The HAUNTED by Maggy
"But... what about... us?" Jarod's voice seemed to deepen with some unidentfiable emotion which Ms. Parker was unwilling to acknowledge. If she did, if she let herself be weak for just a moment-- No. She hardened her heart, and her tone.
"You run and I chase..." Parker wiped away a tear that had strayed down her cheek. A moment later, his voice was stilled.
Just like always. Her hand, of its own volition, brought the phone up to her face, and she rested her cheek against it, as if ...
... as if somehow she could cross the distance of overwhelming sadness between them and feel the softness of his warm hand against her face. His eyes had held so much sorrow ...
Another tear followed the first, and she closed her eyes, allowing flashes of memory to burn in her thoughts...
the pounding of her heart as she had leaned forward--
the surprise in his eyes as he realized what she was doing--
the unexpected softness of his lips as she pressed hers against them...
... They had been children, hardly qualified even to call themselves teenagers. Her father had invited her to visit "the Pretender" in the laboratory where Sydney worked.
A few weeks earlier, for the first time she'd seen "the Pretender" by accident in the hallway. In all the times she'd heard her parents, and Sydney, and Dr. Raines, talking about "the Pretender Project"-- when they thought she wasn't listening-- she'd thought they were talking about a grownup. Then she got a glimpse of him being whisked into one of the elevators by a sweeper, and she was amazed to find that the all-important, almost legendary "Pretender" was really just a child of her own age. That was why, when her father asked her to help them with an experiment, she'd agreed, excited to have the chance to meet him.
"You're -- a girl," he'd said. His voice and his smile were full of wonder... but his dark eyes had held her attention, caused her to catch her breath. They'd held an innocent curiosity, and ... something else, something that flashed so quickly she wasn't sure she'd seen it. Hope?
Ms. Parker couldn't resist smiling in return. They would be friends, she decided. She'd wanted a friend for such a long time...
"My name is Jarod-- what's yours?"
"I'm --" she'd begun to reply as she would to any other 'new kid,' but just in time glanced over at her father, sitting on the sidelines. Daddy had told her not to allow anyone at The Centre to call her anything other than -- "Miss Parker," she replied formally. Jarod's eyes had narrowed slightly, whether in concentration or disappointment, she couldn't tell. She tried to apologize, silently, aware of the dozens of people watching, recording every word.
Almost immediately someone tugged her from behind, breaking their eye contact, moving her away and out of the room. In her peripheral vision, she could see Sydney doing the same with Jarod. She moved her focus to her father at the far side of the room, where she faintly heard him telling someone, "That should give us plenty of data."
Her face flushed a little; she'd forgotten for a moment that Daddy had said this would be a little "test" for their Pretender. Until then, she hadn't really thought much about what kind of test it might be. Now she realized it was physiological-- Sydney and the other scientists were checking this boy's biological reactions to a female of his own age-- her.
The shorter of the two attendants who'd moved her out of the lab and into the hall turned to the other, speaking over her head.
"Did you see the look on the kid's face?" He chuckled unpleasantly through his nose. "You owe me ten bucks."
The second man, who had curly black hair and a severe case of smoking halitosis, wheezed an equally repulsive laugh. "I'll pay you Friday."
"What do we do now-- wait? Or do you think one of us should take her upstairs?"
"Wait. The Boss said he'd be out in a minute to take her back."
The first attendant nodded. Neither of them spoke to Miss Parker.
A flash of anger burned inside her at such blatant disrespect, for her father, for her-- even for the boy, Jarod. She considered simply walking away from them. There was an elevator at the end of the hall, and all she had to do was press the button. Daddy would know that she had gone back to her mother's office...
The door opened and closed behind her. Daddy spoke, dismissing the attendants. Leaning down to kiss her cheek, he said, "Thank you, Angel. That was very helpful to the experiment."
She felt inexplicably uncomfortable and slightly confused, but she answered courteously. "You're welcome, Daddy. Where's Mom?"
"Your mother? She was supposed to be at the experiment," he said, a little curtly. "Let's go check her office."
"Mr. Parker," another voice hailed them from behind. "I need to see you."
"Not now," Daddy said, without turning around. They took two more steps before the voice added,
"It's urgent."
Her father's fingers tightened painfully around hers as he stopped walking. "All right." She raised her eyes just in time to catch a twitching sort of wince pass across her father's features. "You go on back to Momma's office, Angel. I have to explain something to Dr. Raines."
