Balancing The Scales - 3
by MMB
"Broots? Can I talk to you for a moment?"
The technician looked up from his computer screen and the flow of the discussion in the chat room he'd been visiting to see Sydney standing in his doorway. He popped the last, large, piece of donut into his mouth and waved the older man in, then dusted his hand off on his pant leg. "What's up?" he somehow managed around the half-chewed pastry.
"I need you to do me a HUGE favor." Sydney reached into his shirt pocket and removed a tiny vial of red liquid that Broots knew instantly was blood. "I want you to run this through DNA analysis - quietly. Stand there and watch them do it, if need be - but I want real results, and not convenient lies."
"What's going on?" Broots was instantly alert, and concerned. "Whose blood is this?"
"Davy's."
The computer technician stared at his old friend in consternation. "Does Parker know what you're doing..."
"No, she doesn't - and I don't want her to know. Not yet, anyway - not until the analysis is finished and I have my answers." Sydney's face was a study in conflicted emotions. "Something occurred to me last night, just before our 'discussion', and I want to follow through on it before saying anything to anybody else."
"What's that?" Broots was genuinely curious. He'd been there - what had Syd seen that he'd missed?
"It suddenly occurred to me that Mr. Parker was functionally sterile," Sydney stated flatly. "And that we've never seriously questioned just how a man who mostly likely couldn't be the father of our Miss Parker in his prime could, at a much older and less capable age, father a son." Chestnut eyes bored holes into Broots' ice-blues. "We've toyed with the idea that it was Lyle, once upon a time... but we never tested to prove anything. I think we need to know before too much more time passes."
"Alright," Broots replied in a confused but agreeable tone and then pocketed the vial. "What brought this on?"
Sydney shrugged with deceptive calm; he had been anything but ever since he had awakened in the middle of the night, unable to set the wondering aside enough to sleep. "I was watching Davy and Jarod playing that stupid video game last night, and I had the most horrible thought. What if Jarod were..." He looked at Broots sharply. "We all know Davy's bright - too bright for his age, as a matter of fact. And while I was watching the two of them together, I saw..." He paused, his mind replaying the moment and pondering how to put the evidence he'd seen into plain English. He settled for blunt. "Davy has Jarod's smile."
"Oh man!" Broots put his face in his hands and then rubbed his eyes. "That would..." He looked up at the psychiatrist. "Are you ready to break the news, if it turns out..."
"We can't keep it from them both," Sydney replied, equally tiredly for that early in the morning. "I'm praying with my whole heart that I'm wrong - that my eyes were just playing tricks on me on account of the surgery or something."
"Oh man, Syd!" Broots' mind hadn't stopped considering possibilities. "And what if that DNA test tells us that Miss P actually IS Davy's mother?" He stared up at the older man. "I mean if they could create a clone of Jarod, who's to say that they couldn't just do a little old-fashioned in- vitro and..." He stopped. "Man oh man, that would tear her up BIG time!"
"She won't be the only one," Sydney said softly. "It was bad enough for Jarod to know that they cloned him. To think that they actually took something far more private from him and created another original human being without his knowledge or permission..." He shrugged again. "I don't know how he'll react. You know how important family and families being together is to him. As for Miss Parker..." His voice died away as he plodded heavily from the office. "Prove me wrong, Broots. Please."
Broots looked after his friend with a worried look until he'd moved out of sight, then stared at his monitor screen without seeing anything written on it. "Man O man..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy turned off the TV with the remote, then got to his feet and went in search of his mother. He found her sitting at the dining table, a cup of her evening herbal tea cooling in front of her, staring into space. "Mommy?"
The small voice never failed to make her smile when he called her that. Miss Parker turned to her son with a smile. "What is it, sweetie?"
The child moved towards her and watched her unfold in his direction and then hold her arms out for him. He moved with the sureness of a well-loved child into his mother's arms, then peered up into her face. "Are you still mad at Jarod?" he asked, curious.
"No," she answered after a moment to examine her response. "Not anymore." She peeked down at her son's expression of intense curiosity. "Why?"
"Why were you mad at him?"
"Oh, baby, I was only mad at him because he went away a long time ago without saying goodbye," she explained. It was the truth, but left a lot out. "After I got used to him being gone, I didn't think I'd ever see him again - and having Grandpa Sydney bring him by like that, without warning me, was a shock." She ruffled his dark hair fondly. "But what has you so interested in Jarod?"
"I like him," the boy answered with open enthusiasm. "He's funny, and he's better at Demon Riders than even Uncle Broots." The child snuggled down against his mother. "Can we have him over again sometime, or is he going to leave again?"
