yes. My mother knew you were the only one who could sim this. What exactly is your problem here, Jarod? I thought you’d want to take the Centre down.”
“You expect me to let you use me this way? I don’t belong to anyone – especially you, Miss Parker. And your plan has an essential problem in it for me – if you return me to the Centre, I won’t be alive to see its demise.”
“They won’t kill you. You’re too valuable.”
Jarod laughed with an edge of hysteria before turning to stare out the window. He knew that his chances of surviving his next encounter with the Centre were very low. They had already killed him more times than he wanted to remember. He couldn’t go back. They had come too close. All they had to do was find one of his family members and he would do it – perform the simulation during the experiment. When he woke up, he wouldn’t exist anymore. Someone else would inhabit his body. And to top it off, if the experiment succeeded – someone would find out and somewhere, it would go on.
Lyle’s phone rang and he released Jarod’s foot to answer it. Jarod and Miss Parker watched impassively as he answered the questions. Once he hung up, he returned to bandaging Jarod’s feet.
“Daddy wants me to check your house to see if you had anything to do with the disappearance of the pretender,” Lyle told his sister. “I’ve got a meeting with him in three hours to discuss the escape and reacquisition. Can you handle him until I get back?”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Miss Parker replied smugly.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Jarod smirked.
“I’ve got some more sedative,” Lyle announced. Jarod paled and shook his head. “Then you better be here when I get back. Now, we’ll need someplace to hide for awhile while I supposedly track down Jarod and he performs the simulations. Any ideas?”
“Yes. We’ll take him to Ben’s place. Our mother used to go there.”
After seeing her brother out, Miss Parker went to the kitchen and heated a bowl of soup. She found Jarod asleep in the bed when she returned. He jerked and blinked up at her when she tested the temperature of his forehead.
“You’re sick, Jarod. You’ve gone from too low a temperature to too high. You’re going to end up with pneumonia.”
“Worried about me or my ability to do the sim for you?” he whispered.
She sat beside him on the bed and stared down at him. With his hands cuffed over his head, he was pretty helpless but that didn’t stop him from antagonizing her. She smiled as she realized that it was partially his helplessness that he was fighting against. That, and the fact that Lyle was now involved in the Centre’s demise, she thought.
Jarod scowled at her as she studied him. He shifted positions and the urge to cough overtook him.
The coughing fit hit him hard – waves of agony through his chest as he hacked gunk from his lungs. She ripped a pillow from the bed and shoved it against Jarod’s broken ribs. The pretender had turned onto his side and she pressed the pillow firmly against him while he coughed into his bent arms. Too late, she realized, he already has pneumonia.
Once he had quieted, she fetched cough medication. Pouring into the dispenser cap, she slipped a hand beneath his head and held it up. She waited until he complied by opening his mouth before pouring the liquid into him. Setting the medication aside, she sat beside him and reached for the bowl on the bedside table.
“Are you going to cooperate and eat this or do I do this the hard way?” she asked as she brought the spoon to his lips.
“I’m not hungry.” His voice was raw and scratchy sounding.
“Tough.”
“I can feed myself,” Jarod told her. He shook the handcuffs and they rattled. She smiled nastily and shook her head. He huffed before returning his gaze to the ceiling. Her smile turned genuine when she put the spoon to his lips and he opened his mouth. After feeding him half the bowl, he turned his face away, into his arms. She yanked his chin so his face came back around.
“You’re done when I say you’re done,” she told him with a nasty smile.
He glowered at her intensely - hating this helplessness and her enjoyment of it. He knew this was her repayment for all the nasty tricks he had played on her. She would ensure he was totally dependent on her and force him to acknowledge it too. If he wanted any chance, he would need to save his strength up. He opened his mouth and swallowed more of the damn soup – swearing he would never touch the stuff again in his life.
***
An Hour Later
“No,” he groaned. “Please. No more.”
“Jarod, wake up,” she urged. His nightmares had awakened her all the way from the other side of the house. “You’re not at the Centre. Open your eyes.”
“Cold. I’m so cold. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Jarod, this isn’t the Centre,” Parker said loudly. “NOW OPEN YOUR EYES.”
Jarod’s eyes snapped open. There was no awareness in his eyes – only panic as he began to pull desperately at the cuffs while scooting to a sitting position.
“No, lay back,” she told him. “It’s okay. Don’t you remember? Lyle got you out!”
When he continued to yank and pull at his restraints, she reached for his face. He was burning up. He coughed as he pulled - sounding like he would respirate his lungs up. When he paused to suck in his breath, he gagged and she realized he was about to throw up. She held his head as he vomited the soup into the trash can. Pushing him back on the bed, she wiped the sweat from his face and made a decision.
She ran to get the syringe with the sedative and carefully tapped the bubbles out. After she yanked his sleeve up, Jarod pulled on his restraints and coughed. He turned his attention from the cuffs to her just as she plunged the needle into his upper arm.
“No!” he screamed. “I won’t go there again! Please let me go! Please!”
“No,” she told him. “We need to get the fever down. Lay down now, Jarod.”
“No,” he whimpered. He laid his head on the headboard, curled his legs under him and rocked back and forth, coughing sporadically and trying to comfort himself.
She waited until the sedative began to relax him before pulling him down so he lay flat. Reaching up, she unlocked his wrists. Blood had seeped through the bandaging from where he had pulled on the cuffs too hard. She sighed – it didn’t look like she was going to get any sleep.
****
Sydney paced his office. The pleasure he felt at hearing Jarod had escaped was rapidly being overcome with anxiety. Please, let him call, Sydney worried. Conversely, he also hoped Jarod wouldn’t call. How would he explain it to him? The door opened and he turned to see Cox.
“Trying to find the way out from between the rock and the hard place?” Cox asked.
“There’s never been a way out for me,” Sydney replied quietly. “Why did you do it Cox? Taking over the experiments… you had to know how that would affect me.”
“Why do you think I came here? It certainly wasn’t for quality family time. Raines’ work was brilliant. The idea that we could find out what happens at death…man would never need to fear anything.”
“I should never have shown you that DSA.”
“Then why did you?”
“When Broots showed me the DSA of Raines and Lyle experimenting on Jarod, I knew you were considering coming to work here. I thought it would keep you away…”
“Away? That hurts my feelings Sydney. Why I would think you would be happy to have Jarod and I near to you. After everything you’ve done to…”
“Cox,” Sydney interrupted impatiently. “You know what happened to Raines. Can’t you see how dangerous this is?”
“We’ve already had this discussion. I will continue the experiments as soon as your runaway is returned. Oh don’t look so despondent Sydney. If you would just help me out, we could find out whether it works or not.”
“You ask too much. I won’t help you.”
“But you won’t stop me either. Don’t even try, Sydney. You won’t win.”
“I know.”
******
Noon
Lyle closed the door quietly and smiled at his sleeping sister. She had obviously had a hard time keeping track of the labrat, he thought as he studied her. He headed for the back bedroom and found Jarod weakly sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Going somewhere?” Lyle asked as he stepped into the room.
Jarod jerked his head up and frowned.
Lyle picked up the handcuffs and studied the room. A basin of water sat on the table beside the bed with a washcloth. An empty bottle of cough medication sat beside it. He scanned the other items scattered around as his sister stepped into the room.
“What is it - pneumonia?” Lyle asked his sister. “Isn’t that a common side effect of hyperthermia?”
“Yes,” she replied. “He’s had a raging fever.”
“Well, my morning hasn’t been that wonderful either,” Lyle interjected. “But I managed to convince our father that I don’t need any help capturing the lab rat.”
“I have a name,” Jarod interrupted. “Use it.”
“We’ve got two weeks,” Lyle continued. “We better make the best of it. Now let’s get moving.”
“I’m already packed and ready,” Miss Parker told her brother, ignoring Jarod. “Toss my luggage into the car. Did you bring some things for frankenboy?”
Lyle handed his sister a bag and took her luggage to the garage. He returned to the bedroom to find his sister smiling nastily at the pretender.
“Is he giving you trouble?” Lyle asked.
“No trouble at all, right Jarod?”
He considered if she would carry through on her threat to chain him up and strip him naked herself. Grimacing, he took the tee-shirt she held out. It was Lyle’s clothing.
“Can I take a shower?” he asked hopefully. Both of his captors shook their heads – Lyle at least mentioning that they didn’t have time and he didn’t have the strength. She just grinned evilly.
He pulled the tee-shirt on, the movement causing his ribs to grind. Gritting his teeth, he pulled it down over the bandaging around his torso. He looked down at his black-Centre-issue pants. The pants were torn at the knees and dirty.
“Take them off,” she told him. She held out a pair of light-blue pajama bottoms.
“Don’t you have any jeans I could borrow?” Jarod asked Lyle. Lyle shrugged and went back to gathering any items that could lead a search team to believe Jarod had been there. All the bloody bandages and sheets were tossed into garbage bags. They would burn them at Ben’s.
“Jarod,” she warned.
He took the pants and scowled. She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, enjoying herself immensely. Lyle had already stripped the bed of its coverings so Jarod was stuck.
Lyle looked over and saw the standoff. They needed to get moving. He picked up a garbage bag of bedding and tossed it at his sister.
“Load this in the jeep, will you?” he asked.
She glared at it, then at her brother.
“Fine,” she huffed and marched out.
Jarod sighed and quickly changed. He looked up to thank Lyle but found his wrist encased in a handcuff. He changed his mind about expressing his gratitude as Lyle quickly cuffed the other wrist.
His feet hurt as he unsteadily walked towards the garage, using the wall for support. By the time he got to the car, the coughing had started and he fell into the backseat. He didn’t even notice as they pulled out of the garage and headed down the road.
***
The Centre
Mr. Parker scowled at the DSA recorder. From Raine’s private stash of discs, they had found two labeled “Bobby”. The bastard had not only stolen his son but he had also implanted a device in his head to control him. Not surprisingly, one of the discs showed Jarod designing the disc and the subsequent memory wiping session they used on the teenager afterwards.
The device was ingenious but, of course, it would be since it came from Jarod’s head. When activated, the device interfered with certain neurons ability to send signals. In effect, it lobotomized Lyle at selective times – turning him into an emotionless automaton that wouldn’t remember most of what had happened. When it wasn’t activated, Lyle would be confused and mystified by any memories that seeped through. Eventually, Lyle would shut off his ability to feel autonomously. He wouldn’t be able to reconcile his actions with his feelings. The ultimate question would be, without the device turned on, how long before Lyle started letting his feelings surface? Mr. Parker wasn’t interested in taking chances. The activator for the device had to be found.
****
Two Hours Later
Miss Parker turned in her seat to look back at Jarod. After his coughing spell, he had fallen asleep sprawled across the backseat. The restlessness that she had come to expect had started and he mumbled incoherently in his sleep.
Lyle watched the pretender in his rearview mirror. Jarod sleeps like I do, he realized. The nightmares had gotten worse since Raines’ death. Distinguishing between dreams and things had actually happened was torturing him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as a headache began forming.
“Wake him up,” he told his sister. “I’ll go through a drive through at this next town. He needs to eat.”
She reached into the backseat and shook Jarod’s arm. He pulled himself up, his gaze darting right and left.
“Where are we?” he croaked – his voice rough from sleeping.
“About three more hours and we’ll be there,” Miss Parker told him. “We’re coming into a town. We’re going to go through a drive-through. You try anything and you’ll spend the rest of the trip sedated. Got that?”
“What about these?” he asked, holding up his cuffed wrists. She shook her head and he evaluated his options before agreeing to keep quiet.
They pulled into a restaurant’s drive through and allowed him to choose what he wanted. Miss Parker passed his food to him and he took a bite of the sandwich, watching out the window and praying the food stayed put.
Miss Parker ate her sandwich and watched the passing scenery. She and Lyle had been lost in their own thoughts and the drive had been quiet and uneventful so far. But with Jarod awake, all that was about to change. She sighed and decided to begin round one.
“Jarod, these are antibiotics. You need to take them.” She opened her hand to reveal two large red pills.
He took another bite and talked around the mouthful of food just to annoy her.
“Now how do I know what those are? And where did you get them from? Antibiotics, last I checked, don’t grow on trees.”
“I brought them,” Lyle told him. “I called my doctor while at the Centre and he called in the prescription for me. They don’t come from the Centre’s pharmacy. Show him the bottle.”
She handed him the bottle, which Jarod studied intently before shaking his head and giving it back to her.
“Lyle, pull over. He’s going to be difficult.”
Jarod assessed the situation and realized that she wasn’t going to relent. He took the two pills and swallowed them. Leaning back, he set aside his sandwich and stared out the window.
“Do you know where my mother is?” Jarod asked Lyle quietly.
“No idea. Mr. White couldn’t even get a trace on her. How’s Emily?”
“You mean, did she survive you tossing her out the window?”
“I didn’t toss her out the window. She fell.” Lyle stated. The memory was clear to him but somehow it didn’t feel like something he had actually done. It felt like someone else had done it while he was observing. The device, he realized with an angry frown.
Jarod turned to stare at the back of Lyle’s head. Emily couldn’t clearly remember what had happened due to the concussion she suffered.
“Tell me how it happened.”
“Eat the rest of your sandwich,” Miss Parker told him.
Jarod ignored her and waited. Lyle sighed and gave in. “I took a picture of your mother and made up a fake file about her location. I tried to bribe Emily with it. Basically, if she allowed me to use her as bait to get you, I would give her the information. She refused. I held the information out the window and told her that she would never find her mother. She made a dive for it.” Lyle looked into his rearview mirror. “Jarod, I tried to grab her but she slipped right through my fingers. I’m sorry. Is she okay?”
Jarod considered him. It made sense. Lyle had no reason to kill Emily – she was too useful as bait. In the past, Lyle’s modus operandi was kidnapping people. Lyle’s intention had probably been to kidnap his sister. The apology had been a surprise. Even more surprising, he found himself answering Lyle’s question.
“The last time I saw my sister, she was recovering. She’s going to be fine.”
“Good. She’s a pretty girl. Stubborn too.”
Now, Jarod was angry.
“Stay away from her! She’s not Asian. You should have no interest in her.”
“Asian? What in the world are you talking about?”
“Your wife? The one you killed?”
“I didn’t kill her!” Lyle struggled to a sitting position. “My father did!”
“Yeah. Right. What about May Li?”
“What about May Li? I’m not allowed to have a love affair?”
“Not if the girl ends up dead!”
“Shutup! Both of you!” Miss Parker shouted at them. “Look, we all have questions – things to sort out. But we have better things to concentrate on right now! Like staying alive and shutting down the Centre. So stop it! Not a word, Jarod, or you’ll find yourself wearing duct tape.”
***
Ben’s Inn
Miss Parker slammed her door shut. She was exhausted and sick of being trapped in the same vehicle with two petulant men. It would be a miracle if they didn’t kill each other before the end of the day. She hugged Ben tightly when he rushed forward. Ben then turned to smile at Jarod as he stepped down from the vehicle. She heard Ben’s gasp as he got a good look at Jarod’s bruised face and pallor.
“You hold on there,” Ben told his former maintenance man. “You’re not going anywhere without help.”
Jarod grinned at his former employer and looked around.
“The place looks good,” he commented. “How’s business?”
“We’ll talk once we get you horizontal,” Ben lectured. He stared at the handcuffs a moment before turning to look back at Miss Parker. “I know you told me not to ask about those but are they really necessary? He doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to walk more or less run.”
“I’ll take them off until he’s in bed,” Miss Parker conceded. “But yes, they are necessary. Which room are you putting him into?”
“The one next to Catherine’s. Your brother is across the hall.”
Lyle came around with the bags and looked over the man who may, or may not, be his father. According to his sister, this man had kept a room with their mother’s things in it untouched for twenty years. He was intensely curious about his mother’s relationship with this man. What if Mr. Parker wasn’t his father after all? That thought made him smile but he wasn’t ready to examine the reason why.
Jarod limped into the house with Ben’s assistance, his leg wound from the subway incident still bothering him since it had never had a chance to heal properly. He climbed into bed and sat against the headboard. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the wall while Miss Parker handcuffed his right wrist to the bed post. Lyle began unpacking the medical supplies.
“Take your shirt off,” Lyle instructed him. “We need to change the bandages.”
Miss Parker smiled as Jarod did as told without any fight. She realized that he was too exhausted and sick to expend the energy. Ben came into the room with the water she had requested.
“Oh god,” Ben breathed as he saw the wounds Lyle revealed as the bandages came off. “What are those?”
“Persuasive interrogation,” Lyle told him. “I think this collarbone is fractured. Cox became enraged one time when Jarod wouldn’t… well, he threw the chair he was sitting in at him..”
“Nice of you to remind me,” Jarod whispered tiredly. “Do we have any more cough syrup?”
Miss Parker poured a dose, knowing the lab rat was trying to suppress the urge to cough. After he had drained the container, she helped by unwrapping the bandaging on Jarod’s feet.
Jarod was shaking from pain and exhaustion by the time they finished. Ben pulled back the blankets and told him to get under them and he complied wordlessly. He had just closed his eyes when Miss Parker grabbed his chin and forced the thermometer into his mouth. He reached up to take it out to tell her what he thought of her high handedness.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she told him. “There’s another way we can do this that doesn’t require your cooperation at all.”
