dayglo_parker@yahoo.com
PART NINE
It was late in Colorado and ungodly in Delaware. Out of courtesy, Parker tried the Centre first, aware of the risk and hardly expecting the voice to answer.
"Have you slept at all, Sydney?" she asked when he answered.
There was a small, inaudible sigh. Relief, she guessed. "Have you?" he countered. She didn't answer, however, unwilling to let him mother her with such questions. The silence between them was awkward for a moment, before he breeched it. "I was worried...I worried that something had happened to you, Parker. To either of you, both of you."
Her eyes absentmindedly left the rain outside and glanced at the man hard at work at the computer. The care for them was evident in Sydney's voice, and it was hard to ignore. "I'm sorry," she offered, not knowing what else to give. She wasn't good at these kinds of conversations.
"Where are you?" Again, it didn't take long for him to get to his point.
She was shaking her head, not aware for the moment that he couldn't see her. "We've been through this before, Syd."
"I know." He sounded as if he'd been telling himself the same thing for hours now, unable to convince his conscience thoroughly. "I guess you can't blame me for trying."
Was this how every conversation between he and Jarod began? For a moment she almost said something to that effect, but at the last minute decided against it. She wasn't exactly sure she knew why, however.
"Parker, there's something you should know." She sighed loudly, readying her mind for the next revelation. She wondered what could possibly thicken the plot any more. "Lyle's gone."
"He's dead?" She couldn't help the bit of excitement that escaped into her voice. Jarod turned from the laptop at her question, his eyes full of questions.
"No, no. He, uh, he seems to have escaped."
She was incredulous. "Escaped? Sydney, the man had a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Even in the Centre, he doesn't just waltz out like that."
Jarod looked concerned. She waved him off, but he persisted.
"We don't know much," by 'we', Parker knew he was including Broots, "but Raines seems to think he had some help. They've been talking to certain employees since this afternoon." After a pause, he continued. "I want you to watch yourself, Parker. Both of you. As long as he's out there, there's no way of telling whether or not he'll want to..."
The man didn't answer. Parker finished for him. "You can say it, Sydney. That he'll want to finish what he started." The words were biting, bitter, and full of emotion. It had hit her full force days ago, but now she had more to deal with, and a second wave of emotion was started to form in her mind. She bit it back. "We're in safe hands here, Syd. You don't have to worry."
In the corner of her eye, she saw Jarod smile sweetly.
"I always worry," the psychiatrist replied. Parker's eyes found the rain-streaked window she had been staring at earlier, and the droplets running down the glass entranced her. She knew that if she were to touch the glass, it would be as cold as the outside air. After a moment, she heard Sydney's voice in her ear, momentarily forgetting she was holding the phone.
His voice was kind. "Is there something else on your mind? You seem...distant."
Her mind was alive with activity. The last four days had been nothing but activity, one revelation after another, it seemed. Running and running, she had barely had time to deal with the issues personally, Jarod's eyes constantly on her. Privacy was a luxury she hadn't had, and it was privacy she needed to grieve. Her breakdown in the airplane hanger had been a rarity, and something she would give anything *not* to repeat a second time. She wasn't sure how to answer Sydney's question, but any mention of the truth she knew would bring her to a position she was uncomfortable in.
"Parker?" Now he was worried again, she could hear it in the minutest traces of his voice. Her exterior was steel, but her insides were crumbling. The fall felt so familiar...
"I..." she trailed off. What would she say? How could she possibly finish the thought and convey all that had happened? Suddenly, she steeled against the burden of her truth, her posture becoming rigid and her face blank. It stared at her from the reflection in the windowpane, and she recognized a familiar face. "There's nothing. Nothing at all."
They exchanged goodbyes and Parker hung up, her eyes still fixed on the rain streaking the window. The headset fell with a thud on the bed, and soon the room was filled with occasional keystrokes and the rhythmic pounding of precipitation. She watched the dark sky light up like a photograph's camera bulb, and every once in a while a streak of electricity would dance from cloud to cloud. The silence between she and Jarod was not deafening and heavy like it had been earlier, and his whispered words made her jump.
"You didn't tell him," he remarked. Her eyes never left the windowpane, so she wasn't sure whether or not he was looking at her. She couldn't feel his gaze burning holes in her body, and guessed not.
The rain continued to pound.
"No," she answered simply.
A low rumble of thunder filled the room.
"Why not?" She glanced in his direction, and found him intent on the laptop.