"I think he's staying with Grandpa right now," Miss Parker responded, dropping a kiss onto the top of her son's head. "I would imagine that we'll be seeing him again."
"Did Grandpa know him too?"
"Oh yeah," Miss Parker nodded with the memory. "Grandpa practically raised him from a small boy."
"How come you guys never talked about him before now?" Davy wanted to know.
"Because it made us sad, sweetie." Miss Parker cradled her son more tightly against her. "We both missed him a lot, and talking about him would only make that worse."
"Did Uncle Broots know him too?"
Miss Parker shook her head gently. "Not as well as your Grandpa and I did. Broots met Jarod only a few years before he went away."
Davy rested quietly in his mother's arms for a while. "I wish he lived closer," the boy remarked eventually. "He's fun. I like being around him."
"Yes, he can be lots of fun," his mother agreed, then kissed him and pushed him from her lap. "Time for bed, young man. You have school in the morning."
"Can you invite him over for supper tomorrow night?" Davy twisted to look at her imploringly. "Please, Mommy?"
"I'll think about it, I promise," Miss Parker chuckled at him, then stood and turned her son in the direction of the front of the house and its staircase. "Bed now. Scoot!" she ordered and gave him a slight push to get him started moving.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots didn't often bring work home from the Centre, but this night he had packed up several files full of paper in his briefcase and also brought along a Halliburton viewer with few assorted DSA's to peruse once Debbie had retired for the evening. This was research he didn't necessarily want anyone at the Centre itself to know he was doing - the files and Halliburton and DSA's had been very quietly lifted from Records without signing them out. He would have to make sure they made it back with the same level of notice and fuss.
Sydney's strange request had started the technician thinking, and the thoughts had led him to take a number of related actions. First off, it had occurred to him that so many of the assumptions about Miss Parker's family tree had been proven inaccurate or misleading over the past few years - most recently the discovery of her not being Mr. Parker's progeny. He imagined that getting her some definitive word on just who she was and wasn't related to, and in what way, might not be such a bad idea. And since he was already going to have the lab running DNA tests to settle Sydney's question, getting a complete family relationship profile for an entire set of samples wouldn't be such a far stretch - especially if he could hide all the subject names with code of his own invention. In a rare fit of courage, he'd secretly visited the vault that held genetic fluids and semen samples for all the major Centre players and taken samples from a number of them. Small samples of each were put in vials marked with his own coding, relabeled Davy's blood sample, and then taken the lot to the lab together.
Also, if Sydney were right, and Davy was yet another Centre eugenics experiment or project, then there would have to be supporting paperwork - a project name, progress notes - to document the effort that led to his birth. Davy's date of birth was well known to all the members of the little family that had coalesced around Miss Parker, so using the power of logic and deduction, he had counted back ten months from the birthday and rounded up a list of all projects just getting started. There had been seven projects begun between nine and ten months prior to Davy's birthday, and Broots had located paperwork on all of them and digital archives on four of them.
With a tall glass of heavily caffeinated cola at his elbow, Broots flipped open the Halliburton to begin a superficial scan of the DSA's. With any luck, just watching some of the related activities and meetings pertaining to each project should enable him to eliminate all unrelated projects quickly, so as to make his reading task more easy.
But within two minutes of viewing the first DSA, he knew he had the right project. "Reflection". And by the time he'd seen the end of the DSA, he was sick to his stomach. He wasn't going to need the lab tech's answer to Sydney's question - the DSA had given the answer all too clearly, and then some. He would wait until he had the DNA test results before telling Sydney what he'd discovered, though. He doubted he'd have the intestinal fortitude to bring two sets of disturbing news to his friend.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney set the psychiatric journal he'd been reading aside for the evening and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He'd been pushing his eyes as hard as he dared, and knew better than to keep reading once the burning started. He looked across the room to where Jarod was sprawled half-way across his long leather couch. The younger man had several throw pillows piled haphazardly behind his head, held there by hands folded behind his head in comfortable repose. But Jarod wasn't asleep at all. Sydney could see his eyes looking at the ceiling, but knew that the man's mind was anything but calm and sedate.
Not that his own mind was all that calm either. Broots wouldn't have any report on the DNA testing for another day at least, and Sydney knew that his patience would be just about stretched to its limits by then. "Still doing sims in your head, I see," he said aloud to his former protégé, knowing that he needed to find something else to occupy his mind before he went nuts.
Jarod's eyes focussed, then the bearded face turned briefly in his direction. "It's the only place to do them," he commented back, then ran both hands down his face. "The only time I needed props, REALLY, was in trying to crawl into somebody else's mind - to know what they were thinking at some point in the past. Planning strategies, when it had to do with physical realities and physics, could be done both ways." He sat up and stretched his arms out. "It's late, Syd."