He put his hand down and stared at the ceiling. She asked him if he wanted any pain medication and he shook his head. The fever was dulling his senses and cognition enough as is.
Once she had read the thermometer, she set it aside and gave Jarod the water. He drank it before turning onto his side away from her.
Miss Parker finished checking everything within reach of Jarod. She removed the bedside alarm clock and lamp – knowing Jarod would find some use from disassembling these. When she and Lyle were satisfied that they had imprisoned him, they turned off the lights.
“Go to sleep,” she told Jarod but she saw he wasn’t listening. He was already asleep.
****
Lyle stared at the faded photographs of his mother. She was very different from the woman who had raised him. While Mrs. Bowman had been a kind substitute mother, she had always been timid and withdrawing – allowing her husband to dominate both herself and their adopted son. He knew from his previous venture into discovering his mother that Catherine Parker had never been timid and withdrawing. She had been a strong woman – firm in her beliefs and brave enough to die for them.
He set the photographs aside and headed outside.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Miss Parker called as her brother walked past.
“I’ll get a sandwich later,” he responded. “I’m going for a walk.”
She frowned at his back as he almost ran outside. Two days ago she would have believed he was up to something and she might have followed him to find out what deviousness he was entrapping her in now. But she realized she couldn’t even generate a spark of mistrust for her twin. She could feel his turmoil.
“Lyle,” she called out. He spun around from the trail ahead of her. “There’s a beautiful overlook this way.”
He reluctantly followed – morosely concluding she had followed because she didn’t trust him. He would have to prove his trustworthiness to her over and over again. When they got to the overlook, she sat down on a fallen log and patted the seat next to her. Once he was seated, she watched the setting sun for a moment.
“This was our mother’s favorite spot in the world. Ben said she liked to sit and watch the sun setting over the water. I think she would be pleased that you’re here.”
“I don’t think so. Look at what I’ve become. She probably would have preferred if I had died at birth.”
She spun around, horrified. This was no play on her sympathy, she realized. Lyle actually felt his mother wouldn’t want him for her son. And sympathy wouldn’t help him, she knew.
“So what have you become Lyle?” she asked quietly. “A remote-controlled machine?”
Lyle jumped up. “A machine – is that what you think I am? Some toy Raines played with? Believe it or not, sis, I do have feelings!”
“So what, are you reformed now? Overnight you decide that everything you did was Raines’ and his remote controlled brain switch’s fault?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” Lyle shouted at her. “God, I am so confused. When I got Jarod out, it felt so right. But now…”
“And now?” she prompted sarcastically.
Lyle sighed and sat back down.
“When I was a kid, my foster mother taught me things – be good to animals and people – stuff like that. I always had this sense inside me when I did things about whether they were right or wrong. Then Raines came…I can’t remember any operation. But I remember this experiment. He killed my best friend and I didn’t feel anything. There were these probes hooked up to my head and Raines seemed really happy with the results. Then one morning, I woke up and thought it was all a dream.”
“What did you do when you found out it wasn’t?”
“I tried not to. God, do you think we’re all white knights like Jarod?” Lyle stared at her. “He makes it look so easy – doesn’t he? Just go out there and make everything better that you screwed up. Be the hero! Well, I guess I’m just too selfish. Raines would have killed me for any disobedience and maybe, not all of us are willing to die for some ‘greater good’ like Mom and Jarod.”
“Perhaps it takes more courage to stay alive to win the war than to die early in the battle,” Miss Parker told him. She changed tactics. “You know, in some ways, Jarod is luckier than you. They took away your ability to feel. It must all be crashing down on you now. I want to help. Let me be your sister and help you.”
“I’m afraid,” Lyle told her. “Afraid of myself – what I’ll do if this thing is turned on again. And I don’t know if I can go through it again. I’ve been telling myself for so long now that I’m a monster that that’s all I know how to be.”
“You don’t know who you are,” she replied. “If there is anything the three of us – you, me and Jarod – have in common – it’s that.”
Lyle looked shocked. “But you’ve always been so sure of yourself…”
“I’ve always been Daddy’s angel – well, except with Tommy.”
Lyle smiled sadly. “So what do we do now? Eat PEZ and save the little guy?”
“That’s who Jarod is – not me and I highly suspect it’s not in your makeup either. First, we take down the Centre and…”
“Redeem our souls,” Lyle concluded.
***
They walked back in companionable silence. At the front door, Lyle turned to her.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I don’t feel so…”
“Alone? You’re not. Let’s go see if we still have a pretender, shall we?”
“Or what’s left of the pretender,” he joked.
“Cox certainly makes you look like an angel.”
“Somehow I don’t think Jarod sees it that way.”
“He’s no angel either.”
“I know,” Lyle grinned at her. “But his sister – well, there’s someone who probably has the qualifications.”
She laughed. “You like living dangerously – don’t you?”
He winked at her. He went to fetch the pretender’s dinner while she woke him up. When he walked into the bedroom, Jarod sat against the headboard with pillows behind him and a thermometer in his mouth. Lyle set the tray aside and sat in a chair.
She removed the thermometer and read it carefully.
“Dammit! It’s going sky high again.” She looked over at her brother and he felt her anxiety.
“Jarod, don’t fall back asleep,” Lyle lectured. “You didn’t eat your lunch and you haven’t eaten in days. What do you want to drink with your dinner?”
Jarod opened his eyes and watched the twins. Something had happened between them. He turned fever-glazed eyes towards Miss Parker, questions swimming in them.
“Answer my brother,” she snapped. Jarod suddenly understood. They had found common ground and a united cause. He smiled slightly to himself.
“Water is fine,” he told them.
Ben called up the stairs and Lyle nodded at his sister as she left. Taking the tray from her a moment later, he plopped it on Jarod’s lap along with a large glass of milk.
“We’re out of water. You need calories. Trust me – I’ve had pneumonia before.”
“Trust you? Aren’t you forgetting the jumper cables?”
“Not at all.” Lyle gazed thoughtfully at the pretender. “Would you have preferred if I had let Cox have you? He bothered me constantly with his requests to spend time with you.”
“So you were protecting me?” Jarod asked. He shoved the tray of food away. “You couldn’t have just let me go? You could have told them I escaped.”
“Actually, at the time, the thought never even occurred to me,” Lyle answered truthfully. “I just knew that I had to find a way of getting your cooperation before transferring you to Africa. Shall I tell you what they would have done to you in Africa if you had arrived in a less-than-cooperative state?”
Jarod shuddered.
“Now, no more talk. You need to eat that,” Lyle informed him.
“I seem to have lost my appetite,” Jarod replied honestly.
Lyle sighed melodramatically. “I could try to change your mind but I know how much my sister enjoys your little power struggles. I’ll just wait until she gets back. She would make my life miserable if I denied her this pleasure.”
Jarod scowled and picked up the fork. Eating with one hand chained to the bed was difficult but he managed.
***
Two o’clock in the morning
Ben shook her awake gently. When she stuck the gun in his face, he shrieked and stepped away from her. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair.
“You scared me half out of my wits,” she told him. “I’m sorry. Old habit.”
“I know – don’t ask,” he replied. “Look, I hate to wake you – especially since you’ve had so little sleep lately. But your prisoner is really sick. I think we need to take him to a hospital. I went in to give him the 2 a.m. dose and he thought I was someone called Cox.”
She jumped up – this had to be bad if Jarod was hallucinating of Cox.
“Wake my brother up, will you Ben?” she asked as she headed out. Inside Jarod’s room, she found the pretender curled into a tight shivering ball beneath the blankets. Placing her hand on his forehead, she felt the hotness. Jarod moaned and tried to pull away. Lyle came into the room with a basin, washcloth and cold water. Ringing the washcloth out, her brother handed it to her before grabbing an edge of the blankets.
“Jarod, somewhere in that superbrain of yours I know you can hear me. Let go of the blankets. We need to cool you down.”
Jarod continued shivering and mumbling nonsense. Lyle yanked and the blankets landed on the floor. Grabbing Jarod’s ankles, Lyle pulled Jarod’s feet down so the pretender lay flat on the bed. Jarod turned his face up from his cuffed arm.
“Miss Parker?” he croaked. “Why are you here?”
“Jarod, do you know where you’re at?” she asked cautiously.
“I’m in the Centre,” he replied. “I tried to save you. They shot you. Are you a ghost?”
“Why do you think I’m a ghost?”
“You disappeared. I always knew you’d haunt me. I can never get you out of my mind. I’ve tried.”
She suddenly grinned as she lay the washcloth across Jarod’s forehead. A delirious pretender – this could be fun, she thought.
“Why can’t you get me out of your mind?”
“I don’t know. You make me so mad most of the time. You believe everything your father tells you. But I remember when we were friends. Then you went away.”
“Yes. I went to school. Did you miss me?”
“Sydney wouldn’t tell me where you went to. Then I had to do a simulation that was horrible. I still remember it but they tried to make me forget.”
“What did you sim?” Lyle asked.
“Mind control. So many ways – drugs, hypnosis, electroshock. But none of them work as well as the device I figured out how to build.” Jarod shivered as she wiped his chest. He stared at the ceiling, lost in the memories. “Please Sydney, don’t let them use it! Please tell me it was just a simulation!”
“It was just a simulation,” Miss Parker comforted.
“No.” Jarod tried to sit up, desperately trying to make her understand through the fog that shrouded his brain. “They used it. I know they did. The sim of your mother – it made me remember. They put it in Lyle’s head. I can’t let them tear you from your brother. It’s all my fault – everything he’s done.”
“What did you do, Jarod?” Miss Parker asked.
“I went back to the Centre so I could protect Lyle,” Jarod confessed. “I was going to find it – the control device. But Cox was there and they…”
Miss Parker looked up at her brother, shocked. They stared at each other for a moment before looking down at the pretender.
“Dammit,” Miss Parker swore. “He’s going to go into shock.”
Lyle jumped into action. “We’ve got to get the fever down! Fill the bathtub with tepid water.” He unlocked the cuff and hauled Jarod upright.
Miss Parker looked up from the tub as her brother hauled the weakly resisting pretender into the room. Lyle maneuvered him into the tub and locked his wrists together around the piping on the wall beside the tub. Jarod struggled for a moment before passing out.
“Get a cup and pour water over him,” Lyle told his sister as he arranged Jarod so he lay back along the tub. She took the cup Ben offered and scooped up water. Ben left to fetch clean sheets.
“His bandages are getting wet,” she said after pouring water for ten minutes.
“It can’t be helped,” Lyle responded. “I’ll get some new bandages. Keep that up and yell if you need me.”
She poured water over Jarod’s chest and he shivered. Scooping more water, she poured it over his head, half the water sluicing onto the floor. His eyelids fluttered and he blinked the water from his eyes.
“Welcome back,” she greeted him. She examined his eyes – seeing awareness and pain there. He lifted his head from the back of the tub and took in his situation.
“You don’t have enough blood left in you to blush so don’t bother,” she informed him.
He pulled briefly at the handcuffs locking him in position then leaned his head back against the tub and closed his eyes.
“I’m not awake,” he whispered to himself. “It’s just a nightmare.”
She pinched his arm. “Nope. You’re awake.”
He didn’t reply – just gritted his teeth as the shivering started. His shivering made his ribs burn and the water stung where it reached some of the fresher wounds.
“You did this to yourself, you know,” she told him as she worked – letting her anger at him for not telling her about his plans override her concern for him. “I don’t know how you thought you were going to find the control device while inside the Centre.”
His eyes popped open. “How..”
She smiled nastily at him. “Fever makes you talkative. Too bad Cox didn’t try that.”
He cringed and turned away. “I know where it’s at,” he whispered.
“Where?” she demanded.
“Let me go…”
“No. The Centre is going down for what they did to my mother, my brothers and me. I know you don’t want to go back there…”
“I can’t. Cox…” He turned his face to the wall.
“Cox what?” She asked. “Jarod?” He shook his head.
“Cox made his life hell,” Lyle told her as he walked into the room.
“What did he do to him?”
Jarod shook his head and opened his mouth to tell Lyle off but Miss Parker slapped her hand over his mouth.
“The drugs were designers made by Cox especially for Jarod,” Lyle informed her. “The good doctor would explain exactly what the drugs were as he injected him. Then they’d beat the hell out of him.”
“Why?”
“To get him to cooperate in the simulations. The drugs increased his central nervous system’s response to stimulus. Basically, doubled the pain, caused extreme nausea, headaches…”
“Shutup, Lyle,” Jarod yelled when Miss Parker removed her hand as she stood.
Lyle turned to the tub angrily.
“You’re in no condition to be telling me what to do,” Lyle spat out. “I cleaned up your blood and vomit for two weeks. I kept you alive in there!”
“You hosed me down like an animal,” Jarod retorted through his chattering teeth.
“You certainly smelled worse than a pig sty. Would you have preferred if I left you to rot in your own vomit and blood?”
“Lyle, stop it!” Miss Parker barked. “Leave him alone. He’s miserable enough. If you want to be useful, go get him some water.”
“He’ll just puke it back up.”
“He’s kept both lunch and dinner down.”
“Lunch? He ate two bites of that sandwich and Ben told me he threw dinner up an hour after I left him!”
“What did you expect?” Jarod growled. “The location may have changed but I’m still a prisoner.”
Lyle stormed out of the room.
“You shouldn’t be trying to piss him off,” Miss Parker lectured. “God, you’re hot. Why isn’t this working?”
“Too cold,” he mumbled.
“That’s the idea.” She reached over him and turned the faucet on – allowing freezing cold water to pour into the tub. Jarod tried to scoot further away from the faucet but the cuffs halted his movements. He shivered more violently – he felt like liquid nitrogen ran in his veins.
She stood and went to the sink. Lyle returned with a large container of water and marched over to the tub. She gasped when she saw him grasp Jarod by the hair, holding him in place as he roughly poured the liquid, half it running down Jarod’s face. Jarod gagged, choking as the liquid was poured into him. She grabbed her brother’s arm.
“Lyle, stop it! What the hell are you doing?”
“Parker,” he explained patiently as he continued. “I’ve done this before. If you let him do it, he’ll drink two sips and then throw that up. You’ve got to fill his stomach up with water quickly.”
When Lyle was done, Jarod choked and tried to regulate his breathing. He had never felt so humiliated in his life and he turned away so they wouldn’t see the tears form in his hot eyes. He tuned out their voices as they discussed his condition and closed his eyes – letting his mind drift to more pleasant places.
Miss Parker looked over at the pretender. Jarod was oblivious to them.
“Be more gentle with him,” she advised her brother. “He hasn’t had any drugs in him for 24 hours.”
Lyle sighed and nodded reluctantly. He couldn’t keep treating Jarod like they were still in the Centre.
“I’ll try. You haven’t exactly been the model of gentle, caring nurse with him either.”
“I know. We Parkers aren’t bred to be gentle. Let’s give him a few minutes alone.”
She peeked in at him every five minutes or so while she paced in his bedroom.
“You’re driving me nuts,” Lyle told her from where he sat beside the window. “Sit down.”
“I’m going take his temperature.”
“No. We’ll know when it breaks. Just leave him be. He doesn’t want you seeing him like this.”
“Since when do you give a damn what he wants?”
“I give up!” Lyle threw his hands up. “First, I’m not gentle enough with him and now, when I try to help him out, I get this!”
She blocked his exit from the room.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I can’t handle this.”
“I know.”
***
Jarod had managed to sit forward and was now leaning his head into his elbows. Another wave of pain and shivers assaulted him and he bit down on the skin of his arm. They were right outside the bathroom door and he didn’t want them hearing him moan. He bit harder and waited. Exhaustion suddenly weighed him down and he leaned back. He didn’t feel so cold anymore but he was too tired to know for sure.
When Lyle peered into the bathroom, he smiled.
“He’s sweating,” he told his sister. They rushed into the bathroom and felt Jarod’s forehead.
“It’s about @#!$ time,” she said. “Let’s get him into bed.”
***
The next morning
Ben smiled at the lack of handcuffs on the bedridden man. Parker sat beside him on the bed with a bowl balanced on her knees. She scooped another spoonful of the oatmeal and honey mixture and held it to Jarod’s lips.
“You certainly gave us a scare last night,” Ben told him. “How are you feeling this morning?”
Jarod swallowed the mixture and licked his lips clean.
“Better,” he croaked. “I apologize for being so much trouble last night.”
“No trouble at all. Just get better quickly, okay? And don’t let that oatmeal make any return appearances.”
Jarod nodded with a weak smile and Ben left. He turned his gaze to Miss Parker when she shoved the spoon against his lips again. After he had swallowed that mouthful, he turned his face away. She set the spoon down and reached to yank his face around in order to force him. Remembering her conversation with Lyle the night before, she changed tactics and gently pulled his face around.
“I’ll untuck the blankets some if you’ll eat the rest of this,” she offered. They had tucked him in tightly – the blankets and his weakness effectively imprisoning him. He nodded and accepted more of the food. She pulled the blankets from between the mattresses. Even loosened, Jarod couldn’t garner enough strength to free his arms from the restrictions.
