As a child, the walls of Emily's life were defined by two things: The outside world will hurt you. There are demons that will take you. From the instant she was born her world was constrained by her parents' fear, which naturally was subsumed into fear of her own. Even before she knew the story of her brothers, stolen by monsters in the night, her mother enveloped her as the only safe place in the universe. Inside was protection, safety, the love of both parents and Christ's, outside was contamination, pain, foulness and sin.

It looked lovely from the window, though. All the colors that slowly changed with God's seasons, and a kind old man with a young child who tended the flowers. The boy was a child of God, she could tell somehow, simple but loving. Her sense of the boy was the first indication of her special talent at reading people, although it was not the last, and she didn't even know it was unique yet. Sometimes they waved at each other through the window, before the grandfather hushed him.

Emily learned to read practically before she learned to speak, for her parents didn't do a great deal of talking. What was there to talk about, trapped within the confines of two rooms for all your days? There were always books, though, brought by Sister Harriet. A children's Bible was always there, of course, telling the stories of the ancients with helpful watercolor photos every other page. Sister Harriet, though, brought in many more on a rotating basis – stories of Elves and Dwarves, of a submarine exploring the fantastical creatures under the sea, of families shipwrecked on deserted islands, of a little girl falling into a wondrous and nonsensical land. The books were all stamped with the names magical realms, too, like clues on a hidden treasure map: Mondor-Eagen Library at Anna Maria College, Property of Boston College, Saint Anselm College Geisel Library.

Her favorite was the one about a spoiled and lonely girl sent to live with her cruel uncle, and who discovers a sickly cousin locked away from the world. Together they discover and explore a hidden garden, and the ill young man slowly recovers with love and friendship. Emily read the story over and over, enough that Sister Harriet later brought her a copy of the book without one of the mysterious college library stamps, and told her she could keep it forever. Wouldn't it be wondrous, Emily thought, to have a friend show up and unlock all the doors. If she could explore even the garden below the window, that would be enough. But of course the door could never be unlocked, lest the demons find her.

As she grew older her language skills grew too, and the books became more complex. With her mother she read books in the realm of the spirit: the real Bible with all its strange inconsistencies, catechism, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila. With her father, when he was back in the attic, she read books of the realm of the earth and air: Textbook of Aerodynamics, Vector Calculus, Principles of Thermodynamics, Organic Chemistry.

“Daddy, are molecules real?” Emily asked one day. Daddy's absences grew each time he left, but he always returned with new books and new lessons for when he would be gone again. That all these facts and arguments swimming in her head were supposed to represent reality had only recently dawned on her; previously she had been operating under the impression that they were all stories, with greater or lesser degrees of internal consistency.

“Yes, of course, honey,” her father replied. He sat up a little straighter in the familiar rocking chair, shifting from the pain in his back. “This is science. It's … well, proven isn't the right word, you can never one hundred percent prove something with the scientific method. But at least there's evidence.”

“As much evidence as for demons and the devil?” she asked. Those seemed more real than invisible little particles that somehow added up to chairs and windows and bedsheets. Chemistry had math, which was beautiful in its logic, but religion weighed like a living, breathing force. Her parents didn't live their lives according to the principles of physics.

“Demons are just a myth, Em. Metaphors for evil in the world. Remember we talked about metaphors?”

“That's not what Momma says.” She did remember about metaphors, where something not-real represented something real but abstract. “Momma says they're real men who want to knock down our door.”

Daddy frowned. “The men are real, but they're not literal demons. They're still human beings, misguided, misinformed, maybe sometimes evil. Evil lurks within us all, you don't need to invent a mythical creature to explain it.”

“If I'm evil and you're evil and Momma's evil, why don't you let them take me to the evil place? Maybe I belong there.”

“No. They already have your brothers. You belong to us.”

Later that night, as Emily tried to sleep on her bedroll behind the partition in the second room, she could hear her parents arguing in the kitchenette. Arguing again, they fought more and more lately, when Daddy was there. He left through the locked doors all the time now, but Momma never did. Tonight, even from a distance Emily knew the dispute was over her and the demons-not-demons outside. Daddy wanted to leave, either fight directly or move somewhere far enough away they'd never find her. Momma was afraid. They hadn't discovered them yet at this location, so why play with hellfire? The Devil could already be seen on the horizon, just off the edges of the Earth through the windows.

The next day, Daddy handed her a new balsam wood puzzle, told her to take care of her mother, kissed her on the forehead and walked out the door.

He didn't come back for over a month.

Sister Harriet always dropped by once a week with essential supplies – food, toilet paper, soap, books. She seemed especially worried about them while Daddy was gone fighting monsters, but Emily wasn't worried. She knew how to do laundry, wash dishes, tidy up their tiny two rooms. She knew the correct chemistry to make dinner, and the correct incantations to keep the evil spirits from creeping too close to the door. She knew how to keep herself busy within her own mind, and how to take care of Momma when she couldn't get out of bed. What's to be concerned about?

“You are too grown up for a little girl,” Sister Harriet would tell her.

“How can you be too grown up?” Emily would ask. And Harriet would smile sadly and bring another book out of her bag, and Emily would describe for her all the adventures she had imagined from the books for the weeks before.

Sister Harriet would sit for hours with Momma, listening, holding her hand, coaxing her to the living room for even a short while. During her afflicted time of month, Harriet brought medicine for the pain, and helped change the blood-drenched laundry. That, too, had her worried, even though Emily could hardly remember a time when the full moon didn't cause the pads to overflow.

Secretly, Emily thought Momma was just like Colin, the sickly boy from the book who needed love and affection and the outside world to slowly come alive. But Momma would never leave the attic. Not while Emily was still there to protect. Like the saints of old, cloistered for the single dedicated purpose of a life for God, visions and all. Sometimes Emily wondered whether the souls of the saints breathed like her mother's, ethereal, one foot in the underworld.

The last time Sister Harriet arrived alone it was night, and Momma didn't want to let her in. “It's a trick,” she whispered, holding Emily tight. “They can fake voices, darling, I can tell.”

Outside Harriet began to rattle the door and shout. “Margaret! Open the door! I need to know that Emily is still safe! Let me in!”

“She thinks the Centre might have come, Momma,” Emily whispered. “We should at least tell her we're all right.”

“Lies!” hissed Momma. “Treachery and lies, I have to protect you.”