"I know. My eyes have just about had it for the day." Sydney rose and stretched out his back with a groan. "Don't get old, Jarod. Old age sucks."
Jarod's dark eyes watched his former mentor carefully. "You've been distracted all evening, haven't you?"
"What gives you that idea?" Sydney looked over sharply.
"You don't normally sigh every five to ten minutes when you're really engrossed in an article," Jarod informed him.
"It's just been a very long day," Sydney explained lamely, knowing exactly what Jarod was referring to and disgusted with himself that he wasn't more successful at keeping his impatience better hidden.
Dark chocolate eyes gazed at the older man with both indulgence and mild frustration. "OK. I get the message. You don't want to talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about, Jarod. Broots is doing his digging, you're doing your share of hacking into the Centre mainframe too. We both know that we still need to bring Sam in on what's going on - and that the time is approaching when we're going to have to think about sending Debbie, Davy and Angelo to your family. What do YOU think there is to talk about?"
"I know you," the younger man said gently. "And even though I haven't spent that much time around you lately, I doubt your old habits would have changed THAT much." He gave the older man a knowing smile. "My knowing that you're distracted and bothered is the result of having been very close for a very long time, Syd - just like your knowing I was uptight the other night was."
Sydney shot Jarod a knowing look. "Familiarity does have its down sides, does it not?"
"You're changing the subject," Jarod shook his head, then rose. "It's OK. Maybe you'll feel more like talking tomorrow." He yawned. "I'm tired too, for that matter. I'll see you in the morning." With that, he walked slowly from the room and towards the stairs.
Sydney watched his former protégé walk away with sadness in his eyes. Much as he would have liked to voice his concerns, now was not the time. He needed to have the report from Broots, so that he'd know WHAT to say - and what Jarod's probable reaction would be if his gut feeling turned out to be right.
But Broots had a valid concern. Miss Parker would be a basket case if it were to happen that the test results pointed to her actually being Davy's mother - a situation that would only be made worse if the tests showed that he'd been right after all and Jarod was actually Davy's biological father as well. Jarod had another life, he remembered, whereas Miss Parker's life was here. The two didn't mix - at all.
He pushed his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. It never seemed to end, the repercussions of the many decades of subterfuge and experimentation the Centre had visited upon them all. He was getting too old to be able to keep picking up the pieces for loved ones when something else would come at them and shatter them.
God help me, he closed his eyes tightly and prayed with all his might, let me be wrong - please, just let me be wrong!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker glanced up from her paperwork as the glass doors to her office parted to admit her personal sweeper, Sam. "You sent for me, Miss Parker?" he asked in his usual, deferential tone.
"Yeah, Sam," she said, closing the folder of weekly security reports on which she'd been making notes in the margins. "Walk with me for a bit. I want to talk to you."
"Yes, ma'am," he responded, then stood at what was the Centre equivalent of attention while his boss stowed her paperwork and, with a crook of her finger, led him to wait at the elevator door. She didn't speak a word to him during the entire elevator ride down to the ground floor, and merely walked her stately, regal walk straight out the front doors of the Centre itself and down the wide steps toward the green lawns that stretched beyond. The day was warm and silky, and a light breeze ruffled Miss Parker's hair as she sedately led them off in a direction where there were few others around.
Only after they were about fifty yards from the steps and the nearest fellow Centre employee did she speak to him again. "Sam, I need a favor."
"Yes, ma'am. What can I do for you?"
Miss Parker gazed evenly at her personal sweeper. Sam had been with her now for nearly ten years, and had proven his loyalty to her time and time again during those years. Even Davy had a soft spot in his heart for the former wrestling champion and top Centre sharpshooter, for Sam, off-hours, had proven to be a real push-over for kids - little boys without fathers in particular.
"I need you to take care of Davy and Debbie for me for a while," she informed him quietly. "But before you do that, I need you to help me figure out a way to get Angelo out of the Centre without raising any alarms for a while."
Sam's heavy eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Angelo, Miss Parker?" He shrugged. "He's a hard one to locate half the time, much less shepherd around outside the Centre perimeter."
"I know that," her voice was only a mild retort. "It's important to me that we figure it out, though."
"Yes, ma'am." Sam watched his boss pace in front of him for a long moment as he pondered what he was being asked. "Miss Parker?"
"Mmmmmm?"
"What's going on?"
She looked up into his face warily. "What do you mean?"
"Just between us?"
"That's why we're out here, and not in my office," she snorted.