I wouldn't know where to begin, she thought. "I don't know," she lied. She heard him sigh - saw his shoulders rise and fall - and knew her lie was spotted. After all, she reminded herself, the Centre didn't want him back so badly just to protect their reputation. The thought stuck in her brain for a second longer than it should, for reasons she was unaware of.
Parker looked dejectedly at the receiver on the bed before scooting around the edge of the mattress. Her legs dangled over and she moved them a little out of boredom. No, not boredom...maybe apathy...or thought. Her mind settled on thought, and her mind's processes became clear. The memory was clear and vivid, yet nothing she had ever recalled before. Perhaps because it was short and of little significance?
In her mind, she was watching him put something to together while she sat quietly...she wasn't sure what it was he was putting together; at that age, she hadn't paid much attention because little details like this weren't crucial. His focus was intense on the pieces of the puzzle, and Parker's attention was intense on him. Curiously, she asked, Why are you doing that? He looked up at her, and she saw genuine thought in his eyes as he struggled for an appropriate answer. Then he shrugged and mumbled something about Sydney, but her mind had tuned out the rest...
She sighed rather dramatically and his head turned curiously in her direction. He wore a strange expression - bordering on humorous, in fact - but Parker's reaction was not to smile. Instead she glared at him, which she soon found only worsened the look. Now he was smiling, bearing his white teeth.
"I'm having a hard time finding something funny here, Jarod," she hissed. Much like she remembered, he shrugged his shoulders in response and turned back to his computer. But Parker caught it and it enraged her - he was amused. Amused! The disgust and anger was rising up inside of her. Suddenly she felt like they were back in the car, and the walls of the spacious room upstairs were more constricting than the small cabin of the sports car they had driven cross-country.
Her mini-tirade was interrupted by a yawn that erupted rather abruptly from her mouth. She was able to grasp her hand over her mouth fairly quickly to cork the sound, but some escaped quicker than she could react. To say she hadn't gotten much decent sleep in past few days was an understatement: between the motels and the car and the airplane, her sleep had been light and plagued with dreams of her mother. The latter alone was enough to make sleep difficult, the increasingly cryptic messages Parker felt from her inner sense distracting her when she was awake. It would not have taken much effort to lean backward and fall asleep on the bed, but she felt a sense of...she wasn't sure what she felt, but she knew she couldn't fall asleep quite yet.
Jarod had spent a better part of the evening attempting to decrypt the file Peter had recovered from the Mainframe, and for almost four hours he had had little success. Someone had gone to great lengths to make sure only certain people read that file, and their encryption was making it difficult for she and Jarod to be added to that list. By going to sleep, she almost felt as if she were betraying the information the file held; that by giving up and giving in to her fatigue, she would resent it. It was an irrational feeling she knew.
"I'm curious," Parker said, her sudden question taking both of them by surprise. It was imperceptible, but she heard a child's voice mingling with hers as she spoke. "Why New York City?"
Again, his reaction was identical; eerie, almost. His whole body was facing her now.
"Isn't it obvious?" he replied.
She took her stance. "Explain it to me."
He contemplated his answer before starting. "I found myself inexplicably drawn there. I...I don't know if I can explain it. It just felt...right. The logical next step." He paused, adding with a smile, "I guess logic was what found you catching me down that alley."
"Logic." She repeated the word several times in her mouth with a whisper. "So no one tipped you off? About whomever you managed to save, I mean, no hint? You weren't told to go there, you just...found yourself in New York City." Her voice hinted at skepticism.
"That's right," he said. "Were you hoping that you'd somehow fallen in one of Lyle's traps?"
It was like he had read the words straight from her brain. She hated that about him, the way he always anticipated her, the strange connection between them. "I don't know if I'd use hope, but..."
Parker felt herself on the brink of spilling everything. Why was she doing this? Why was confessing to Jarod, and not Sydney? Surely, she must have trusted Sydney more than Jarod...right?
"I guess..." She hesitated for a moment, and finally, in a moment of weakness or insanity or God knows what else kind of lapse of mental function, spilled. "I guess I just wanted to know that this wasn't some act of vengeance on his part, that this wasn't a way to make his climb up the Centre power ladder that much easier." God Dammit, she berated herself, feeling the tear ducts moistening. "I didn't want to be just a pawn to get to you. I'm more than that!"
The admission felt strange and conceited, but to her, it made sense. To die in order to bring Jarod in was, in her eyes, a fate worse than death at the hands of a conspiracy to cover up a secret or a project - or both.
