*Author's note: This was written for non pretender fans, so please bear with me. Sorry NBC and TnT...
INTRODUCTION
Lyle stood solemnly and respectfully in front of
the Tribunal.
"She would be a valuable asset to the Centre and an
excellent aide to the recapture and reassimilation of the Pretender Jarod."
"We have wasted years searching, what difference will…" the woman
started.
Lyle cut her off, "She is not a waste."
One of the men
spoke. "We will forgive you for your disrespect this time, Mr. Lyle. And we will
allow you to continue in her assimilation. When she arrives, we want proof of
her ability. We cannot waste even more time and money on frivolous and
unrealistic goals. If she is what you say she is, and if you can find our
pretender, we will reward you greatly for your accomplishments. If your plan
succeeds, we may permit you to be the director of both the Pretender and the
Reader. If not, your position in this corporation will be reduced considerably."
The other man finished for him. "We are rather tired of playing your
games, Mr. Lyle. And so far they have led to several recaptures of Jarod that
have led to an equal number of escapes. For the time being, Mr. Raines will
overlook your progress and will report directly to us. Failure will not be
tolerated any longer."
"I will not disappoint you."
* * *
"I don't care what you think, she must be told the truth! She would
trust us even less if she knew we were lying to her. And she is capable of
telling if we are," snapped Lyle.
"She won't help us if she knows the
truth," Mr. Raines shot back.
"Problem?" Miss. Parker asked
sarcastically as she approached them.
Lyle straightened, "No, how was
your trip to Florida?"
"Florida was a dead-end. The only Jarods there
were as dried up as you, Raines."
He glared at her, but walked away
silently. Lyle turned his attention back to his sister.
"I have to go."
She eyed him warily as he followed Raines to the elevator. "I will make
her help us," he whispered to Raines.
The Pretender: We
All Fall Down
Chapter 1 "Lyle"
"And remember,
don't stay out too late," reminded Ms. Jameson.
"O-Kay," Leigh said,
exasperated, "It's not like I'm gonna stay at the party forever, it's only a
street dance with some of my friends."
"Alright, Leigh. Have fun
sweetie," said her foster mother affectionately.
"'Kay, bye Ms.
Jameson."
Leigh's bike skidded to a halt in front of the abused
and rusted bike rack.
"Hey Leigh, waz up? Where ya been?" her friends
teased her.
"Oh yeah, I found another bunch of friends and had a huge
bash before this one," Leigh teased back.
"Hey HEY!! Are we gonna party,
or just botha' Leigh?" a curly-haired blonde girl asked.
Her friend, AJ,
flipped on his CD player, "Any requests?" he asked as he looked through his CD
collection.
"98°'s" shouted another girl, Jenn. The boys howled in mock
annoyance.
"Sugar-Ray!" which was soon followed by a chorus of teenaged
agreements.
The music pounded over the speakers.
"Great
party," Jenn commented to Leigh.
The party was rockin' and the music was
fast. The teenagers danced for hours. Dusk was beginning to fall on the warm
summer day when AJ crouched down by the CD player and flicked it off.
"Batteries run low?" someone asked him.
"I have summore,"
someone else offered.
"Nah, da police are here," AJ said nonchalantly.
The teens turned around to see a lone cruiser parked near them. The
officer inside slowly rose out of the car and threw a hand through his dark
brown hair. After flicking his cigarette to the ground he glanced casually at
the teens with his beady eyes, who were elbowing each other jokingly. He pointed
right at Leigh with his pencil
"You Leslie Sanchez?" he inquired.
"So what if I am?" she retorted, some of her friends giggled nervously.
"I need you for ah- questioning," he said as he glanced at a notebook.
She shrugged and he motioned to the back seat. He slipped in front,
carrying with him the acrid smell of his cigarettes. He tossed the notebook on
the passenger seat and started the engine. He twisted around to back up the car,
giving Leigh a strange look of confusion. As the cruiser sped off she waved
good-bye to her friends out the back window.
* * *
The officer
pulled up to a trailer in an otherwise empty yard and brusquely escorted Leigh
out of the car. She paused to view the dismal scenery, and wonder why they were
so far out of town, but the cop pulled her arm to have her walk in front of him.
She complied and they entered the trailer.
The inside was small, but
brightly lit.
"Sit here," the officer ordered, pointing to a small
wooden stool inside the kitchen counter's half circle.
