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Disclaimer: The Pretender and its related characters don't belong to me. There is no money involved here and no copyright infringement is intended. This is all just my humble way of paying tribute to a really entertaining show that I miss a great deal. 05/04/03
Bridge of the Abyss Part 6
Altering Destiny
By Phenyx
"Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Parker was unconscious for only a few moments. Acrid smoke stung her nostrils as she blinked into wakefulness. The farmhouse was in full blaze now, casting eerily familiar shadows across the dark yard.
"Are you okay?" Ethan was bent over her, frowning with concern.
Parker moaned and sat up with a shaky nod.
"Charles!" Parker heard a woman yell not far away.
Grimacing at the headache throbbing in her temples, Parker sat up and quickly surveyed the physical damage. She hadn't broken anything. Aside from the impending migraine, she seemed fine. Looking up, Parker saw that Ethan was similarly unharmed. In an uncharacteristic burst of relief, she threw her arms around her little brother and hugged him fiercely.
Releasing Ethan abruptly, Parker glanced around the yard. Emily was sitting in the grass blinking in wonder at the burning house. Major Charles was running to his wife's side.
"Jack is hurt." The older woman said to her husband.
The teenager, evidently named Jack, was writhing in pain on the ground. His mother knelt at his side, holding one hand tightly between her own. The major crouched beside the boy and lovingly caressed the hair away from his damp forehead. Parker could see the concern etched on the older couple's faces as the major searched around him frantically.
Parker crossed the few feet that separated them and knelt in the grass above the boy's head. An eight-inch shaft of splintered wood protruded from the young man's shoulder. Blood oozed slowly from the wound turning the boy's t-shirt red.
As Parker stared in awe at the youngster, he looked up at her with pleading, pain filled eyes. The strange sensation that she'd been here before descended upon her again. But this feeling of déjà vu wasn't from her vision. The pain in young Jack's eyes was so much like that she had seen in Jarod's so many years ago. The pleading look the boy gave her was identical to the looks Jarod had once given her. Looks she had seen, but had turned away from.
She couldn't turn away any longer. Running her fingers through the young man's hair, Parker whispered. "Its okay Jack. It's only a flesh wound. You'll be okay."
"Hurts." The boy gasped.
"I know." Parker purred. "Hang on, Jack. Jarod will be here soon. He'll take care of it."
At Parker's words, the major and his wife both glanced at her in surprise. "Jarod?" His mother whispered hopefully.
As though uttering his name had conjured him up, a car skidded to a halt in the drive behind Parker's sedan and the pretender bounded from the driver's seat.
"Parker?" Jarod called from across the grass.
"You're late." She scolded him half-heartedly.
For a moment, Jarod stood in stunned disbelief as he stared at the family gathered before him. Emily abruptly laughed in nervous reaction to the emotional overload. The sound of her voice snapped Jarod from his silence and he rushed toward his parents, arms spread wide.
Wrapping one another in a warm embrace, Jarod and his folks laughed as they finally reunited after so many years.
Parker smiled and turned away in an effort to give the small group a measure of privacy. She smirked wryly at the young man lying in the grass beside her.
"Hey," Jack whined. "There's a child bleeding here."
Tugging a cotton scarf from her neck, Parker pressed the material against the wound to staunch the flow of blood. "Don't be a baby." She growled playfully. "It looks worse than it is."
The boy, though obviously in pain, was still smirking timidly. "It feels worse than it looks."
Parker allowed Jarod to bask in his mother's warm reception for a minute longer before she interrupted, "Jarod," she called. "The boy is injured."
Jarod's mother Margaret gasped fretfully and turned back to her younger son. "Jack," she said, tenderly stroking the child's hair. "This is your eldest brother, Jarod."
The youngster rolled his eyes melodramatically. "Yeah, Mom." He sighed. "We met. It was Jarod that busted this little experiment out of the lab, remember?"
"Hey." Jarod frowned as he knelt beside them. He quickly inspected the boy's wound as he spoke. "Don't be a smart ass with your mother."
"I am an adolescent." Jack said with a grimace. "I'm supposed to be a smart ass."
Jarod grinned at the boy merrily. Then, without warning or hesitation, Jarod grabbed the shaft of wood and yanked it out of Jack's arm. Before the boy's strangled cry had faded, Jarod had reapplied the makeshift bandage and wrapped the shoulder in a strip of cotton torn from Jarod's top shirt.
As he tied Jack's arm against his chest with a sling made from the rest of the shirt, Jarod said, "I'm afraid that's going to leave a permanent mark buddy."
"Probably." Jack agreed with a sigh.