"You and Doctor Green and Mr. Broots have all been acting... distracted... somehow." Sam was finding putting his gut feelings and observations into words a more difficult task than he'd imagined. "And your temper..." He stopped; his boss' eyebrow had climbed into what he personally considered the 'red zone' that marked the barrier between simple annoyance and outright rage. "Sorry, ma'am..."
Miss Parker sighed, and her eyebrow dropped back down into the 'safe zone'. "No, Sam, you're right. I HAVE been distracted lately, and for very good reason. Things have..." She looked at her burly sweeper appraisingly. "I need to know something, Sam. If it ever came down to a choice between me or the Centre, where would you stand?"
Now Sam did blink in surprise, but he didn't hesitate with his answer. "With you, Miss Parker. No question."
She continued to study him carefully even after his answer, watching his emotions flit past his expressive dark eyes - the only sign that there was anything going on inside the man on an otherwise stoic face. After a long and silent pause, during which Sam had a strong urge to fidget nervously that he viciously suppressed, she moved close to him and put a hand uncharacteristically on his arm. "OK."
"OK?" The dark eyebrows had headed for the hairline again.
"Sam, I need you to do something very important for me, and I need to know that I can trust you implicitly."
"I'm your man, Miss Parker. Whatever you need..."
She nodded. "I think I know that now."
"What is it you need that's so important, then?" he asked her, finally daring to push at her a little to get to the point.
"Things here at the Centre are going to be getting... um... messy... after a while. And before that, I'm going to want you to escort Davy and Debbie and Angelo to a safe place and protect them until its OK for them to come home again." There. She'd laid half of the plan on the table. Aware of the risk she was taking in bringing him into the little conspiracy, she watched his reactions closely. Sam had been a completely loyal sweeper and acquaintance of her little family for quite a while now; this request would have him put that loyalty to the ultimate test.
Sam straightened. "Where do you need me to take them?"
She looked him square in the eye. "I need you to take them to Jarod's family."
THAT was a shock he couldn't easily pretend away. His mouth dropped open and he gaped at her wordlessly while his mind attempted to navigate its way through the many deductions that simple sentence had brought about. "J...JAROD'S family?"
"And I need you to stay with them once you arrive, and help keep the whole group safe and off the Centre's radar."
At last Sam's mind made a vital deduction, and the man gave Miss Parker a crooked smile. "What are you guys doing, taking down the Centre?"
Miss Parker shook her head. "Nope. Just Raines and Lyle."
Sam nodded in a broad gesture. "Ah." He drew himself up to his full height. "I'll start work on the problem of getting Angelo out of the Centre without attracting attention, and I'll let you know the moment I've figured it out."
"I'll probably have you run it past Jarod and let him do a sim on it," she mused, as much to herself as to her companion. "As long as we have his resources to draw on, it would be unwise not to make use of them."
The sweeper was beyond being any more surprised by now. He took the news that not only had Jarod reappeared after years of total absence, that not only did Miss Parker know he was back but was actively cooperating with him, completely in stride without batting an eye. "Yes, ma'am, I think that would be a very good idea."
Miss Parker gave her sweeper a smile and patted his arm again. "Let's head back," she suggested, her first steps obviously leading back in the direction of the front entrance to the Centre lobby. "If anybody asks what we were doing, you can tell them I was just feeling insecure today and wanted an escort."
"Yes, ma'am..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the end of a long, tiring and frustrating day of interviewing prospective fraternal twin subjects for the next stage of his current project when the phone on his desk rang. "This is Sydney."
"Syd?" Broots' voice sounded hesitant, almost frightened.
"What is it?" Sydney's blood ran cold. He knew the answer before the young technician answered.
"I have the DNA test results you wanted." Broots stopped. "Well, I don't know if they're what you WANTED, but I have them anyway..."
"Merde!"
Broots sighed on the other end of the line. "Yeah."
Sydney leaned forward heavily and put his forehead in his hand. "Both of them?
"Yeah." The psychiatrist could hear the distress in his friend's voice. "By the way, there was more..."
Sydney's head snapped up and he stared at the far wall of his office. "What do you mean, 'more'?"
"Well, I handed the technician the sample you gave me, and then decided maybe we needed to do a fresh comparison with known samples otherwise. You know, get the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the whole thing, once and for all? Anyway, I went back to the vault, took several vials, and then told him to just run a simple family relationship analysis on everything." Sydney's eyebrows climbed his forehead. Broots wasn't often either that brave or forward-thinking.
"I figured that at best, the only change - if any - would have been to confirm your suspicions. But..." Broots' voice got even softer and more sympathetic. "Syd, Lyle isn't her brother - he's Mr. Parker's son alright, one of that guy's "one chance in ten"s, but definitely NOT Miss Parker's twin. Catherine wasn't his mother at all." Broots was quiet for a long moment, knowing he'd just dropped a major bomb on the Parker family tree. "You know what that means, don't you?
