Alex watched her wake and smiled to himself when he noticed her attempt at gaining some control by combing her hair out and straightening her clothes. He waited and wasn’t in the least disappointed when she finally asked what he wanted. Taking a water bottle from the fridge, he made his way downstairs and opened the door leading to her current quarters. She glared at him and he threw her the bottle. She looked at it with distrust and he gave her a comforting smile, knowing that it would unbalance her even more. Folding his arms, he said, “Drink, it will help you feel better.”

She couldn't remember her mouth being this dry since...well, ever actually. Though a few bad celebratory hangovers did come in a close second.
She could feel him smiling in the corner of her eye, but didn't allow it to throw her off as much as it probably should. After simply staring at the sealed bottle cap for a while, she decided to open it. As much as she hated to admit it, if he wanted to drug her, he would have no problem simply jabbing a needle in her arm.

Alex grabbed a chair and after maneuvering it in front of the couch, sat down. Leaning back so that he was comfortable while still able to prevent her from making a dash for the door, he asked, “How much are you willing to give up for a brother you’ve met only once?”

She watched him carefully removing all possible ways of escape, and figured her brother had obviously made quite an impression on Alex. After taking another sip of the now half empty bottle, she put the cap back on. She ignored the throbbing headache, as she maneuvered herself into a more comfortable position, her hands still firmly wrapped around the bottle.

"Could you be more specific?" She said calmly, not allowing the panic to grab her just yet.

“It’s not a difficult question. How much are you willing to give up?” He wanted her to really think about the answer, he didn’t want to lead her or give her any indication of his own plans. Let her work this out for herself.

She looked up and meet his gaze, "Whatever it takes." she said with a steady voice. Clearing her throat she continued, "Now the real question is, why do you want to know?"

Alex shrugged, as if her question was of no consequence. He could see her anger starting to shimmer in her eyes. Good. He wanted her off balance and angry. It made her actions that more predictable. He shifted, taking out a prepared syringe and rested it on his leg. Her eyes widened and he smelled her fear. It invigorated his senses as he continued to watch her, letting the silence stretch. He was contemplating whether he wanted to tell her why her brother was so important to his plans and why he needed her. Playing with the syringe, he finally broke the silence.

“Will you be so willing to give what is most precious to you for a brother who has killed?”

She pushed the syringe out of her mind and focused her attention on Alex, the lesser of the two evils. "Even if he did..." not willing to say the actual word she simply continued, "I'm sure it was justified. An eye for an eye, remember?" Her voice was much shakier than she would have liked, and she was having problems controlling her breathing, which was turning into hyperventilation.

“You’re brother is a genius, right?” She nodded tentatively and he allowed a brief glimmer of his hatred for Jarod to show. “Jarod keeps on explaining to the world how he’s been manipulated into doing simulations that killed so many innocent people. Well, if he’s that good a pretender, why didn’t he pick up on that manipulation? He could’ve escaped when he was a child and yet he stayed. And when he finally did decide to escape the Centre’ clutches, he not only phones Sydney, who’s exploited him and manipulated him all these years, but he fails to disappear off their radar. Why is that, do you think?”

Sydney, she repeated it internally a few times until she was sure she wouldn't forget. If she got out of her, no, when she got out of here, she would look into it. Maybe it would bring her one step closer to learning what happened to her brother.

"It's not really my place to say." She said while carefully monitoring his reaction.

Alex growled and rose swiftly, watching with satisfaction when she retreated slightly. He slid down next to her and leaned in, his face inches away from hers. In a deceptively calm voice, slightly deepened by his simmering anger, he commanded, “I want you to.”

She grabbed the water bottle more tightly. She could feel his breath on her cheek and moved slightly in the opposite direction on the sofa, "I..." she sighed, trying to come up with a response, "I don't know." She screwed the lid on more tightly and continued, "He probably had his reasons."

Though she doubted very much Alex was even telling the truth. Besides, even if what he was saying was factually accurate, considering how much hatred Alex so obviously had for her brother, it wasn't unlikely that Jarod's version would be slightly different. But for now, she would play along.