"No problem." Parker said, ruffling the young man's hair as he sat up. "Chicks dig scars."
"They do?" Jarod and his young clone asked simultaneously.
Parker sighed in exasperation.
"Daddy?" Emily called, drawing everyone's attention. "Do you think we should wait for the authorities to arrive?"
"No!" Parker cried. Turning to Jarod she explained, "Lyle will be here any minute with half a dozen sweepers."
"How much time have we got?" the pretender asked.
"I'm not sure." Parker shrugged. "They're not far behind me." She didn't bother to explain how she knew and Jarod didn't ask. Parker wasn't quite ready to examine her motivations right now, let alone try to explain them to a curious pretender.
Jarod turned toward his father. "Do you have a vehicle that can carry us all?"
The major nodded. "There's a passenger van in the garage." He said, pointing toward a structure not far away.
Jarod and his father helped Jack stand and they all started moving toward the garage. They'd nearly reached their destination when the sound of several cars roared up the drive. Moving in unison like a well-trained military troupe, the entire family eased up to the far edge of the lone structure and hid in the shadows.
"What do we do now?" Emily hissed.
Easing Jack into Ethan's care, Jarod turned toward Miss Parker. "I'll create a diversion. You get them to the van and away from here."
Margaret clutched at Jarod's arm. "No! Jarod, we have to stay together."
Prying his mother away, Jarod reassured her. "It's going to be okay, Mother. Parker will protect you." He turned toward Parker and said, "Get on the main highway and head east. If I don't catch up to you in the next twelve hours, we'll contact each other through Ben."
Parker responded with a curt nod and then Jarod was gone, vanished into the darkness and smoke like a wraith. Jarod hadn't questioned Parker's allegiance. He'd never doubted her. He had simply placed his precious family in her care and she had accepted the responsibility without hesitation.
Margaret started to move out of the shadows to follow the son she had only just found. But Parker hauled her back into hiding.
"I won't lose him again." The older woman growled in frustration.
Parker yanked on the woman's arm hard. "Don't blow this for him." Parker hissed. "Do what Jarod says, exactly as he says, and we may all get out of this alive." Determination flared in Parker's eyes. "We've cheated fate once tonight. We can't afford to push it much further."
Seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness as Parker hushed the group of refugees in her care. Peering around the corner, Parker watched as Lyle and his sweepers poured out of two cars. Raines was slithering out of the second automobile when a shout went up.
A shadow dashed across a field on the opposite side of the burning house.
"Jarod!" Lyle yelled. "After him!"
As intended, Lyle and his sweepers all took off after the fleeing pretender. They crossed a field and disappeared into a wooded area. Raines hauled his oxygen tank several hundred yards but did not go into the field itself.
"Quickly and quietly." Parker whispered. "Let's go."
Parker stayed in the shadows, watching Raines for several moments, giving the others time to get ready. Dashing in to the garage, Parker slid into the van's front passenger seat. Major Charles was behind the wheel.
With a screeching of tires and a huge crash, the Major revved the vehicle and collided with the garage door, splintering the entrance and shooting on to the driveway.
"Hang on, everyone!" The major called as the van swerved around the many cars now blocking the way.
Bumping through the grass, the vehicle sped across the yard. When they reached the road, the van fishtailed slightly as it hit the asphalt. A moment later, they were racing down the street toward the main highway.
"Ethan." Parker ordered. "Watch the back."
Her little brother nodded perfunctorily and switched seats with Emily so that he had an unobstructed view out the rear window.
Jarod's mother sniffled in despair. "We shouldn't have left Jarod behind." She moaned. "Those men will kill him if he gets caught."
"You underestimate Jarod." Parker said. "He'll get away. Even if he does get caught, The Centre doesn't want him dead."
Glancing furtively at Parker as he drove down the road, Major Charles said, "I thought that you were The Centre, Miss Parker."
Staring at the older man with wide eyes, Parker whispered. "I was." Looking one at a time at the faces of Jarod's family, she added, "I think I may have just resigned."
The enormity of what was happening abruptly hit Parker like a fist in the gut. Her world was now gone, vaporized in the explosion that had been meant for these people. There was no going back. The unknown loomed ahead of her like an ominous shade.
Shaking her head, Parker forced away the anxiety rising within her. She shoved her misgivings into a dark corner of her soul and slammed a tight lid over those emotions.
As they approached the rural two-lane highway, Parker said, "Jarod wants us to head east."
For a moment, it looked like the Major might debate the wisdom of going in that direction. But when they reached the intersection, he maneuvered the vehicle to the right so that they were headed in the correct direction.