"Yeah."
"There's something else... something..." Broots' voice had dropped several decibels, and Sydney had to strain to hear his friend.
"That wasn't all of it?" Sydney gaped, already practically with his head in his hands.
"Are you by yourself?"
The psychiatrist frowned. "At this time of day? Of course I am..."
"Good," Broots interrupted the minor peeved lecture. "Get your DSA viewer out. You just gotta see this before doing or saying anything else. I'll be down there in about ten minutes."
Sydney hung up the phone after Broots had abruptly disconnected the call, and he sat back in his comfortable leather chair and stared at the ceiling. Something was up, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was going to like what Broots had to show him no more than he like the test results he'd just been given.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam yawned and let the blueprints of the Centre ventilation ducts slowly roll themselves back up into a tube. The complicated system of heating, air conditioning and infrastructure access tunnels and conduits had been the playground and private domain of the Centre's elusive empath for more years than Sam had been employed there. But the dedicated sweeper was determined to find a way to track Angelo down. Once that was accomplished, finding a way out of the Centre without setting off alarms for taking one of their projects AWOL would be a piece of cake.
Still, there was no guarantee which sublevel Angelo might be choosing to inhabit at any point in time. Sam had had the plans for entire complex delivered to his postage-stamp sized office area and then slowly and meticulously studied them for the better part of the day since his talk with Miss Parker. He had paused only briefly, while waiting for the plans to be delivered, to contemplate why Miss Parker would be including Angelo in a grouping of children destined for a safe house retreat. Then he had shrugged. Knowing Miss Parker, she had her reasons, and they were most likely good ones. His job was to do what she'd asked of him.
As he yawned and stretched, he finally noticed the shadow behind the ventilation grate near his office door. He moved to it; and there, behind the heavy mesh, sat the object of his search, looking out at him with innocent yet knowing blue-grey eyes. "Angelo," the sweeper breathed.
"Angelo here," the empath nodded as if he knew what Sam needed. "Angelo be here, when the time comes." Then the child-man smiled a crooked smile that told the sweeper that there was a LOT more going on in his mind than most people ever gave him credit for. "Angelo knows the way out too."
"Can Angelo show me?" Sam asked skeptically.
Angelo just smiled wider and pushed at a particular spot on the mesh screen, and the screen opened on hidden hinges. And less than ten minutes later, Sam knew he had the answers Miss Parker wanted of him.
Sam watched the screen reclose after the empath had climbed nimbly back into the vent, then rolled up the blueprints to be taken back to Records. He'd need to take a walk with Miss Parker the next morning, and maybe with Jarod in the very near future.
It was almost too easy. Almost.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"You're awfully quiet tonight, Syd." Miss Parker remarked as she negotiated the car around the last corner before pulling into his driveway.
"I know," he said in a truly apologetic tone. "I've had a lot on my mind these last couple of days. Even Jarod was asking questions last night - questions I ducked shamelessly. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"Don't sweat it," she shook her head. "We all get in our moods at times. God knows you've put up with your share from me over the years - I've nothing to complain about."
Sydney waited until the car had pulled completely into the drive and then laid a very gentle hand on her shoulder. "Can I talk you into coming in for a bit tonight? I need to talk to you... talk to you and Jarod together."
She pushed her sun glasses up into her hair like a headband and peered at her old friend in worry. "Syd? Is everything OK with you? I mean, you're not..."
"No, no, nothing like that." He reached over and pulled her into a quick and gentle hug - and then didn't let go right away, but held her close just a little longer than normal. "You worry too much about me, Parker. I'm fine - really. I just need to talk to the two of you. Together. I asked Broots to pick up Davy for you, so that you'd have the time..."
Miss Parker pushed against his chest and straightened so that she could look at him directly again. "Sydney? What's going on?"
He used the distancing move she'd done as impetus to unbuckle himself and climb from the car, and then he bent down and peered across the interior at her as he took hold of his briefcase that sat upright on the floorboard of the car. "Please, Parker? Humor me?"
She stared at him with a slightly frustrated look on her face, as if it would convince him to be a little more forthcoming before committing herself to either agree or refuse, and then she shut off the motor and pulled the key from the ignition. "Alright, Freud, but I'm not really in the mood to put up with much crap from Jarod tonight, so I hope your mysterious whatever is really THAT important..."
