"What was Angelo doing in the guard room?" Mr. Raines demanded.

"Apparently he wanted to see Jarod," Sydney answered. "He can sense his pain from quite a distance, it seems. But when he got to the guard room he was distracted by one of the guards who is going though a divorce. He is easily distractible, especially when someone near him is feeling something quite intensely. He had the guard in tears."

"The man should be shot."

"Who? The guard or Angelo?"

"The guard. Angelo is too valuable, even if he is a nuisance. Jarod has decided to cooperate now, has he?"

"Yes. Letting Angelo see him might have had something to do with it. But he says he has to be in his own room. He can't think in a holding cell."

Raines gave a short, unamused laugh. "He can go back anytime…now."

"Raines, I wish you would tell me—"

Raines' head swiveled around. "What was that?"

The shrill voice of a girl could be heard in the corridor outside the laboratory. "Let me go!"

Sam the Sweeper flung the door open. "Mr. Raines, we've caught an intruder!"

"An intruder?" Raines and Sydney both repeated.

"In the Centre?" Sydney said. "Has that ever happened before?" People usually wanted to get out of the Centre, not in.

Sam and Willie brought the struggling girl in. She was short, stocky in an attractive way, blonde, and very pretty. She was also very young and rather grubby.

"What is this?" Raines demanded.

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "He said there weren't going to be any zombies."

Sydney cocked his head. London accent? Cockney? Not something you would expect from a Centre intruder.

"Just you wait until my daddy finds out about the way your sweepers have treated me, Mr. Raines! Or should I say Doctor Raines?"

"Who are you?" Raines growled at her.

"Miss Tyler!" came a new voice from the doorway. Five heads swiveled this time. The new intruder was a tall man, hair cropped short, very long nose and wide mouth, wearing jeans, a black leather jacket, and a smirk. "There you are! You have given me quite a chase, young lady. As soon as my assignment here is cleared up, I am taking you straight home."

Another Brit? Northern England, Sydney decided.

"No. I'm not going home. You tell Mutumbo it's not his job to send sweepers after me. If Daddy wants me home, he can jolly well come here and fetch me himself."

Raines dragged his oxygen tank forward and glared up at the tall man. "What is going on? Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor." He smiled widely beneath his long nose.

"Doctor? Doctor Who?"

"Just 'the Doctor.' My business here is with you, Mr. Raines. Mutumbo sent me." He pulled a wallet out of his pocket and flashed what was clearly a Triumvirate authorization, signed by Mutumbo, in Raines' face. "It also incidentally happens to be with Mr. Tyler's little girl."

"I'm not a child anymore!" Miss Tyler shouted at him. "And I don't want to go back to Africa! I hate Africa! I want to go back to London where I belong!"

"Who is Mr. Tyler?" Raines snapped. "And what is his kid doing in the Centre?"

"Oh, you wouldn't have heard of Mr. Tyler, Mr. Raines. But he's valuable enough that Mutumbo is even willing to put up with his spoiled brat to have his assistance in Africa. She stowed away aboard my plane, thinking I was going to Dover. Dover, England, not Dover, Delaware."

"I like Delaware," Miss Tyler announced. "And I really like the famous Centre. Really neat place. Wicked. You know I've been here a day and a half and none of you ever knew? The poor Doctor has been searching for me all over Delaware, and here I've been." She edged up to Sydney and smiled at him. She had a dazzling smile, one that made her face glow. "You've been doing some interesting experiments, Doctor Sydney. I liked the one with the little twin boys. Do you think they could actually read each other's minds?"

Sydney chuckled with a sly enjoyment of Raines' predicament. "I'm not sure yet. Identical twins do have a very special connection. Are you interested in twins, Miss Tyler?"

"Of course! Who isn't?"

The Doctor interrupted them. "Sydney, keep the child occupied while I talk to Mr. Raines. Don't let her escape. Alright, Mr. Raines. Mutumbo sent me to find out why you've been keeping the Centre's biggest discovery from him."

"Discovery? I haven't been keeping any discovery from the Triumvirate—"

Sydney quite enjoyed talking to Miss Tyler. She was a change from his normal subjects, a chaotic but vivacious seventeen-year old with no mother and no home life to speak of. He could see that her antics were an effort to get her father's attention, not really a bid to go home to England.

"Tell me about your father, Miss Tyler."

She made a face. "What's there to tell, Syd? He's a workaholic. So he works for Mutumbo. Big deal. That man thinks he's a king."

"Well, he is, in a way."

"The important thing is my father thinks he is. Mutumbo says Jump, and Daddy jumps. Doesn't matter that he promised to take me to the wildlife reserve last week. No, he has to run off on another assignment for King Mutumbo. It's not fair! He should be here!" Angry tears started out of her eyes. "I hate Africa, and I hate Mutumbo."

"Your father is probably trying to protect you, Miss Tyler. It's not an easy thing working for the Triumvirate. He probably has no choice—anymore than the rest of us do."

Miss Tyler stared at him. "Is that why you do it, Sydney? Why you work here and do experiments on little children?"

He stared back. No one had questioned him on his motivations before, not since Jacob—that night— He pushed the memory away. "My work here is valuable, Miss Tyler. The discoveries I make about the human condition will benefit society."

"You really think that, don't you? So it really doesn't matter what happens to a few individual lives, as long as you can feel like you're benefiting society."

For a moment Sydney seemed to see another person behind the eyes of the seventeen-year-old girl, and that person was analyzing him as intently as he was analyzing the girl. But then the glimpse disappeared.

"That's probably what my dad thinks, too. What do we matter as long as the Triumvirate is served? Forget society. The Triumvirate is what matters."

A sweeper stuck his head in the door. "Jarod's room is almost ready for us to move him there to get ready for tomorrow's simulation, Mr. Raines."

Sydney broke away from Miss Tyler. "We'll meet you on the way, Sam."

"I'm done here," the Doctor announced. He clapped Raines hard on the back, making Raines burst out into a fit of coughing. "Mr. Raines, I expect this project you've told me about to be completely buried until you receive word from Mutumbo about what he wants done with it. It should never have got this far without Triumvirate authorization. You people here at the Centre really are overstepping your bounds. He'll probably be sending in some overseers from Africa. You can tell Mr. Parker to be ready for a complete audit. Miss Tyler, come along. You're coming home." He took her arm. "Don't bother to see us out, Mr. Raines. We'll go out the way we came in."

Miss Tyler tried to shake out of his grasp and failed. She heaved a dramatic sigh. As he began to pull her out of the room, she turned back to Sydney. "Be seeing you, Number Two!" she smirked with a strange sort of salute, curved fingers raised to eye and flicked away.

Sydney and Raines stared after them. What did that mean? Sydney wondered. That was familiar, what she did. It's important. Why?

"That was a disaster," Raines muttered. But then he smiled his ghastly smile. "But at least we still have Jarod."