Her voice may have been forceful before, but now it was quiet and withdrawn. "I can't live like this, Jarod. I *won't* live like this. I will not allow myself to-"
"- to become like me," he finished. She didn't know how to answer.
Tension, their familiar friend, was back, settling comfortably between Jarod and Parker as quickly as possible. The air inside seemed almost as electric as the lightning outside.
Philadelphia.
It was like a dam breaking, the waters of her memory suddenly flooding her conscious mind. The moment in time that only minutes ago had been vague and fuzzy was so vividly. Jarod had been putting together a 1000-piece puzzle, and wouldn't let her help, relegating her to the sidelines to watch. Her non-participation had been frustrating, and she had taken to asking hundreds of questions to show it. Somehow they fell into the cities game, after, of course, Miss Parker explained the rules: to name a city (and here she had limited it to the United States) that ended in the last letter of the city name. Parker knew, as a child, that suggesting to play a game based on memory gave Jarod on unfair advantage, but it was the spirit of competition that mattered to her.
Philadelphia.
Albuquerque.
Eerie.
Ewing.
Grand Rapids.
Sioux Falls.
Most of the city names blurred together still. They played long after Jarod's puzzle was complete and until Sydney came to retrieve from the SimLab. But when they went to sleep that night in their respective beds, the city game was laid to rest, and it was never mentioned again.
"Are you ever going to tell him?" Jarod's gentle voice jarred her from her memory.
She took a moment to recover, unable for an instant to recall who they were talking about...or what. "I don't know." She buried her face in her hands. That was her answer for a lot of questions tonight.
Parker couldn't help the involuntary twitch when she felt his hand massaging the base of her neck. A second later she felt the mattress ink as he sat down, and she realized she hadn't even heard him advance from the computer. Her muscles were tense with alertness as his fingers worked the knots that had been forming for weeks now. Not that it didn't feel good; in fact, she realized, it felt wonderful. She would give anything for him never to stop. The rational half of her brain, however, screamed about how inappropriate the situation was. Stop! Her brain was shouting at her. Stop this now! Parker thought she must have sighed and allowed some vocalization of pleasure escape her lips, because Jarod began to massage harder, and moved slightly lower down her spine. His fingers had hardly reached indecent levels; in fact, they had barely slipped beneath the collar of her shirt.
In her mind, she saw a flash of two months ago, and felt (for a moment) the warmth of a fireplace on her cold and clammy skin. Her eyes shot open. This is not appropriate, she thought.
Suddenly the tension between them was very different.
"I'm sorry," he began.
Parker shook her head, her eyes not daring to look at him. "Don't apologize." She hadn't meant it to sound like that. She hadn't meant to imply that she wouldn't mind if he started again.
It was then that his attention found something new. Neither had realized that a small 'OK' message had appeared on the screen. Because of the distance between the laptop and the bed, however, she was unable to read exactly what it declared. In a flash, he was moving back towards the machine, and their small intimate moment was over.
"It worked," he said, disbelief seeping into his voice. "It actually worked."
Her muscles ached with fatigue, but somehow she maneuvered herself to stand behind him, reading the decrypted file over his shoulder. Immediately, her eyes caught the glaring discrepancy.
"Look at that." Her finger indicated the donor subject numbers. "The listed primary maternal subject is identical to the ones we found in Colorado, but look! They used a different primary paternal donor."
It was true. Sometime after August 15, 1987, the Colorado installation had stopped using paternal sample #45-122759-4. Now she read that the final result of Project Prometheus was conceived from an identical maternal sample and paternal sample #45-051760-4. Parker concerned the number, and determined the donor's birthday to be May 17, 1960, almost five months younger than the first. Like she had done since they had narrowly escaped the sweepers, her mind ran the date through anything and everything she could think of, but nothing about the day was significant.
"Prometheus is only genetically identical to about half of those..." Parker paused, "failures in Colorado. The others are half siblings, I would assume." She shook her head. "I'm not sure if that's supposed to be reassuring or not."
Jarod sighed. "I'll have Peter look into it tomorrow morning, see what he can find."
The screen scrolled down and Parker continued to read the various dated entries. It was as if someone were keeping a diary on the child. She read how successful the fertilization was, when the embryo reached the crucial eight-cell cluster stage, successful implantation into a surrogate mother...in her mind, Parker was alone in the cabin, the child resting innocently in her blood-soaked arms as Brigette's last breath escaped. She shuddered at the memory, and turned away from the laptop, unable to read much more.
She was staring at the rain streaks again when she heard Jarod call her name. "I think you should come and take a look at this."