She laughed at his frowning face and did something to shock him. Bending down, she kissed him gently on the forehead. He blinked up at her – for once, speechless.
“Sweet dreams,” she told him. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
He looked confused by her statement. “Bed bugs? There are insects in this bed?”
She heard Lyle’s laughter and smiled. Her brother stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“You had better explain it to him or he won’t go to sleep,” Lyle informed her.
“Jarod, there aren’t any insects in your bed. It’s just a saying. It dates back to when…well, when there probably were insects in the beds.”
Jarod nodded and closed his eyes. They shut the door and left him to sleep as he had hoped. Unfortunately though, instead of an escape plan forming in his mind, sleep overtook him.
***
Noon
Miss Parker peered into the bedroom and, finding its occupant still sound asleep, closed the door quietly and went back down the stairs. Ben and Lyle had gone fishing, leaving her alone with Jarod. She had protested at first – telling Lyle they had too much work to be done but Lyle had laughed and said their work wasn’t going anywhere with a nod towards Jarod’s room. She had decided to do something different and as un-Miss Parker like as possible.
She decided she had enough time to feed the lab rat before the pies would be done baking. The smell from the pies baking changed her mind about lunch and she made up sandwiches instead of more oatmeal – remembering her mother doing this.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” Jarod stirred at her words and turned to blink up at her. “Lunch time.”
He sniffed while pushing at the blankets. He felt somewhat stronger and was able to free his arms.
“What smells so good?”
“Blackberry pies are baking.” She bent and helped him to a sitting position, plopping large pillows behind his back. He picked up the sandwich on the plate in front of him and bit into it. He chewed for a moment then frowned at her.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“It’s sticking to the roof of my mouth,” he mumbled.
She grinned. “It’s supposed to. I made it just like my mother used to make them for me – sticky and messy.”
A plop of jelly landed on the plate as he bit off another piece. He chewed again, a serious look on his face, then grinned back.
“It’s very good,” he told her. “Your mother must have been a really good cook. It’s brilliant – putting a gooey, sweet jelly with salty, peanut butter.”
She laughed at him. His perplexed expression as she doubled with laughter just made it worse. When she had control, she sat beside him on the bed and watched him finish the sandwich.
“Can I have another one?” he asked.
“So now you’re hungry?”
“Yes. My stomach seems to have settled down.”
“Or perhaps the drugs have worn off?”
“Can I have a piece of that pie too?”
She decided to let it pass – his changing the subject.
“The pies are for dinner. They’re not done yet and then they have to cool down. Hopefully, we’ll also have fresh fish.”
“Ben took Lyle fishing on the lake?”
“Yes. Okay, I’m going to get the sandwich. Look at me, Jarod.” He lifted his eyes from his lunch to hers. “Are we doing the handcuffs today?”
“You overestimate me.”
“Oh, I know you’re not strong enough to go anywhere. But that doesn’t mean you won’t try something – only God knows what that brain of yours could cook up.”
He considered his reply. Sighing, he gave up his half-formed plans to turn the tables and imprison Lyle and his sister today. He’d miss out on the pie.
“I’ll behave – for today.”
“Good idea. I’ll go get that sandwich.”
When he had finished his second sandwich, she pulled the pillows away from him and ordered him to sleep. Checking on him an hour later, she was surprised to find him curled on his side, sleeping peacefully. Lyle returned with Ben and a string of fish and an even longer string of tales about the one that got away. She listened with amazement – this is her psycho brother?
Lyle grinned as he took in the kitchen. His sister had spent the day cooking? There were three blackberry pies cooling on the kitchen table as proof. He decided to rub it in just a little.
“Did Jarod help make those pies? They smell awfully good.”
“No,” she snapped. “I made them.”
“Okay, did wonderboy give you the recipe? Walk you through the steps?”
“Jarod has been asleep except for lunch. I did it.”
“Well, I hope they’re edible.” She punched him in the chest and he grinned at her. “How is your favorite lab rat?”
“Much better.” She snorted remembering his comments about the sandwiches. “He thinks Mom invented peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. It was…amusing.”
“Amusing? Since when do you find his naivete enjoyable?”
“I never got to experience it firsthand. I’m just glad his curiosity and innocence are still intact. Somehow, I would have thought this latest experience at the Centre would have killed that.”
“It’s not like Cox didn’t try. And he learned from the best – Raines. Raines had been doing these experiments since right before our mother died.”
“He’s been experimenting on Jarod since he was eleven?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Not continuously – just every four years or so. But Catherine…Our mother went to Sydney two days after Jarod’s first death experience. That was supposedly her last ‘session’ with Sydney. She tried to talk to Sydney – tell him what was going on. But he wouldn’t believe her. He thought she was going over the edge and making it up.”
“And when she couldn’t get through to him, she became desperate.”
“Exactly. It’s all in the reports. I brought copies with me from the Centre.”
“I want to see them.”
“They’re pretty disturbing.” Lyle hesitated. “I’ll get them out for you but make sure Jarod doesn’t see them.”
“What are you, his mother now?”
“Fine. Show them to him. There’s some great reading by Raines in there. I’m sure it’ll help him on the road to recovery beautifully,” Lyle sneered.
“I don’t know,” she considered. “He hasn’t really dealt with it. Maybe we need to show him so he can deal with it. We need him to work this through before we implement our plan.”
Lyle sighed and turned to look out the window. His sister had a good point.
***
Later that evening
Jarod stared unseeing at the ceiling while he went through some simulations. He almost groaned in frustration. His plan had partially worked. His family was free and Lyle and Miss Parker were working together. But he hadn’t planned on Lyle getting him out of the Centre before he got the control device. The plan failed when Lyle unexpectedly developed a conscience before he found the device. He also had failed to include the most important factor of all – Project Regeneration. Of course, he hadn’t really remembered it but that was no excuse.
He had formed his plan during his sim of Catherine Parker. During the sim, he realized a number of things. First, the cryogenic experiments were tied to the Centre’s existence and he needed to learn more about them. Second, the device he remembered simming as a child was in Lyle’s head. Third, the only way to take down the Centre was to unite the twins against their father; and last, he felt guilty as hell for wanting to kill Lyle when Lyle’s actions were a result of his own simulation.
The final hand was getting ready to be dealt. He had to make sure he had all the cards – the control device, his family’s safety, his freedom and the twins united.
***
She didn’t bother knocking. Finding him lost in a simulation didn’t improve her dismal mood from looking through those reports. It was time they finished their discussion. The handcuffs were snapped in place before he could move a muscle.
“What are you doing?” he protested. “I thought we had reached an understanding!”
“I know what you’re up to! And it isn’t going to work! We’re going to follow my mother’s plan!”
“NO! Listen, her plan is flawed! It won’t work! I’ve simmed it!”
“We’ve been through this before. They won’t kill you…”
“There’s something your mother didn’t know…”
“And what is that?”
“It’s Jacob. When your mother came up with this, Jacob was alive. Now he’s dead.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Cox wants to regenerate Jacob.”
“Why?”
“Because Jacob is Cox’s father.”
“Oh God,” she interrupted. She began pacing – needing to feel the solidity of the earth beneath her. “Cox is Sydney’s nephew. Sydney has been protecting him all along.”
“Yes. Sydney is caught in the middle – between his nephew and me. He won’t help Cox but if helps me – his nephew will be killed.”
“And Cox will do anything to make the experiment work. Jarod, it couldn’t possibly work, could it?”
“I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “There is no way to sim it. You cannot sim death or regeneration. It’s impossible. That’s why I can’t go back…”
“Because if it works – you’ll become Jacob and it will all start over again – the children being kidnapped, the experiments.”
“Yes. There’s got to be some other way of doing this. If we could just get our hands on one of the past reports, the corporate sponsors are probably listed in it.”
“They’re not.”
Jarod stared at her, shock and understanding on his face.
“I want to see them.”
“No.”
He yanked at the handcuffs anchoring him to the bed. “Yes. I have a right to see them! Unlock me!”
“I decide what your rights are – you belong to me. Forget about the reports and tell me why you kept all this a secret in the first place!”
“I’m not a piece of property,” he spat out. “Why are you keeping me here? You cannot seriously still be considering taking me back there now that you know what Cox intends to do!”
“You’re not going anywhere yet. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you.” They glared at each other. “Right now – I want answers. You’re going to tell me what your original plan was, why you didn’t tell me about it and where that damn control device is located at!”
He continued glaring at her and she went to the telephone on the dresser.
“I’m sure your father will be eager to come here and see you. I wonder what he’ll do when he reads those reports.”
Jarod swallowed. He couldn’t risk her calling his dad. The boy would trace the call and his father would come here. He didn’t need to simulate what would happen if his father and Lyle came face to face. He caved.
“When I did the sim of your mother, I remembered the mind control simulation,” he told her. He turned his face towards the wall. “I could feel your mother's anguish at her realization that Lyle was alive and I felt guilty. Lyle is a victim of one of my simulations just like all those people who were killed. I asked you to take me back so I could look for the control device and the DSA.”
“Dammit! You knew all along that the DSA was at the Centre too! You sent me to those two other locations just to keep me out of your way!”
“Yes. I planned to get the DSA and control device and use them to persuade Lyle to help me escape. Once I was out – I would give you the control device and Lyle the DSA…”
“Forcing us to work together. Did you suspect that my mother knew about regeneration from your sim?”
“No. I only knew that those experiments were important somehow to the continuation of the Centre. When you told me about the DSA yesterday, I realized her plans required you to be willing to do something I don’t think you’re prepared for.”
“Do what?”
“Once you’ve taken out the sponsors, they’ll be one more person you’ll need to kill.”
“If you’re talking about my father – rest assured, that I have no problems with wiping that slime bag off the planet.”
“I know. But I was talking about me.”
“WHAT?”
“I know you’ve often wanted to put a bullet in my head. But you never have. Can you do it?”
“I’m not going to kill you! What the hell are you talking about?”
“The ending. You’ll have to wipe all the evidence of this experiment off the face of the earth. If you take me back and the experiment succeeds, I will become Jacob – living proof that regeneration works. Proof that you’ll have to destroy. YOU are the flaw in your mother’s plan.”
She stepped back – horrified at his words. She shook her head and backed out of the room.
Lyle watched as his sister ran out the back door. He could feel her emotions boiling, getting ready to explode. Following her to the same spot they had talked at yesterday, he sat beside her on the log and waited.
“He said I’d have to kill him,” she finally said stonily. “When it is all over with, I’d have to make sure the evidence, himself, was gone.”
Lyle sucked in his breath. If what she said was true, then Jarod was afraid the experiment would work. Wouldn’t Cox just love to get his hands on this piece of information, Lyle thought. If Cox knew that Jarod suspected the experiment could succeed, nothing would stop Cox from pursuing it. Jarod had just given his sister and himself a very dangerous piece of information.
“Why did he tell you this?” Lyle asked.
“Because I threatened to call his father,” she replied.
“Then he’ll be escaping soon.”
“As if he could,” she snorted.
Lyle laughed. “He can and he will. You put his family at risk. He’ll find a way to protect them. He’s probably simming it now.”
“Then we’ll just have to be more cautious around him.”
“One of us will need to be with him continuously.”
“Fine.” She snapped. “Why would our mother come up with a plan that requires us to kill Jarod? None of this makes any sense!”
“Mom wasn’t a pretender. She couldn’t predict the ending like Jarod can. That’s why she told us to get him to sim it.”
“You hope. What if her plan really was to get us to kill Jarod? After all, there have been so many people hurt, including herself, because of him.”
He considered her for a moment. If what she was saying was true, then this was really just an elaborate revenge planned by his dead mother.
“She would have to have known that the experiment works,” he thought out loud. “And not even Jarod knows that. Was there anything in those reports that would lead you to believe she knew?”
“I haven’t read through everything! There are piles of paperwork there. It would take me a week to go through it all.”
“But Jarod could do it in a day.”
“Yes. But you were right – it is too disturbing.”
“We’re running out of time. We don’t have a choice. We show it to him and have him sim it.”
“This isn’t going to be easy on him. I think we should wait another day or two until he’s better.”
“Agreed. We can’t risk him getting away if we wait longer. Either way – his escape or reading those files – it’s going to screw up his recovery.”
“Then we better go get some rest. It’s going to be a long 24 hours.”
****
Jarod sighed deeply. He had known what her response would be. But if she couldn’t do it, put a bullet through in his brain, his family would be at risk. He would have to escape before she decided to take the chance that the experiment wouldn’t work. She was already threatening his family. It was time to leave. He began simming his escape.
feedback please : Unreal8@aol.com
part 1
by Gizmo
He blinked, trying to open his eyes which seemed glued shut. Reaching up with one arm, he wiped and opened them. His hand came into focus and he stared at the blood on his fingers. Hearing voices, he gingerly lifted his now throbbing head from the ground and peered into the dusty tunnel.
Miss Parker was pulling Ethan to his feet when she heard the maintenance door bang open. She reached for her gun but couldn’t find it. Three sweepers rushed them and she protested loudly as they were hustled out the tunnel and into the maintenance duct. She glanced back down the tunnel briefly, wondering if Jarod was still alive.
Jarod waited until the footsteps had receded before getting a look at his surroundings. He found himself laying on his side against the wall of the tunnel, hidden from view by a piece of sheet metal. A searing pain in his right leg got his attention and he looked down at the piece of rebar sticking through it. He screamed and bit his lip as he pulled his leg away from the bar that had impaled him against the wall. After a moment, he pushed the metal away and limped to the maintenance door the sweepers had used.
***
The Centre
Miss Parker’s fingers itched to shoot someone. Since arriving back at the Centre, she had been ‘escorted’ to the infirmary. They had left her locked in a room waiting for the doctor. Now, an hour later, she was boiling. When the door clicked open, she sat back and waited for her first visitor.
“Hello Daddy.”
“Angel, I came as soon as I heard. What is going on?”
“Yes, Daddy, I’m hurt and I need a doctor to stitch up my arm. So glad you asked.”
“Oh, yes, well, the Centre doctor is busy with Ethan right now. What were you doing there?”
“How is my half-brother?”
Mr. Parker stared at his daughter. So she knows, he realized. He considered her carefully.
“Ethan is going to recover. He has a broken collarbone and some ribs needed taping. They’re checking to make sure there’s no internal damage. Now, Angel, you need to tell me what you were doing there. There’s a board meeting in two hours. They’re very concerned about where your loyalties are.”
“Trying to decide what to do with me, hmmm, Daddy? What do you do with bad daughters that don’t play your Centre games? Kill them off like you do with inconvenient wives? Just for the record, Daddy, is your little son really yours or is he another Centre creation?”
Mr. Parker grabbed his daughter and shook her.
“Now, you listen here. I didn’t raise you to be a weakling like your mother. You knew when you came to work here what we do. You’re just as involved in the Centre’s schemes as I am. You’re a Parker – act like one!”
She shoved her father away and glared.
“You’re right, Daddy. It is time to start acting like a Parker. Where’s my gun?”
“It’s safe. I’m going to tell the tower that you followed Ethan in hopes that Jarod would show up. Now that Jarod knows about Ethan, we can use Ethan to capture him. Jarod will probably contact you. Our deal still stands, Angel. Can I count on you to bring Jarod in?”
Miss Parker couldn’t believe her father’s audacity. Did he think she was stupid? They were never going to allow her to go free. Somehow, it all came back to Jarod. She needed time – time to get the answers and find that disk her mother had made.
“I don’t know Daddy. How can I trust you to live up to your end of the bargain?”
Mr. Parker glared at his daughter. He had protected her many times from the Centre’s wrath and this is what he gets? Perhaps it was time to end their relationship. But she has the best chance of capturing Jarod, he thought.
“I’ll give you Ethan. You get me Jarod and I’ll give you both yours and Ethan’s freedom.”
“Deal. I’ll want it in writing.”
“It’ll be on your desk in an hour.”
****
Miss Parker considered the computer monitor. She had been shocked when, after the doctor sewed her arm back together, she had been allowed to visit with Ethan. Her half-brother had been under the drugs they had given him and a little banged up but otherwise seemed fine. Now, she sat at home, trying to decipher the Centre’s ultimate motives.
“It’s simple,” a voice said from behind. “They’re setting you up.”
Miss Parker spun around and stared at Jarod. A large gash oozed above his right ear. He took a limping step towards her and she glanced down at his legs.
He watched as she stood up and came towards him. Her face was bruised along one side and she held her arm gingerly.
“Are you okay?” he asked with concern.
“I will be,” she replied. “When my father is dead and the Centre is a hole in the ground.”
She walked around him, inspecting the damage. He glowered at her and she grinned. It was making him uncomfortable – her careful perusal of his body. She smiled.
“We need to find that disc your mother left.”
“No shit, sherlock. Sit down before you fall down. You’re bleeding on my floors.”
He limped to the sofa and sat. She sat across from him and they stared at each other.
“Ethan?”
“A couple of broken bones and some stitches. Daddy renegotiated with me. I get Ethan too when I turn you over.”
She knows, he thought. Daddy won’t give her freedom – even for me. They had to come up with a plan and she was asking for his help.
“Do you believe it, Jarod?” she asked quietly. “Will the truth finally set us free? Or will we end up more twisted and ensnared in that place?”