Parker carefully watched out her window as the landscape roll by. The road curved and Parker could see in the distance, a red glow above the trees. They had doubled back the way they had come. Parker could see the smoke rising from the burning farmhouse less than a mile away.
Understanding what Jarod had intended Parker scanned the darkness, looking for the pretender. As they approached another bend in the road, she thought she saw a shadow moving among the trees. It wasn't until Jarod reached the top of a steep rise that Parker could be sure it was him.
"There he is!" Parker said, pointing.
Watching Jarod run along the ridge at top speed, Parker glanced at the road, gauging where he would emerge from the woods. There was a car coming from the opposite direction. She frowned as she realized that Jarod would have to cross the road to reach the van. With the steep incline he was now descending, Jarod would not be able to see the oncoming car until he was nearly on top of it.
Parker could see the collision coming but there was simply nothing she could do to stop it. Jarod barreled down the hill, appearing and disappearing among the trees. The other car, oblivious to the pedestrian in the dark, kept coming.
The Major, in an attempt to prevent the coming disaster, slammed on his brakes and leaned on the horn. But it was too late. Jarod burst from the tree line and onto the road. It was difficult to tell whether the car ran into Jarod or Jarod ran into the car.
Brakes screeched as Jarod flew over the hood of the vehicle. He slammed into the windshield, leaving a spider's web of cracks in the glass. A woman screamed, her voice reverberating within the confines of the van.
Jarod's body rolled off the car and flopped like a rag doll to the pavement.
Parker felt her heart stop beating. All motion around her seemed to freeze while her mind raced frantically. Ominous fragments of thought and irony flitted through her brain.
"I couldn't stop it," she whispered in anguish. "Couldn't change destiny. The story of our lives was never ours to change."
Parker sat there, dumbfounded, staring at the dark shape lying in the street. Some part of her registered the continuing screams from nearby but the rest of Parker's psyche began to shut down.
As a result, when the bundle of leather and denim began to move, Parker wasn't quite sure what was happening. Jarod groaned and rolled to his knees. Pulling himself up with one hand on the hood of the car, he grimaced. Waving cheerily to the stunned driver, Jarod began to limp across the road, clutching at his side.
Just as he reached the van, his mother threw open the door. He stepped into the vehicle and collapsed into the older woman's arms.
"Go!" the pretender barked.
For the second time in as many hours, Parker fled the scene of an accident as the van zoomed away through the night.
Bridge of the Abyss Part 6
Altering Destiny
By Phenyx
"Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Parker was unconscious for only a few moments. Acrid smoke stung her nostrils as she blinked into wakefulness. The farmhouse was in full blaze now, casting eerily familiar shadows across the dark yard.
"Are you okay?" Ethan was bent over her, frowning with concern.
Parker moaned and sat up with a shaky nod.
"Charles!" Parker heard a woman yell not far away.
Grimacing at the headache throbbing in her temples, Parker sat up and quickly surveyed the physical damage. She hadn't broken anything. Aside from the impending migraine, she seemed fine. Looking up, Parker saw that Ethan was similarly unharmed. In an uncharacteristic burst of relief, she threw her arms around her little brother and hugged him fiercely.
Releasing Ethan abruptly, Parker glanced around the yard. Emily was sitting in the grass blinking in wonder at the burning house. Major Charles was running to his wife's side.
"Jack is hurt." The older woman said to her husband.
The teenager, evidently named Jack, was writhing in pain on the ground. His mother knelt at his side, holding one hand tightly between her own. The major crouched beside the boy and lovingly caressed the hair away from his damp forehead. Parker could see the concern etched on the older couple's faces as the major searched around him frantically.
Parker crossed the few feet that separated them and knelt in the grass above the boy's head. An eight-inch shaft of splintered wood protruded from the young man's shoulder. Blood oozed slowly from the wound turning the boy's t-shirt red.
As Parker stared in awe at the youngster, he looked up at her with pleading, pain filled eyes. The strange sensation that she'd been here before descended upon her again. But this feeling of déjà vu wasn't from her vision. The pain in young Jack's eyes was so much like that she had seen in Jarod's so many years ago. The pleading look the boy gave her was identical to the looks Jarod had once given her. Looks she had seen, but had turned away from.
She couldn't turn away any longer. Running her fingers through the young man's hair, Parker whispered. "Its okay Jack. It's only a flesh wound. You'll be okay."
"Hurts." The boy gasped.
"I know." Parker purred. "Hang on, Jack. Jarod will be here soon. He'll take care of it."
At Parker's words, the major and his wife both glanced at her in surprise. "Jarod?" His mother whispered hopefully.