But Emily had a sense too, and she knew it was really Sister Harriet, not a demon. Plus she was hungry, for they had run out of peanut butter and apples and rice again. So she wormed her way out of her mother's arms despite the thrashing sobs, and ran to unlock the door. To her astonishment Momma followed, leaping out of bed and grabbing her hair back with a yank just as the door swung open.

Harriet didn't step over the threshold. “Margaret. Let her go.”

“Leave us, you foul thing. You can't have another child. My only child!”

Harriet's eyes shifted to Emily, who was gripped around the neck by her mother. “How long has she been like this?”

“Since nightfall.” Then Emily added, “But the demons come every night. Usually when you come up, we can still see out the windows.”

Sister Harriet sucked in a breath. Carefully she placed the bags of groceries just inside the door-jam without taking a step forward. “If I leave, will Margaret go back to bed?”

Momma hissed at the impertinent words, but in her arms Emily nodded yes.

“Do you think you are in danger? Time to be a grown-up, now, Emily, and tell me the truth.”

“No. Momma protects me. She would never deliberately hurt me.”

“All right, then. I'm leaving now, Margaret. No one is going to take your child.”

She closed the door, although Emily could somehow tell Harriet was still outside the door, listening hard. Momma loosened her grip, but she still muttered, “The children have already been taken,” over and over. After a long time standing there, Emily pulled her back to bed, and curled up in her trembling arms.

The next day Daddy finally returned with sad eyes, accompanied by two priests, Harriet, and another Sister, who in another life had been a nurse. The priests spoke in a strangely beautiful way. Even the priests weren't enough to quell her fear, though, and eventually they had to put Momma almost in a walking sleep to get her out of the barn attic. Then Daddy took her hand, and they too walked through the forbidden door.

Emily was seven years old.

* * * * *

After that, Emily lived with her father, but she also had to learn to live with people. They were smuggled across what Emily would later learn was the rural border between Canada and the United States, and settled north of Montréal. Sister Harriet bid them goodbye at the border, with a kiss and prayer for Margaret, and a brand new copy of The Secret Garden for Emily to keep. She never saw her for another ten years.

Dad immediately enrolled her in semi-public French-speaking Catholic school, and the two of them carved out a something like a normal life in a tiny bungalow in the suburbs. Later Emily would reflect that it was a strange way to hide, placing an unsocialized flaming redhead in a foreign land with a foreign language. But the Centre didn't know what she looked like – baby pictures of both her brothers revealed her father's brown hair – and Dad somehow knew the language barrier wouldn't last long. Indeed within the space of a month, she went from absorbing melodic gibberish to spouting français québécois slang with the rest of the kids.

The hardest adjustment for Emily wasn't the language, but all the people, regardless of the form of words coming out of their mouths. So many strange people; they were a psychic burden, as all those years of isolation left her with no instincts of how ordinary people operated. She could sense the basic personality of anyone she met: shy or aggressive, in peace or in pain, whatever good or evil lurked beneath the surface. These judgments came instantly, without conscious awareness that the knowledge was unusual, and at first she thought everyone just knew about other people as soon as they saw them. She developed a reputation as the preternatural child who knew everyone's secrets, although the content of people's minds was still a black void. Some people avoided her, others became her friends and fiercely defended her utter honesty.

For many years after the Tashman farm, she barely saw her mother. Margaret's mind was relatively stable in the gentle rhythm of the convent-attached convalescent home in which she was placed, but any reminder of her children tended to put her into a panic, and the demons arose anew. As a young girl Emily didn't mind her mother's terrified grip, for it was still a hug, still the loving touch she craved. But at some point she would always have to leave, go back to the normal life her father was trying to create for her in the outside world, and the parting inevitably triggered Margaret's hysteria and psychosis. So she wrote letters instead, telling her mother all about her friends, her hobbies, her books, everything that indicated she was leading a life of freedom and contentment, to remind Margaret that she was her own person, not the Centre's possession. And very slowly, Margaret's mental state improved. Not enough to go back to normal life as a wife and mother, but enough to be at peace.

Dad continued to research the Centre as she grew up, obsessively charting their organizational structure and activities. But he didn't take action, even though Kyle and Jarod were likely still being held in the depths of the Blue Cove complex. Too much risk, Charles later told her. After getting shot trying to assist the doomed Catherine Parker – and he still wasn't sure why they tossed him out the door and let him live, considering the wife of the director was slaughtered in an elevator – the Centre obviously knew who he was and had no qualms about using deadly force to protect their precious property.

Then, ten years after leaving Harriet Tashman's farm, the calculus changed yet again. Kyle escaped.

Harriet was no longer a Sister, but Kyle tracked her down anyway, leaving behind him trail of kidnappings and incoherent ravings and random cruel acts. Harriet didn't know the details of their resettlement but she knew the people who knew, and offered to put Kyle in contact with his family under controlled conditions. After all, who knew how the child kidnapped at age 18 months had been programmed? He responded by holding her at gunpoint and demanding she drive him straight to his parents. She responded by crashing the car not five miles into the journey north, right next to a police cruiser.

Charles never blamed Harriet for deciding to put his son's fate in the hands of yet another institution. They had made his son into a madman, and her life was at risk. But now that there was definitive proof that his sons were alive, and psychologically tortured in some way, it renewed his obsession with the search for the last lost boy. And now Emily was old enough to join in the fight, not just sit around waiting to be picked up like a stray cat on the street.

A part of Emily suspected Jarod was dead, in mind if not in body, just like Kyle. If he were alive he was likely held in the bowels of the Blue Cove building, not far where Dad had been shot all those years ago. Major Charles had never found another way in, although he endlessly researched: architectural plans for the building, security annexes, subsidiary companies of The Centre's vast multinational organization. In theory Jarod could have been transferred to several other semi-secret locations – South Africa, France, Vietnam, Bangladesh – or the truly secret ones they likely built. But they had no evidence. Not a whisper of the genius grown man held captive for decades.

Emily did her part, off and on. In her most daring move she visited Kyle, on the down low posing as a research psychologist. A very young psychologist, but Emily had already learned that the right attitude, and approaching the right people, and folks would believe. Dad would freak and forbid her to go, so she didn't tell him the plan in advance. Kyle was a dead end, Major Charles believed. He had skipped the trial of course, although he longed to see his long-lost baby boy, but obtained transcripts of the proceedings. It indicated to him that little Kyle was really and truly as insane as his actions indicated.

But Emily knew she could do it. She was the one that could read his soul, after all. Perhaps with more information about Jarod's project, they could follow leads from the Centre's public think tank activities. Obviously they were using Jarod for something, if he were still alive.

She was twenty-one years old.