"OK, Daddy."
He started to turn back to the strange doctor with the deep set blue eyes-- Dr. Raines-- but paused to call after her: "Don't detour anywhere, Angel. Remember the cameras."
"Yes, Daddy." She controlled a smile. She had been told about the cameras when she was six, and by the time she was seven, she had not only figured out how they worked but how to hide from them when she wanted to. Until now, she had never thought to use that knowledge to sneak down to the Sub-Levels. She had always been afraid of what might be down there.
Now she knew. And she knew that this would not be her last trip into the lower levels of the Centre.
"Where have you been, Angel?" her mother's beautifully modulated voice chimed from behind her desk. She was tucking some photographs into a big yellow envelope and writing an address on the front, when Miss Parker entered her office.
"Daddy asked me to be part of an experiment," she said.
"Experiment?" Her mother's head snapped up and her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What kind of experiment, Sweetheart?"
"I went to the place where Sydney works with the Pretender, and they -- introduced us. He was behind a glass wall."
"Who was behind a glass wall? Your father?"
"No, Jarod."
"Oh." Her mother sighed. "I'm sorry; I didn't know that was scheduled for today. I wanted to talk to you about it first."
"Why does he look so lonely, Mom?"
"Jarod?"
Miss Parker nodded.
"Well, I would imagine that he sometimes gets tired of working all the time, and needs someone his own age to ..." Momma's voice trailed off.
"Could I-- maybe-- visit with him sometimes?" she asked, hesitantly. To her relief, her mother smiled broadly.
"You know, darling, I think that would be a wonderful idea. Jarod is a very special young man, and the two of you --" She stopped, and her smile disappeared. "No. On second thought, it's not a good idea. The Triumvirate would never allow it."
"Who?"
"The Triumvirate-- Daddy's bosses. The people who are in charge of The Centre."
Miss Parker's eyes narrowed, and she looked at her mother quizzically. "But... I thought Daddy was in charge."
"He is, mostly, but he doesn't own The Centre."
"Well, I think anyone who doesn't let a boy have friends is pretty mean," Miss Parker said, getting up to sit on the arm of her mother's chair.
Her mother pulled her into her lap, and held her close. "So do I, Angel. So do I."
Her anger was still smoldering later that day when an emergency in the Main Lobby area on Level G created the commotion she was waiting for. Her mother had been called out of the Centre temporarily, but Miss Parker had preferred to stay behind, slumped in a leather chair reading Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl. She had just reached the part when the Shaw children are caught reading Polly's diary, when a commotion outside distracted her attention. Miss Parker grinned, and, placing her book neatly on the floor beside her chair, sneaked into the elevator and back down to the area reserved for the Pretender project.
Jarod hadn't seemed the least surprised to see her; in fact, he almost acted as if he'd expected her.
For her part, she apologized for the foolishness of the adults' behavior. As a peace offering, to make it clear that she wanted to be friends, and that she didn't think of him as an "experiment," she defied her father and did something truly daring: she told Jarod her name. Eyes wide, he solemnly promised he would never tell a soul.
After that, whenever she could sneak away-- letting her father think she was with her mother, or her mother think she was with her father (although from something her mother said one day, she suspected her visits weren't as secret as she hoped, but no one stopped her)-- she continued her clandestine forays into the nether regions of The Centre.
Jarod was always delighted to see her. Sometimes they just sat while he plied her with questions, and she told him about the "normal things" she did outside The Centre; sometimes he told her about "simulations" he did within The Centre's walls. And sometimes, when Sydney was busy on other projects, they went exploring. She was always the one who led these expeditions, since Jarod had little experience with pushing the envelope of rules.
On one particular day, they nearly got caught, and almost gave themselves hernias trying not to laugh as a group of sweepers patrolled only inches from their hiding place. The joy of not being discovered, of having a friend who knew exactly when to be quiet and when to talk, prompted her turn to him and smile in completely unguarded delight. The answering look on his own face made her act completely spontaneously, though in truth she'd thought about it many times: she leaned forward, quickly, and kissed his lips.
She hadn't expected the warm, slightly chocolatey taste of his breath (from the Tootsie Rolls she'd smuggled in), or the softness of his lips against hers... but what had surprised her most was the warm smile in his eyes, as if she'd given him an incomparable gift...