As though uttering his name had conjured him up, a car skidded to a halt in the drive behind Parker's sedan and the pretender bounded from the driver's seat.
"Parker?" Jarod called from across the grass.
"You're late." She scolded him half-heartedly.
For a moment, Jarod stood in stunned disbelief as he stared at the family gathered before him. Emily abruptly laughed in nervous reaction to the emotional overload. The sound of her voice snapped Jarod from his silence and he rushed toward his parents, arms spread wide.
Wrapping one another in a warm embrace, Jarod and his folks laughed as they finally reunited after so many years.
Parker smiled and turned away in an effort to give the small group a measure of privacy. She smirked wryly at the young man lying in the grass beside her.
"Hey," Jack whined. "There's a child bleeding here."
Tugging a cotton scarf from her neck, Parker pressed the material against the wound to staunch the flow of blood. "Don't be a baby." She growled playfully. "It looks worse than it is."
The boy, though obviously in pain, was still smirking timidly. "It feels worse than it looks."
Parker allowed Jarod to bask in his mother's warm reception for a minute longer before she interrupted, "Jarod," she called. "The boy is injured."
Jarod's mother Margaret gasped fretfully and turned back to her younger son. "Jack," she said, tenderly stroking the child's hair. "This is your eldest brother, Jarod."
The youngster rolled his eyes melodramatically. "Yeah, Mom." He sighed. "We met. It was Jarod that busted this little experiment out of the lab, remember?"
"Hey." Jarod frowned as he knelt beside them. He quickly inspected the boy's wound as he spoke. "Don't be a smart ass with your mother."
"I am an adolescent." Jack said with a grimace. "I'm supposed to be a smart ass."
Jarod grinned at the boy merrily. Then, without warning or hesitation, Jarod grabbed the shaft of wood and yanked it out of Jack's arm. Before the boy's strangled cry had faded, Jarod had reapplied the makeshift bandage and wrapped the shoulder in a strip of cotton torn from Jarod's top shirt.
As he tied Jack's arm against his chest with a sling made from the rest of the shirt, Jarod said, "I'm afraid that's going to leave a permanent mark buddy."
"Probably." Jack agreed with a sigh.
"No problem." Parker said, ruffling the young man's hair as he sat up. "Chicks dig scars."
"They do?" Jarod and his young clone asked simultaneously.
Parker sighed in exasperation.
"Daddy?" Emily called, drawing everyone's attention. "Do you think we should wait for the authorities to arrive?"
"No!" Parker cried. Turning to Jarod she explained, "Lyle will be here any minute with half a dozen sweepers."
"How much time have we got?" the pretender asked.
"I'm not sure." Parker shrugged. "They're not far behind me." She didn't bother to explain how she knew and Jarod didn't ask. Parker wasn't quite ready to examine her motivations right now, let alone try to explain them to a curious pretender.
Jarod turned toward his father. "Do you have a vehicle that can carry us all?"
The major nodded. "There's a passenger van in the garage." He said, pointing toward a structure not far away.
Jarod and his father helped Jack stand and they all started moving toward the garage. They'd nearly reached their destination when the sound of several cars roared up the drive. Moving in unison like a well-trained military troupe, the entire family eased up to the far edge of the lone structure and hid in the shadows.
"What do we do now?" Emily hissed.
Easing Jack into Ethan's care, Jarod turned toward Miss Parker. "I'll create a diversion. You get them to the van and away from here."
Margaret clutched at Jarod's arm. "No! Jarod, we have to stay together."
Prying his mother away, Jarod reassured her. "It's going to be okay, Mother. Parker will protect you." He turned toward Parker and said, "Get on the main highway and head east. If I don't catch up to you in the next twelve hours, we'll contact each other through Ben."
Parker responded with a curt nod and then Jarod was gone, vanished into the darkness and smoke like a wraith. Jarod hadn't questioned Parker's allegiance. He'd never doubted her. He had simply placed his precious family in her care and she had accepted the responsibility without hesitation.
Margaret started to move out of the shadows to follow the son she had only just found. But Parker hauled her back into hiding.
"I won't lose him again." The older woman growled in frustration.
Parker yanked on the woman's arm hard. "Don't blow this for him." Parker hissed. "Do what Jarod says, exactly as he says, and we may all get out of this alive." Determination flared in Parker's eyes. "We've cheated fate once tonight. We can't afford to push it much further."
Seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness as Parker hushed the group of refugees in her care. Peering around the corner, Parker watched as Lyle and his sweepers poured out of two cars. Raines was slithering out of the second automobile when a shout went up.
