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Author's Chapter Notes:

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my first posting and an extra super-special thank-you to everyone who reviewed. It’s really great to hear feedback and to have all positive reviews thus far is amazing. You’re all awesome!

This chapter is going to start to bring in the Miss Parker/Lyle back-story a little… Hope you enjoy!


Chapter 2. Shades of Guilt.

  Miss Parker watched Jarod sleeping off the effects of a heavy sedative and yet another round with her demented brother, through the one-way glass of the private infirmary.

  She sighed at the thought of the works Rains had commissioned for the entire level; effectively converting it from his own personal playground, into Jarod’s own private hell. Everything they could possibly require to keep Jarod locked away for the rest of his life was now located on one convenient level… They wouldn’t ever have to risk moving him again…

  Biting the inside of her cheek, she watched the steady but shallow rise and fall of Jarod’s chest and battled the constant voice in her ear that reminded her of the ever-growing guilt that she now felt. She deeply regretted her part in using a child against Jarod and silently prayed that he could forgive her... That she could forgive herself…

  Glancing away at the sound of footsteps, Parker caught sight of her iniquitous twin rounding the end of the corridor and quickly replaced the appearance of desolation, anguish and guilt, with one of ice.

  “Your phone is off,” Lyle arrived next to her, folding his arms across his chest in an act of dominance as he smiled at the heavily sedated Pretender.

  Parker turned back to watch Jarod, “Yet you still managed to find me.” Her reply was spoken through clenched teeth. She was not in the mood for Lyle’s taunts.

  Lyle smiled at her obvious irritation, “Yes, well seeing as you decided to grace us with your presence today, Raines wants to see us both in his office…” he paused to look at his watch, “…30 seconds ago...”

  Miss Parker smiled defiantly in return, “Well you can tell Wheezy that my contract is up... I no longer have to have anything to do with the Centre...”

  Lyle interrupted before she could continue, “He said if that was your reaction, to enlighten you to the fact that Mr Parker will be in attendance...”

  “Did he just?” Parker raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and considered the likelihood that her brother was just too scared to face Raines alone. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried to manipulate her, and even she had to admit that since the decrepit bag of bones had taken the Centre’s helm, not even being a potential relative could guarantee sanctuary…

  Lyle could tell what she was thinking, but was silenced by the untimely ringing of his phone, before he had the chance to interject, “Lyle… Actually, she’s with me now… I am, she’s yet to decide… Very well…” he handed her the phone.

  “What…? Daddy…?” She brushed past her brother and headed off towards the elevator, in the direction Lyle had just come from.

   Lyle jogged after her, catching her as she hung up the phone, “So I take it you’re coming then?” when Parker didn’t respond, he continued, “And you thought I was lying about dad...” He grinned at her frosty reflection in the metal as they neared elevator doors.

  Miss Parker turned around and glared abrasively at her brother, before stepping inside the elevator and staring intently at the doors, willing them closed before he could join her. Her will failed and Lyle followed with yet another grin, determined to make the most of the newfound almost-leverage he had over her.

  Together, albeit as far apart as the elevator would permit, they ascended in silence to the lobby.

<~> 

  Seeing Miss Parker exit the elevator from across the lobby, Sydney made a direct beeline towards her, only to be stopped in his tracks by the sight of Lyle struggling slightly, to keep up with his obviously enraged twin sister. Sydney stared in shock as they crossed the foyer, headed towards the tower elevator without so much as a glance in his direction, or any direction for that matter. They were clearly siblings on a mission and Sydney couldn’t decide which part of that fact was the most unnerving. After all, he hadn’t seen or heard back from Parker all week, and as far as he knew, Lyle hadn’t left the sublevels or Jarod, since he’d brought him in three days ago... And that wasn’t even to mention the fact that under normal circumstances, Parker and Lyle would avoid one another like they would the plague…

  There was definitely something going on, Sydney just hoped against his better judgement, that it didn’t involve Jarod.

  Sighing heavily, Sydney set himself up in the best position to catch Miss Parker on her return to the lobby, hopeful that it wouldn’t be a long wait and even more hopeful that he could catch her on her own, where he had the slightest chance of pleading his case to see Jarod.

<~> 

  Arriving at the chairman’s office, Miss Parker didn’t wait for their presence to be announced, and barged past a stunned secretary and equally astounded Lyle, right into the middle of the lion’s den.

  At the sight of her father behind the chairman’s desk, the speech she’d rehearsed over and over in her head should she ever live to see him again, was silenced. Instead, Parker stared at him in blatant disbelief. She didn’t even bother to acknowledge the wasted office space that was being taken up by Raines hovering behind him. Her gaze was transfixed and unwaveringly set upon Mr Parker.

  “Angel.”

  Miss Parker stared from him to the file sitting on the desk in front of him, and back again without blinking, “We had a deal.”