"Trust me, it is..." Sydney responded, a sour taste arising from the pit of his stomach. He waited for her on by the front bumper, then captured her hand and tucked it into the bend of his arm. "I appreciate this." He escorted her up his front steps and into the unlocked house.
"Jarod!" Miss Parker called out loudly after the door was closed. "Your presence is requested in the living room, please." She heard the fall of footsteps above her head, and then on the stairs descending towards her. Jarod had shed his informal preppie look for his more habitual black T- shirt and jeans, but with the beard and glasses still only remotely resembled the man they had once known and pursued.
"What's up?" he asked brightly, with far more energy than either of the others in the room was showing.
"Sit down, the both of you," Sydney directed in a tired voice.
Jarod's boyish smile died on his face, and he gave Parker a questioning look. "Don't ask me," she responded with a shrug and reached out for his hand and dragged him over to the couch to sit next to her. "Let's not keep the man waiting, though, shall we? I have a little boy to get home to."
"Sydney?" Jarod's voice had now found the worried tone Parker's had had in the car. "Is everything OK?"
The older psychiatrist toyed with the idea of sitting down in one of his leather easy chairs, facing the pair on the couch, but discarded the idea almost immediately. He was nervous, and finally just allowed that nervousness to show plainly by pacing ever so slightly in front of the seated pair. "That depends on your definition of 'OK', Jarod," he started lamely.
"C'mon, Syd. Spill it," Parker advised with a shadow of impatience more suited to the relentless huntress she had been in years gone by.
"Damn!" Sydney swore to himself, and then parked himself on the very edge of the easy chair after all. He looked over at the two on the couch. "I hardly know where to begin."
"It helps if you start at the beginning," Jarod suggested with a glance at Parker, who nodded.
The older man took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, then expelled it noisily. "You're right. This started the night we had dinner together at your place, Parker - after dinner, while you and Debbie were cleaning up." The chestnut gaze landed on Jarod. "Do you remember what happened?"
"You mean when Davy gave me a run for my money at that video game?" Jarod asked with a dumbfounded look on his face. Sydney nodded. "Of course I remember. Why?"
"Well, it was the first time I'd seen Davy and you side by side. You two were having such fun, laughing, smiling..." Sydney's face was soft with memory, then creased with something akin to pain. "I was hoping that it was just a trick of the light, or my eyes were tired and playing tricks on me."
"For God's sake, Syd, will you draw a bulls-eye around the point and hit it?" Miss Parker frowned in frustration. "What did you see?"
Sydney rested his gaze on her. "I saw Jarod smile, and Davy smile, and with God as my witness, Parker, they were the same smile."
Miss Parker began to sputter in order to dismiss Sydney's statement, only to have Jarod land a hand on her arm. She fell silent at the look on his face, which was a cross between intense concentration and near anger, and then turned to face her old friend with a look of concerned bewilderment. "And you're trying to tell us it wasn't just a trick or illusion?"
Sydney shook his head, his face reflecting his true sorrow. "I wanted to be wrong so badly - I knew I wasn't - but I had to be sure. I had Broots run the tests that should have been run a long time ago. I pulled some of Davy's umbilical blood from the fluids vault, and later Broots took the lead and snatched some of your blood, Lyle's blood, Catherine's blood, your father's semen and Jarod's blood, just to make sure we were covering all the bases." He looked at Miss Parker and saw that she hadn't figured it out yet. "Davy IS Jarod's son, Parker. And..."
"What?!" Miss Parker exploded. "How can that be? He can't..." She looked at Jarod, who continued to concentrate on his former mentor, studying the lines of the Pretender's face that were visible through the beard and trying to remember what it looked like without the hair, then blanched. "But..." she looked back at Sydney, who continued to look at her sadly. "Oh God!" she realized. "That isn't all of it, is it?"
Jarod was bumped from his musings with that whispered revelation, and he glanced over at Miss Parker in concern and then back at Sydney. "There's more?"
Sydney nodded, and looked down to study his hands as they tried to fold together in calm and only managed to stay folded but a moment. "Davy is also your son, Miss Parker. He really IS your son, biologically-speaking."
She stared at her old friend, trying to wrap her mind around the magnitude of the cruel twist of fate that been exposed. "You're sure?" she breathed, not daring to even hazard a glance at the man sitting next to her.
"I had Broots baby-sit the medical technician while the tests were running," Sydney informed her quietly. "I didn't want any screw-ups or deliberate misreporting this time. If I was going to have to upset you, I wanted to have my facts utterly and unquestionably straight. But then Broots, in the process of conducting his own investigation, managed to find something even more concrete than even the DNA tests."