“I believe it. The only way to be free of the Centre is to be free of its lies. We have to find your mother’s DSA.”
“I know. I can only stall my father for so long. What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to sim your mother.”
“The HELL you are! First you have me dig up her grave. Now, you want to dig up her mind? No way.”
“It’s the only way we’ll be able to determine possible locations of the DSA. If I can get into her mind, become her, I’ll be able to see what places she would have considered safe for putting the DSA.”
“NO!”
“You’re not being reasonable. Listen to your inner voices. We don’t have a lot of time. They’ll find me here.”
Miss Parker stood up and began pacing, her shoulders heavy. She was still reeling from the discovery of her father’s complicity in her mother’s death.
“You don’t have to stay,” he said quietly.
“I know. I’m not going to wimp out now. But you’re not in any shape to sim anyone right now. First, we do your leg. Then my mother.”
“I’m fine. We don’t have time…”
“Then I’ll make the time. Give me my phone.”
Jarod handed her the phone and listened as she called Broots and asked him to arrange a diversionary tactic. After Broots had obviously agreed to help, she hung up and went into her bathroom.
“Take your jeans off,” she told him.
He looked down at his pants then back at her with a shake of his head.
“Give me some scissors. I’ll do it,” he told her.
“We’re not arguing about this. Take the @#!$@ jeans off.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear.” It was an excuse, he knew, but hopefully good enough to deflect her determination.
“I’ll give you a pair of Tommy’s jeans.”
He stood and unbuttoned the pants. Looking up at her, he scowled at her smirk as he pushed the jeans down. When he pushed the jeans past his wound, he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
The pants landed in a heap at his ankles. Blood had soaked up and through the material and his entire right thigh as well as a portion of his briefs was smeared with red.
“Now sit back on the couch and let me look at it,” she told him. He kicked off his shoes and complied. Besides, he was too tired to argue and his leg hurt like blazes. He had to save energy to do this sim. She gasped when she got a close look at the wound.
“How the hell were you able to talk on this?”
“I just tuned it out.” He glanced down at the wound, bending his leg at the knee to get a better look. “I hit the wall and it tore downwards when I fell to the ground. It needs some internal stitches. Have you got a kit?”
“Actually, I do. I kept it from my days as a sweeper. My stitches might not be up to your standards anymore but they’ll have to do.”
He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Just do it fast. We’ve got work to do.”
***
Mr. Parker’s office
“Jarod will go back to Sydney temporarily,” Mr. Parker explained to his son. “Once things have settled down some, you can resume Project Regeneration. Of course, without Raines, you will be reporting directly to the new project leader. I expect you to get results. This project is the basis of the Centre.”
“Of course. I appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate my unwavering loyalty. You can count on me.”
“I’m relying on it. No screw ups this time, Lyle. This is your last chance. After 7677’s failure, you are going to need to pull this off.”
“I will not disappoint you,” Lyle said with feeling. “What about my darling sister?”
“She and Ethan will be assigned to Mr. White. He has some ideas for using their special abilities. Now, when do you think Jarod will be contacting her?”
The phone rang and Mr. Parker answered. After he spoke with whomever was on the phone, he turned back to his son.
“That was Broots. He has a lead on Jarod somewhere in North Carolina. I want you to get a team together and get down there right now!”
“And my sister? Should I call and invite her?”
“No. She’s not going anywhere as long as we have Ethan. Just go.”
***
Miss Parker looked up at Jarod’s face as she snipped the last stitch. He was pale and breathing harshly with both eyes squeezed tightly shut. She had offered him pain medication but he refused it – stating simply that he couldn’t perform a sim with his mind drugged up.
“Okay, I’m done. What do you need me to do?”
He opened his eyes, swung his legs gingerly back over the edge of the couch and sat up. The world spun and he waited until the feeling had passed before looking up at her.
“I could use those pants.”
She went to get the pants. He was more injured than he was letting on, she thought. Time to put a stop to the heroics. She took Tommy’s pants back to the injured pretender and watched as he pulled them up to his knees. She smiled and waited.
He frowned as he felt her watching him. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself to a standing position. Too quickly, he thought as the world went dark.
She grabbed his arms and shoved him back down on the couch. Standing back, she waited while he fought for consciousness. When he had won the battle, he scowled up at her.
“Done playing tough guy?” she quipped. “If you’re done, we can get back to business.”
He sighed and lifted his hips from the couch, pulling the pants up. Even moving his leg sent waves of pain shooting up his body.
Miss Parker returned from her kitchen with a tray. She set the tray on the table in front of him.
“Eat this. It’ll help with the dizziness.”
He picked up the sandwich and ate slowly. While he ate, she cleaned up the first aid kit supplies and blood soaked clothing. He finished and leaned back against the couch, closing his eyes.
“How long has it been since you’ve slept?” she asked.
“Awhile. I just need to rest my eyes for a minute…” he mumbled.
She watched for a moment until his breathing had deepened and evened out. Grabbing an afghan from the chair, she tossed it over him. When he began slipping to the side, she took hold of his shoulders and lowered him so he lay flat. She took off his shoes, draped his legs across the couch and then sat in the chair across from him, watching him sleep.
***
Sydney watched as Lyle became increasingly angry.
“Where is he, Sydney?” Lyle demanded. Failure was not something he wanted to report to his father. An anxiousness crept into his mind when he thought of failure.
“I don’t know. Perhaps someone leaked to him that you were setting up at trap. Or perhaps he was injured in the explosion and he can’t make it. I don’t think he’s coming.”
“If I find out this was some sort of setup on your part, Sydney, there’ll be hell to pay.”
***
Ethan shuddered. Since being dumped in this cell, he had seen no one other than the man who brought his food. He stood and began pacing. After a moment, he tilted his head to one side.
“I know they’re coming for me and I’m trying to be patient,” he said. “But I don’t like it here.”
After a moment, Ethan nodded his head and went back to pacing. Yes, it was definitely better to spend his time contemplating what it would be like to spend time with his siblings rather than worrying.
***
Jarod spun around and ran towards the elevator. The sound grew louder, harsher instead of fading. He looked back over his shoulder expecting to find Raines there, wheezing behind him. Instead, he saw Lyle with the scalpel and thumbs littering the floor. He reached the elevator and it opened. Inside, stood Sydney – blocking his only exit.
“It’s time for your next sim, Jarod.”
Miss Parker stared as Jarod thrashed in the throes of his nightmare. She caught snatches of the people populating his nightmare world through his disjointed mumbling. She had never seen this – the real results of the Centre’s lifetime of terror on its inhabitants. It had always seemed like whining and complaints. Grow up, she had told him.
He sat up suddenly, his eyes panicked and terror stricken. She stood and went to the kitchen – giving him time to collect himself. She smiled sardonically to herself. Was she giving him time to collect himself or giving herself time? His dreams had affected her more than she was ready to acknowledge.
He put his feet on the floor, elbows on knees and lowered his head to his hands. The last thing he had wanted to do was fall asleep and give Miss Parker a demonstration of his inability to handle what had happened to him at the Centre. He looked down and realized someone had taken off his shoes and covered him with an afghan. It seemed the ice queen has melted, he thought with a slight grin.
“How long was I out?” he asked without raising his head when she returned.
“About two hours.” She held out a cup of coffee and waited until he raised his head and took the cup. He leaned back against the couch and sipped at the steaming cup – still not looking at her.
She knew he didn’t want to discuss the dreams. She had given him his dignity by leaving the room when he awakened – knowing he wouldn’t want her to see his fear. But she needed to know everything. It was time to stop hiding from the painful truth.
“I used to envy you. Everyone always took care of you. You were their prize – treasured and watched over. I felt invisible at times. I thought you had a great life. You had Sydney to take care of you and you never had to worry if someone would remember to give you something to eat or not. I would have gladly traded all my toys and pretty bedroom for that kind of security.”
He glanced at her – saw her determination that this conversation would take place – and sighed. He had tried, so many times, to have this conversation with her. It was what he had wanted – to get her to admit her feelings and to finally see that the Centre’s security blanket it wrapped its inmates in was actually not the sweet comfort she imagined. He shook his head at himself. This is what he had fought for and now he didn’t want it. For some reason, this conversation had lost its appeal.
“Let’s not do this now,” he said quietly, his eyes pleading. “We’ve got to make plans…”
“Stalling, labrat?” She knew he was too vulnerable, too close to it, right now. But she needed him weakened.
“Why is this suddenly so important to you?”
“It’s the only way to stop their lies. And…stop my lies – to myself. I need to feel that guilt. It’s the only way I can save that little part of me that still has a conscience.”
“I can’t do this right now,” he whispered.
“Yes, you can. I’ll help you.” She put her hand on his knee. “You were taken as a child from your family…”
He stood up and limped away from her. Standing by the window, he spoke quietly.
“I was jealous of you too. Your mother was so…perfect. After I had been there awhile, I couldn’t remember my mother’s face anymore. I’d imagine that your mother was mine too. Then I’d feel guilty for not remembering my mother – for not wishing for my mother anymore. Sometimes it got so confusing that I’d look forward to the sims. I wanted to be someone else.”
“What were your days really like?”
“The days were okay. It was the nights. Then when Raines started to…I didn’t know when he’d be coming for me.”
“Started to what, Jarod? How old were you when he first got his hands on you?”
“I don’t know. The memories are really fuzzy. It wasn’t the same as what he did to Kyle and Angelo. I remembered the heart drug/cryogenic experiments about two years ago. But there’s more – or maybe those experiments just go further back. I’m not sure. I just remember fear and pain.”
“Did you ever learn what those experiments were really about? And why did they use you?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping your mother’s DSA will tell us. This secret – it’s essential. It’s the string we’re missing to unraveling the Centre.”
***
Mr. Parker’s Office
“You do realize what is going to happen if we don’t get Jarod back?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Project Regeneration will not be shutdown,” Lyle said evenly. “We will get him back. I’m sending a team over to my sister’s house even as we speak. If this was some type of diversionary setup by Jarod, he’ll be there.”
“Good. What about Sydney? How much is he involved?”
“Sydney’s loyalties have always been in question. He’s been playing both sides of the field for too long. I think it’s time we played our trump card with the good doctor.”
Mr. Parker considered Lyle’s suggestion. They had one ace up their sleeve when it came to manipulating the doctor. He had been reluctant to use it up to now. But they were getting desperate.
“I agree. Sydney needs to be brought back under our control. Do it.”
“I’ll contact you as soon as I get back.”
***
Miss Parker’s House
Jarod had slipped into the pretend fairly easily. Knowing the person who he was simming made it easier. But feeling these emotions – her fears and pain – when he knew and cared about the person , made the pretend more draining emotionally and physically. By the time he was done with the list of her three possible locations, he was exhausted.
Miss Parker took the list and wiped the tears from her face. Her mother had suffered for them. It was there in Jarod’s drawn face, weary eyes.
“We don’t have much time,” he told her. “They’ll be coming for me soon. You’re going to need time to search those places for the DSA. There’s something I want you to do.”
“What? Kill my father?” she asked it half seriously.
“No. Take me back to the Centre. Go through with the deal you made with your father.”
“Are you crazy? That’s exactly what they want! Giving you back to them would just keep the place going!”
“I didn’t say I was going to stay. But as long as they have me – they’ll leave you and Ethan alone. Take Ethan to my father, then find the DSA. How much time do you need?”
“No. I am not doing this. You’re going to help me take down the Centre. I need you alive. There’s got to be another way.”
“Don’t you think I’ve considered all the possibilities? This is it. I can help from the inside. They won’t kill me. I’m too important to them. But they will kill you or Ethan to get to me.”
She stared at him. She knew they were running out of time. The Centre sweepers would arrive any minute. If they found them here, like this, she would find out just how little ‘Daddy’ really cared.
“If you’re not out in three weeks, I’m coming in after you,” she warned him.
“Three weeks. I’ll meet you here. You’ll take Ethan to my father?”
“Yes. How will Major Charles know to trust me? He’ll believe I took you in unwillingly.”
“You’ll just have to make him believe you.”
“Oh, I can see this is going to be a lot of fun. Okay, let’s do this.”
***
The Centre
“She wasn’t there,” Lyle told his father over the cellphone. “It looks like he probably showed up. We found a pair of jeans. Oh, and here’s the kicker. The jeans were soaked with blood.”
“So he’s injured,” Mr. Parker replied. The door to his office swung open and slammed into the wall. He jumped up at the intrusion.
“Lyle, it looks like your sister has come home,” Mr. Parker said into the phone. “And she’s brought us an early Christmas present.”
He disconnected the call and approached his daughter. She stood with her gun pointing down – placed directly at the back of Jarod’s skull as he stood in front of her, handcuffs restraining his hands behind his back.
“Get Ethan up here now,” she snarled. “Or I blow this key to the Centre away.”
“Angel, you caught him. I’m so proud of you. Now, put the gun away. Don’t you trust me?”
Jarod snorted. “There’s a good one. She’s not a complete idiot.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to spit on me if I was on fire. I’ll give you exactly one minute to get Ethan up here before I blow Jarod’s brains out. And don’t think I won’t do it. After all the trouble he’s given me for the past four years, I would only be too happy to splatter these super brains all over your office.”
Mr. Parker fumed for a minute, then relented. After all, he really didn’t mind letting her go. Killing his own daughter would seem extreme – even to the Centre. He buzzed for Willie to bring Ethan up to his office. Once Ethan was delivered, Miss Parker demanded Willie’s gun. Turning the gun over to Ethan, she looked one last time at her father.
“I hope you rot in hell,” she told him before spinning on her heel and marching out with Ethan.
***
Major Charles watched as his daughter laughed with the boy. JJ, as he preferred to be called now, kept his daughter entertained during her convalescence. It was so good to be with Emily again. Now, if only he could find out what had happened to Jarod. After Jarod left to find Ethan, they heard about the explosion on the news. When the news reported no bodies had been found, he had felt joyous relief. But Jarod hadn’t returned and he quickly realized that they weren’t safe at the convent anymore. If the Centre found Jarod, they would find ways of digging their whereabouts out of his son. He couldn’t risk Emily – she was too weak still. He opened up his e-mail account and scowled at it.
“Emily, JJ, come over here. What do you make of this?”
“It’s from Miss Parker!” the boy said happily. “Open it!”
“I’m not sure I should. I don’t know if I’m willing to risk losing this place. We’ve been safe here for a year.”
The boy pushed his father’s hands aside and fiddled with the computer controls. Emily watched amazed as windows popped open, commands were entered, changed and read lightening quick.
“It’s okay, Dad,” JJ said. “It’s just a regular e-mail. They won’t be able to trace anything.”
Major Charles opened the mail and they scanned the contents. She wants to meet, he realized. Ethan is with her. When he read that she had turned Jarod over to the Centre as part of Jarod’s plan, he frowned.
“Jarod would never give up his freedom. This has got to be some kind of setup.”
“He would for us,” Emily disagreed. “He’d do it to save his family.”
“I’m still not sure about this. I’ll need some time to consider it. JJ, send her a reply telling her to give me a week. That should be enough time.”
“Time for what?”
“I’m going to Blue Cove. I’ll contact Sydney and find out if they’ve really got him. If they do, then we can probably trust her. If they don’t, then this is some kind of trap to get him.”
“How do you know you can trust Sydney?” Emily asked.
“I don’t. But he’s our best chance. I’ve got to risk it.”
****
Sydney watched through the two way glass. Jarod hadn’t moved from the corner where he huddled since they had dumped him in the cell four hours ago. The past three days of being in the Centre had obviously taken their toll on the pretender. He pressed a button and the two-way glass changed so that Jarod could see him.
“Hello Jarod. How are you feeling?”
Jarod looked up and Sydney felt the twinge blossom into a full- bodied guilt attack.
“I’ve been better,” Jarod responded. “Sydney, have you heard anything from Miss Parker or my father?”
“Actually, I do have news for you.” Sydney checked to ensure Broots had switched the cameras off. “Your father contacted me today.”
Jarod waited – trying to suppress his anxiousness.
“Your father wanted to know if the Centre had recaptured you. So, it seems, Miss Parker has not contacted him after all. That was your plan – wasn’t it? Send Miss Parker to your father with Ethan.”
“Yes.” He worried over that for a moment. “What did you tell my father?”
“I told him that you were back here. He…”
“Asked for your help getting me out.” Jarod smiled slightly. “Sydney, there’s something I have to tell you. Remember those experiments I told you about …”
“The ones where Raines was stopping your heart?”
“Yes. Syd, there’s some other reason why they’re doing this.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying that they’ve been doing it again? But Raines is dead…”
Sydney’s phone rang and he answered it.
“Jarod, that was Broots. I have to go. I’ll try to help but they’re…well, there’s something you don’t know about me that we need to talk about later. I’ll come back when it’s safe.”
With a last smile for his protege, he pressed a button and left Jarod to darkness.
***
Major Charles didn’t trust the psychiatrist. Sydney had told him that yes, Jarod was back at the Centre and reluctantly agreed to meet. He watched as the psychiatrist approached.
“Good location,” Sydney said as he looked around the deserted parking lot. “Did the boy sim this location for you?”