Emily sat across the glass from the man that had kidnapped Harriet, and before either one of them spoke she knew it was hopeless. His soul had been brutally damaged, to the point he no longer had an identity, or possibly coherent memories from that identity. Still, she tried.

“What can you tell me about the Centre?” she asked softly, without introducing herself. Best not to beat around the bush; she might not have a lot of time.

His blue eyes widened by a fraction, and he studied her without twitching another muscle. She had dyed her hair brown and put on glasses for the encounter, hoping that would be enough to avoid tipping off the Centre. Even after all these years, Emily still doubted they knew what she looked like – in all honesty there was some doubt in her mind whether the Centre even knew she existed – but her natural color was similar enough to Margaret with her flaming red hair that she didn't take chances.

Finally he responded. “What do you know of The Centre?” he croaked.

“I know they stole you as a baby. I know you had abilities they wanted to exploit. I know they broke you.”

“He never broke me,” Kyle hissed.

Emily had to wonder who “he” was. Nevertheless she tipped her head and nonchalantly shrugged. “You don't even know who you are. Seems pretty broken to me.”

“I was competent enough to stand trial. I'm in jail, not in the looney bin.”

“Yeah? Then what's your name?”

His eyes rolled back as he withdrew a bit into his shell. “The names change. The occupations change. The being changes. What does the original one matter?”

“It does matter, Kyle.” His eyes snapped back at her in grief and astonishment, but Emily could tell his fragile grip on reality was slowly disintegrating despite her deployment of the name. “What did they have you do at The Centre, Kyle?”

“Pretend. Make-believe. He was serious about the 'believe' part, too.” Kyle grimaced, his head dropping back in memory. “Murderer. Assassin. Rapist. Soldier. Engineer. Madman. Victim. You had to relive it all, believe it was really you. And then after awhile it is you.”

“Did you ever know someone named Jarod at the Centre? As a boy, perhaps? Kyle, look at me, focus.” She tapped on the glass.

“Jarod. He said he was my friend, but then he hurt me. They made him hurt me, even with Sydney there. He was an excellent engineer. The best they had of all of us, at everything.”

“The best at what? Who is 'all of us'?”

“The Make-Believers. The Pretenders. Become anyone you want to be, but don't forget yourself, that's how you get into jail.”

“Why would they make you become different people?” Emily asked. There must be some tremendous gain to the Centre, to hold people prisoner for decades.

But Kyle simply laughed at that, as if it were the funniest question in the world. “Who are you, bearer of the dead names Kyle and Jarod?”

“Harriet Tashman's demon slayer,” she replied.

Emily got up to leave at his astonished face, before the temptation to tell him everything overwhelmed her, and ground down what was left of Kyle Tully down to the last gritty bits of his soul. There was nothing she could do for her tortured brother in there.

* * * * *

They gained valuable information from Emily's daring visit, although Dad practically had a coronary when he found out about it. Point one, Jarod was alive and in the Centre's custody, at least in the decade or so after his kidnapping, confirming Catherine Parker's story. Point two, someone named Sydney was a handler for the boys. Last name or first name, they couldn't tell, but it gave them something to hunt for amidst all the pilfered personnel records. Point three, the project that the young genius minds had been warped towards all these years involved some kind of mental simulation of others. The Centre had been quietly funding psychological and neuropsych research for decades, among several other fields. Emily sat in university libraries with stacks of old journals and carefully followed the lines of evidence, starting all the way back in the forties and fifties.

For her personally, though, meeting Kyle had brought home an overarching point to Emily: The Centre wasn't the raving product of her mother's fractured mind, but it really existed. Her brothers, too, for in her mind they were often no more than smiling toddlers in an old photo. They were real people, trapped for their entire lives in some evil version of the attic, possibly demented and warped into something inhuman. They were her own private but-for-God-there-go-I, for she now knew in her gut that her parents had been right, and she would have been stolen straight from her cradle if it weren't for their efforts. Just like the demon changelings her mother warned about all those years ago, only the Centre never gave anything in return.

In any case, Emily slowly built up a picture of what had likely happened to Kyle and Jarod. Among other activities, the Centre was fairly well-known in certain circles for its forecasting and modeling. When the supercomputers of the world failed, it was rumored, the Centre could still divine an answer, seemingly from the blue. And some of the reports they acquired, sanitized as they were, bore the impression not of a cold machine but a human soul. Almost as if Emily were getting a read off the paper itself, not merely from a mind. They had tapped into her brother's latent genius, she suspected, exploiting it like a natural resource to be mined and drained down to the last economic drop.

It didn't help to know what to do, however. Jarod was now in his thirties, and if they were still holding him prisoner, it was likely because he didn't want to escape, or didn't have the mental capacity. Emily and Charles still couldn't break into an impenetrable fortress and kidnap back a grown man. They didn't even know if he was still called Jarod.

Slowly Emily let the search consume her, just as it did her father. A mystery to be solved, she could sense the solution just beyond her reach, buried in all that data. Her Dad finally took her to one side, glimpsing the mountains of reports and papers piled in her Montréal apartment.

“You need to go, Em. Do something else. We didn't save you just to let the Centre eat your life. You're young, go sit on a beach, climb a mountain, see new places, fall in love. Send me a postcard occasionally.”

“Really, Dad? Easily traceable postcards?”

“Fine, that newfangled email. I'll keep you updated on the search. And your mother. But you can't live your life in a dark room surrounded by dead words and dead souls. You've got a gift too, Emily, how will you ever learn how to use it unless you get out and meet people?”

“Where should I go?”

“Where do you want to go? Where have none of us ever been? I'm going to live vicariously through you, you know. At least one of my children deserves to be free.”

The next day she boarded up her apartment, prepaid for a year so her Dad could crash there whenever he wanted, and hopped on a plane to India. And although she did come back on occasion, without some sign that the status of her lost brother had changed, Emily vowed never to open a dusty report again.

* * * * *

Ten years after Kyle's abortive attempt to find his family, he escaped from prison. Emily kept flags on her “John Doe” of course, so immediately she left her current occupation – infiltrating an ashram cult in Oregon to gather evidence of abuse – to fly back to Quebec as support for her mother. The central dilemma of Kyle, whether to tell her broken older brother where to find his family or leave it be, had never been resolved. Emily didn't think her mother could take seeing her little boy driven insane, and maybe Kyle couldn't handle his broken mother, either. They also had evidence that officials from the Centre were still visiting Kyle in his cell, possibly to shore up his childhood programming. Emily hadn't met the young man long enough to tell whether his Stockholm Syndrome might cause him to run straight back to his captors at the first opportunity and tell them everything.