Alex searched her eyes, gauging her reaction as he tried to determine whether she was lying or not. He smoothed her hair away from her face and growled a warning when she raised a hand in protest. When he had her full attention, he gave her an empty smile and said, “So, has mommy never told you her deepest, darkest secret regarding your brother?”

Somewhere in between the enormous amounts of disgust by having him touch her hair and the deep fear of what he would eventully do with the syringe a memory erupted, or at least she thought it was a memory, of her mother combing her hair and humming. How safe it had made her feel. In the debts of her mind she could still hear her mother humming the only nursery rhyme over and over again.

Suddenly the song stopped, and she was left sitting on a warn-down leather sofa, with some creep touching her hair. "No," she answered, "no, she never told me anything."

“I think you’re lying.”

"Well if she did I don't remember anything" Emily said agitated.

He clamped a hand on her wrist and pulled her arm out. She resisted briefly and he tightened his hand, knowing that he was hurting her. She met his gaze and then her shoulders slumped in defeat. She allowed him to manipulate her arm and he paused when he had the needle posed over a vein. He watched her take a breath and then hold it, her hand clenching involuntarily in anticipation of what he was about to do. He winked at her and then slowly slid the needle in, watching her wince in response.

“This is all your brother’s fault. Remember that,” he whispered into her ear as his thumb slid over the plunger. She stiffened and he pushed down on the plunger, sending his own little cocktail streaming into her bloodstream. All he expected Jarod to do when he finally arrived was to watch her die.

--

Sydney was snapped out of his daze when his phone burst into a shrill ring, a sound all too unfamiliar lately. Outside he could hear Broots hollering as well. He'd been waiting and wishing to reconnect with the only few people in the world he had left to care about and suddenly they all wanted his attention at once.

He picked up his phone with a quick "This is Sydney" while he rushed to the door. Opening it, Broots looked like he was about to start talking but he quickly silenced him with a finger pointed to his lips and the phone. Broots nodded in understanding, and Sydney ushered him inside.

"Parker? I'm so glad you've called. What's going on? Do you know if Jarod's okay?" He could hardly contain all the questions that had been building up inside of him for so long.

Sydney led Broots into the kitchen, nodding to the fridge while Miss Parker rattled off just how much was currently going on.

--

Jarod's giggles ended as abruptly as they appeared. He leaned back against the toilet tank and gave a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. He was now so exhausted he could hardly keep his eyes open. He could he Sam pounding against the door, he could hear (but not understand) Parker talking to someone (Sydney, he hoped), but all he wanted to do was to lay down and sleep. His eyes wandered the small room he was in aimlessly, but then almost sharpened. There were more towels on the shelves. Soft, fluffy towels. Lots and lots (at least to his now burning-with-exhaustion eyes) of soft, fluffy towels that would make a wonderful bed. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and headed over to the shelving. He grabbed all the towels and made a bed close to the door. His slower-than-normal thought process told him that his body would also make a wonderful barricade against Sam. He laid down in his newly made nest, used some of the hand towels for a pillow, and drifted off to sleep, muttering to himself as he did so: "Refuge, please, Sydney, refuge".

--

Parker stepped away from the bathroom as she heard Jarod's pathetic whining from behind the door. She turned to Sam, "I don't care how you do it, just get him out of there," giving the sweeper a apathetic look as he looked at her helplessly.

"Your boy is loosing his mind Syd," she stated unnecessarily into the phone.

Sydney groaned and glanced over at Broots' wide-eyed expression. "I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific, Parker."

Parker watched as Sam pounded angrily on the door, muttering a veiled threat to the bathroom's occupant. "I don't even know where to begin Syd. He's been acting irrational and childish all evening, more so than usual anyways. If i didn't know any better I would say Lyle carved up his brain like a thanksgiving turkey."

