Chapter 2: Statue

It was a practiced stance – face set in stern neutrality, hands either hanging deceptively limp at the sides or tucked carefully behind, legs shoulder-length apart, knees flexed. Only the eyes, sometimes hidden from view by dark glasses when out in the bright sun, would move and take in the entirety of the situation. Yet despite the illusion of being relaxed and at rest, the body was taut like a tightly-strung bow, ready to snap into action at the slightest provocation – or a simple word or glance from the proper person.

Sam knew his place in the Sim Lab – in the corner by the door. He also knew the reason for his being there – ostensibly to guard the three who were the point unit in the hunt for the escaped Pretender. Then again, he thought as he had millions of times in the past ten years of service directly assigned to Miss Parker, what threat would dare penetrate seventeen floors beneath the ground – other than a threat that existed within the Centre itself all along, that was? And he could think of quite a few of those that had arisen over the years: Raines, Cox, Lyle, Willy…

The latter name came with a bitter taste to it – and a reminiscing that didn't necessarily disturb the process of being a sentinel. Sam and Willy had been recruited by the Centre at roughly the same time – their training had been simultaneous and sometimes cooperative. Willy had been a thug and a rapist, rescued from yet another confrontation with the state judicial system by the Centre. Sam knew his own history to be no less unsavory – he'd been the bulk and the muscle behind a very profitable racketeering scheme in a low-rent area of East Los Angeles, equally destined for yet another retreat behind bars at state expense until whisked all the way across the continent by an organization that nobody knew about – or didn't dare mention if they DID know.

Willy's rise within sweeper ranks had been meteoric, however, due to his willingness to do absolutely anything asked of him regardless of how inhuman or sadistic. Sam, while certainly capable of ignoring the suffering of others or inflicting a goodly portion of it himself, didn't have that same sadistic, cruel, inhuman streak to him that Willy had – and that had meant that when William Raines had come looking for a personal sweeper, he hadn't even bothered applying for the job. When Miss Parker had come looking, however, she'd come looking for someone who was expert in every last martial art or form of weaponry known – and Sam knew he'd found his place at her side. He'd done everything in his power to keep himself right where he'd landed at last, and for a long time had been content – more or less.

Those first few years with her at Corporate had been boring ones, and his job had been purely cosmetic. Miss Parker was in charge of Security, and he'd been image enhancement for her. His height and bulk next to her slender form had strengthened the perception of her as tough and no-nonsense to those who weren't acquainted with her. Once a person had met the Ice Queen, however, his presence had been superfluous. And yet, she'd kept him around.

When ordered out of the Corporate skyscraper in New York City, where she'd been responsible for overseeing Centre security around the globe, and into the underground facility at the Centre headquarters in Blue Cove in order to take charge of retrieving an escaped Centre asset, she'd brought Sam with her. And suddenly, life as Miss Parker's personal sweeper was anything BUT boring. There were cross-continental flights at the drop of the hat, and foot chases that started out so promisingly and inevitably ended up being so futile. The boring persisted too, unfortunately – the process of sorting through and analyzing the detritus of Jarod's various lairs and hideouts was a task for Sydney and Broots and Parker alone, and his input was neither desired nor requested. Those were the days he manned his post by the Sim Lab door and adopted "the position" he'd learned during training. Those were the days he became a statue – a part of the scenery there.

In between the exciting and the boring were those times when Miss Parker had him do things outside the normal definition of his job – taking care of the small daughter of her coworker Broots being one of them. Sam had enjoyed every part of that particular assignment, despite the fact that Miss Parker found plenty of excuses since to give him a bad time for not wiping the floor with an eleven year-old girl at checkers. For the first time in a very long time, he'd had the chance to just be himself with someone who had no reason to be practicing guile – and no amount of kidding could change how much he'd enjoyed that respite.