But that didn't happen.

Emily had left for a short lunch run when the phone call came in. Dad was stuck in South Africa, having hopped a freighter with the help of some old Navy friends. He was tracking down thin leads to the leadership of the Centre, and unavailable to return for at least 24 hours. So when Emily returned to find her mother riled up in a feverish excitement, it was all on her to make sense of the jumble of words.

“Harriet called… he's alive...my baby boy wants to come back… I said Boston … that cafe where your father and I used to meet … we can get down there by tomorrow, darling, I'm sure of it...”

Dread filled Emily at my baby boy wants to come back. “Who, Mom? You mean Kyle? Did you talk to Harriet herself?” It didn't make sense. Harriet would know not to leave a vital message only with Mom, but to wait until she or Dad got back in touch.

“No! Father Alain, relayed from St. Catherine's.”

Emily closed her eyes. Playing telephone with a madwoman. They'd probably tried to contact Dad at the old bungalow and failed. And who knew what was really going on down there in the States? Kyle might have had a knife to Harriet's throat as she made the call. “What exactly did he say, Mom? Kyle wants to meet us?”

“Not Kyle! Jarod!”

“Mom… Jarod's not the one that escaped. Remember? Kyle kidnapped Harriet, Kyle went on trial, and Kyle's the one who yesterday gave himself a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“They said Jarod, darling, I'm sure of it. I told them we'd meet at the cafe at three tomorrow. How wonderful will it be to see your brother again?”

Wonderful, thought Emily, but didn't utter the sarcasm out loud. The whole situation reeked of a trap, but looking at her mother's bright hopeful eyes, she knew they had to go. She put in a call to her and Charles' answering service – their old pre-email system to pass messages back and forth, no matter where they were in the world – but also booked a flight down south. They'd have to take a chance at Customs to get into Boston on time, although her fake Canadian passport hadn't let her down yet.

They were early enough in the city for Emily to scout ahead to the location, now a coffee shop instead of the sidewalk cafe of forty years ago. She left Margaret in their nearby hotel room, occupied with the ritual prayers that always soothed her mother's mind. Unfortunately, the spot Margaret picked turned out to be terrible for avoiding capture. It was on one of Boston's notoriously narrow winding streets, with several alleyways around it and poor visibility on multiple vectors. An easily ambushed location. Emily decided that arriving in a moving target was their best bet for quick get-away should the Centre choose to put in an appearance, while still allowing them to scan the corner for Kyle and/or Jarod.

She wished Dad were here. Or even Sister Harriet, to act as lookout. Or anyone on their side, for that matter. The situation felt unmoored, out of control, as if their fragile hidden détente with the Centre was about to be cracked and shattered into chaotic pieces on this fine spring day.

But then again, if Jarod had really gotten out of the Centre, maybe the future had already tipped over.

They pulled up near the location in a taxi, having the driver idle. And to her surprise, there was not Kyle, but instead an even taller man with dark features like a younger version of Dad. The expression on his face was one of wonderment, and amazement, and happiness, and a little bit of terror – all from a soul whose basic goodness shined like a jewel. Deep cracks ran through the brilliance, moral guilt perhaps, but still Jarod was whole, thriving in a way that should not have been possible given all the abuse and harm he must have endured over the years. Emily couldn't help but grin at her brother's improbable survival and sanity.

The moment lasted less than a second before both Jarod and Emily simultaneously noticed the sweeper teams closing in around them.

In the next instant Emily tried to judge whether Jarod could make it to the taxi, and decided he could. She motioned for him to make a run for it, even as she pulled Margaret back into the car. But Jarod apparently made a separate calculation not to risk their capture, even at the lowest probability level. He motioned for them to go, as Margaret crumpled in the vehicle at the renewed loss of her child. The last thing Emily saw from the back of the taxi was Jarod tearfully staring them down, then fight like lightening when the sweeper team approached. She doubted her brother would be easily captured.

They went straight to the airport, for although he mother was already a mess, she'd likely collapse and regress by nightfall. Back over the border, to her safe home and attendants and routine. Emily promised her over and over she would bring Jarod to her side as soon as they located him again.

It would be over two years before she could make good on that promise.

* * * * *

Dad flew straight to Boston to try and track down Kyle and Jarod, but all he found was grief: Kyle was supposedly dead, killed in a car explosion. The only consolation was that Jarod apparently managed to escape, according to camera footage Dad blustered his way into viewing of the area around the cafe. So that turned out to be the most hopeful sign of all: Jarod was alive, sane, free and looking for them too.

They had no way to predict where he would go, however, so they fell back on an old-standby: Watch the Centre as the Centre watched for them, looking for clues of Jarod. Unlike the old days, it turned out neither her brother nor the Centre were interested in being subtle any longer. Jarod's exploits tended to be publicized in the local press, and it soon became apparent that several Centre teams were chasing him down. One of them was led by the daughter of the very same Catherine Parker that had been murdered trying to free her brother. Emily had to scoff at the irony, or perhaps tremble at the power of the Centre to warp people to its will.

A second member of the team was someone named Dr. Sydney Green, whom had published research papers on the development of childhood genius before disappearing from the scientific community. The same Sydney Kyle had mentioned, they decided, likely Jarod's handler for all these years. His substitute father figure, perhaps. They seemed to be operating some kind of carrot-and-stick strategy, maybe hoping to convince Jarod to return to the Centre of his own free will while simultaneously threatening force. That goal that seemed delusional given Jarod's gleeful, repeated baiting of his would-be captors. Obviously he was enjoying his freedom, but also ambivalent about cutting his connections entirely.

A year passed, with a bizarre cat-and-mouse game developing: Jarod would act out in some public manner, followed by the Centre teams, followed more surreptitiously by either Charles or Emily. They left cards with an email address with some of the more likely prospects, ones that Emily's senses deemed trustworthy, but Jarod never seemed to return to the same place twice, no matter how much of a connection he made with people. Her brother was eternally rootless, his identity shifting every time but retaining the same moral core.

Then Jarod fell off the map, and the Centre teams chasing him slowly began to dissolve. Sydney stopped traveling with Miss Parker, whereabouts unknown, and the technician that often accompanied them managed to disappear with his daughter, amidst rumors of corruption and scandal. Parker herself seemed to abdicate the search to another team, as if she were finally done with the whole mess. Perhaps Jarod had finally found some manner of peace, and broken off ties with the Centre. But he still hadn't found them.