A shadow dashed across a field on the opposite side of the burning house.
"Jarod!" Lyle yelled. "After him!"
As intended, Lyle and his sweepers all took off after the fleeing pretender. They crossed a field and disappeared into a wooded area. Raines hauled his oxygen tank several hundred yards but did not go into the field itself.
"Quickly and quietly." Parker whispered. "Let's go."
Parker stayed in the shadows, watching Raines for several moments, giving the others time to get ready. Dashing in to the garage, Parker slid into the van's front passenger seat. Major Charles was behind the wheel.
With a screeching of tires and a huge crash, the Major revved the vehicle and collided with the garage door, splintering the entrance and shooting on to the driveway.
"Hang on, everyone!" The major called as the van swerved around the many cars now blocking the way.
Bumping through the grass, the vehicle sped across the yard. When they reached the road, the van fishtailed slightly as it hit the asphalt. A moment later, they were racing down the street toward the main highway.
"Ethan." Parker ordered. "Watch the back."
Her little brother nodded perfunctorily and switched seats with Emily so that he had an unobstructed view out the rear window.
Jarod's mother sniffled in despair. "We shouldn't have left Jarod behind." She moaned. "Those men will kill him if he gets caught."
"You underestimate Jarod." Parker said. "He'll get away. Even if he does get caught, The Centre doesn't want him dead."
Glancing furtively at Parker as he drove down the road, Major Charles said, "I thought that you were The Centre, Miss Parker."
Staring at the older man with wide eyes, Parker whispered. "I was." Looking one at a time at the faces of Jarod's family, she added, "I think I may have just resigned."
The enormity of what was happening abruptly hit Parker like a fist in the gut. Her world was now gone, vaporized in the explosion that had been meant for these people. There was no going back. The unknown loomed ahead of her like an ominous shade.
Shaking her head, Parker forced away the anxiety rising within her. She shoved her misgivings into a dark corner of her soul and slammed a tight lid over those emotions.
As they approached the rural two-lane highway, Parker said, "Jarod wants us to head east."
For a moment, it looked like the Major might debate the wisdom of going in that direction. But when they reached the intersection, he maneuvered the vehicle to the right so that they were headed in the correct direction.
Parker carefully watched out her window as the landscape roll by. The road curved and Parker could see in the distance, a red glow above the trees. They had doubled back the way they had come. Parker could see the smoke rising from the burning farmhouse less than a mile away.
Understanding what Jarod had intended Parker scanned the darkness, looking for the pretender. As they approached another bend in the road, she thought she saw a shadow moving among the trees. It wasn't until Jarod reached the top of a steep rise that Parker could be sure it was him.
"There he is!" Parker said, pointing.
Watching Jarod run along the ridge at top speed, Parker glanced at the road, gauging where he would emerge from the woods. There was a car coming from the opposite direction. She frowned as she realized that Jarod would have to cross the road to reach the van. With the steep incline he was now descending, Jarod would not be able to see the oncoming car until he was nearly on top of it.
Parker could see the collision coming but there was simply nothing she could do to stop it. Jarod barreled down the hill, appearing and disappearing among the trees. The other car, oblivious to the pedestrian in the dark, kept coming.
The Major, in an attempt to prevent the coming disaster, slammed on his brakes and leaned on the horn. But it was too late. Jarod burst from the tree line and onto the road. It was difficult to tell whether the car ran into Jarod or Jarod ran into the car.
Brakes screeched as Jarod flew over the hood of the vehicle. He slammed into the windshield, leaving a spider's web of cracks in the glass. A woman screamed, her voice reverberating within the confines of the van.
Jarod's body rolled off the car and flopped like a rag doll to the pavement.
Parker felt her heart stop beating. All motion around her seemed to freeze while her mind raced frantically. Ominous fragments of thought and irony flitted through her brain.
"I couldn't stop it," she whispered in anguish. "Couldn't change destiny. The story of our lives was never ours to change."
Parker sat there, dumbfounded, staring at the dark shape lying in the street. Some part of her registered the continuing screams from nearby but the rest of Parker's psyche began to shut down.
As a result, when the bundle of leather and denim began to move, Parker wasn't quite sure what was happening. Jarod groaned and rolled to his knees. Pulling himself up with one hand on the hood of the car, he grimaced. Waving cheerily to the stunned driver, Jarod began to limp across the road, clutching at his side.
Just as he reached the van, his mother threw open the door. He stepped into the vehicle and collapsed into the older woman's arms.
"Go!" the pretender barked.
For the second time in as many hours, Parker fled the scene of an accident as the van zoomed away through the night.