She waited,
bored, and studied the countertop. She spun on the stool, back and forth, back
and forth. When she spun completely around, she saw the cop talking with another
man. A name echoed in her mind,
"Lyle?" she whispered, confused.
The man stared at her, in grim satisfaction painted on his face as he
heard his name. He was handsome, with a kind, almost gentle, expression, but
something in his piercing blue eyes kept her from believing that. She stood up.
She closed her eyes as he slowly came around the counter and circled her,
studying her closely. His blue eyes poured across her body. He stopped in front
of her.
"Hello Leigh," he said as he reached out and grabbed her arm.
He pulled her closer to himself, but she struggled away from him,
confused and scared. He increased he's grip and pulled her closer again.
"No," she murmured as she tore out of his grasp.
He pushed her,
hard. She fell onto the counter. It hit her neck; blackness crept up around the
edges of her eyes.
She moaned as Lyle grabbed her arm and picked her up
like a rag doll. He pulled her to the counter and let go. Leigh shot her arm out
to keep from falling. The cop watched her in amused interest. Lyle laughed; he
punched her across the face and grinned as she slipped off the counter,
unconscious.
* * *
Leigh awoke in a darkened room. She moaned
softly as she remembered what had happened. Fear and pain paraded their sad song
around in her head.
At the sound of her voice, a man's voice, from an
intercom system, called to her. It was soft and patient, like a grandfather's
voice, and had the slightest hint of an accent. It seemed out of place in
comparison to her encounter with Mr. Lyle.
"Leigh?" the man invited.
"Who are you? Where am I?" she demanded.
"My name is Dr. Sydney
Greene, I work here at the Centre."
"The Centre?"
"It is a
research facility that it finds pretenders and exploits their intelli-."
"What are pretenders?" she interrupted again, her curiosity outdoing her
fear.
"They are people with an ability to become anyone they want to, or
are forced to, be. They are incredibly smart, geniuses, in fact."
"Why
am I here?" she asked.
"One of ours has gone missing," he paused,
carefully avoiding the pretender's name, "We need you to locate him. You will be
given DSA files on him to help-."
"Files?! What? wait a min. You're
telling me I have to find this person for you? I'm no psychic, Mr., let me go!"
she said.
"In a way," he sighed, "You know what your ability is. We call
it Reading. To see into someone's mind. You can do this and we need you to find
him. He was raised at the Centre, but he escaped a couple years ago and we
cannot get him back. We need you to find him for us."
"What, do you own
Jarod or something?" she said scornfully.
Sydney's surprise registered
at her perception. "I did not tell you his name." Leigh shuttered at the
realization she had guessed right and he knew it.
"Lyle would tell you
that we own him. Jarod was raised and trained at the Centre after he was stolen
from his parents. What was done to him should never had been done to any human."
"You seem to care about him more than Lyle would."
"I raised
him."
A few minutes later a silver laptop arrived with about
twenty CD's. Out of curiosity, she opened it, popped the first CD into the
drive, and turned it on. She watched as a scared three-year-old grew up into a
brilliant 30-year-old at the Centre. She watched him grow to be a strong,
brilliant adult. In some ways he still was a child. Although he was kind and
caring, his lack of awareness for others and the programmed lack of emotions was
disturbing.
He spent those decades solving problems and completing
scenarios where his genius was used to create things from models, new
inventions, to ideas. He was forced to simulate crimes with stunning realty. He
literal could become anyone the Centre wanted him to be. At the start of each
simulation, he was made to believe that he was the person he was pretending to
be. Sometimes, depending on the extremeness of the Sim, he was drugged
beforehand. He intimidated violent murders, kidnappings, robberies and rapes as
the criminal. During the sessions, he would try to understand why the person did
what they did and how they achieved it. In the later files, there were even
experiments used on him and others that he designed. Some of which had been
recreated from Hitler's time. The last CD showed one of them.
Leigh set
it in the player and commanded the computer to run it. Leigh saw Jarod, yelling.
Struggling, twisting, turning, Jarod was held by two men who were attempting to
drag him down a hallway. The camera caught a sign overhead that read: "SUBLEVEL
27."