They had been so young... neither one of them had any idea of the manipulations and strategies that were being masterminded around them. But it was Jarod who'd known how much she'd enjoy the lab with the twin rabbits, Jarod who'd shown her how to use the plastic suspension sphere as a swing... and it was Jarod who held her when Faith died, when she'd suddenly been overwhelmed by the feeling of abandonment that reminded her of her mother's death all over again...
"Why is it that the one person I've been trained to hate... is always with me during the worst moments of my life?"
Not quite a week ago, as "the devil's own storm" raged outside, and the heat of Ocee's fire warmed her back, even through the quilt he'd tucked around her, she'd been moved to ask that question of the Pretender. The bright flames had reflected in his brown eyes, reminding her of the innocent boy he'd once been. His breath against her face was warm as he bent towards her, so slowly that time seemed reverse itself, and allow her to be the innocent girl who had trusted him more than any other human being...
Then Ocee had interrupted them, and the moment had been lost. She'd been unable to stop herself from meeting his eyes, those brown eyes that could hold more meaning in a glance than most poets could express in an epic...
But five years cannot be erased in a single moment of weakness, and she couldn't help remembering...
...her return to The Centre, years after she had been sent away by her father. In her pervasive naivete, she had believed Jarod long gone-- "graduated" -- sent along his way, progressed into his grown-up life. Her father had called her back to work on "the Pretender" project, and she had foolishly assumed they had moved on to a new Pretender, most likely a young child.
They had not.
To her chagrin and dismay, she was assigned to monitor Jarod, a grown-up Jarod, who was having episodes of violent nightmares. Her job, based on her graduate school experience in the psychology of sleep disorders, was to observe him via the omnipresent monitoring cameras, and evaluate the magnitude and severity of his disturbance. She had stayed up through the night watching his tortured thrashing and listening to his desperate cries for just over a week, when suddenly his pattern changed. There came a night when, for some reason unknown to her, he began to incorporate her name into his terrors. Unable -- or, she admitted to herself years later, unwilling-- to control her response, she had disengaged the recording cameras and rushed into his sleep chamber. He continued to scream her name, alternately begging "Don't let them!" and threatening "I won't let you!"
As soon as she touched his arm, speaking soothingly, he calmed down. With carefully detached concern, she assumed a sitting position on the bed beside him until he stopped tossing around. Relieved, she moved to get up-- only to find that Jarod had wrapped his arm tightly around her waist.
"Don't go yet. Please." She was startled by the deep rumble of his voice in the darkness. "I need to talk to you."
"You were having a nightmare," she said quickly, defensively. "I only came in because--"
Jarod let out a breath, like a laugh. "My entire life is a nightmare, Parker. And you came because I needed you."
Loosening his hold, he sat up on his knees beside her. He moved his face right next to hers, scrutinizing her as best he could in the dim fluorescent light. "You can't really be part of-- all this-- can you?" he asked. When his hand came up and gently touched her hair, she realized he wasn't actually asking her.
That didn't stop her from responding, however. "Part of what, Jarod?"
Now that her vision was acclimated to the near-darkness, she could see his eyes close, and feel when his whole body shook in a spasm. "This place, Parker. It's-- it's Hell."
"It's a corporation," she said. Not knowing how to respond, she opted for glib sarcasm. "Every corporation is its own version of Hell."
He shook his head. "You don't understand. They make me do things-- the sims." His voice rasped with raw pain.
"You've always done sims," she replied, but she was uneasy. When she'd first seen him, she'd feared him mad. But now... she didn't know what to think.
"You really don't understand, do you?" he asked, almost reading her mind.
"Then explain," she replied reasonably, as if they weren't sitting in a dark room in the bowels of an unexplainable corporate structure.
Jarod watched her silently for a moment, not answering. When at last he spoke, his tone was wistful, and he reached out to stroke her dark hair, again, briefly. "No. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."
Drawn into the trusting warmth of his eyes, she almost smiled at him. "Try me."
"Someday, Miss Parker. Someday." He paused, shaking his head. "Not now. Not today. You have to go back to your job, and so do I. But-- thanks for coming to my rescue, and for reminding me of that little girl--" Jarod leaned forward and kissed her cheek, gently. Then he whispered in her ear, a name. Her name. The one no one ever spoke.
With a start, Miss Parker suddenly recalled where she was, and who she was, and what she was supposed to be doing. She pushed away from him, jumping up to put space between herself and the man on the bed. "I'm not that naive little girl anymore, Jarod."