"Just read it to me," she replied, a familiar bitterness seeping back into her voice. He didn't even seem to notice.
"The last entry here is a record of transfer for all copies of files pertaining to Prometheus. Apparently only those involved with Prometheus are allowed to see the files..."
"...except for us..."
"...and only registered doctors and scientists can make copies."
Her arms were crossed across her chest. "You have a point, I assume?" She pointedly glared at him to punctuate her question. Whatever semblance of sensitivity she might have shown seconds ago had evaporated completely.
"The file indicates Cox was the doctor who requisitioned files."
The lying bastard. He's on our side, Angel. She should have expected it, at least, but for some foreign reason the revelation managed to shock her. Or maybe it wasn't disgust. Maybe it was the fact that her father had stood in front of her as she held a life barely a few minutes old and he had dared to lie about Cox to her. That after all the years and countless lies and excuses for anything and everything, Parker had expected this one ounce of decency from him.
He was jotting down the two sample numbers when her mind came to a conclusion. "Lyle brought Cox into the Centre. You don't think...that what happened in New York has any connection to Prometheus, do you?" What happened in New York was as close to the real words as she could get, unable to make herself say my brother's failed murder attempt. "How did you find out about this, Jarod?"
Parker watched him move around in his seat, his eyes fixed on the computer screen. He didn't answer. She recognized the avoidance technique instantly, stalking towards me. "I asked you a question, and I expect an answer." Her voice was short and to the point. "How did you find about Prometheus?" she reiterated.
"Someone contacted me over the Internet," Jarod finally whispered. "They sent an anonymous email. Told me the key to the Centre lay invisible in Colorado."
Parker was close to him now, breathing down his neck. "Who sent that email, Jarod?" Adding quickly, "I know you have the means to find out, so don't play dumb and say you don't know."
He swung his head to face her, and their sudden proximity startled her. She jerked her head back a few inches, trying to keep her respective distance. "You don't think I tried?" he asked. "The closest I came was a location trace." He stopped.
Parker's patience was wearing thin. "And?"
"Triumvirate Station, Africa." Your father, he said unconsciously. "But I swear to you, I had no idea you'd come so close to me in New York City, or that Lyle would..." Jarod couldn't say the words, either.
She wasn't sure when she had begun to pace nervously across the bedroom, but she found herself doing it soon enough. Her arms were crossed across her chest again, and the anger inside of her was infinitely close to exploding. Her mouth was spurting words she hadn't had time to comprehend, and Jarod was sitting quietly and obediently, reading the decrypted file.
"If it wasn't for Lyle, you would have taken the liberty of gallivanting across the country and discovering all these juicy secrets for yourself. And then you would have doubled yourself over in fun leaving tantalizing clues around the country, no doubt. How long were you planning on making me wait to learn I had son, Jarod? How long? Were you going to wait until you had had proper time to grieve before you deigned me worthy of that kind of information? Or were you going to steal him under the cover of night and disappear forever, never the wiser about whom else might like to know, or who else might care? Were you going to wait until the Centre had sucked me of my entire life to tell me my life wouldn't be forgotten..."
Jarod leaped up from his seat, intentionally putting himself in her path and grabbing Parker by the shoulders. "For Christ's sake, Parker, stop!"
Her eyes blazed with anger. "Let go of me," she seethed.
"No," he answered defiantly, tightening his grip to illustrate his point. For the moment it occurred to him he might be hurting her, but perhaps, he thought, the pain would inspire some sense in her. "I won't let go until you hear me out." She was squirming. "Just listen." She stopped moving, and he began to speak. "Of course I was going to tell you. If you hadn't jumped the gun and gotten to New York so soon I would have invited you to come along." She snorted. "What?"
She was shaking her head. "You may be book-smart, but you have no common sense, Jarod. No one in their right-mind, least of all you, would trust me to come along without bringing along some sweepers."
He was glaring at her intensely. "Believe or it not, Parker, I'm one of the few people in this world who does trust you."
Had she heard that right? Had sleep deprivation gotten to him so much that he claimed to trust the one person who had feverishly pursued him for five years? Or was this just one sick dream of hers?
Her mouth moved futilely as she tried to think of something to say. It wasn't an easy task. "I'm not sure what you want me to say here," she managed. "If you're expecting to swoon and proclaim how I've really trusted you all these years, then you're thoroughly mistaken."
Now he was smiling. God, she hated when he smiled like that... "I don't want you to change, Parker. I just don't want you to be angry at me just for the sake of being angry."