“Yes,” he replied cautiously. “I’ll need your help to get Jarod out of there. Details on where he’s being held. I need your help to get him out.”
“Major, I’d love to help you get your son out of there. But I can’t. And it’s too dangerous for you to try it. If they capture you…”
“They would use me against Jarod. I know.” Major Charles ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know who else to turn to. Please Sydney, you’ve got to help us.”
“I can’t.” Sydney sighed and turned away. “I have someone to protect too.”
Two cars screeched around a corner and approached the parking lot. Major Charles shot the shrink an angry look just as the Centre cars ramped over the curb. He ran towards his escape vehicle. Using the boy’s escape plan, he pressed a button and the board studded with spikes popped up. Tires blew and one of the black cars swerved and hit Sydney’s car.
***
Lyle frowned as he yanked a strap tighter. Jarod struggled on the table before giving up. His chest heaved up and down as he tried to control his fear. The coldness would seep into his bones quickly as the chamber filled with ice cold air, he knew. One of the sweepers stepped forward and Jarod flinched as the syringe was injected.
The door to the cylinder was opened and he looked down at his feet as they shoved him into it. At the last moment, he twisted his head back to get a glimpse of it. Those eyes held the deepest sickness he had ever witnessed.
Cox watched, feeling the excitement building. When Jarod’s lips turned blue and the thermometers inside the chamber read below zero temperatures, he bent to the window. Pressing a button, he leaned in.
“Tell me what you see Jarod. Tell me how you feel.”
Lyle turned to his father in disgust. In the past, he had participated eagerly. But now, he felt sickened by the whole thing. And there was something bothering him – a feeling he couldn’t identify – something inside his mind that pressed down heavily. It felt familiar somehow .
“This is disgusting,” Lyle commented. “Can we get the sicko out of here so I can get some work done?”
“Now Lyle, Cox’s fascination with death has been very useful to us. Let him play his game. It won’t interfere with the results. Now, who are we attempting to regenerate today?”
“How about Raines?” Lyle asked. He immediately wanted to withdraw the suggestion but decided to play it out.
“Hmm. Interesting. But I’m not sure I want Raines back. But nothing else has worked so I’m willing to try it. If this doesn’t work, we may have to get Sydney’s cooperation.”
“I don’t know how we’ll get Sydney to force Jarod into pretending to be whoever we’re regenerating.”
“The way we always get Sydney to do anything.”
***
Miss Parker smiled at Ethan. The young man smiled back at her. In the past week, they had gotten to know each other. Her brother was a lot like Jarod, she thought. He cared about other people. But he was also like her too. He knew how to play dirty.
“Are you ready for this meeting? Your father is very eager to meet you but if you need more time…”
“No. I can handle it. Maybe he’ll know where the DSA is.”
“I doubt it.” She sighed. “All these mysteries… hopefully, I’ll be able to find that DSA and everything will become clearer.”
“I know how disappointed you were that it wasn’t at the first place on Jarod’s list. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to look for it?”
“No. You need time to get to know your father. I’ll be back as soon as I find it.”
They stopped at the designated meeting spot. Major Charles stood waiting for them. Ethan got out of the car and walked towards him. They stared at each other for a minute before Major Charles grabbed the young man and pulled him into a tight hug. After a moment, Ethan hugged him back.
***
Jarod shivered in his corner. He wasn’t sure what day it was but it didn’t really matter. He was too weak to explore and find what he had come to get. He suspected that about two weeks had gone by. But at least they hadn’t been successful in their latest attempts at their sick experiments.
It was the combination – drugs and physical torture – that had him worried about his ability to withstand it much longer. But he couldn’t give in – even if he thought the experiment would fail. There was no way to sim it to know for sure. If the experiments were successful, he would disappear. When they brought his body back to life, someone else would inhabit it.
He tried to reason it out but his exhaustion was too heavy. He knew that if he tried to sleep, they would come for him. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
“Crew craw, toad stools, geese walking barefoot…”
Cox watched the pretender as he sang quietly. That damn song – he hated that song. He knew he used it to protect himself – as comfort. But he didn’t want Jarod feeling comfort – only fear and anxiety.
Lyle came up behind him and looked in the cell at the pretender.
“I think you should reconsider your methods,” Lyle advised. “The jumper cables were extremely effective. No blood and mess to clean up afterwards.”
“Most of us don’t abhor blood or messiness as much as you do, Mr. Lyle,” Cox replied.
“Perhaps. But the point is that you haven’t been successful in gaining his cooperation. He still absolutely refuses to perform the simulation. My methods were cleaner.”
“Clean torture? How dull.”
“I once said that diagnosis of mental illness is highly subjective. But seeing what you’ve done with the pretender…well, I think that no one would disagree with my diagnosis. I may be sick but I can be cured. You’re just plain evil..”
What is happening to me? Lyle wondered as he walked away. He shook his head wondering if Raines’ death had something to do with these strange feelings. Did Raines somehow have more control over me than I realized? Lyle looked back at the door to the observation room. Jarod would know, he realized. Jarod could sim it
***
Miss Parker shook her head. It was impossible, she thought. There had to be some other reason why Sydney had set up Major Charles. Sydney adores Jarod. There’s no way he would do anything to hurt his protégé. But the Major had been convinced. After Ethan and the Major left to rejoin Emily at their hiding spot, she had returned home and thought it through. There was nothing left to do but call and get the truth from the source.
“Sydney here,” he answered.
“A friend tells me that you aren’t playing by the old rules. What’s really going on Syd?”
“Hello Miss Parker. I assume you’ve talked with Major Charles?”
“You can assume anything you want. Been spending too much time in the renewal wing, have we Syd?”
“No. Was there something you wanted?”
“Why did you set up Major Charles?”
“Why do you think I set him up?”
“Cut the shrink crap and answer the question!”
“Miss Parker, the choices I make… you don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me!” she demanded.
“I can’t.” He flicked off the phone.
She hung up the phone and sat down. The disc, she thought. There was only one more place on Jarod’s list to search. She needed it now more than ever.
****
Five Days Later
Miss Parker peeled the back of the picture off. She smiled. Her mother was ingenious. The last place on Jarod’s list had been right. The disc was in her father’s office. Sneaking into the office had been the most difficult part. But, like Jarod, she knew the Centre inside and out. She pocketed the disc and turned to leave.
“Hi sis. Going somewhere?”
Miss Parker jumped. Lyle stood in the doorway grinning at her.
“Just thought I’d take one last look around,” she lied.
“Was it here?”
“What?”
“Don’t play games with me,” Lyle whispered angrily. “She was my mother too. I have a right to see it.”
“A right? Why so you can go tell her murderer everything.”
“Dad didn’t kill her.”
“He ordered it. Get a clue.”
Lyle stepped up to her.
“You’re telling me to get a clue? Do you have any idea what is going on here? Do you know what they’ve been doing to your favorite labrat?”
“They? Aren’t you forgetting that you’re a part of it?”
“Yes. That’s the problem. I seem to have all these big gaps in my memories. I don’t know if they made me forget or if it’s just stuff that I’ve blocked. That disc – it’s the only way I’ll know. My answers are on it too.”
Shock hit her. This one went off the Richter scale, she realized. Finding out Sydney had setup Major Charles was a big one but this hit her harder. Lyle was doing the same thing she was – looking for answers – looking for the truth.
“I don’t know if I can trust you. How do I know you won’t have me killed?”
He considered her sadly. He knew she was his only chance at learning the truth to his life. But what would his life be worth if he helped her? The Centre would hunt him down as ruthlessly as they hunted Jarod. It all came back to Jarod, he realized. Jarod is the key to everything – including my life, he thought.
“Give me an hour and I’ll show you that you can trust me. We need to work together on this Parker. Meet me at your house in an hour. Will you do that?”
She saw something different about Lyle. Always, she had felt that he had a hidden agenda behind every move. There was calculation in his eyes. Tonight, there were questions there.
“If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” she told him. “There is too much at stake here.”
“Yes, Parker, there is too much at stake.” He leaned in to whisper it. “It’s not about money and power anymore. They want to be gods. We’ve got to stop them.”
***
Miss Parker paced anxiously. Going to the DSA player, she picked up the disk and held it to the light.
“I hope it was worth it, Mom,” she said.
“We’ll know in a minute,” Lyle replied. He stepped into the light and smiled at her. “I’ve got something for you but I need your help getting it out of the car.”
She frowned at him wondering what he could be up to as she followed him to his car. He had parked it around the back of her house. He opened the passenger door and the light went on. Whatever had been in the passenger seat had fallen out when he opened the door and she couldn’t see what he was manhandling out the door.
“I could use some help here,” he called to her.
She went around to the passenger side and gasped. Lyle had his arms under Jarod’s armpits and was dragging the unconscious man out of the car. She rushed forward and grabbed Jarod’s legs, hefting them up. They carried him into the house and she jerked her head towards her bedroom. Dumping him onto the bed, she stood back – the shock evident on her face.
“Damn, he’s heavier than he looks,” Lyle told her.
“You got him out? I can’t believe you did this. What happened?”
Lyle smiled at her as he bent over the unconscious man.
“Have you got a first aid kit? I’ll tell you what happened while we get him cleaned up some.”
When she returned with the kit, she found her brother peeling the shirt off Jarod. She gazed down at the pretender’s body.
“Is he going to live?” she asked.
“What do I look like, a doctor? Cox doesn’t believe in clean torture. Get some towels and warm water.”
The basin of warm water sloshed as she almost tripped over the dirty, bloody shirt tossed on the floor. Lyle was putting pressure on a bleeding wound. She soaked a towel and picked up one of Jarod’s arms. Some of the wounds were older, encrusted with blood and dirty while the inside of the elbow contained track marks. She watched her brother as she washed these.
“They won’t trace me here, if that’s what you’re worried about. They don’t suspect a thing. Who would believe that I sprung the pretender? You were even in shock when you saw him. But I needed something to help persuade you that my loyalties are not where they used to be and he’s the only thing I could think of.”
She considered him for a moment. “Your loyalties have never been in question. You’re loyal to Lyle and only Lyle.”
“That’s why I’m still alive. The Centre doesn’t exactly have a good retirement program.”
“No, they don’t. But I can’t believe you sprung him just to use him as a demonstration to me. You could have forced me to show you this DSA. You didn’t need my trust. You got him out because whatever they were doing to him didn’t agree with you.”
Lyle looked up at her uncertainly – wondering if she could read his mind. It had been an impulse – to get Jarod. But once it came into his mind, he couldn’t stop it. And it had felt so right. Like he was completing something that he was meant to do.
***
Two hours later
“It’s late. Perhaps we ought to wait until morning,” Miss Parker said quietly.
“No. Let’s do it now. One of us is going to have to stay up and keep an eye on him. His body temperature is still too low. We need to get some warm fluids in him when he wakes up. Do you have any soup?”
“Yes. The sedative you gave him – how long will he be out for?”
“I’m not sure. If I could have done it without drugging him…”
“You’d still be hassling with him at the Centre. He’ll get over it.”
“Assuming he lives. Where’s the DSA?”
She plugged the DSA into the recorder and they sat down to watch their mother.
Catherine Parker sat quietly looking into the camera. Her life was almost over. She knew it and it showed in her eyes.
“Hello darling. There are so many things I have to tell you. I can only hope that you’re not watching this alone. I hope that one of your brothers is there with you. You see, you actually have a twin brother and soon, a half brother. They told me your twin died when he was born. But lately, the voices have been telling me that Lyle actually lived. Lyle, if you are there, your mother loved you very much. You were taken away from me to fulfill a purpose in life. I know it will take you a long time to find that purpose – but understand that it’s not the one the Centre plans for you.”
Lyle felt something change inside. He smiled. Although Cox would never get the answer to one of life’s most important questions, he had just found the answer to the other question. Yes, he thought, people can change.
“By now, you probably know that the Centre was a good place originally. We wanted to study behavior and genetics – hoping to find cures and understanding. Doctor Raines was our specialist on extreme violent behavior and near-death experiences. At first, I thought it was a purely scientific fascination. After Jarod came to us, I realized that the doctor was obsessed. But it took me nine years to discover just how obsessed and sick he really is.
He is using Jarod to study death. No one can simulate death. From near death experiences, we know that it is different for every person. Jarod is capable of becoming many people. Do you see what he intends to do? Also, there is also a theory that a pretender can be used to ‘regenerate’ a dead person by becoming that person at the moment before death. When the pretender is revived, the regenerated person inhabits his body….
“Jesus,” Miss Parker whispered. “Those experiments where you stopped his heart…”
“Cryogenic research,” Lyle interrupted. “We were killing him, freezing him and then attempting to revive him as someone else.”
“And that’s what they’ve been doing to him these past two weeks?”
“Yes. Jarod wasn’t cooperative the last time we did these experiments. Sydney was out of town that time and Jarod wouldn’t do the sim. We knew he wasn’t going to cooperate this time either. I wanted to use the jumper cables but as you saw Cox had other plans to gain his cooperation.”
“How did they manage to hide this from me all these years? Why didn’t I know?”
“You didn’t want to know. Neither did Jarod. We blocked Jarod’s memories but even without the drugs, he probably wouldn’t have remembered it,” Lyle responded.
When I discovered how Raines was using Jarod, I knew my days were numbered. I ‘pretended’ to trust Raines to keep this baby safe. I tried to tell Sydney – but he doesn’t want to hear. I don’t think he could live with the guilt if he accepted what I told him. But he has someone he has to protect…
I never wanted this to come to this point - where I would leave my children in their hands – without a loving parent. But I had to try to stop them. We cannot let them do this. They have even tried to clone Jarod so that they’ll have a perpetual supply of pretenders to use for this experiment. But I failed.
Here’s my plan: Raines has devised a new method of mind control. I discovered that he has hidden your twin brother with a family. When Lyle reaches maturity, Raines will implant a device in his brain. He’ll have control over your brother – use him to carry out his dirty work and divide the Parkers. Raines knows that together – you and Lyle would make a team that could bring the Centre to its knees. You must find your brother and work together to get that device out of his head. Use Jarod to get it out. Then, once Lyle is free from the Centre’s control, the two of you…
Miss Parker was crying. As her mother finished describing her plan to wipe the Centre from the face of the earth, she smiled a little. The plan was deviously simple. She waited until the screen went blank before turning to Lyle. There was amazement and joyous wonder in her twin’s eyes.
“There’s something in my head,” he whispered. “They made me do those things. I can’t explain it but I couldn’t stop. I never wanted…”
Tears had come to Lyle’s eyes. Real tears, she thought. She reached for his hand. A jolt went through her and they sprung apart.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
“Yes. What was it?”
“I don’t know. But it was like I could feel you in my head.”
He grinned. “So maybe Sydney was right but it just took us longer to feel it. Twins do have a special bond.”
Jarod slowly became aware of the softness of the surface he was laying on. He fought through the fog in his brain to open his eyes. Yes, he was actually on a bed. Pillows were tucked in around him, keeping him on his side. His wrists were bandaged rather than shackled. He raised his head from the pillow. How the hell did I get in Miss Parker’s bedroom, he worried. The last thing he could remember was Lyle with a syringe. He heard footsteps and closed his eyes – feigning sleep. Something was inserted in his ear and when the ting sounded, he realized that whoever was in the room was taking his temperature.
“Any better?” Jarod heard Miss Parker ask from the doorway.
“It’s gone up to 97.” Jarod almost jumped out of his skin when he heard Lyle’s voice. He felt Lyle pick up his wrist.
“He’ll be waking up soon. His pulse has increased some. We should try and get some food into him. It’s been awhile since he’s eaten.”
He heard them leave the room, discussing him as they went down the hallway. Using his elbow, he levered himself up. He looked down at himself. Bandages swathed most of his upper torso where the majority of the damage had been inflicted. Grabbing the end of the blanket, he went to pull it back but discovered his lack of clothing. Looking around, he saw his clothing piled in a heap on the floor. He steeled himself for the pain and sat up slowly.
***
After pouring the soup into a bowl, she opened her mouth to call for Lyle when she heard a thump. Then she felt something – in her head, she heard Lyle.
She rushed down the hallway. Inside the bedroom, she found Lyle in a heap. The bedroom window was open, the smashed ear thermometer littered the floor and the bed was empty.
“Lyle!” She bent down to her twin. His pulse was strong and he moaned as she felt along his skull. He blinked and opened his eyes.
“He jumped me when I came in,” Lyle told her. “I didn’t think he’d have the strength to even stand. We better find him before he collapses somewhere and the Centre finds him.”
***
Four Hours Later
Jarod panted, holding his broken ribs, as he leaned against the wall to catch his breath. Adrenaline kept him vertical but he was quickly running out of that commodity. He heard Miss Parker and Lyle approaching and pushed himself off. Wincing, he stumbled down the littered alleyway bare footed.
Lyle turned the corner and saw the figure limping around the next corner. His feet crunched over broken glass as he followed Jarod. He skidded to a stop twenty feet from the pretender. Jarod was trapped. The alleyway was a dead end.
Miss Parker followed her brother. Jarod, looking like a caged animal, was warily watching them as he leaned against the far wall.
Let me handle this, she told her brother mentally. He nodded.