Sydney forsaw Miss Parker and the normally rational, now irrational pretender as a good mix for disaster. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, wishing he could do more. Always wishing he could do more. "Lyle deciding to play God wouldn't be a stretch anyway. The few times Jarod has been in contact with me, he's seemed very fragile. You need to be very careful to not push him over the edge. Do you understand me?"

"I think Jarod's teetered and fallen Sydney. Between Lyle's house and horrors and Emily's capture, I think your boy has lost what i have always said was a fragile grasp on reality."

"Emily's capture?" he repeated. Even under normal circumstances that would tear Jarod apart. "Please be patient with him and do the best that you can. Tell me where you are and I can help you if you just stall for some time away from anyone else at the Centre. They can't be trusted anymore concerning Jarod. Well I suppose they never could be, but something even more unusual than normal is happening and I won't allow Jarod to suffer because of it."

Parker looked at her watch. "The deal was Jarod in exchange for you and Broots. Lyle's going to clue in pretty quickly that his deal of the day has backfired. You and Broots need to get somewhere safe - now. I'll meet you there if boy wonder can regain control of his well endowed faculties," she allowed her voice to raise knowing Jarod would hear her, lucid or not.

"White Cloud then. I'm sure you remember the way." Sydney nodded, knowing she couldn't see him but recalling Jacob's last days all the same. Broots looked surprised but the psychiatrist ignored him momentarily. "Broots and I will meet you there. Please be careful, Miss Parker."

Parker shut her phone and met Sam's helpless glance before the sweeper went back to pounding on the door. She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. All they had to do now was get the world's biggest man child out from behind Fort Knox. Easier said than done.

--

Jarod grumpily rolled over. There was an annoying thumping sounds coming from behind him and it was really starting to disturb his sleep. He had trouble getting a sound sleep in the best of times and, now that he was finally falling into a good sleep, this idiot was banging on the wall. He opened his eyes and was shocked to see a bathroom. Why was he sleeping on the floor? On a bed of towels?

It took Miss Parker's voice coming through the door to revive his memory of the last week or so. She was speaking a bit louder than normal so he was able to hear (barely) something about control of well endowed faculities. Was she conspiring with Lyle now?

He sat up, leaned back against the door and started thinking. He had water here and could feasibly stay inside the room for up to a week. But staying here wouldn't help Emily.

'Oh my God, I forgot about Emily!' he thought to himself as he started panicking, wondering how long he had been in the bathroom. 'And Sydney and Broots were trapped in the Centre by Lyle and Cox.'

His thoughts were spinning uncontrollably. The small, very faint Sydney-voice deep inside his head was urging him to gain control, to try to overcome the influence of the drugs still coursing through his body, but he was having a hard time doing so. Finally, out of pure frustration, he started banging the back of his head against the bathroom door in countering beats from Sam's body hitting the same door.

--

When Broots had headed over to Sydney's house earlier the same evening his plan had been to use every trick in the book to convince the old man they needed to dissapear until they knew more of what was going on, he had fully expected the old man to simply laugh it off as another one of Broots' irrational ideas based on a moments hysteria. So when Sydney not only did not find the idea ridiculous, but had the same one, it didn't exactly calm his nerves.

The ride up to White Cloud was longer than he had expected. But after several years of working on the pursuit, he'd been on enough car-rides to know that bringing plenty of snacks was essential to ones sanity. So by focusing on his chewing and looking out the window he somehow managed to avoid the eminent panic slowly simmering inside him.

He didn't really know what he had expected to happen once Jarod was caught, but this was definitively not it. Not only had Jarod been drugged, but somehow his ever illusive sister had been tracked down and captured as well. Something big was going on, and for the time being Broots enjoyed not knowing what it was.

Sometime halfway through his second funions bag Sydney took a left and stopped on a residential driveway. Broots didn't hear any of the seatbelt unbuckling sounds he expected after such a long ride and looked up from his snackbag. The old psychiatrist was looking older than usual as he sat completely frozen in the driver's seat. Broots followed his gaze and nearly chocked on a funion.

He really, really hoped Miss Parker had been extremely lucky with the traffic because a little further down the driveway was another car.