And then one day out of the blue, Emily's phone rang.

“Is this Emily Tully?” a deep voice said, in abysmally accented French. This number was her Canadian line.

Alarm bells went off, although the voice sounded kind and a touch nervous. Her ability to get a read off a voice was limited. She hadn't used the last name “Tully” since, well, never. “Who wants to know?” she asked, in regular American English.

“Jarod.”

Emily nearly dropped the phone. Then she shouted across the room, “DAD! Get on the line!”

Through a series of teary – but more secure than Catholic convents – phone calls, they made arrangements to meet Jarod in Nevada. That evidently wasn't where he'd been hiding out for most of the previous year, but considering the events of Boston, a little caution was mutually agreed to be a good thing.

They debated bringing Margaret, and in the end opted not to tell her. Not another heartbreak, unless it panned out for real this time. Jarod could visit her without the rigors of flying her across the continent, and things would go much more smoothly.

The meeting place was an empty airfield on a flat plane in the middle of the desert, with good visibility for a hundred miles. Charles grinned to see his son piloting the other light aircraft. Jarod did look a lot like him, before the gray hair.

Jarod disembarked his plane with two other people, a woman and man both in their thirties with dirty blond hair, both looking a little green around the gills. But then Jarod ran and flung his arms around both Charles and Emily at the same time in a giant bear hug, and everybody began to laugh.

“Dad! I can't believe I finally found you,” Jarod murmured.

“The feeling's mutual, son. We've been chasing you for, what, almost two years now?”

“Three years. Three years since I escaped. You were not easy to find. Even after I finally got the name...”

The woman cleared her throat, and Jarod jumped back with a grin to introduce them. “Dad, Emily, this is Annalise and Tim. They're cousins, and, uh, both were held by the Centre at various times.”

Annalise smiled at her, kindly but also sizing her up, and Emily did the same. After a lifetime of being on the run, habits die hard for everyone, she thought. She got an uncanny vibe off both of them, harder to pin down than anyone she'd met since Kyle. Goodness there, for sure, but also extraordinary strength and power, although in what dimension Emily couldn't say. The man's soul in particular was simultaneously fractured and opened, as if the entire universe was pouring in behind his crystal blue eyes.

“Hi,” said Annalise after a heartbeat pause, and offered her hand to shake. Jarod blinked and something passed between them, a tiny warning followed by trust. They obviously knew each other intimately, and Emily guessed this was the reason Jarod had gone more fully underground in recent months.

Emily took her hand, and experienced the strange sensation of pressure on her own soul. Annalise was touching her somehow, with her mind. Probing softly. “Nice to meet you, Emily,” she said, and pulled back as soon as Emily sensed her presence.

Emily wondered what the woman could do if she pushed. She wondered if the Centre had created Annalise with such a power, or simply found and exploited her in the same they had her brothers. Either way, she knew why they were hiding out somewhere in the wilds of the west.

The man with the blue eyes stepped up then, and with a strange copy of a smile, offered his hand too. “Hi,” he said, with identical inflection as his cousin.

Emily held out her hand, letting him probe her too. But just as their hands met, Annalise broke in with a “Wait!” and lunged for them both.

And Emily fell into Tim's mind.

It felt exactly like that, falling into a vast open chasm as the winds of sensory information of every kind buffeted her plummet. Every brown blade of wearied grass, every bird, the wispy water of the clouds, Jarod's vast rock of a mind, Dad's worry and screams as she collapsed to the ground, dirt and rocks down through the mantle, the harsh metal skin of the planes, every tiny heat-warped leaf on the sagebrush, the sun blasting energy at them, the sun the sun the sun…

And she felt Annalise's mind dive after them, so much stronger than she could have grasped thirty seconds ago. Annalise had merely been whispering before, caressing hello with only a drop of her power, but now she reached in like the hand of God to yank Emily back out before utter madness descended.

Let her go, Tim, she heard in her mind. You can't rip an unsuspecting person like that, you could hurt her. We promised Jarod we wouldn't scan them.

Angelo now, another voice said, the man's voice. She fell first. Like us.

No. Tim. Angelo's dead, remember? She's not exactly like us, although she can hear us. More than Jarod though. You're transmitting too much stimulation, you need to let her go even if her mind feels good.

She can learn to listen to the sun.

Then they both released her, and her mind snapped off as if nothing had happened. She had fallen to her knees, and everyone was hovering around her.

“What the hell happened?” Dad demanded.

“Sorry. He's still learning certain types of self-control,” Annalise said blandly, as if telepathic attacks were an everyday occurrence. “The Centre Swiss-cheesed his mind, although he has access to information the rest of us don't, that's why we brought him along. Probably best not to shake hands, though.”

“What… why… Is that what happens when anyone touches one of you?” Emily asked. Her head was starting to ache just a bit, but mostly she was shaken by the feeling of avoiding a much larger invasion.

“No. You're mind is just an appealing one, for people like us. Very unusual.” She patted Emily on the shoulder, careful not to make skin contact.

“Comforting,” said Tim. “Hear people.”

“Not their thoughts,” Emily protested. “I just get impressions sometimes.”

“Hear souls. Like the sun. One of us. Lucky to be free.”

Annalise nodded in agreement, and shrugged at Jarod's glowering at the less-than-perfect meeting. She touched his hand, skin to skin, and his face softened. She could have been manipulating his mind, Emily thought, but she doubted it. They were talking, without vocal words.

“What the hell just happened?” Dad repeated, and Emily found it was impossible to explain.

* * * * *

Charles and Emily had apparently passed some sort of telepath test, for then they all flew to their hidden home in Southern Oregon. A working farm with distinct anti-technology vibes, and several other relatives that waved at them but kept their distance, obviously giving the visitors some space.

And there Emily discovered he true reason Jarod had switched from bait mode to stealth mode all those months ago, and perhaps even why Parker had de facto given up the search. Jarod had a child, in hiding. Annalise's child, and Emily knew as soon as she laid eyes on her that girl was also a telepath. They were easy to spot, now that she had a taste of their souls. The girl, Miriam, was a lovely thirteen year old with long wavy brown hair and a sharp-witted intelligent air, although she was quiet for most of the initial meeting. She was probably the second smartest person in the room, Emily intuited. The Centre knew what it was doing.

The fact that Miriam was a teenager had Dad scratching his head. “So, you two met only last year?” he asked Annalise, confused.

“Yup.” She collapsed on a comfortable worn couch next to her daughter and put her arms around her.