“Jarod, I don’t know what you’re thinking but we need to get you back to my house. You need to be in bed. Your body temperature isn’t back to normal yet and you’re wounded.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Get away from me!” he croaked out.
“We can’t do that. You’ll get caught! The Centre is already combing this town for you. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Time for what? What is going on?”
“Lyle got you out. It’s a long story. You’ve got to trust us.”
She took another step towards him and he moved to the right. She stopped and considered her options. Rush him, Lyle told her. She nodded and sprung.
Jarod waited until she reached him before bringing his hand around. He grabbed her and twisting her around, forced her into a head lock. The gun he put under her throat was her own.
“Stay back,” he warned Lyle. The de ja vu sunk in and he smiled at the irony.
Miss Parker groaned but thought quickly. He won’t kill me, she told Lyle. He’s hurt and sick, Lyle returned. I’m not risking you, he told her. You’ve got to, she pleaded. They can’t win.
“Put the gun down, Jarod,” Lyle warned. “I know you won’t hurt her. You can’t do this. It’s not in your makeup. I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What are you offering this time, Lyle? By now you should realize that I’m not interested in running the Centre with you,” Jarod asked.
“Raines put a device in my head twenty years ago. It made me do things. Your freedom for mine – it’s that simple. You get this thing out of my head and I’ll let you go.”
“You can’t believe I’ll trust you – not even you are that stupid. One step closer and you’ll be explaining to daddy dearest why you let his angel get her brains blown out.”
“The device - it’s on the DSA my mother made.”
“You found it?” Jarod asked his captive quietly.
“Yes,” she got out. “Come with us and we’ll show it to you.”
“How can you trust him? He’ll set us up.”
“I just know I can. Something inside me tells me to trust him.”
The voices, Jarod realized. Jarod turned the gun from his captive to her twin.
“If you try anything, I’ll hunt you down and I will kill you.”
“Understood.”
Jarod lowered the gun. Yanking the gun from Jarod’s grip, Miss Parker shoved the pretender hard and he fell back against the wall. She spun him around and roughly shoved him face first into the wall. Taking out her handcuffs, she secured his wrists before spinning him back.
He glared at her. “I should have known better than to believe in you.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.” She stepped up closer to him. “You belong to me now and you’ve got a job to do.”
“And what would that be?” he snarled.
“Take down the Centre. You’re going to help us carry out my mother’s plan.”
****
The Centre
“He’s gone – disappeared. There’s no sign of him anywhere in Blue Cove,” Cox told Mr. Parker over the cellphone.
“How the hell did he get out? He could hardly stand much less walk. Could he have been pretending?”
“The beatings were designed to keep him debilitated and too weak to escape. There is no way he did this on his own. Someone got him out.”
“Who? That idiot savant – Angelo?”
“No. Angelo was locked up. Someone else. What about your daughter?”
“She brought him in. Why would she get him out?”
“Perhaps Sydney persuaded her.”
“You should know better than anyone that Sydney isn’t going to take any risks.”
“Yes. But we’ve got to find him. I was so close during the last session. So close.”
“Let me talk to Lyle.”
“He’s not here. I haven’t seen him.”
****
Miss Parker’s house
“Did anyone ever tell you that for a genius you’re a real idiot?” Lyle asked. Jarod just stared.
Lyle sat at the foot of the bed, grabbed a piece of glass and yanked. Hearing Jarod’s sharp intake of breath, he grinned.
“Bet that hurts. Well, if you had stayed put we wouldn’t be doing this, would we?”
Miss Parker handed Lyle some gauze and he dabbed the wound. She wet some cotton balls with alcohol and watched impassively as Lyle pressed them to Jarod’s foot. Jarod clenched his teeth together and fisted his cuffed hands.
“Tell me about the DSA,” Jarod gritted out. He pulled a little on the cuffs attaching him to the headboard as Lyle picked out glass.
“According to my mother, Project Regeneration is the heart of the Centre,” Miss Parker told him. “Every five years, a project report is sent to the corporate sponsors. You are the main attraction of that report. After they review the report, they do an onsite evaluation. You can bet that they’ll fake the report and during the next couple weeks, you’ll become the hottest commodity on this planet.”
“So you plan on taking me back to the Centre,” Jarod surmised. He jerked his foot as Lyle pulled another piece of glass out. Lyle gave him a warning look and Jarod glared at him before concentrating on Miss Parker again. “You’ll get them when they’re all together – the sponsors and the Centre – when they come for their onsite evaluation. Take out the source of the money being funneled into the Centre.”
“Exactly. No money coming into the Centre means no Centre. We nail the corporate sponsors and we’ve got not only the Centre – but a guarantee that they won’t continue these experiments somewhere else. In two weeks, Lyle will return to the Centre with you and coordinate the final report.”
Jarod turned to look out the window. “And you need me to sim the whole thing. How you’re going to take the sponsors out, where, when, etc. ”
“Yes. My mother knew you were the only one who could sim this. What exactly is your problem here, Jarod? I thought you’d want to take the Centre down.”
“You expect me to let you use me this way? I don’t belong to anyone – especially you, Miss Parker. And your plan has an essential problem in it for me – if you return me to the Centre, I won’t be alive to see its demise.”
“They won’t kill you. You’re too valuable.”
Jarod laughed with an edge of hysteria before turning to stare out the window. He knew that his chances of surviving his next encounter with the Centre were very low. They had already killed him more times than he wanted to remember. He couldn’t go back. They had come too close. All they had to do was find one of his family members and he would do it – perform the simulation during the experiment. When he woke up, he wouldn’t exist anymore. Someone else would inhabit his body. And to top it off, if the experiment succeeded – someone would find out and somewhere, it would go on.
Lyle’s phone rang and he released Jarod’s foot to answer it. Jarod and Miss Parker watched impassively as he answered the questions. Once he hung up, he returned to bandaging Jarod’s feet.
“Daddy wants me to check your house to see if you had anything to do with the disappearance of the pretender,” Lyle told his sister. “I’ve got a meeting with him in three hours to discuss the escape and reacquisition. Can you handle him until I get back?”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Miss Parker replied smugly.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Jarod smirked.
“I’ve got some more sedative,” Lyle announced. Jarod paled and shook his head. “Then you better be here when I get back. Now, we’ll need someplace to hide for awhile while I supposedly track down Jarod and he performs the simulations. Any ideas?”
“Yes. We’ll take him to Ben’s place. Our mother used to go there.”
After seeing her brother out, Miss Parker went to the kitchen and heated a bowl of soup. She found Jarod asleep in the bed when she returned. He jerked and blinked up at her when she tested the temperature of his forehead.
“You’re sick, Jarod. You’ve gone from too low a temperature to too high. You’re going to end up with pneumonia.”
“Worried about me or my ability to do the sim for you?” he whispered.
She sat beside him on the bed and stared down at him. With his hands cuffed over his head, he was pretty helpless but that didn’t stop him from antagonizing her. She smiled as she realized that it was partially his helplessness that he was fighting against. That, and the fact that Lyle was now involved in the Centre’s demise, she thought.
Jarod scowled at her as she studied him. He shifted positions and the urge to cough overtook him.
The coughing fit hit him hard – waves of agony through his chest as he hacked gunk from his lungs. She ripped a pillow from the bed and shoved it against Jarod’s broken ribs. The pretender had turned onto his side and she pressed the pillow firmly against him while he coughed into his bent arms. Too late, she realized, he already has pneumonia.
Once he had quieted, she fetched cough medication. Pouring into the dispenser cap, she slipped a hand beneath his head and held it up. She waited until he complied by opening his mouth before pouring the liquid into him. Setting the medication aside, she sat beside him and reached for the bowl on the bedside table.
“Are you going to cooperate and eat this or do I do this the hard way?” she asked as she brought the spoon to his lips.
“I’m not hungry.” His voice was raw and scratchy sounding.
“Tough.”
“I can feed myself,” Jarod told her. He shook the handcuffs and they rattled. She smiled nastily and shook her head. He huffed before returning his gaze to the ceiling. Her smile turned genuine when she put the spoon to his lips and he opened his mouth. After feeding him half the bowl, he turned his face away, into his arms. She yanked his chin so his face came back around.
“You’re done when I say you’re done,” she told him with a nasty smile.
He glowered at her intensely - hating this helplessness and her enjoyment of it. He knew this was her repayment for all the nasty tricks he had played on her. She would ensure he was totally dependent on her and force him to acknowledge it too. If he wanted any chance, he would need to save his strength up. He opened his mouth and swallowed more of the damn soup – swearing he would never touch the stuff again in his life.
***
An Hour Later
“No,” he groaned. “Please. No more.”
“Jarod, wake up,” she urged. His nightmares had awakened her all the way from the other side of the house. “You’re not at the Centre. Open your eyes.”
“Cold. I’m so cold. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Jarod, this isn’t the Centre,” Parker said loudly. “NOW OPEN YOUR EYES.”
Jarod’s eyes snapped open. There was no awareness in his eyes – only panic as he began to pull desperately at the cuffs while scooting to a sitting position.
“No, lay back,” she told him. “It’s okay. Don’t you remember? Lyle got you out!”
When he continued to yank and pull at his restraints, she reached for his face. He was burning up. He coughed as he pulled - sounding like he would respirate his lungs up. When he paused to suck in his breath, he gagged and she realized he was about to throw up. She held his head as he vomited the soup into the trash can. Pushing him back on the bed, she wiped the sweat from his face and made a decision.
She ran to get the syringe with the sedative and carefully tapped the bubbles out. After she yanked his sleeve up, Jarod pulled on his restraints and coughed. He turned his attention from the cuffs to her just as she plunged the needle into his upper arm.
“No!” he screamed. “I won’t go there again! Please let me go! Please!”
“No,” she told him. “We need to get the fever down. Lay down now, Jarod.”
“No,” he whimpered. He laid his head on the headboard, curled his legs under him and rocked back and forth, coughing sporadically and trying to comfort himself.
She waited until the sedative began to relax him before pulling him down so he lay flat. Reaching up, she unlocked his wrists. Blood had seeped through the bandaging from where he had pulled on the cuffs too hard. She sighed – it didn’t look like she was going to get any sleep.
****
Sydney paced his office. The pleasure he felt at hearing Jarod had escaped was rapidly being overcome with anxiety. Please, let him call, Sydney worried. Conversely, he also hoped Jarod wouldn’t call. How would he explain it to him? The door opened and he turned to see Cox.
“Trying to find the way out from between the rock and the hard place?” Cox asked.
“There’s never been a way out for me,” Sydney replied quietly. “Why did you do it Cox? Taking over the experiments… you had to know how that would affect me.”
“Why do you think I came here? It certainly wasn’t for quality family time. Raines’ work was brilliant. The idea that we could find out what happens at death…man would never need to fear anything.”
“I should never have shown you that DSA.”
“Then why did you?”
“When Broots showed me the DSA of Raines and Lyle experimenting on Jarod, I knew you were considering coming to work here. I thought it would keep you away…”
“Away? That hurts my feelings Sydney. Why I would think you would be happy to have Jarod and I near to you. After everything you’ve done to…”
“Cox,” Sydney interrupted impatiently. “You know what happened to Raines. Can’t you see how dangerous this is?”
“We’ve already had this discussion. I will continue the experiments as soon as your runaway is returned. Oh don’t look so despondent Sydney. If you would just help me out, we could find out whether it works or not.”
“You ask too much. I won’t help you.”
“But you won’t stop me either. Don’t even try, Sydney. You won’t win.”
“I know.”
******
Noon
Lyle closed the door quietly and smiled at his sleeping sister. She had obviously had a hard time keeping track of the labrat, he thought as he studied her. He headed for the back bedroom and found Jarod weakly sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Going somewhere?” Lyle asked as he stepped into the room.
Jarod jerked his head up and frowned.
Lyle picked up the handcuffs and studied the room. A basin of water sat on the table beside the bed with a washcloth. An empty bottle of cough medication sat beside it. He scanned the other items scattered around as his sister stepped into the room.
“What is it - pneumonia?” Lyle asked his sister. “Isn’t that a common side effect of hyperthermia?”
“Yes,” she replied. “He’s had a raging fever.”
“Well, my morning hasn’t been that wonderful either,” Lyle interjected. “But I managed to convince our father that I don’t need any help capturing the lab rat.”
“I have a name,” Jarod interrupted. “Use it.”
“We’ve got two weeks,” Lyle continued. “We better make the best of it. Now let’s get moving.”
“I’m already packed and ready,” Miss Parker told her brother, ignoring Jarod. “Toss my luggage into the car. Did you bring some things for frankenboy?”
Lyle handed his sister a bag and took her luggage to the garage. He returned to the bedroom to find his sister smiling nastily at the pretender.
“Is he giving you trouble?” Lyle asked.
“No trouble at all, right Jarod?”
He considered if she would carry through on her threat to chain him up and strip him naked herself. Grimacing, he took the tee-shirt she held out. It was Lyle’s clothing.
“Can I take a shower?” he asked hopefully. Both of his captors shook their heads – Lyle at least mentioning that they didn’t have time and he didn’t have the strength. She just grinned evilly.
He pulled the tee-shirt on, the movement causing his ribs to grind. Gritting his teeth, he pulled it down over the bandaging around his torso. He looked down at his black-Centre-issue pants. The pants were torn at the knees and dirty.
“Take them off,” she told him. She held out a pair of light-blue pajama bottoms.
“Don’t you have any jeans I could borrow?” Jarod asked Lyle. Lyle shrugged and went back to gathering any items that could lead a search team to believe Jarod had been there. All the bloody bandages and sheets were tossed into garbage bags. They would burn them at Ben’s.
“Jarod,” she warned.
He took the pants and scowled. She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, enjoying herself immensely. Lyle had already stripped the bed of its coverings so Jarod was stuck.
Lyle looked over and saw the standoff. They needed to get moving. He picked up a garbage bag of bedding and tossed it at his sister.
“Load this in the jeep, will you?” he asked.
She glared at it, then at her brother.
“Fine,” she huffed and marched out.
Jarod sighed and quickly changed. He looked up to thank Lyle but found his wrist encased in a handcuff. He changed his mind about expressing his gratitude as Lyle quickly cuffed the other wrist.
His feet hurt as he unsteadily walked towards the garage, using the wall for support. By the time he got to the car, the coughing had started and he fell into the backseat. He didn’t even notice as they pulled out of the garage and headed down the road.
***
The Centre
Mr. Parker scowled at the DSA recorder. From Raine’s private stash of discs, they had found two labeled “Bobby”. The bastard had not only stolen his son but he had also implanted a device in his head to control him. Not surprisingly, one of the discs showed Jarod designing the disc and the subsequent memory wiping session they used on the teenager afterwards.
The device was ingenious but, of course, it would be since it came from Jarod’s head. When activated, the device interfered with certain neurons ability to send signals. In effect, it lobotomized Lyle at selective times – turning him into an emotionless automaton that wouldn’t remember most of what had happened. When it wasn’t activated, Lyle would be confused and mystified by any memories that seeped through. Eventually, Lyle would shut off his ability to feel autonomously. He wouldn’t be able to reconcile his actions with his feelings. The ultimate question would be, without the device turned on, how long before Lyle started letting his feelings surface? Mr. Parker wasn’t interested in taking chances. The activator for the device had to be found.
****
Two Hours Later
Miss Parker turned in her seat to look back at Jarod. After his coughing spell, he had fallen asleep sprawled across the backseat. The restlessness that she had come to expect had started and he mumbled incoherently in his sleep.
Lyle watched the pretender in his rearview mirror. Jarod sleeps like I do, he realized. The nightmares had gotten worse since Raines’ death. Distinguishing between dreams and things had actually happened was torturing him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as a headache began forming.
“Wake him up,” he told his sister. “I’ll go through a drive through at this next town. He needs to eat.”
She reached into the backseat and shook Jarod’s arm. He pulled himself up, his gaze darting right and left.
“Where are we?” he croaked – his voice rough from sleeping.
“About three more hours and we’ll be there,” Miss Parker told him. “We’re coming into a town. We’re going to go through a drive-through. You try anything and you’ll spend the rest of the trip sedated. Got that?”
“What about these?” he asked, holding up his cuffed wrists. She shook her head and he evaluated his options before agreeing to keep quiet.
They pulled into a restaurant’s drive through and allowed him to choose what he wanted. Miss Parker passed his food to him and he took a bite of the sandwich, watching out the window and praying the food stayed put.
Miss Parker ate her sandwich and watched the passing scenery. She and Lyle had been lost in their own thoughts and the drive had been quiet and uneventful so far. But with Jarod awake, all that was about to change. She sighed and decided to begin round one.
“Jarod, these are antibiotics. You need to take them.” She opened her hand to reveal two large red pills.
He took another bite and talked around the mouthful of food just to annoy her.
“Now how do I know what those are? And where did you get them from? Antibiotics, last I checked, don’t grow on trees.”
“I brought them,” Lyle told him. “I called my doctor while at the Centre and he called in the prescription for me. They don’t come from the Centre’s pharmacy. Show him the bottle.”
She handed him the bottle, which Jarod studied intently before shaking his head and giving it back to her.
“Lyle, pull over. He’s going to be difficult.”