"Don't be so sure about that." He flashed his boyish smile, then sobered almost immediately. He reached out for her hand, pressing it between both of his. "No matter what happens in the next -- few weeks-- just know that I would never do anything to hurt-- her. Your mother would understand."
But she hadn't understood. She'd pushed him away, ignoring the hurt in his face, telling him she'd had enough of his riddles and foolishness. She would be requesting a transfer from his project and he could try his pretends on some other gullible fool. He had watched her without responding as she pulled his door shut behind her. She had even been perversely satisfied by the finality in the click of the lock.
Exactly three days later, Jarod had escaped, catapulting her into a nightmare beyond her ugliest imagination.
He had reminded her in the limousine on the tarmac, his bound hands warm, closing around hers, of the connection she'd tried to deny for so many years. Her heart had jolted in real fear as she realized what he was asking, what he was telling her. Just as he had on that long-ago morning in his room on SL-16, Jarod watched her silently, speaking to her only with his eyes. And just as it had on that occasion, the hope in his dark gaze turned to pain as she pulled away from him.
"Forget that... moment of weakness, Jarod."
The lines of care had become suddenly prominent in his face, sending a chill skidding along her spine. She wanted to reach out, to take back her rejection, but it was too late. In a moment, the protective mask settled over his features. Once more, they were back to the familiar old territory, into their habitual roles of huntress and prey. It was too late.
Miss Parker dropped her phone onto the bed, and covered her face with her hands.
The Pretender. He was a genius who could be anyone, could be anything he wanted to be.
And it would haunt her forever, remembering...
that for just a moment he had let her know, had let her see, that all he had ever really wanted to be... was with her.
Note: Please do not archive without permission. Email: diamanta1@aol.com
(Jan 26, 2002 // *expanded* Oct. 8, 2002)
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DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters, and I respect
the intellectual property rights of those who do.
As the saying goes, "I just borrowed them" for a minute
or two to fill in a blank space.
SUMMARY (Spoilers for IOTH):
Expansion of Ms. Parker's thoughts after
she hangs up the cellphone at the end of Island of the Haunted.
It started out as "just a filler" but it begged to be developed more coherently.
I thought I covered that by doing it from Jarod's p.o.v. -- but you all
know how persistent our Ms. P. can be. It's one of the things we
love about her.
Please note that in the second "reminiscence," I have
referred to completely non-canonical events which I created in Sotto
Voce, a Pretender fanfic of my own which is no longer posted.
FILLER: Note also that there's a bit of "filler" for the episode (title??) in which Miss Parker and Jarod first meet.
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"But... what about... us?" Jarod's voice seemed to deepen with some unidentfiable emotion which Ms. Parker was unwilling to acknowledge. If she did, if she let herself be weak for just a moment-- No. She hardened her heart, and her tone.
"You run and I chase..." Parker wiped away a tear that had strayed down her cheek. A moment later, his voice was stilled.
Just like always. Her hand, of its own volition, brought the phone up to her face, and she rested her cheek against it, as if ...
... as if somehow she could cross the distance of overwhelming sadness between them and feel the softness of his warm hand against her face. His eyes had held so much sorrow ...
Another tear followed the first, and she closed her eyes, allowing flashes of memory to burn in her thoughts...
the pounding of her heart as she had leaned forward--
the surprise in his eyes as he realized what she was doing--
the unexpected softness of his lips as she pressed hers against them...
... They had been children, hardly qualified even to call themselves teenagers. Her father had invited her to visit "the Pretender" in the laboratory where Sydney worked.
A few weeks earlier, for the first time she'd seen "the Pretender" by accident in the hallway. In all the times she'd heard her parents, and Sydney, and Dr. Raines, talking about "the Pretender Project"-- when they thought she wasn't listening-- she'd thought they were talking about a grownup. Then she got a glimpse of him being whisked into one of the elevators by a sweeper, and she was amazed to find that the all-important, almost legendary "Pretender" was really just a child of her own age. That was why, when her father asked her to help them with an experiment, she'd agreed, excited to have the chance to meet him.
"You're -- a girl," he'd said. His voice and his smile were full of wonder... but his dark eyes had held her attention, caused her to catch her breath. They'd held an innocent curiosity, and ... something else, something that flashed so quickly she wasn't sure she'd seen it. Hope?