“But Miriam is thirteen?”

“Mind-blowing, I know,” Annalise replied. “Breeding project. God, it's weird to say that out loud. They decided to cross certain families, I guess, and I inconveniently escaped while pregnant. We've got some genetic data, but not enough to make the situation clear.”

“And...you're all telepaths?”

“Well, not your son, although he tries,” and everyone laughed. “But the rest of us, yes. By touch primarily, I can't tell what you're thinking from this far. Except what's written all over your face.” The group chuckled again. Camaraderie, thought Emily. Another whole family that had been targeted by the Centre. It was hard to believe the Tullys weren't alone.

“Dad,” Jarod ventured. “Where's Mom? When can I see her?” Emily and Charles were the ones to exchange a private glance this time, and Jarod read into it the worst. “Is she…?”

“No, no, son, she's still alive,” Charles soothed. “We're just not exactly together.”

Jarod frowned, his face falling as some deep-rooted dream crumbled before him. “Divorced?” he asked softly.

“No. My faith tells me you can only marry one person, and that person will be Margaret, forever and always. But your mother had … difficulties ... after Emily was born. You met Harriet Tashman?”

“Yes. I saw the farm where you lived. Where you were born,” he said, looking at Emily. “It looked beautiful.”

“It was a prison,” said Charles starkly. “Margaret couldn't cope, not with another child to hide, not with being on the run, not with the world in general. We hid away, but it only aggravated her persecution complex. Eventually it gave way to full psychosis. She's still only partially functioning, under controlled circumstances.”

“Where is she?” Jarod whispered, his eyes filling with tears.

“At a Catholic facility outside of Montréal. Not far from where I raised Emily. She would love to see you, Jarod, but you need to be prepared.”

Jarod nodded, and looked like he was about to dash to the nearest plane to hop across the continent. Just then though, Annalise tipped her head. “You're machine's going off, Jarod.” And like she was a prophet, a laptop wired up in a discreet corner beeped urgently.

“Broots,” said Tim, and Emily wondered if this family had some mystically power to read machines as well as minds. And what the hell was a 'Broots'? The technician who embezzled from the Centre and ran away with his kid, her brain supplied. His malfeasance may not have been self-imposed, she realized with amusement. That's one way to disrupt the team chasing down you and your family.

Jarod's shoulders tensed at the interruption, but apparently the alert was important, for he got up to check the message. Then his frown deepened.

“Broots has a lead on Donoterase,” he said. “The Centre has a hidden tissue storage lab called 'Pakor'. He thinks they're storing genetic samples from Donoterase there.”

“We know of Pakor,” Emily said. “Baltimore, right? Remember, Dad, we deemed it low priority? Although they did go to some effort to hid the facility behind some frozen food front. Never heard of Donoterase, though.”

“It was the lab where I was kept prisoner,” Annalise said softly. “We have reason to believe more children might have been created. It would be the perfect place to hide them.”

“Why not at Blue Cove?” asked Charles. “I knew you were there for twenty years, Jarod, and we couldn't do a damn thing. Surely they could be hiding more projects somewhere in the sublevels.”

“Not from me,” said Jarod. “I've hacked the mainframe several times and now so has Broots. There's plenty of questionable projects going on in the sublevels, but none involving children living there. The Centre has to be more covert than that to get something like this by me.”

“Pakor's a relatively low-security facility,” said Emily. “They can't keep too many people there or it would draw attention to the fact that not is all what it seems.”

“Exactly,” said Jarod, his eyes lighting up. Emily could already tell that look meant trouble, and by Annalise's narrowing eyes, this was a look he got often. “Security's probably passive electronic monitoring, like their data annexes. Not a challenge.”

Emily turned to grin at him. “Well, we could make it a challenge. I for one wouldn't mind hitting back at the Centre, after all these years of hiding away. Then we could puddle-jump up to Canada to see Mom, while you send the data to this Broots guy.”

“You're just as much of a trouble-maker as he is, I can tell,” Annalise complained. “Don't get caught, Jarod, I'll never forgive you.”

“Would you come with us, Annalise?” Emily asked. She was admittedly curious what the woman could really do.

“I'd rather have both my arms broken than directly engage the Centre,” she replied. “But you crazy kids have fun.”

“A Tully mission,” Dad said, grinning. The name was odd to hear, like a long-lost family heirloom shined up once more.

They agree to leave in the morning, for yet more days of flying. But this time Emily felt not like she was walking into a trap, but freer than she'd been in years. Less like prey, more like an army. For once they were the ones to go the offensive. She could tell, now, why Jarod had enjoyed taunting the Centre so much after his release. Catharsis.

* * * * *

That evening Emily sat in the cozy living room, late after dark. Jarod and Dad were in the kitchen discussing battle plans, but Emily already had the gist and was ready for a break. If she knew Dad, he'd eventually steer the conversation to the topics he most wanted to know. Jarod's childhood. His motivation for escape. Kyle, whom they knew hadn't been killed in the car explosion after all, but in some sort of confrontation with the Centre.

Miriam and Tim were sitting on the rug in the living room when she walked in, playing a board game with black and white round stones. Go, the Chinese strategy game. Emily could tell Tim was crushing her at it, but the girl didn't seem perturbed. The odd thing was, they were holding hands.

“Can't you tell what the other is thinking when you touch like that?” Emily asked.

“You can control most of the information flow,” the girl responded, shrugging. “But with him, a lot leaks. That's part of the challenge.”

“How often do you beat him?”

“Wellll, never yet, but I've been close a few times. I'm a very motivated girl.”

Emily chuckled at that. “Do you enjoy having your family back? Your Dad?”

“There's not really a 'back', I never met him until last year, and he didn't grow up with a Dad either, exactly. But now I can't imagine him not being around. Are you glad to have your brother back?”

“Definitely. I've heard about him my entire life.”

“Did you have to hide your whole life, too, like me?”

Emily sighed and sat down next Tim, across from her. “Yeah. Sort of. You still have to live your life to whatever you degree you can, otherwise they've won and captured you just as much as if they've taken you to Blue Cove. Jarod seems to have embraced that philosophy.”

“Yeah. He'll try anything once. Mom calls him a daredevil. Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away.”

“Do you think you're a pretender, like them? Can you become other people?”

“I don't know about the 'becoming' part, but it is easy to convince people that you are someone else. I faked my way into a prison when I was twenty-one. I've told people I'm a detective, reporter, university student doing a paper, and no one ever questioned it. But I've never known what exactly the Centre means by “Pretender,” so there's that. Maybe Jarod can tell me, one day.”