When the camera returned to Jarod, he had sprung free of the guards
and leapt towards a desk. Another camera caught sight of his face. His eyes were
terror-stricken. He was pleading with the man at the desk to help him, "Save
me!" his lips mouthed. The man backed up in surprise and fear. Jarod looked
hopeless and confused by his reaction. The two guards seized Jarod's legs and
tore him off. He tried to reach the edge of the desk for a brace, but only
managed in upsetting a pile of papers. "No!" he screamed. The men dragged him to
a surgery table. They strapped him to it as he flailed about. After they left,
Jarod looked around the now seemingly empty room and started to shake the steel
table in his feudal efforts to escape. He whimpered in fear.
The camera
zoomed over to show a man's hands holding a small bottle and a syringe. It
showed the hands ejecting 3 ccs from a bottle labeled potassium chloride.
It showed the face of the other man, heartless, cruel, Lyle.
He
looked into Jarod's face, smiling. Jarod froze with horrified recognition. Lyle
plunged the needle into his shoulder and injected.
"No, no, NOOO!" Jarod
screamed, endeavoring to tear the leather bindings from his limbs.
Slowly his cries diminished, weakness overcame Jarod. Mr. Lyle waited,
impatiently, off to the side, for the medication to work. The monitors loosely
attached to Jarod flickered feebly.
"Bastard!" Leigh cried.
Lyle
casually picked up another filled syringe. He injected it into Jarod's deadened
shoulder. He started to move. The other chemicals must have been some kind of
antidote.
Leigh sat there, stunned by the sheer inhumanity of Lyle. She
decided never to help this Centre to find Jarod, for he had created the
experiment, not knowing that he was to be the guinea pig.
* * *
"Good morning Ms Parker," Sydney offered as he reached for his cup of
coffee.
"Morning," she said with the usual storm clouds drifting across
her face.
"Who's the new player Lyle has dragged in this day?"
"She's here to help him find Jarod, she's-"
Parker stopped him,
"Let me guess, another one of his fantasy Asian lovers, Lyle has more
girlfriends that disappear…" she composed herself, "What is she, another
hacker?"
"A pretender, but she was specifically chosen because she can
Read."
"So can I," she said indignantly.
"No, what I mean is…
she can Read someone's mind."
"Yeah, right. If that's so," Miss Parker
stated disbelieving, "Why haven't we heard about her before? The Centre has ties
to almost every company and web site, unless she's never gone public…"
"I would be short notice for her to do that," Sydney explained, "She's
sixteen."
"Sh-" Miss Parker caught her self, "You're kidding!"
"No, she was brought in yesterday. Lyle ordered that she be brought up
to speed on Jarod so she can locate him faster. I was able to talk with her
briefly, her ability is amazing!"
Parker cringed visibly as images in
her mind of her teenaged years at the Centre flashed by. She was overwhelmed
with pity for the girl.
Leigh was roughly shaken awake to find
Lyle leaning over her. She closed her eyes to slits and glared at him.
"I see Sydney included some of his own DSA's. I'll get to the point
then, we need Jarod and you are capable of doing that. So, will you find him?"
he paused to let her answer. "Okay, this can be done willingly or there are some
methods of persuasion we can-"
"Why can't you let me go?"
"Because, Jarod is our property and we need you to find him."
"You can't own a person, that's…"
"We have for thirty years."
"You are a sick and twisted man."
"We have other ways of making
you Read him, it's Jarod's own design I believe. He created a way that would
force you to Read anyone. It seems to be very painful, or at least I have
heard…"
"Fine," she snapped.
She closed her eyes,
"dream-phasing" she had nicknamed it. She did not know what it was or how it
happened, but she did know it let her in other's minds. She had never really
enjoyed doing it, reading other's memories or experiencing things through
other's eyes. It had that guilty feeling attached to it like reading someone's
diary, only worse. She had never told anyone about it. Even Ms. Jameson did not
know. She knew it was unnatural. She always wondered if anyone else could Read,
too. What could a Pretender do?
She saw Jarod sitting at a desk in a
room full of plants and tables; it had an odd alga smell to it. He looked up at
a chalkboard with writing and pictures covering most of it. One specific part
read: "Sci. 4- review quest. 1-5, read pg. 31-39."
Science, a school!
she guessed.
Jarod looked back at his paperwork, and began to rustle
through it.
As fast as she could, Leigh read one of the paper's
headings.
"Inter -----
-----------
Andover, ME"
was all she caught.
Andover, Maine?
Jarod's
world faded as she awakened to her own. She kept her eyes closed for a while,
recollecting her jumbled thoughts.
Lyle's sadistic voice came from
behind her, "Thank you, Sanchez, that was very well done."