Ms. Parker couldn't resist smiling in return. They would be friends, she decided. She'd wanted a friend for such a long time...
"My name is Jarod-- what's yours?"
"I'm --" she'd begun to reply as she would to any other 'new kid,' but just in time glanced over at her father, sitting on the sidelines. Daddy had told her not to allow anyone at The Centre to call her anything other than -- "Miss Parker," she replied formally. Jarod's eyes had narrowed slightly, whether in concentration or disappointment, she couldn't tell. She tried to apologize, silently, aware of the dozens of people watching, recording every word.
Almost immediately someone tugged her from behind, breaking their eye contact, moving her away and out of the room. In her peripheral vision, she could see Sydney doing the same with Jarod. She moved her focus to her father at the far side of the room, where she faintly heard him telling someone, "That should give us plenty of data."
Her face flushed a little; she'd forgotten for a moment that Daddy had said this would be a little "test" for their Pretender. Until then, she hadn't really thought much about what kind of test it might be. Now she realized it was physiological-- Sydney and the other scientists were checking this boy's biological reactions to a female of his own age-- her.
The shorter of the two attendants who'd moved her out of the lab and into the hall turned to the other, speaking over her head.
"Did you see the look on the kid's face?" He chuckled unpleasantly through his nose. "You owe me ten bucks."
The second man, who had curly black hair and a severe case of smoking halitosis, wheezed an equally repulsive laugh. "I'll pay you Friday."
"What do we do now-- wait? Or do you think one of us should take her upstairs?"
"Wait. The Boss said he'd be out in a minute to take her back."
The first attendant nodded. Neither of them spoke to Miss Parker.
A flash of anger burned inside her at such blatant disrespect, for her father, for her-- even for the boy, Jarod. She considered simply walking away from them. There was an elevator at the end of the hall, and all she had to do was press the button. Daddy would know that she had gone back to her mother's office...
The door opened and closed behind her. Daddy spoke, dismissing the attendants. Leaning down to kiss her cheek, he said, "Thank you, Angel. That was very helpful to the experiment."
She felt inexplicably uncomfortable and slightly confused, but she answered courteously. "You're welcome, Daddy. Where's Mom?"
"Your mother? She was supposed to be at the experiment," he said, a little curtly. "Let's go check her office."
"Mr. Parker," another voice hailed them from behind. "I need to see you."
"Not now," Daddy said, without turning around. They took two more steps before the voice added,
"It's urgent."
Her father's fingers tightened painfully around hers as he stopped walking. "All right." She raised her eyes just in time to catch a twitching sort of wince pass across her father's features. "You go on back to Momma's office, Angel. I have to explain something to Dr. Raines."
"OK, Daddy."
He started to turn back to the strange doctor with the deep set blue eyes-- Dr. Raines-- but paused to call after her: "Don't detour anywhere, Angel. Remember the cameras."
"Yes, Daddy." She controlled a smile. She had been told about the cameras when she was six, and by the time she was seven, she had not only figured out how they worked but how to hide from them when she wanted to. Until now, she had never thought to use that knowledge to sneak down to the Sub-Levels. She had always been afraid of what might be down there.
Now she knew. And she knew that this would not be her last trip into the lower levels of the Centre.
"Where have you been, Angel?" her mother's beautifully modulated voice chimed from behind her desk. She was tucking some photographs into a big yellow envelope and writing an address on the front, when Miss Parker entered her office.
"Daddy asked me to be part of an experiment," she said.
"Experiment?" Her mother's head snapped up and her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What kind of experiment, Sweetheart?"
"I went to the place where Sydney works with the Pretender, and they -- introduced us. He was behind a glass wall."
"Who was behind a glass wall? Your father?"
"No, Jarod."
"Oh." Her mother sighed. "I'm sorry; I didn't know that was scheduled for today. I wanted to talk to you about it first."
"Why does he look so lonely, Mom?"
"Jarod?"
Miss Parker nodded.
"Well, I would imagine that he sometimes gets tired of working all the time, and needs someone his own age to ..." Momma's voice trailed off.
"Could I-- maybe-- visit with him sometimes?" she asked, hesitantly. To her relief, her mother smiled broadly.
"You know, darling, I think that would be a wonderful idea. Jarod is a very special young man, and the two of you --" She stopped, and her smile disappeared. "No. On second thought, it's not a good idea. The Triumvirate would never allow it."