While Miss Parker rose and began pacing the floor in front of the hearth, her hands crossed over her chest like armor, Jarod leaned back into the couch and slouched, and for a long moment stared at the ceiling without seeing anything. Sydney rose and went over to a cabinet at the base of one of his floor-to-ceiling bookcases and withdrew a silver case and, with an air of complete desolation, carried it over and opened it with the view screen facing the couch. From his jacket pocket he withdrew an envelope and slid the shiny DSA disc into his hand, slipped it into the play slot. "You need to see this, Miss Parker," he called sadly, then waited until she had conceded to sit back down next to Jarod before he flipped the switch to activate the viewer, then backed away to let the pair on the couch see what he'd seen.
The setting was Mr. Parker's office, and the date stamped on the beginning segment of the video showed that the meeting had taken place a little more than ten months prior to Davy's birth. Mr. Parker was sitting behind his desk, as usual, with Lyle standing in attendance at his right hand while Mr. Raines sat in the comfortable chair in front of the desk, a sheaf of papers in his hands.
"We've already tried this once," Mr. Parker was telling a very animated Raines. "And you said that Mirage needed a little more work before we can make effective use of him. Why start another project now? Why not wait until we have the results from Mirage?"
"Contingencies," Raines replied in his gasping voice, then pulled more oxygen from his ever-present tank noisily into his lungs. "Each one of these projects has yielded a single individual - and so far, we've lost one already. Had we put all our hopes for the future in Gemini, we'd be screwed. We don't dare make that mistake with Mirage. Reflection will give us the kind of backup we need that we stand a decent chance of getting to use still within our lifetimes."
"But why not just use the same materials we used for Mirage? Why go to the trouble of collecting fresh samples?" Mr. Parker was frowning. "Every time we have to resort to medical procedures hidden within medical procedures, we run the risk of discovery."
"We cannot trust the integrity of the genetic material we harvested from either Catherine or Major Charles," Raines' voice was adamant. He dragged in more oxygen. "The samples are decades old, and we don't have the time to run the risk that they are no longer viable."
"Well, that means we'll need to talk to my daughter's surgeon before she gets that ulcer repaired," Mr. Parker sighed. "Convenient, isn't it, that she collapsed last night?"
"Not so convenient, Dad," Lyle moved in his serpentine way and parked his hip on the very edge of his father's desk. "I've been putting the pressure on her workwise - and I had Willy make sure that the coffee she's been guzzling lately had... well... a little something extra..."
Jarod glanced over at Miss Parker and found her staring at the little screen, her mouth agape. Something told him that Raines and Lyle would not be the sole recipients of their efforts after THAT little piece of news. Then again, he despised Willy almost as much as Miss Parker did, so it was no skin off of his nose to see to it that Willy didn't last any longer than his boss did. The next remark from the DSA quickly drew his attention again, however:
"Good thinking," Mr. Parker commented with an approving nod and gazed up at his son as if gaining a new appreciation of the man's capabilities. He then looked back over at Raines. "That takes care of the mother's material. But what about Jarod?"
"We COULD use material taken from Gemini," Lyle suggested, making both his father and Raines look up at him in surprise. "Technically speaking, it IS Jarod's material..."
"Too many other risks are involved with using cloned material," Raines shook his head vehemently. "There is the inevitable degradation that comes with cloning - the gene sequences become more fragile, more open to mutation or breakdown. No, the samples we collected from Jarod may not be completely fresh, but they are well within viability parameters." Raines' smile was wide. "We use Jarod, a proven natural Pretender, and we use Miss Parker, whose genetics were managed to enhance and augment her mother's natural psi abilities. The offspring of this pairing should more than fulfill any of the prophecies written in the scrolls - I'm sure fourth century prophets didn't have a full grasp on the technological capabilities of the times they were writing about."
"Well, we've got things planned to the petri dish stage. But we're going to need a surrogate mother to carry the child..." Mr. Parker sat back in his comfortable leather chair and steepled his fingers. "This child is too important to the future of the Centre to trust to our regular breeding program. I'm going to want to supervise the progress of the pregnancy directly."
"Are you sure that's wise, Dad?" Lyle asked in an oily tone. "You've managed to keep your involvement in all of this pretty distanced from the projects themselves until now. Why change tactics now?"
"Because this is TOO important to just farm out to subordinate supervision," the old man snapped at his son. "And I have to be realistic. If this is a final fall-back plan, and all our hopes end up resting on this child's abilities being proven and then given proper guidance, then its even MORE important that I be directly and personally involved at every step of the way."
"We still need to select a suitable surrogate," Raines reminded the others in his tired tones, yet again pulling noisily on the oxygen tank.