  “One… that you’re… yet to complete…” Raines gathered the file in front of Mr Parker, and handed it to Lyle, who’d strategically placed himself between the chairmen and his sister.

  “Gemini?” Lyle opened the file, leafing through the pages it contained.

  Miss Parker ignored him, glaring from a smiling Raines to her tight-lipped father, “We agreed that once Jarod was back, I was done...”

  Lyle lifted his head from the pages, “Jarod’s not back...”

  Miss Parker glowered at her brother, “Oh? So who exactly do you have chained to a gurney on a newly refurbished SL-27?”

  Lyle passed her the file, “That would be Jarod…” he waited for her to look at the photograph attached by a paperclip to the front of the folder, “…but so would he...”

Miss Parker sat abruptly on the chair behind her, staring at the photo of Gemini. He looked so much like the Jarod she used to know…

  “Jarod was assigned to Cox and myself…” Lyle again folded his arms across his chest as if to establish his dominance once more. He wasn’t about to sign Jarod back over to his sister, and no matter how critical she was to his re-capture, Lyle would be dead and buried before she took all of the Triumvirate’s praise from underneath him.

  “And your sister will head the search for the clone,” Mr Parker’s tone was as commanding and resolute as ever, there was no doubt that he’d reclaimed the chairman’s position and all the power that came with it.

  Miss Parker stood and threw the file down angrily on the desk in front of him, “So I’m supposed to forget our deal; forget that you just disappeared for a few months; forget that I brought the wayward genius home; accept that you’re chairman again and go off merrily searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack that is Jarod’s clone…?” She spoke without a breath, fuelled by ire and pain, “…And how exactly do you suppose that I do that…?”

  “You found Jarod, Angel. Jarod’s the key to everything.”

  “So you’ve told me,” Miss Parker replied through clenched teeth, sitting back down and staring bitterly at the file she’d thrown across the desk.

  “There’s no ‘I’ in team” Lyle muttered under his breath in her direction, before speaking up, “…Then there’s just the tiny problem that Jarod’s not exactly willing to cooperate…” Lyle sat on the chair next to his sister, “He’s gone nine rounds with the cattle prod and the best we’ve got out of him were a few incoherent screams…”

  Miss Parker closed her eyes and tried to block out what Lyle had just said about Jarod. Had she really been so naïve that she’d believed she was out, the second she brought Jarod in? Had she really been so infuriated and inebriated to give Jarod to Lyle, without any concrete evidence that it was him that she should be mad at?

  She was so… tired… that kind of tired

  Miss Parker stood abruptly, disappearing from the office in haste, without further word or dismissal. She even made it to the elevators before Lyle caught up to her, “I don’t think they were done…”

  Stepping inside and turning around, she sent Lyle a look that stopped him in his tracks, and she didn’t divert her stare when the doors closed. Instead, she spent the duration of the elevator’s descent to the lobby, glaring at herself. Was this really who she’d become, just another pawn on her father’s twisted chessboard?

<~> 

  Upon exiting the elevator, Miss Parker literally ran into Sydney, whom she knew had been stalking her since Jarod was brought in, and whom she’d been deliberately avoiding.

  “He’s fine Sigmund,” she snapped as she stalked across the marble floor.

  “Just like you I suppose,” Sydney replied, struggling to keep her pace.

  “Exactly.”

  “Who are you trying to convince Miss Parker, me or yourself?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You have to let me see him. Jarod’s...”

  Miss Parker snapped around to face him. He could see that she was fiercely battling her own demons, “Not my problem Syd... Apparently, I have a clone to catch…”

  Sydney watched her storm over to the sub-level elevators and press the button incessantly until the doors opened. He was sure she did the same to close the doors, and again to command the elevator to descend.

  Biting his lip firmly enough to draw blood, he turned away to head back to his office and call Broots, when Sydney was confronted by the sight of Mr Parker exiting the tower elevator, followed closely at heel by Lyle and Raines. Instantly changing his course of direction, Sydney went to find Broots in person, in the hope that he might have some clues as to what was going on, in the Tower; or even better, that he’d successfully tapped into the security footage of wherever it was that they were holding Jarod…

<~> 

  Stopping outside his room for the second time that day, Miss Parker again, watched Jarod from behind the glass. He was still in the same position as before, asleep; cuffed and shackled to the gurney; dressed in the shapeless charcoal grey scrubs that were mandatory for all of the Centre’s high priority prisoners. The extensive bruises littering his bare chest, coupled with the paired burns from the cattle prod and flesh wounds from the taser barbs, were even more apparent than before.

  Taking a deep breath, she scanned her palm on the electronic door lock, and entered the room.

<~> 

  Jarod had woken to a dull pain that seemed to emanate throughout his entire body, but was determined to appear as if he was still asleep while he assessed the situation.