"Who?"
"The Triumvirate-- Daddy's bosses. The people who are in charge of The Centre."
Miss Parker's eyes narrowed, and she looked at her mother quizzically. "But... I thought Daddy was in charge."
"He is, mostly, but he doesn't own The Centre."
"Well, I think anyone who doesn't let a boy have friends is pretty mean," Miss Parker said, getting up to sit on the arm of her mother's chair.
Her mother pulled her into her lap, and held her close. "So do I, Angel. So do I."
Her anger was still smoldering later that day when an emergency in the Main Lobby area on Level G created the commotion she was waiting for. Her mother had been called out of the Centre temporarily, but Miss Parker had preferred to stay behind, slumped in a leather chair reading Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl. She had just reached the part when the Shaw children are caught reading Polly's diary, when a commotion outside distracted her attention. Miss Parker grinned, and, placing her book neatly on the floor beside her chair, sneaked into the elevator and back down to the area reserved for the Pretender project.
Jarod hadn't seemed the least surprised to see her; in fact, he almost acted as if he'd expected her.
For her part, she apologized for the foolishness of the adults' behavior. As a peace offering, to make it clear that she wanted to be friends, and that she didn't think of him as an "experiment," she defied her father and did something truly daring: she told Jarod her name. Eyes wide, he solemnly promised he would never tell a soul.
After that, whenever she could sneak away-- letting her father think she was with her mother, or her mother think she was with her father (although from something her mother said one day, she suspected her visits weren't as secret as she hoped, but no one stopped her)-- she continued her clandestine forays into the nether regions of The Centre.
Jarod was always delighted to see her. Sometimes they just sat while he plied her with questions, and she told him about the "normal things" she did outside The Centre; sometimes he told her about "simulations" he did within The Centre's walls. And sometimes, when Sydney was busy on other projects, they went exploring. She was always the one who led these expeditions, since Jarod had little experience with pushing the envelope of rules.
On one particular day, they nearly got caught, and almost gave themselves hernias trying not to laugh as a group of sweepers patrolled only inches from their hiding place. The joy of not being discovered, of having a friend who knew exactly when to be quiet and when to talk, prompted her turn to him and smile in completely unguarded delight. The answering look on his own face made her act completely spontaneously, though in truth she'd thought about it many times: she leaned forward, quickly, and kissed his lips.
She hadn't expected the warm, slightly chocolatey taste of his breath (from the Tootsie Rolls she'd smuggled in), or the softness of his lips against hers... but what had surprised her most was the warm smile in his eyes, as if she'd given him an incomparable gift...
They had been so young... neither one of them had any idea of the manipulations and strategies that were being masterminded around them. But it was Jarod who'd known how much she'd enjoy the lab with the twin rabbits, Jarod who'd shown her how to use the plastic suspension sphere as a swing... and it was Jarod who held her when Faith died, when she'd suddenly been overwhelmed by the feeling of abandonment that reminded her of her mother's death all over again...
"Why is it that the one person I've been trained to hate... is always with me during the worst moments of my life?"
Not quite a week ago, as "the devil's own storm" raged outside, and the heat of Ocee's fire warmed her back, even through the quilt he'd tucked around her, she'd been moved to ask that question of the Pretender. The bright flames had reflected in his brown eyes, reminding her of the innocent boy he'd once been. His breath against her face was warm as he bent towards her, so slowly that time seemed reverse itself, and allow her to be the innocent girl who had trusted him more than any other human being...
Then Ocee had interrupted them, and the moment had been lost. She'd been unable to stop herself from meeting his eyes, those brown eyes that could hold more meaning in a glance than most poets could express in an epic...
But five years cannot be erased in a single moment of weakness, and she couldn't help remembering...
...her return to The Centre, years after she had been sent away by her father. In her pervasive naivete, she had believed Jarod long gone-- "graduated" -- sent along his way, progressed into his grown-up life. Her father had called her back to work on "the Pretender" project, and she had foolishly assumed they had moved on to a new Pretender, most likely a young child.
They had not.
