Exactly to the minute at 10pm, there was a knock on the door. Parker knew it was Sydney; no one else from the Centre had the decency to knock anymore, so she could easily separate.
“Syd, come in.”
“Hello Miss Parker. How are you?”
“How am I supposed to feel? I‘m happy and scared and scared and excited.”
“I can only imagine.”
“So how do we start?”
“We‘ll start with an exercise so I can evaluate you a bit.”
“Good, okay, do you want anything to drink? Coffee? And please sit down.”
“Coffee would be wonderful thank you; we have a long night ahead of us!”
“Syd, how long do you think this will take?”
“I honestly can‘t say, I‘ve never done this in such a short time and outside the Centre without my computers. Well, obviously you won‘t come to the stage Jarod is on, I had a few decades with him, but I think in a few weeks you should be able to easily pretend in any job and stay hidden from the Centre as long as you want to.”
“A few weeks are okay, but I don‘t want to spent too much time with this and then before I can run away, they steel Baby Parker from me. We have to hurry.”
“You‘re right, we do. Two lives are at stake. Yours and your brothers.”
“Yes.”
Sydney started with a few IQ tests and really easy SIMs and Miss Parker had no problem whatsoever with them. After many hours of very concentrated work, Miss Parker offered some snacks so they wouldn’t starve to death being this motivated.
“You‘re on a rather high stage already, where you ever trained by anyone when you were younger?”
“Not that I can think of, but there is actually one thing I could never really place. When I was about thirteen, I had a blackout over the time span of a few weeks. In the beginning I didn‘t even realize it, but then I saw on my calendar, that my mother’s birthday was already over, even though I haven’t been to her grave, I would never forget her birthday, you know?”
“So you think somebody made you forget?”
“I guess so. Perhaps they used that time to see if I am anything worth, but they decided against it, because I wasn‘t enough or my father stopped them or… I don‘t know.”
“That‘s possible, I know that the Centre is in the possession of a drug such as that, but I didn‘t know, that they already had it back then, that explains a lot.”
“When I was trained for a few weeks back then, but they made me forget, shouldn‘t it be like I‘ve never even been trained?”
“No, they can never make you forget completely, it‘s still back there in your mind somewhere, that‘s why you had so good test results just now.”
“Could I regain the knowledge of what happened in those weeks? Perhaps with hypnosis?”
“Yes, we could try, but tomorrow night, we have to get up in a few hours to get to work and you need your sleep and your strengths to stand up against Raines and that pig Lyle.”
“SO true! Lyle is a little pervert; they try to convince me to just leave the Baby with the Centre! Who do they think I am?”
“What did Lyle do?”
“He made inappropriate sexual comments.”
“I‘m sorry that you have to go through that Parker, I wish I could take that away from you.”
“Thanks Syd. Did Jarod call again? I really need to talk to him. I need him if I want to do this right.”
“No he didn‘t, but I will definitely tell him what you wrote as soon as he does. What is your plan by the way?”
“I don‘t want to tell you the place, because I am afraid for you, but a few things you can know. I will leave this country; I have everything set up for me and the baby with the help of a few old friends. Fake papers are on their way. Now I only need a good cover story for the Centre, so I can get a little head start. A vacation is too suspicious. What do you think?”
“You could say the Baby is ill and you have to get him special treatment somewhere else.”
“The Centre would want to treat him themselves.”
“You go to visit someone?”
“Who? I have no friends!”
“Okay, what if Broots went away on holidays and you go visit him, so it wouldn‘t be a vacation. You‘d have a few days ahead of them.”
“That might work, but Broots can‘t know. And they will think he knows and threaten him with Debbie or something.”
“Ben?”
“Ben? What‘s with him? The Centre can‘t know about him.”
“Then all there is left is Jarod.”
“He‘ll have to talk to me first. If he said he wants to vanish, he will. Nothing will stop him. And you know he can.”
“We‘ll figure something out, I promise you.”
“I hope so. When I simply follow a lead somewhere because of Jarod, I wouldn‘t have a reason to take the Baby with me.”
“And what if you visit me on vacation?”
“It‘s the same with you as with Broots, they‘ll threaten you.”
“They can‘t threaten me with anything anymore, when you and Jarod are out of the Centre.”
“But they‘ll kill you.”
“Still.”
“Oh, you are stupid to believe I would let you sacrifice yourself for us, nothing like that will happen. Nobody will get hurt.”
“Please think about it.”
“No, you can‘t make me do anything. And I won‘t think about it.”
They argued a while longer and when they realized, that they really had to get some sleep and they weren’t getting anywhere with their argument, Sydney went home.
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Jarod sat on a bench in front of Loch Ness in Scotland and thought about monsters. He had a lot of time to think lately, because he didn’t do pretends anymore and didn’t bother to find a real job or anything. It was as if all his power and strength had left him. He was demotivated and didn’t see a way out of it. So he enjoyed the view and thought about monsters. Did he believe in the Supernatural? Yes, he thought, because in some way he himself was supernatural. Was the Loch Ness monster as lonely as he was, if it even existed? Probably.
When he last talked to Sydney he told him that he’d go away and wouldn’t come back. The last glimpse of hope he had was gone and would never come back. There was nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to fight for. But there was, said a voice in the back of his head. All the people you can help and safe with your abilities. They need you. Shall somebody else care. Shall somebody else help them. He needed time for himself; he had to think of himself for a while.
He didn’t really have a plan, he wanted to stay in Europe, but other than that he didn’t know. Perhaps a trip to Asia or Africa at some point, but other than that…
And then like the thousands of other times that day, that week, he thought of her. She did this to him, that much he knew. He hadn’t realized until then, that she was the reason for him to keep on doing what he did. She was also the reason he stopped, because with her taking away the last piece of hope to be together forever, she also took away his will for everything else. Oh god, he hated it when he analyzed himself like that. Why couldn’t he just have a midlife crisis like any other normal person, too? No, his mind tricked him. Dammit, it was hard being smart. He had to smile at his thoughts. How stupid he had been, hanging on to someone who didn’t know what she wanted herself. How could he have been so stupid?
“I‘m sorry sir, we are closing in a few minutes and you have been here since this morning, are you alright?”
“Yes I am fine, thank you. Are you open tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I‘ll come back in the morning.”
He stood and left, leaving a confused woman behind.
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One week later

“Miss Parker, are you alright? Miss Parker?”
She bolted from her deep sleep and saw a worried looking Broots starring at her.
“Broots… No, I mean yes, I am fine, thanks.”
“It‘s the third time this week this happened, are you sure you are fine?”
“YES Broots. I‘m just tired.”
He nodded and left, knowing it wasn’t smart to argue with her.
She knew he was right of course. She didn’t get any sleep at night and her desk always seemed to look so compliable. She still didn’t have a plan or an excuse for her leaving with the Baby and time was running out. The only thing that put her mind at ease a bit was her progress in the training. She and Sydney worked every night and she learned fast, she had always been good at learning and memorizing things. Her mother had taught her that much.
They had thought about a thousand things, from an aunt far away to some fake conference she had to go to with a baby, but nothing was satisfying enough so far, that the Centre really wouldn’t suspect anything.

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To be continued...

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