But now…

It had been months since the last time they'd had a "hit" on Jarod that showed even belated promise – and standing near the door of the Sim Lab in "the position" for day after day, week after week, month after month was growing very old. Sam knew that he wasn't the only one that was wearing down. The cast of characters likely to push through those pneumatic doors had changed considerably lately. Miss Parker's father was dead – rumor had it that he'd just walked out an open hatch of an air liner over a stormy, night-time Atlantic ocean. Her father's latest wife was dead too – dying in childbirth long before her husband. Mr. Cox – an associate referred to Raines courtesy of the Triumvirate – had been withdrawn abruptly to Africa after what was rumored to be a botched attempt by Raines to bomb an international convention of peace advocates. Mr. Lyle, Miss Parker's sinister twin brother, was far less likely to visit now that the two siblings were in a competition to be the first to bring the escaped Pretender back to the fold. Only Mr. Raines and Mr. Lyle would come calling now – giving him reason to be patient and play his part as statue and sentinel.

Knowing that the three in the Sim Lab would be paying attention to just about anything but him and what he was looking at, Sam let his eyes rest on his boss. She was doing the best she could to broadcast an attitude of confidence and business-as-usual, but to those who knew her as well as he did now, signs that she was visibly tiring were all too obvious. That she was growing more and more desperately unhappy with each passing day was obvious in the fact that she no longer had that smart snap to her step or the steel spring in her back. The growl in her voice was half-hearted now.

Sam's eyes wandered to the others. Sydney knew that something changed. He'd seen the old psychiatrist watch Miss Parker's actions carefully on the rare occasion when he could get away with it without causing comment, and he'd seen the quick flash of worry on the old man's face. Broots was watching both of the others, no less worried in his turn. The computer tech just hid his concerns expertly beneath his generally cowardly flakiness.

But Sam had resources the others did not. He spent time with other sweepers, among which there was an active and unusually accurate rumor mill. There were locker room bets being made now that Miss Parker's continued lack of success at being able to bring in even a hint of where Jarod had found to hide was going to be costing her politically soon. He hadn't participated in any of the bets, of course – that would be disloyalty of a magnitude even he couldn't abide. On the contrary, he'd kept his ear to the ground, in case any of the sweepers associated with Raines or Lyle decided to discuss what was going on in either of those camps. It was one of the few ways in which he could actively participate with his team.

After all, neither Broots nor Sydney would want or even expected to hear HIS perspective on much of anything else. He was a sweeper – period, end of statement. He was muscle, unthinking and unquestioning in response, uncritical of the demands put upon him. For the last few months, he'd been a statue near the door of the Sim Lab. He was a bit of Centre décor.

No, he wasn't – but that was the way everyone thought of him. Sometime it suited his purpose.

What would happen, he wondered, if late some evening, when everyone but the old psychiatrist had vacated the Sim Lab, Sam stepped out of his customary spot and brought HIS concerns to him – let the old psychiatrist in on the skuttlebutt from the sweeper's locker room? Sydney was one of those people whose reactions could never be predictable – chances were about even that he'd be told to butt out of something that was none of his concern just as quickly as he'd be invited to consult with the other two.

Sam let his eyes sweep across the faces of the three with him in the Sim Lab. Despite everything, they were his coworkers – he cared about them. He spent more time with these people than he did with anyone else, and had been doing so for far more years than he wanted to admit. And as time continued to flow by with nothing making the situation much better for any of them, he was finding he wanted to be considered as something more than just a tall, silent Centre man-in-black – more than just image enhancement.

Sam took a deep, cleansing breath and mentally shook out the cobwebs. Who was he fooling?

He WAS just a bit of Centre décor – a big, burly, intimidating statue by the Sim Lab door. Not one of these people had ever given any inclination that they thought of him as anything else. In true sweeper style, he was expected to watch and not comment – act but not advise. His advice, his concerns – indeed, his very humanity – were neither required nor desired of him. He had his place – he knew his place – and he knew the penalty for stepping out of place. It was a penalty he really didn't want to have to pay.

And so he'd remain a statue by the door, always watching, never speaking.

God help them all!