Jarod assessed the situation and realized that she wasn’t going to relent. He took the two pills and swallowed them. Leaning back, he set aside his sandwich and stared out the window.
“Do you know where my mother is?” Jarod asked Lyle quietly.
“No idea. Mr. White couldn’t even get a trace on her. How’s Emily?”
“You mean, did she survive you tossing her out the window?”
“I didn’t toss her out the window. She fell.” Lyle stated. The memory was clear to him but somehow it didn’t feel like something he had actually done. It felt like someone else had done it while he was observing. The device, he realized with an angry frown.
Jarod turned to stare at the back of Lyle’s head. Emily couldn’t clearly remember what had happened due to the concussion she suffered.
“Tell me how it happened.”
“Eat the rest of your sandwich,” Miss Parker told him.
Jarod ignored her and waited. Lyle sighed and gave in. “I took a picture of your mother and made up a fake file about her location. I tried to bribe Emily with it. Basically, if she allowed me to use her as bait to get you, I would give her the information. She refused. I held the information out the window and told her that she would never find her mother. She made a dive for it.” Lyle looked into his rearview mirror. “Jarod, I tried to grab her but she slipped right through my fingers. I’m sorry. Is she okay?”
Jarod considered him. It made sense. Lyle had no reason to kill Emily – she was too useful as bait. In the past, Lyle’s modus operandi was kidnapping people. Lyle’s intention had probably been to kidnap his sister. The apology had been a surprise. Even more surprising, he found himself answering Lyle’s question.
“The last time I saw my sister, she was recovering. She’s going to be fine.”
“Good. She’s a pretty girl. Stubborn too.”
Now, Jarod was angry.
“Stay away from her! She’s not Asian. You should have no interest in her.”
“Asian? What in the world are you talking about?”
“Your wife? The one you killed?”
“I didn’t kill her!” Lyle struggled to a sitting position. “My father did!”
“Yeah. Right. What about May Li?”
“What about May Li? I’m not allowed to have a love affair?”
“Not if the girl ends up dead!”
“Shutup! Both of you!” Miss Parker shouted at them. “Look, we all have questions – things to sort out. But we have better things to concentrate on right now! Like staying alive and shutting down the Centre. So stop it! Not a word, Jarod, or you’ll find yourself wearing duct tape.”
***
Ben’s Inn
Miss Parker slammed her door shut. She was exhausted and sick of being trapped in the same vehicle with two petulant men. It would be a miracle if they didn’t kill each other before the end of the day. She hugged Ben tightly when he rushed forward. Ben then turned to smile at Jarod as he stepped down from the vehicle. She heard Ben’s gasp as he got a good look at Jarod’s bruised face and pallor.
“You hold on there,” Ben told his former maintenance man. “You’re not going anywhere without help.”
Jarod grinned at his former employer and looked around.
“The place looks good,” he commented. “How’s business?”
“We’ll talk once we get you horizontal,” Ben lectured. He stared at the handcuffs a moment before turning to look back at Miss Parker. “I know you told me not to ask about those but are they really necessary? He doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to walk more or less run.”
“I’ll take them off until he’s in bed,” Miss Parker conceded. “But yes, they are necessary. Which room are you putting him into?”
“The one next to Catherine’s. Your brother is across the hall.”
Lyle came around with the bags and looked over the man who may, or may not, be his father. According to his sister, this man had kept a room with their mother’s things in it untouched for twenty years. He was intensely curious about his mother’s relationship with this man. What if Mr. Parker wasn’t his father after all? That thought made him smile but he wasn’t ready to examine the reason why.
Jarod limped into the house with Ben’s assistance, his leg wound from the subway incident still bothering him since it had never had a chance to heal properly. He climbed into bed and sat against the headboard. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the wall while Miss Parker handcuffed his right wrist to the bed post. Lyle began unpacking the medical supplies.
“Take your shirt off,” Lyle instructed him. “We need to change the bandages.”
Miss Parker smiled as Jarod did as told without any fight. She realized that he was too exhausted and sick to expend the energy. Ben came into the room with the water she had requested.
“Oh god,” Ben breathed as he saw the wounds Lyle revealed as the bandages came off. “What are those?”
“Persuasive interrogation,” Lyle told him. “I think this collarbone is fractured. Cox became enraged one time when Jarod wouldn’t… well, he threw the chair he was sitting in at him..”
“Nice of you to remind me,” Jarod whispered tiredly. “Do we have any more cough syrup?”
Miss Parker poured a dose, knowing the lab rat was trying to suppress the urge to cough. After he had drained the container, she helped by unwrapping the bandaging on Jarod’s feet.
Jarod was shaking from pain and exhaustion by the time they finished. Ben pulled back the blankets and told him to get under them and he complied wordlessly. He had just closed his eyes when Miss Parker grabbed his chin and forced the thermometer into his mouth. He reached up to take it out to tell her what he thought of her high handedness.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she told him. “There’s another way we can do this that doesn’t require your cooperation at all.”
He put his hand down and stared at the ceiling. She asked him if he wanted any pain medication and he shook his head. The fever was dulling his senses and cognition enough as is.
Once she had read the thermometer, she set it aside and gave Jarod the water. He drank it before turning onto his side away from her.
Miss Parker finished checking everything within reach of Jarod. She removed the bedside alarm clock and lamp – knowing Jarod would find some use from disassembling these. When she and Lyle were satisfied that they had imprisoned him, they turned off the lights.
“Go to sleep,” she told Jarod but she saw he wasn’t listening. He was already asleep.
****
Lyle stared at the faded photographs of his mother. She was very different from the woman who had raised him. While Mrs. Bowman had been a kind substitute mother, she had always been timid and withdrawing – allowing her husband to dominate both herself and their adopted son. He knew from his previous venture into discovering his mother that Catherine Parker had never been timid and withdrawing. She had been a strong woman – firm in her beliefs and brave enough to die for them.
He set the photographs aside and headed outside.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Miss Parker called as her brother walked past.
“I’ll get a sandwich later,” he responded. “I’m going for a walk.”
She frowned at his back as he almost ran outside. Two days ago she would have believed he was up to something and she might have followed him to find out what deviousness he was entrapping her in now. But she realized she couldn’t even generate a spark of mistrust for her twin. She could feel his turmoil.
“Lyle,” she called out. He spun around from the trail ahead of her. “There’s a beautiful overlook this way.”
He reluctantly followed – morosely concluding she had followed because she didn’t trust him. He would have to prove his trustworthiness to her over and over again. When they got to the overlook, she sat down on a fallen log and patted the seat next to her. Once he was seated, she watched the setting sun for a moment.
“This was our mother’s favorite spot in the world. Ben said she liked to sit and watch the sun setting over the water. I think she would be pleased that you’re here.”
“I don’t think so. Look at what I’ve become. She probably would have preferred if I had died at birth.”
She spun around, horrified. This was no play on her sympathy, she realized. Lyle actually felt his mother wouldn’t want him for her son. And sympathy wouldn’t help him, she knew.
“So what have you become Lyle?” she asked quietly. “A remote-controlled machine?”
Lyle jumped up. “A machine – is that what you think I am? Some toy Raines played with? Believe it or not, sis, I do have feelings!”
“So what, are you reformed now? Overnight you decide that everything you did was Raines’ and his remote controlled brain switch’s fault?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” Lyle shouted at her. “God, I am so confused. When I got Jarod out, it felt so right. But now…”
“And now?” she prompted sarcastically.
Lyle sighed and sat back down.
“When I was a kid, my foster mother taught me things – be good to animals and people – stuff like that. I always had this sense inside me when I did things about whether they were right or wrong. Then Raines came…I can’t remember any operation. But I remember this experiment. He killed my best friend and I didn’t feel anything. There were these probes hooked up to my head and Raines seemed really happy with the results. Then one morning, I woke up and thought it was all a dream.”
“What did you do when you found out it wasn’t?”
“I tried not to. God, do you think we’re all white knights like Jarod?” Lyle stared at her. “He makes it look so easy – doesn’t he? Just go out there and make everything better that you screwed up. Be the hero! Well, I guess I’m just too selfish. Raines would have killed me for any disobedience and maybe, not all of us are willing to die for some ‘greater good’ like Mom and Jarod.”
“Perhaps it takes more courage to stay alive to win the war than to die early in the battle,” Miss Parker told him. She changed tactics. “You know, in some ways, Jarod is luckier than you. They took away your ability to feel. It must all be crashing down on you now. I want to help. Let me be your sister and help you.”
“I’m afraid,” Lyle told her. “Afraid of myself – what I’ll do if this thing is turned on again. And I don’t know if I can go through it again. I’ve been telling myself for so long now that I’m a monster that that’s all I know how to be.”
“You don’t know who you are,” she replied. “If there is anything the three of us – you, me and Jarod – have in common – it’s that.”
Lyle looked shocked. “But you’ve always been so sure of yourself…”
“I’ve always been Daddy’s angel – well, except with Tommy.”
Lyle smiled sadly. “So what do we do now? Eat PEZ and save the little guy?”
“That’s who Jarod is – not me and I highly suspect it’s not in your makeup either. First, we take down the Centre and…”
“Redeem our souls,” Lyle concluded.
***
They walked back in companionable silence. At the front door, Lyle turned to her.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I don’t feel so…”
“Alone? You’re not. Let’s go see if we still have a pretender, shall we?”
“Or what’s left of the pretender,” he joked.
“Cox certainly makes you look like an angel.”
“Somehow I don’t think Jarod sees it that way.”
“He’s no angel either.”
“I know,” Lyle grinned at her. “But his sister – well, there’s someone who probably has the qualifications.”
She laughed. “You like living dangerously – don’t you?”
He winked at her. He went to fetch the pretender’s dinner while she woke him up. When he walked into the bedroom, Jarod sat against the headboard with pillows behind him and a thermometer in his mouth. Lyle set the tray aside and sat in a chair.
She removed the thermometer and read it carefully.
“Dammit! It’s going sky high again.” She looked over at her brother and he felt her anxiety.
“Jarod, don’t fall back asleep,” Lyle lectured. “You didn’t eat your lunch and you haven’t eaten in days. What do you want to drink with your dinner?”
Jarod opened his eyes and watched the twins. Something had happened between them. He turned fever-glazed eyes towards Miss Parker, questions swimming in them.
“Answer my brother,” she snapped. Jarod suddenly understood. They had found common ground and a united cause. He smiled slightly to himself.
“Water is fine,” he told them.
Ben called up the stairs and Lyle nodded at his sister as she left. Taking the tray from her a moment later, he plopped it on Jarod’s lap along with a large glass of milk.
“We’re out of water. You need calories. Trust me – I’ve had pneumonia before.”
“Trust you? Aren’t you forgetting the jumper cables?”
“Not at all.” Lyle gazed thoughtfully at the pretender. “Would you have preferred if I had let Cox have you? He bothered me constantly with his requests to spend time with you.”
“So you were protecting me?” Jarod asked. He shoved the tray of food away. “You couldn’t have just let me go? You could have told them I escaped.”
“Actually, at the time, the thought never even occurred to me,” Lyle answered truthfully. “I just knew that I had to find a way of getting your cooperation before transferring you to Africa. Shall I tell you what they would have done to you in Africa if you had arrived in a less-than-cooperative state?”
Jarod shuddered.
“Now, no more talk. You need to eat that,” Lyle informed him.
“I seem to have lost my appetite,” Jarod replied honestly.
Lyle sighed melodramatically. “I could try to change your mind but I know how much my sister enjoys your little power struggles. I’ll just wait until she gets back. She would make my life miserable if I denied her this pleasure.”
Jarod scowled and picked up the fork. Eating with one hand chained to the bed was difficult but he managed.
***
Two o’clock in the morning
Ben shook her awake gently. When she stuck the gun in his face, he shrieked and stepped away from her. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair.
“You scared me half out of my wits,” she told him. “I’m sorry. Old habit.”
“I know – don’t ask,” he replied. “Look, I hate to wake you – especially since you’ve had so little sleep lately. But your prisoner is really sick. I think we need to take him to a hospital. I went in to give him the 2 a.m. dose and he thought I was someone called Cox.”
She jumped up – this had to be bad if Jarod was hallucinating of Cox.
“Wake my brother up, will you Ben?” she asked as she headed out. Inside Jarod’s room, she found the pretender curled into a tight shivering ball beneath the blankets. Placing her hand on his forehead, she felt the hotness. Jarod moaned and tried to pull away. Lyle came into the room with a basin, washcloth and cold water. Ringing the washcloth out, her brother handed it to her before grabbing an edge of the blankets.
“Jarod, somewhere in that superbrain of yours I know you can hear me. Let go of the blankets. We need to cool you down.”
Jarod continued shivering and mumbling nonsense. Lyle yanked and the blankets landed on the floor. Grabbing Jarod’s ankles, Lyle pulled Jarod’s feet down so the pretender lay flat on the bed. Jarod turned his face up from his cuffed arm.
“Miss Parker?” he croaked. “Why are you here?”
“Jarod, do you know where you’re at?” she asked cautiously.
“I’m in the Centre,” he replied. “I tried to save you. They shot you. Are you a ghost?”
“Why do you think I’m a ghost?”
“You disappeared. I always knew you’d haunt me. I can never get you out of my mind. I’ve tried.”
She suddenly grinned as she lay the washcloth across Jarod’s forehead. A delirious pretender – this could be fun, she thought.
“Why can’t you get me out of your mind?”
“I don’t know. You make me so mad most of the time. You believe everything your father tells you. But I remember when we were friends. Then you went away.”
“Yes. I went to school. Did you miss me?”
“Sydney wouldn’t tell me where you went to. Then I had to do a simulation that was horrible. I still remember it but they tried to make me forget.”
“What did you sim?” Lyle asked.
“Mind control. So many ways – drugs, hypnosis, electroshock. But none of them work as well as the device I figured out how to build.” Jarod shivered as she wiped his chest. He stared at the ceiling, lost in the memories. “Please Sydney, don’t let them use it! Please tell me it was just a simulation!”
“It was just a simulation,” Miss Parker comforted.
“No.” Jarod tried to sit up, desperately trying to make her understand through the fog that shrouded his brain. “They used it. I know they did. The sim of your mother – it made me remember. They put it in Lyle’s head. I can’t let them tear you from your brother. It’s all my fault – everything he’s done.”
“What did you do, Jarod?” Miss Parker asked.
“I went back to the Centre so I could protect Lyle,” Jarod confessed. “I was going to find it – the control device. But Cox was there and they…”
Miss Parker looked up at her brother, shocked. They stared at each other for a moment before looking down at the pretender.
“Dammit,” Miss Parker swore. “He’s going to go into shock.”
Lyle jumped into action. “We’ve got to get the fever down! Fill the bathtub with tepid water.” He unlocked the cuff and hauled Jarod upright.
Miss Parker looked up from the tub as her brother hauled the weakly resisting pretender into the room. Lyle maneuvered him into the tub and locked his wrists together around the piping on the wall beside the tub. Jarod struggled for a moment before passing out.
“Get a cup and pour water over him,” Lyle told his sister as he arranged Jarod so he lay back along the tub. She took the cup Ben offered and scooped up water. Ben left to fetch clean sheets.
“His bandages are getting wet,” she said after pouring water for ten minutes.
“It can’t be helped,” Lyle responded. “I’ll get some new bandages. Keep that up and yell if you need me.”
She poured water over Jarod’s chest and he shivered. Scooping more water, she poured it over his head, half the water sluicing onto the floor. His eyelids fluttered and he blinked the water from his eyes.
“Welcome back,” she greeted him. She examined his eyes – seeing awareness and pain there. He lifted his head from the back of the tub and took in his situation.
“You don’t have enough blood left in you to blush so don’t bother,” she informed him.
He pulled briefly at the handcuffs locking him in position then leaned his head back against the tub and closed his eyes.
“I’m not awake,” he whispered to himself. “It’s just a nightmare.”
She pinched his arm. “Nope. You’re awake.”
He didn’t reply – just gritted his teeth as the shivering started. His shivering made his ribs burn and the water stung where it reached some of the fresher wounds.
“You did this to yourself, you know,” she told him as she worked – letting her anger at him for not telling her about his plans override her concern for him. “I don’t know how you thought you were going to find the control device while inside the Centre.”
His eyes popped open. “How..”
She smiled nastily at him. “Fever makes you talkative. Too bad Cox didn’t try that.”
He cringed and turned away. “I know where it’s at,” he whispered.
“Where?” she demanded.
“Let me go…”
“No. The Centre is going down for what they did to my mother, my brothers and me. I know you don’t want to go back there…”
“I can’t. Cox…” He turned his face to the wall.
“Cox what?” She asked. “Jarod?” He shook his head.
“Cox made his life hell,” Lyle told her as he walked into the room.
“What did he do to him?”
Jarod shook his head and opened his mouth to tell Lyle off but Miss Parker slapped her hand over his mouth.
“The drugs were designers made by Cox especially for Jarod,” Lyle informed her. “The good doctor would explain exactly what the drugs were as he injected him. Then they’d beat the hell out of him.”
“Why?”
“To get him to cooperate in the simulations. The drugs increased his central nervous system’s response to stimulus. Basically, doubled the pain, caused extreme nausea, headaches…”
“Shutup, Lyle,” Jarod yelled when Miss Parker removed her hand as she stood.