“I think you are one,” Miriam said, and she bent back over the board. The two of them made some quick exchanges, which resulted in Tim taking a large territory of her pieces. She grimaced while Tim grinned.

“Do you two talk to each while you play the game? Is that why you're holding hands?” Emily asked.

“Not so much talking. The language centers of his brain were damaged, and we weren't able to heal it entirely. But we … share. Do you want to hear?” Miriam held out her hand, palm up, for Emily to take if she wished.

“Uhhh...”

“Don't worry, he promises not to pull you in. I can help too.”

Unable to restrain her curiosity, Emily rested her hand on her niece's. Nothing immediately happened except a faint tickle of Miriam's probe, but the girl tipped her head at the contact.

“Your mind is unusual.”

“So I've heard,” Emily said gruffly. “What does that even mean?”

“It feels nice to have contact with you. Like your brain is a balm or something. I don't have to concentrate hardly at all to make this connection, and that usually only happens with people I've had a lot of practice with.”

“Jarod?”

“He's pretty good at reading us now. Mom trained him a bit to project. But you're not even projecting. Like your mind is a pillow and I want to sink into it. Wanna see Tim's mind? Pretty cool.”

“O...kay.”

This time, Miriam eased her in. At first the room simply seemed heightened, sharper somehow. But the Emily gradually realized she could feel all the objects in the room as if they were breathing animals. Plus all the people in the house, the wild trees in the forest outside, satisfied domestic crops planted, quiet real animals settling in for sleep beyond. Everything tied together in a wondrous web of interconnection, complex layers swimming around each other, shifting with each breath.

Isn't his mind beautiful? Miriam thought at her.

Yeah. She responded mentally, without even thinking about how she did it. Somewhere in the background, she could tell Tim was pleased by their observation.

Hey, Tim, Emily continued, can you show me the Centre? He was the only telepath who'd been inside there during the same era as her brothers, and could directly report back what it was like. Beside her, through the hand Miriam's disapproval rained down, but she didn't cut the connection. No emotion at all came from Tim.

He reached over and took Emily's other hand, so for a second all three of them were connected in a ring. Emily didn't plummet this time; he seemed to be keeping his distance just a bit, so it was more like flying aloft through his mind instead of falling. Then he let go of Miriam.

Angelo's not for her, he said. Jarod doesn't want her to see.

He probably doesn't want me to see either, but what the hell.

Tim gave her a conspiratorial smile, and suddenly she was there. Although it was hard to tell where exactly “there” was, it was so dark and grimy. In front of them there was flickering lights, striped, and a tremendous pounding slammed her head.

whats that noise is it even a noise her thoughts rushed out, jumbled, and Tim pulled back on the pounding so it merely thumped in the background.

Electricity. Everywhere.

Wow that sucks. I see why you live on a farm.

Different noises here.

He focused in on the room in front of them, behind the light stripes for some reason. She saw a very young Jarod, probably in his late teens, sitting in a mock house. The memory was stifling, enclosed, claustrophobic. Jarod was speaking, the rhythm of his voice indicating a narration of some kind, but the meaning of the words did not come through. What was clear, however, was that Jarod was upset, the emotional tenor of his voice getting more and more agitated. Another man, older with balding hair, circled the room, at turns comforting and cajoling, his voice slowly rising in intensity like he was wearing down Jarod's soul.

What's happening? Why is he so distressed?

Doesn't want to do the sim. Sydney must push.

Sydney. Right. What's the sim about?

Don't remember. Blur together, so many.

Yeah. Okay, that's enough, Tim. Thank you for showing me.

Lucky to be free.

Me? Yeah I guess they would have stuck me in that room, right?

Yes. One of us.

Miriam too?

Yes.

* * * * *

They flew to Baltimore the next day, just the three of them in Dad's plane. Jarod was insatiable with the questions, about Mom and Dad's family, about Emily's upbringing and adventures as an adult, about their quest for him. Jarod got them to talk so much, Emily only noticed much later that they didn't get a chance to ask about him.

The building they were planning to hit looked like an ordinary industrial building on the outside. Pakor Frozen Foods was the front, and apparently there was indeed some sort of food operation towards the loading dock in the back. Based on satellite imagery, Jarod guessed the hidden lab was off to one side, on a windowless end of the building with a large liquid nitrogen tank. Jarod thought the tank was connected to a backup system for storage freezers, which only would be necessary for critical biological samples.

At a side entrance, Jarod infected the security system with some kind of virus, and suddenly his blank key card worked and clicked open the door. An alarm sounded in the food portion of the building, drawing whatever physical security was on-site down away from the true target in the building. Jarod estimated they had only about ten minutes – and better to do it in eight – before they were noticed.

The rooms were unmarked except for strenuous “No Admittance” signs and more frequent locks. Some lab work appeared to be in progress, but from what little Emily knew of it, there was nothing that high level. Instead the facility seemed to consist of room after room of -80 degree deep freezers, interspersed with refrigerated rooms filled with jars of tissues floating in clear liquid and reeking of formaldehyde.

“Take every disk, notebook or paper inventory you see,” Jarod murmured. “Especially anything marked 'Gemini'. I'll work on the computer.”

In the office, Jarod hooked up a hard drive to the ordinary desktop computer, copying all of its encrypted local data. They could crack the actual contents later. Emily crowbarred open a locked cabinet and hit the jackpot: boxes and boxes of small shiny CD-esque disks, each with tiny code labels: Echidna 1968-1970, Leda 1979-1984, Chimera 1977, Gemini 1971-1972, Talos 1982, Cerebus 1982-1990, Gemini 1983, Gemini 1984, Euryale 1984-1985, Gemini 1985-1988, Cerebus 1991-, Gemini1989-1995, Gemini 1996-

“Jarod. I found Gemini. And wow, someone likes Greek mythology.”

He left his hacking to glance through the contents of the closet. It was a lot of disks. “They do have a flair for the dramatic,” Jarod muttered. “Take all of the Gemini and Euryale disks, and a sampling from every other box. Especially the older stuff.”

“Euryale?”

“Based on the dates, might be Annalise. Is there anything older than 1968?”

“Uh, yeah, like five whole boxes of miscellaneous. Going back to the forties, Jesus. Too many code names for the outside of the boxes.”

“They had less data then. Modern genetic information takes up a lot of room. Take as much as you can.”