  He knew he had one broken rib, possibly three; and that the referred pain in his neck and with each breath told him that he’d deflated a lung and his diaphragm was still recovering it’s normal rhythm; in-turn, inflicting the pain in his neck through the phrenic nerve…

  He suppressed a small smile at the thought of the high school biology class he’d spent trying to convince the students that humans had evolved from fish. It took him a whole 80 minutes to explain the fact that the phrenic nerve originates from the cervical vertebrae in the neck and supplies the diaphragm in the lower thoracic cavity, is evidence enough that human lungs evolved from fish gills.

  Jarod gently tugged at his wrists. A catheter and IV line were inserted into the back of his left hand and both wrists were tightly restrained to what could only be a gurney beneath him. His ankles too, were bound securely to the steel bed frame. Clearly he was in an infirmary but knowing that, did little without knowing who belonged to the heavy breathing beside him…

  Biting his tongue, Jarod fabricated having just woken.

  “Not one of your finer ideas Jarod,” Miss Parker stood over him, akin to an eagle towering over its prey.

 Jarod shook his head slightly, he should have recognized her perfume long ago, but today she was perfume free. Miss Parker was never perfume free…

  Jarod glanced around the bare polished concrete bunker they were in, and noted the positions of the two nameless sweepers that were eagerly eying him off, just waiting for an excuse to give him more face time with their newest coercion tool, a shiny black cattle prod. Just the thought of it made Jarod’s body ache that little bit more, his heart skipping a few beats. For now at least, escaping this room was impossible.

  Letting his eyes rest back on Miss Parker, he considered breaking his silence to taunt her for letting them using a child against him, but decided that, that was why she’d made her way down to see him, and decided that maintaining his silence would give him more satisfaction.

  Miss Parker picked up the chart from the base of the bed and flipped through the pages, “It says here that you’ve got three cracked ribs. Must be painful...”

  Jarod couldn’t discern the motive behind her words so he just stared up her, determined to keep his face expressionless. It was something he’d picked up about Parker. She could glibly handle sad and begrudgingly manage happy, but if someone was genuinely indifferent, she didn’t know what to do. Jarod even attributed this to the power Mr Parker held over her…

  “…Freud’s been beside himself Jarod. They won’t let him near you until you give Lyle what he wants…”

  Jarod continued to stare at her, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the flicker in his eyes when she brought up Sydney. He knew it was only a matter of time before they used Sydney against him.

   But what had Jarod more intrigued, was the way Miss Parker was determined to distance herself from ‘they,’ a collaborative that she technically belonged to.

  Miss Parker didn’t notice the fleeting dilation of Jarod’s pupils, instead taking a seat on the empty gurney that occupied the remaining portion of the otherwise bare concrete room, “…And the little weasel will get what he wants Jarod… They’ll all get what they want…”

  Jarod did his best not to smile. The last time he saw Lyle, Lyle did not get what he wanted and Miss Parker had just confirmed that Jarod’s price was a few cracked ribs, those he could handle. Giving Lyle his brother however, he could not.

  “…He is going to find him Jarod.... He found you after all…”

  The tone in her voice fell to one that Jarod didn’t recognize, and she avoided making eye contact by dropping her gaze to her neatly crossed knees. This wasn’t the ice queen, the scared child, or the survivor persona that Jarod knew… This was a very different Parker and she had Jarod intrigued.

  Jarod decided to break his silence, “I’ve never been hard to find Miss Parker.”

  His comment drew the icy expression that she was clearly craving.

  She smiled callously in return, “Suit yourself.” Slipping off the edge of the empty gurney in one swift motion, she walked the seven strides to the door, her heels clicking loudly on the polished concrete floor beneath her.

  “I’d show you out…” Jarod rattled the handcuffs against the steel bed rails to provoke her, but Miss Parker simply ignored the snide remark, scanning her palm on the electronic door lock and exiting the room at the first opening that could accommodate her slight frame.

  Jarod watched her leave, her absence leaving the room feeling empty and sterile once more, not even a trail of perfume in her wake. Staring up at the fluorescent tube lighting above him, Jarod considered Parker’s odd behaviour. It looked to him like she hadn’t slept all week, but something that must have happened just before her visit, seemed to really tip her over the edge. Even her icy expression was half-hearted and Jarod had never witnessed that before… That wall was usually the rock solid defence Miss Parker used to shelter the scared child she hid inside, the child he used to know…

  Something was clearly upsetting her and it was obvious to anyone that she’d come to him for some sort of absolution, some sort of understanding... Jarod almost wished he could take back his comments and see if she’d offer up anything more… She didn’t even mention the photographs he’d sent her, and instead of asking, he’d let her leave angry, before she could project any more guilt back at him…

<~> 

  Miss Parker watched Jarod through the glass once more, and sighed. If only he knew just how sorry she was, just how much she hated herself right now… She didn’t know… If only she could tell him that she didn’t know… That she was tired too…

  She watched one of Jarod’s doctors enter and aggressively take his pulse and blood pressure, before attempting to listen to his chest. Jarod was determined to make it difficult for the doctor, wriggling and coughing until the doctor couldn’t take it any more and injected a syringe full of sedative directly into the IV line taped firmly to the back of Jarod’s hand.