Parker could feel the hostility dissipating between them, but his hands remained gripped on her arms. A second later, his fingers made contact with the now-expertly bandage wound on her arm, and she winced in pain. Instantly his hands released her. He was mumbling 'I'm sorry' when he stopped him from backing away.
"Wait," she said. It was involuntary that her hand landed on his chest.
His eyes were full of questions, but he didn't speak. Parker smiled a little and said, "I'm about to do something completely out of character, so I suggest you take it for what it's worth and never expect it ever again." Jarod was smiling now, too, smirking perhaps, but he still hadn't a clue. "Do you understand?"
He stood his understanding. She hesitated, the weight of what she about to say feeling heavy on her chest.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
Where to begin? "Saving my life. Again." I'd be lying in a pool of my own blood if it wasn't for you, she added unconsciously. "I haven't been much help these last few days, I know - hell, it seems like you've done everything and I've just been along for the ride."
He seemed to be making a vain attempt to refute her statement, but he remained silent. Parker didn't seem to mind him like that, either. She noticed her hand was still resting on his chest, moved her fingers slightly, but made no great effort to remove it.
"I just..." What else did she want to say? She couldn't answer that question. Parker hadn't put much thought into this move, but her last statement had left her thank-you hanging. She knew he was expecting something. Her mind drifted a bit, settling on a conversation two months earlier. You run, I chase. She couldn't help but chuckle and shake her head at the irony of her own words.
"Something funny?" Jarod asked with a small smile.
She looked up at him. "'You run, I chase.' Seems pretty ironic, considering the circumstances, don't you think? We're living in a game, and someone changed the rules without telling us."
His eyes glanced down at her hand before answer. She had lightly gripped the fabric and (possibly unknowingly) tracing invisible patterns with the painted nail of her index finger. He made no attempt to stop her. "Circumstances change, and you adjust accordingly," he said with a whisper.
The air between them, Parker observed, was always tense, most of the time with hostility and animosity. Now, however, she felt something between them she had felt for only the third time in her entire life. Once, her hand was pressed against cold glass; a second time, her body was chilled but a warm glow had begun to change that. And now...despite the chilly February weather and constant rain, the temperature was moderate, a non-issue in terms of extremities. The room was no longer simply hot or cold; it was bearable.
He was waiting for an answer, and Parker didn't know what she could give.
For five years of her life, she had lived according to a dictated set of rules, her life a pawn in a much bigger game of power. Whatever her genetic heritage, she had been born into an organization founded on the principle that loyalty equaled respect, respect equaled success, and success equaled life. She had been brainwashed by the one man she had expected to trust, and he had manipulated that trust to his own means, enslaving her to a cause she had no way of preventing. Her mother's elimination had been a sign to her: this is what happens to people who don't agree. She knew this now.
Parker was enslaved because she could never run, never run away, never start a family of her own and lead a normal life. She may have convinced herself that "normal" was somehow boring and mundane, but it was like a saying she heard time after time. You never know how much you miss something until you can't have it. What she wouldn't give to get married and have a kid or two! Sure, her father had promised her a ticket out pending the recapture of Jarod, but how could she, in good conscience, send one man to Hell for her ticket out?
She thought of Sydney, a brilliant man who had no choice but to complacently comply with orders in his early years, and was now paying the price of that complacency. She thought of Broots and his daughter, Debbie, who had willingly committed his life to a place so ridden with evil, it was a surprise he had simply disappeared one day. Perfect lives, like hers and Jarod's, corrupted by the Centre.
He's so close to his family you're slowly becoming useless to him.
She hated to admit when Lyle was right. With Margaret's arrival the family would be complete and there would be no reason for Jarod to stay in contact. We would hold he had ever wanted in his hands, and she would mean nothing then. For a second time that day, she felt insanely jealous.
"Parker?" Jarod asked softly. "Is something wrong."
She hesitated before answering quickly, "Don't forget me." Parker didn't recognize her own voice or the words it spoke. "Grant me this one selfish request and promise you won't forget me."
In the most intimate gesture yet, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against her forehead. "Of course I won't," he said to her skin. His breath was warm against her, and strangely comforting. After a moment he leaned his forehead against hers, breathing warm puffs in her face. She closed her eyes, and wasn't sure why. Softly, he added, "I don't think I ever could."
Parker contemplated her next move. If others could change the rules of this game, what could stop her from doing the same?
In one move, she changed them, and finished what they started in December.
TBC