Major Charles came back in from his check of the freezer rooms, and helped them load up a few duffel bags. Then they made a run for it, just as the guards began to shout from down the hallway. Thirty thrilling seconds of running, and they were out and in the car.

“That was fun,” Emily remarked, breathing hard. They were all grinning like Cheshire cats at the exhilarating escape. “Can we do it again?”

“You're a natural,” Jarod said, laughing. “Although normally the recapture quotient is higher, puts a little more fear into it.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe not. What do you think we got?”

“A mountain of genetic, proteomic and other bioinformatic data to sift through, but I'm not going to worry about that now. Highest priority right now is to find an inventory, where the samples are coming from. Somebody must have written down where that damned facility is.”

“They'll know we stole the disks, Jarod,” Charles put in. “How will the Centre react?”

“Hard to say without knowing for sure what this Gemini project is, and what their doing with it. I'll put Broots on monitoring Miss Parker and Brigitte, though.”

“What do you think it is?”

Jarod grimaced. “Sydney told me there was a boy, before he went dark. And I have a theory on who that boy is. Because 'Gemini' means twins.”

* * * * *

They worked through the night and into the next day, caffeine-fueled. Jarod found the inventory database, but although Donoterase was referenced, there still was no clue to its whereabouts. It was obviously one of the Centre's deepest secrets, one unknown even to the scientists working on the data.

The genetics data, what little they could parse in a short period of time, did confirm the nature of Gemini. And it shook their father to his core.

“A clone?” Major Charles asked, aghast. “Some kind of look-alike monster in a lab somewhere? Maybe we should let it be.”

“He's a child, Dad. Like a twin, only younger. We can't let them abuse and exploit him any longer. He was Raines' project before Sydney, that's never a good sign. Just ask Tim.”

“How do you know this thing even has a soul?”

Jarod stared him down coolly. “I don't think God cares whether you are conceived in a petri dish or not. He's a human being, and part of our family. Just like Miriam, only unlucky enough to be raised by them. We have to help him. I wish I could get ahold of Sydney.”

Just like Miriam, thought Emily. His son in a way, raised in captivity just like him. No wonder Jarod was desperate to rescue the boy. Didn't Dad see that all his years of obsession was exactly the same?

A few hours later, when Jarod was still going strong with a laser-like focus and Emily and Charles were about to collapse, Broots came through again.

“J..J..Jarod,” a jittery voice said over the phone. “We got a message. Title header's 'Refuge.' You've got to take a look at it.”

052699 0615 845367

“It's Sydney,” Jarod said gleefully.

“Date and time?” Charles said, rubbing his eyes. “What are the coordinates?”

“The Centre's larger airstrip, the one they use for international flights. They're moving the boy tomorrow morning.” Jarod turned and clasped his exhausted father on the shoulder. “I'm going after him, Dad. Will you help me? He's family.”

Charles gave him a huge bear-hug back. “Of course I will, son. If it's that important to you, I will.”

* * * * *

They had to fly immediately to Delaware to have any hope of rescuing Gemini on time. Jarod had a plan already, one detailed enough that Emily suspected he had foreseen such a scenario before. She had never been so close to the jaws of the devil, located just a couple of miles away on the shore, and it was surprising how nervous that made her. Unlike the robbery at Pakor, this plan was dangerous. There were too many unknowns: How many cars, how much security per car, monitoring of the road in advance of the caravan, whether the boy would even cooperate or not. Emily could tell Dad was nervous too. It had to remind him of his one breech into the enormous building, at Catherine Parker's request. Look how well that had gone.

They were exhausted, too, running on adrenaline now. Jarod seemed like a man possessed, or as if he were a machine that needed no sleep. Emily had seen him take exactly one catnap thus far on this trip. Come to think of it, he hadn't sleep much at Annalise's farm, either.

They stole three construction trucks and placed them strategically at a bottleneck in the road, just between two hills and down only two hundred feet from a small side road that could be used as an alternate getaway route. Jarod had acquired – from stockpiles he had conveniently hidden near Blue Cove – multiple smoke bombs and tear-gas canisters to throw into cars, plus four gas masks for them and the boy. The plan was to hit them fast and make a quick exit in the low-visibility confusion. He also showed them hurriedly on a map where more hidden vehicles were, in case they needed to switch, and another airstrip with a parked plane he owned. It was quite obvious that Jarod had done battle with the Centre before, and would probably do it again. He didn't even carry a gun.

The caravan came along a little early, but they were still prepared. Jarod stopped the line of cars with a fake construction sign, and the three of them hit the first three cars without incident. As Jarod predicted, an adolescent boy was in the third vehicle down the line, accompanied by a silver-haired man that didn't blink as he was gassed and Charles pulled the boy from the car. Gemini seemed dazed by the light, his eyes glazed over black, and he submitted to their direction. He was an exact younger replica of the teenager in Tim's mind. Fourteen years old, they estimated, based on the disks.

The plan looked like a swift success in its first few seconds, but then a fifth car pulled up unannounced. Emily recognized the woman from the two years of cat-and-mouse tracking they had done: Miss Parker, daughter of Catherine Parker, daughter of the director, Jarod's tormentor. I thought that bitch gave up the chase, thought Emily as she ran for a truck, but it was already too late. Parker seemed to waiver her attention between Jarod and her father, for reasons she didn't understand, but before Jarod could get into a vehicle, she raised her gun.

From the expression on Jarod's face, he didn't expect Parker to actually pull the trigger. He was almost taunting her with his eyes, which seemed like a bad choice to Emily, but what did she know of their relationship? She sprinted for the truck with Dad just as the incomprehensible BOOM rolled across the little valley, and Jarod crumpled to the ground behind a car. Charles shoved the boy into the truck, shouting in desperation, but Emily came up behind him and practically dislocated her father's shoulder to prevent him from running.

In the cab of the truck, the boy fainted.

“Dad! Jarod's down! We've got to go!” The sweepers were converging on Jarod's position, making immediate rescue even more unlikely. Emily couldn't tell how bad the wound was, but obviously Jarod couldn't stand. “They've got him! Go, now!”

She climbed over the boy's limp form to the driver's seat and began to gun it, even as her dad leaped into the open door. Behind them they could a pile of security holding Jarod down, who even while injured was wriggling and trying to get away. The long-lost child, lost again. Emily couldn't believe it. Even in only the few days since they had met, Jarod seemed invincible.

Major Charles looked back at the smoke over the hill, and then down at the copy of his son laying passed out in the seat, this unnatural child they had risked everything to get, and began to weep.

Emily was twenty-nine years old, and they were right back to the beginning.