  Miss Parker watched him keep up his act, right up until he couldn’t keep his eyes open, and fell into unconsciousness. He wasn’t unconscious for long, before Lyle found Miss Parker for the second time that day. This time, she didn’t even acknowledge his presence with a glare.

  “Nice to see you too sis.”

  Miss Parker didn’t respond.

  “I don’t really know what you expected… But for what it’s worth, we make a great team... If Jarod didn’t see us coming, we can hardly expect the clone to...”

 Without looking, Parker could picture the smug grin on his face, “I think you should let Sydney talk to him,” her gaze hadn’t left Jarod’s face, even in his sleep it was obvious he was haunted.

  “And he can... Just as soon as Jarod gives us Gemini...” Lyle smiled and scanned his palm on the electronic door lock, entering the infirmary for an update on the damage his latest round of persuasion had caused.

  Miss Parker turned and left, she couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to find Sydney. Something she should have done long before things had gotten so far…

<~> 

  Sydney stood nervously over Broots, who was rapidly typing code after code into his laptop, sitting on the edge of Sydney’s mahogany desk.

  “Are you sure it was him? I mean I thought he was… well, dead…” Broots muttered as he typed.

  “It was Mr Parker... I think his sudden re-appearance may be why Parker is avoiding me...” Sydney stared blankly at the impressive collection of books he’d acquired over the years. Normally, he’d find solace in the words of his predecessors, not today though. Today he’d give his entire collection, a lung and a kidney to know that Jarod was ok.

  “…You said she mentioned Gemini…?” Broots hit the enter key, and turned to face Sydney.

  Sydney nodded his head slightly, “She said that apparently she had a clone to catch...”

  Broots glanced back at the flashing screen, “It’s still rejecting me. The encryption code keeps changing… Whatever’s going on down there, they don’t want anyone to know...”

  Sydney closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He’d give his life to know that Jarod was safe.

  Broots watched his friend’s anguish in silence, recommencing his typing in a defiant refusal of defeat. He couldn’t let Sydney down, especially not when it came to Jarod, “We’ll find him Syd.”

Sydney offered him a weak smile in return, not trusting himself to say anything that he wouldn’t regret later.

  Neither of them noticed Miss Parker standing at the doorway, until she cleared her throat and announced her presence.

  Broots jumped from his position perched on Sydney’s desk and instantly stood up straight as she entered the office without invitation, “Mm…Miss Parker…”

  Walking confidently up to the nervous tech, she leant over Broot’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Get out.”

  Broots took one look at the expression on her face before retrieving the laptop, and ducking out of the room; his head bowed slightly out of reach, should she decide to assist him out. He hadn’t seen her so angry in a long time and maybe Sydney was right… Maybe something bigger than Jarod was going on…

  Sydney opened his mouth to protest at her unnecessarily harsh treatment of their friend, but was silenced when Miss Parker held up a DSA.

  “He’s ok Sydney.”

  Uncertain of whether she meant Broots or Jarod, Sydney took the disc from her and loaded it into his DSA player. Taking a deep breath he played the file, relieved to see Jarod asleep. He was in an infirmary that Sydney didn’t recognize and had clearly suffered since his retrieval, but he was alone…

  “SL-27’s had a bit of a make-over,” Miss Parker sat down on the couch, staring abstractedly at the books that lined Sydney’s shelves. He turned to face her and caught her battling her invisible demons for the second time that day, “…I didn’t mean it Syd… I didn’t know… I didn’t…”

  Sydney sat on the couch next to her, unsure of what she was confessing. Whatever it was, he knew it was big. Big enough for her to voluntarily come to him and that could only mean that it involved Jarod and/or her family…

 He took a deep breath and fought the inevitable sinking feeling in his stomach.

  As a friend of Catherine’s, a friend of Parker’s and a friend of Jarod’s, Sydney wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was about to tell him… But the psychiatrist within, told him that he had to listen to what she had to say… The scientist within, told him he had to know the truth…

  Not about to push or interrupt, he waited for Miss Parker to continue on her own accord...

<~>





Chapter End Notes:

Thanks for reading. I hope Parker didn’t come off too harshly in this chapter, if she did, you’ll have to wait for the next one to see why! ; p

Ooh and I really love reviews… *cough* 






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