To her chagrin and dismay, she was assigned to monitor Jarod, a grown-up Jarod, who was having episodes of violent nightmares. Her job, based on her graduate school experience in the psychology of sleep disorders, was to observe him via the omnipresent monitoring cameras, and evaluate the magnitude and severity of his disturbance. She had stayed up through the night watching his tortured thrashing and listening to his desperate cries for just over a week, when suddenly his pattern changed. There came a night when, for some reason unknown to her, he began to incorporate her name into his terrors. Unable -- or, she admitted to herself years later, unwilling-- to control her response, she had disengaged the recording cameras and rushed into his sleep chamber. He continued to scream her name, alternately begging "Don't let them!" and threatening "I won't let you!"
As soon as she touched his arm, speaking soothingly, he calmed down. With carefully detached concern, she assumed a sitting position on the bed beside him until he stopped tossing around. Relieved, she moved to get up-- only to find that Jarod had wrapped his arm tightly around her waist.
"Don't go yet. Please." She was startled by the deep rumble of his voice in the darkness. "I need to talk to you."
"You were having a nightmare," she said quickly, defensively. "I only came in because--"
Jarod let out a breath, like a laugh. "My entire life is a nightmare, Parker. And you came because I needed you."
Loosening his hold, he sat up on his knees beside her. He moved his face right next to hers, scrutinizing her as best he could in the dim fluorescent light. "You can't really be part of-- all this-- can you?" he asked. When his hand came up and gently touched her hair, she realized he wasn't actually asking her.
That didn't stop her from responding, however. "Part of what, Jarod?"
Now that her vision was acclimated to the near-darkness, she could see his eyes close, and feel when his whole body shook in a spasm. "This place, Parker. It's-- it's Hell."
"It's a corporation," she said. Not knowing how to respond, she opted for glib sarcasm. "Every corporation is its own version of Hell."
He shook his head. "You don't understand. They make me do things-- the sims." His voice rasped with raw pain.
"You've always done sims," she replied, but she was uneasy. When she'd first seen him, she'd feared him mad. But now... she didn't know what to think.
"You really don't understand, do you?" he asked, almost reading her mind.
"Then explain," she replied reasonably, as if they weren't sitting in a dark room in the bowels of an unexplainable corporate structure.
Jarod watched her silently for a moment, not answering. When at last he spoke, his tone was wistful, and he reached out to stroke her dark hair, again, briefly. "No. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."
Drawn into the trusting warmth of his eyes, she almost smiled at him. "Try me."
"Someday, Miss Parker. Someday." He paused, shaking his head. "Not now. Not today. You have to go back to your job, and so do I. But-- thanks for coming to my rescue, and for reminding me of that little girl--" Jarod leaned forward and kissed her cheek, gently. Then he whispered in her ear, a name. Her name. The one no one ever spoke.
With a start, Miss Parker suddenly recalled where she was, and who she was, and what she was supposed to be doing. She pushed away from him, jumping up to put space between herself and the man on the bed. "I'm not that naive little girl anymore, Jarod."
"Don't be so sure about that." He flashed his boyish smile, then sobered almost immediately. He reached out for her hand, pressing it between both of his. "No matter what happens in the next -- few weeks-- just know that I would never do anything to hurt-- her. Your mother would understand."
But she hadn't understood. She'd pushed him away, ignoring the hurt in his face, telling him she'd had enough of his riddles and foolishness. She would be requesting a transfer from his project and he could try his pretends on some other gullible fool. He had watched her without responding as she pulled his door shut behind her. She had even been perversely satisfied by the finality in the click of the lock.
Exactly three days later, Jarod had escaped, catapulting her into a nightmare beyond her ugliest imagination.
He had reminded her in the limousine on the tarmac, his bound hands warm, closing around hers, of the connection she'd tried to deny for so many years. Her heart had jolted in real fear as she realized what he was asking, what he was telling her. Just as he had on that long-ago morning in his room on SL-16, Jarod watched her silently, speaking to her only with his eyes. And just as it had on that occasion, the hope in his dark gaze turned to pain as she pulled away from him.
"Forget that... moment of weakness, Jarod."
The lines of care had become suddenly prominent in his face, sending a chill skidding along her spine. She wanted to reach out, to take back her rejection, but it was too late. In a moment, the protective mask settled over his features. Once more, they were back to the familiar old territory, into their habitual roles of huntress and prey. It was too late.
Miss Parker dropped her phone onto the bed, and covered her face with her hands.
The Pretender. He was a genius who could be anyone, could be anything he wanted to be.
And it would haunt her forever, remembering...
that for just a moment he had let her know, had let her see, that all he had ever really wanted to be... was with her.