Lyle turned to the tub angrily.
“You’re in no condition to be telling me what to do,” Lyle spat out. “I cleaned up your blood and vomit for two weeks. I kept you alive in there!”
“You hosed me down like an animal,” Jarod retorted through his chattering teeth.
“You certainly smelled worse than a pig sty. Would you have preferred if I left you to rot in your own vomit and blood?”
“Lyle, stop it!” Miss Parker barked. “Leave him alone. He’s miserable enough. If you want to be useful, go get him some water.”
“He’ll just puke it back up.”
“He’s kept both lunch and dinner down.”
“Lunch? He ate two bites of that sandwich and Ben told me he threw dinner up an hour after I left him!”
“What did you expect?” Jarod growled. “The location may have changed but I’m still a prisoner.”
Lyle stormed out of the room.
“You shouldn’t be trying to piss him off,” Miss Parker lectured. “God, you’re hot. Why isn’t this working?”
“Too cold,” he mumbled.
“That’s the idea.” She reached over him and turned the faucet on – allowing freezing cold water to pour into the tub. Jarod tried to scoot further away from the faucet but the cuffs halted his movements. He shivered more violently – he felt like liquid nitrogen ran in his veins.
She stood and went to the sink. Lyle returned with a large container of water and marched over to the tub. She gasped when she saw him grasp Jarod by the hair, holding him in place as he roughly poured the liquid, half it running down Jarod’s face. Jarod gagged, choking as the liquid was poured into him. She grabbed her brother’s arm.
“Lyle, stop it! What the hell are you doing?”
“Parker,” he explained patiently as he continued. “I’ve done this before. If you let him do it, he’ll drink two sips and then throw that up. You’ve got to fill his stomach up with water quickly.”
When Lyle was done, Jarod choked and tried to regulate his breathing. He had never felt so humiliated in his life and he turned away so they wouldn’t see the tears form in his hot eyes. He tuned out their voices as they discussed his condition and closed his eyes – letting his mind drift to more pleasant places.
Miss Parker looked over at the pretender. Jarod was oblivious to them.
“Be more gentle with him,” she advised her brother. “He hasn’t had any drugs in him for 24 hours.”
Lyle sighed and nodded reluctantly. He couldn’t keep treating Jarod like they were still in the Centre.
“I’ll try. You haven’t exactly been the model of gentle, caring nurse with him either.”
“I know. We Parkers aren’t bred to be gentle. Let’s give him a few minutes alone.”
She peeked in at him every five minutes or so while she paced in his bedroom.
“You’re driving me nuts,” Lyle told her from where he sat beside the window. “Sit down.”
“I’m going take his temperature.”
“No. We’ll know when it breaks. Just leave him be. He doesn’t want you seeing him like this.”
“Since when do you give a damn what he wants?”
“I give up!” Lyle threw his hands up. “First, I’m not gentle enough with him and now, when I try to help him out, I get this!”
She blocked his exit from the room.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I can’t handle this.”
“I know.”
***
Jarod had managed to sit forward and was now leaning his head into his elbows. Another wave of pain and shivers assaulted him and he bit down on the skin of his arm. They were right outside the bathroom door and he didn’t want them hearing him moan. He bit harder and waited. Exhaustion suddenly weighed him down and he leaned back. He didn’t feel so cold anymore but he was too tired to know for sure.
When Lyle peered into the bathroom, he smiled.
“He’s sweating,” he told his sister. They rushed into the bathroom and felt Jarod’s forehead.
“It’s about @#!$ time,” she said. “Let’s get him into bed.”
***
The next morning
Ben smiled at the lack of handcuffs on the bedridden man. Parker sat beside him on the bed with a bowl balanced on her knees. She scooped another spoonful of the oatmeal and honey mixture and held it to Jarod’s lips.
“You certainly gave us a scare last night,” Ben told him. “How are you feeling this morning?”
Jarod swallowed the mixture and licked his lips clean.
“Better,” he croaked. “I apologize for being so much trouble last night.”
“No trouble at all. Just get better quickly, okay? And don’t let that oatmeal make any return appearances.”
Jarod nodded with a weak smile and Ben left. He turned his gaze to Miss Parker when she shoved the spoon against his lips again. After he had swallowed that mouthful, he turned his face away. She set the spoon down and reached to yank his face around in order to force him. Remembering her conversation with Lyle the night before, she changed tactics and gently pulled his face around.
“I’ll untuck the blankets some if you’ll eat the rest of this,” she offered. They had tucked him in tightly – the blankets and his weakness effectively imprisoning him. He nodded and accepted more of the food. She pulled the blankets from between the mattresses. Even loosened, Jarod couldn’t garner enough strength to free his arms from the restrictions.
She laughed at his frowning face and did something to shock him. Bending down, she kissed him gently on the forehead. He blinked up at her – for once, speechless.
“Sweet dreams,” she told him. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
He looked confused by her statement. “Bed bugs? There are insects in this bed?”
She heard Lyle’s laughter and smiled. Her brother stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“You had better explain it to him or he won’t go to sleep,” Lyle informed her.
“Jarod, there aren’t any insects in your bed. It’s just a saying. It dates back to when…well, when there probably were insects in the beds.”
Jarod nodded and closed his eyes. They shut the door and left him to sleep as he had hoped. Unfortunately though, instead of an escape plan forming in his mind, sleep overtook him.
***
Noon
Miss Parker peered into the bedroom and, finding its occupant still sound asleep, closed the door quietly and went back down the stairs. Ben and Lyle had gone fishing, leaving her alone with Jarod. She had protested at first – telling Lyle they had too much work to be done but Lyle had laughed and said their work wasn’t going anywhere with a nod towards Jarod’s room. She had decided to do something different and as un-Miss Parker like as possible.
She decided she had enough time to feed the lab rat before the pies would be done baking. The smell from the pies baking changed her mind about lunch and she made up sandwiches instead of more oatmeal – remembering her mother doing this.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” Jarod stirred at her words and turned to blink up at her. “Lunch time.”
He sniffed while pushing at the blankets. He felt somewhat stronger and was able to free his arms.
“What smells so good?”
“Blackberry pies are baking.” She bent and helped him to a sitting position, plopping large pillows behind his back. He picked up the sandwich on the plate in front of him and bit into it. He chewed for a moment then frowned at her.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“It’s sticking to the roof of my mouth,” he mumbled.
She grinned. “It’s supposed to. I made it just like my mother used to make them for me – sticky and messy.”
A plop of jelly landed on the plate as he bit off another piece. He chewed again, a serious look on his face, then grinned back.
“It’s very good,” he told her. “Your mother must have been a really good cook. It’s brilliant – putting a gooey, sweet jelly with salty, peanut butter.”
She laughed at him. His perplexed expression as she doubled with laughter just made it worse. When she had control, she sat beside him on the bed and watched him finish the sandwich.
“Can I have another one?” he asked.
“So now you’re hungry?”
“Yes. My stomach seems to have settled down.”
“Or perhaps the drugs have worn off?”
“Can I have a piece of that pie too?”
She decided to let it pass – his changing the subject.
“The pies are for dinner. They’re not done yet and then they have to cool down. Hopefully, we’ll also have fresh fish.”
“Ben took Lyle fishing on the lake?”
“Yes. Okay, I’m going to get the sandwich. Look at me, Jarod.” He lifted his eyes from his lunch to hers. “Are we doing the handcuffs today?”
“You overestimate me.”
“Oh, I know you’re not strong enough to go anywhere. But that doesn’t mean you won’t try something – only God knows what that brain of yours could cook up.”
He considered his reply. Sighing, he gave up his half-formed plans to turn the tables and imprison Lyle and his sister today. He’d miss out on the pie.
“I’ll behave – for today.”
“Good idea. I’ll go get that sandwich.”
When he had finished his second sandwich, she pulled the pillows away from him and ordered him to sleep. Checking on him an hour later, she was surprised to find him curled on his side, sleeping peacefully. Lyle returned with Ben and a string of fish and an even longer string of tales about the one that got away. She listened with amazement – this is her psycho brother?
Lyle grinned as he took in the kitchen. His sister had spent the day cooking? There were three blackberry pies cooling on the kitchen table as proof. He decided to rub it in just a little.
“Did Jarod help make those pies? They smell awfully good.”
“No,” she snapped. “I made them.”
“Okay, did wonderboy give you the recipe? Walk you through the steps?”
“Jarod has been asleep except for lunch. I did it.”
“Well, I hope they’re edible.” She punched him in the chest and he grinned at her. “How is your favorite lab rat?”
“Much better.” She snorted remembering his comments about the sandwiches. “He thinks Mom invented peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. It was…amusing.”
“Amusing? Since when do you find his naivete enjoyable?”
“I never got to experience it firsthand. I’m just glad his curiosity and innocence are still intact. Somehow, I would have thought this latest experience at the Centre would have killed that.”
“It’s not like Cox didn’t try. And he learned from the best – Raines. Raines had been doing these experiments since right before our mother died.”
“He’s been experimenting on Jarod since he was eleven?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Not continuously – just every four years or so. But Catherine…Our mother went to Sydney two days after Jarod’s first death experience. That was supposedly her last ‘session’ with Sydney. She tried to talk to Sydney – tell him what was going on. But he wouldn’t believe her. He thought she was going over the edge and making it up.”
“And when she couldn’t get through to him, she became desperate.”
“Exactly. It’s all in the reports. I brought copies with me from the Centre.”
“I want to see them.”
“They’re pretty disturbing.” Lyle hesitated. “I’ll get them out for you but make sure Jarod doesn’t see them.”
“What are you, his mother now?”
“Fine. Show them to him. There’s some great reading by Raines in there. I’m sure it’ll help him on the road to recovery beautifully,” Lyle sneered.
“I don’t know,” she considered. “He hasn’t really dealt with it. Maybe we need to show him so he can deal with it. We need him to work this through before we implement our plan.”
Lyle sighed and turned to look out the window. His sister had a good point.
***
Later that evening
Jarod stared unseeing at the ceiling while he went through some simulations. He almost groaned in frustration. His plan had partially worked. His family was free and Lyle and Miss Parker were working together. But he hadn’t planned on Lyle getting him out of the Centre before he got the control device. The plan failed when Lyle unexpectedly developed a conscience before he found the device. He also had failed to include the most important factor of all – Project Regeneration. Of course, he hadn’t really remembered it but that was no excuse.
He had formed his plan during his sim of Catherine Parker. During the sim, he realized a number of things. First, the cryogenic experiments were tied to the Centre’s existence and he needed to learn more about them. Second, the device he remembered simming as a child was in Lyle’s head. Third, the only way to take down the Centre was to unite the twins against their father; and last, he felt guilty as hell for wanting to kill Lyle when Lyle’s actions were a result of his own simulation.
The final hand was getting ready to be dealt. He had to make sure he had all the cards – the control device, his family’s safety, his freedom and the twins united.
***
She didn’t bother knocking. Finding him lost in a simulation didn’t improve her dismal mood from looking through those reports. It was time they finished their discussion. The handcuffs were snapped in place before he could move a muscle.
“What are you doing?” he protested. “I thought we had reached an understanding!”
“I know what you’re up to! And it isn’t going to work! We’re going to follow my mother’s plan!”
“NO! Listen, her plan is flawed! It won’t work! I’ve simmed it!”
“We’ve been through this before. They won’t kill you…”
“There’s something your mother didn’t know…”
“And what is that?”
“It’s Jacob. When your mother came up with this, Jacob was alive. Now he’s dead.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Cox wants to regenerate Jacob.”
“Why?”
“Because Jacob is Cox’s father.”
“Oh God,” she interrupted. She began pacing – needing to feel the solidity of the earth beneath her. “Cox is Sydney’s nephew. Sydney has been protecting him all along.”
“Yes. Sydney is caught in the middle – between his nephew and me. He won’t help Cox but if helps me – his nephew will be killed.”
“And Cox will do anything to make the experiment work. Jarod, it couldn’t possibly work, could it?”
“I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “There is no way to sim it. You cannot sim death or regeneration. It’s impossible. That’s why I can’t go back…”
“Because if it works – you’ll become Jacob and it will all start over again – the children being kidnapped, the experiments.”
“Yes. There’s got to be some other way of doing this. If we could just get our hands on one of the past reports, the corporate sponsors are probably listed in it.”
“They’re not.”
Jarod stared at her, shock and understanding on his face.
“I want to see them.”
“No.”
He yanked at the handcuffs anchoring him to the bed. “Yes. I have a right to see them! Unlock me!”
“I decide what your rights are – you belong to me. Forget about the reports and tell me why you kept all this a secret in the first place!”
“I’m not a piece of property,” he spat out. “Why are you keeping me here? You cannot seriously still be considering taking me back there now that you know what Cox intends to do!”
“You’re not going anywhere yet. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you.” They glared at each other. “Right now – I want answers. You’re going to tell me what your original plan was, why you didn’t tell me about it and where that damn control device is located at!”
He continued glaring at her and she went to the telephone on the dresser.
“I’m sure your father will be eager to come here and see you. I wonder what he’ll do when he reads those reports.”
Jarod swallowed. He couldn’t risk her calling his dad. The boy would trace the call and his father would come here. He didn’t need to simulate what would happen if his father and Lyle came face to face. He caved.
“When I did the sim of your mother, I remembered the mind control simulation,” he told her. He turned his face towards the wall. “I could feel your mother's anguish at her realization that Lyle was alive and I felt guilty. Lyle is a victim of one of my simulations just like all those people who were killed. I asked you to take me back so I could look for the control device and the DSA.”
“Dammit! You knew all along that the DSA was at the Centre too! You sent me to those two other locations just to keep me out of your way!”
“Yes. I planned to get the DSA and control device and use them to persuade Lyle to help me escape. Once I was out – I would give you the control device and Lyle the DSA…”
“Forcing us to work together. Did you suspect that my mother knew about regeneration from your sim?”
“No. I only knew that those experiments were important somehow to the continuation of the Centre. When you told me about the DSA yesterday, I realized her plans required you to be willing to do something I don’t think you’re prepared for.”
“Do what?”
“Once you’ve taken out the sponsors, they’ll be one more person you’ll need to kill.”
“If you’re talking about my father – rest assured, that I have no problems with wiping that slime bag off the planet.”
“I know. But I was talking about me.”
“WHAT?”
“I know you’ve often wanted to put a bullet in my head. But you never have. Can you do it?”
“I’m not going to kill you! What the hell are you talking about?”
“The ending. You’ll have to wipe all the evidence of this experiment off the face of the earth. If you take me back and the experiment succeeds, I will become Jacob – living proof that regeneration works. Proof that you’ll have to destroy. YOU are the flaw in your mother’s plan.”
She stepped back – horrified at his words. She shook her head and backed out of the room.
Lyle watched as his sister ran out the back door. He could feel her emotions boiling, getting ready to explode. Following her to the same spot they had talked at yesterday, he sat beside her on the log and waited.
“He said I’d have to kill him,” she finally said stonily. “When it is all over with, I’d have to make sure the evidence, himself, was gone.”
Lyle sucked in his breath. If what she said was true, then Jarod was afraid the experiment would work. Wouldn’t Cox just love to get his hands on this piece of information, Lyle thought. If Cox knew that Jarod suspected the experiment could succeed, nothing would stop Cox from pursuing it. Jarod had just given his sister and himself a very dangerous piece of information.
“Why did he tell you this?” Lyle asked.
“Because I threatened to call his father,” she replied.
“Then he’ll be escaping soon.”
“As if he could,” she snorted.
Lyle laughed. “He can and he will. You put his family at risk. He’ll find a way to protect them. He’s probably simming it now.”
“Then we’ll just have to be more cautious around him.”
“One of us will need to be with him continuously.”
“Fine.” She snapped. “Why would our mother come up with a plan that requires us to kill Jarod? None of this makes any sense!”
“Mom wasn’t a pretender. She couldn’t predict the ending like Jarod can. That’s why she told us to get him to sim it.”
“You hope. What if her plan really was to get us to kill Jarod? After all, there have been so many people hurt, including herself, because of him.”
He considered her for a moment. If what she was saying was true, then this was really just an elaborate revenge planned by his dead mother.
“She would have to have known that the experiment works,” he thought out loud. “And not even Jarod knows that. Was there anything in those reports that would lead you to believe she knew?”
“I haven’t read through everything! There are piles of paperwork there. It would take me a week to go through it all.”
“But Jarod could do it in a day.”
“Yes. But you were right – it is too disturbing.”
“We’re running out of time. We don’t have a choice. We show it to him and have him sim it.”
“This isn’t going to be easy on him. I think we should wait another day or two until he’s better.”
“Agreed. We can’t risk him getting away if we wait longer. Either way – his escape or reading those files – it’s going to screw up his recovery.”
“Then we better go get some rest. It’s going to be a long 24 hours.”
****
Jarod sighed deeply. He had known what her response would be. But if she couldn’t do it, put a bullet through in his brain, his family would be at risk. He would have to escape before she decided to take the chance that the experiment wouldn’t work. She was already threatening his family. It was time to leave. He began simming his escape.
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