"I have just the candidate in mind," Mr. Parker smirked at the other two triumphantly. "She's infertile, so there would be no chance of error as to which child she'd be carrying; and like Catherine was, she's disposable once the baby is born - because technically I should have had her killed several weeks ago anyway."
"Aw, Dad..." Lyle breathed, catching on to just whom it was that his father was referring. "My 'sister' will have a shit fit when she finds out..."
"Let her!" Mr. Parker snapped. "I don't give a damn what she thinks. She's turning into a carbon copy of her mother - and in all the wrong ways, as far as I'm concerned. After all those years of training, and teaching her how to be ruthless as a Parker..." The old man gazed up at his son appraisingly. "I'm glad you aren't Catherine's son. I'd have to wonder about you too, eventually. Catherine's bloodline may be talented, but it's weak when it comes to taking and using the power of the Parker name and heritage."
Raines had sat looking from one to the other in confusion. "Who ARE you suggesting as the surrogate?" he demanded, trying to pull the conversation back on track and away from a family dissection of Miss Parker's attributes.
"Brigitte, of course!" Mr. Parker turned and snapped at him. "We'll start the psychological conditioning that will break down her resistance to me as a husband at once. Today, in fact. Just turn her loyalty from the Triumverate to me personally - and leave the rest of her nasty little personality intact. We don't want TOO many questions because she isn't the same person otherwise..." The old man put his hands behind his head calmly. "We'll do the marriage within a month, do you hear? I want her programmed and ready by then. Hell, she can even have undergone the insemination process just before the wedding, for all I care - provided she's psychologically sound at that point."
"What if she doesn't want to do this?" Lyle couldn't resist probing all the negative options to the plan.
"She won't refuse," Mr. Parker smirked. "Either she undergoes the conditioning willingly, or we do the conditioning without her permission - it makes no difference to me. That's the price she pays for trying to kill me." The old man's face twisted. "Its really quite a form of justice, when I'll be screwing her for having screwed with me..."
"How far do you want her conditioning to go?" Raines asked, and his eagerness to get busy with the psychological twisting of an individual was obvious in his tone.
Mr. Parker shrugged. "I don't care. Make her love me, if you think you can. Hell, if you manage that, I MIGHT just have you work on my daughter and do the same thing to her. God knows I'm starting to have real doubts about HER loyalty, just like I did her mother..."
The DSA viewer screen went black as it reached the end of the recording, and Jarod reached out a slightly trembling hand to turn off the viewer. He looked over at Miss Parker with trepidation, knowing that enough had been said in that meeting to blow a number of her favorite misconceptions about her 'father' completely to pieces, and he knew that Sydney was watching her very closely as well for much the same reasons.
Sydney had retreated back to sit on the edge of his chair while the DSA was playing and to watch both their reactions, but he had watched Miss Parker's reactions particularly carefully. Jarod, despite his unorthodox upbringing, was a far more stable person - he had weathered the many revelations about his familial relationships without much trouble. Over the years, Jarod had become cynical enough about the Centre's treatment of him otherwise that the idea that his genetic material would have been used without his permission to create a child, while upsetting, would not be emotionally crippling.
Miss Parker, on the other hand, had never been given the tools to help her cope well with the idea of how blatantly she'd been used. She had buried her memories of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of an apparently vindictive father so deeply that she had needed to suffer a complete emotional breakdown before she could confess that dark secret to anyone. Growing up as the Princess of the Centre completely overshadowed by that same all-powerful father had predisposed her to want to believe she'd been given only the best of treatments at all times. The broadside bombshells in her understanding of what was real and unreal about her family and her life in the Centre since Jarod's escape inevitably and consistently had taken a weighty and unpredictable toll on her. The psychiatrist was very much aware that what she'd just witnessed and heard would constitute as messy and huge an explosion in her life as the faked suicide of her Mother that she'd witnessed as a child ever had.
She rose from her seat, her face completely expressionless and without a touch of color, and resumed her pacing in front of the hearth. Her eyes were fixed on the floor in front of her, but it was obvious that her mind was replaying the explosive DSA. There was an inner coldness that was threatening to overwhelm her every time she reviewed the callousness that 'Daddy' had demonstrated toward her on that damning DSA. He hadn't even flinched when informed that her ulcer problems had had artificial help in becoming life-threatening, but rather congratulated Lyle on his creative thinking. And THEN he had discussed her genetic contribution to the project as if she were nothing more than just another Centre lab-rat to be exploited without conscience.
Lab-rat. She looked over at Jarod, hearing her own voice throw that epithet at him repeatedly over the years and marveling at the irony of discovering herself to be no less a subject of experimentation than he had ever been. Her eyes met Jarod's, and his sympathetic understanding was met by her utter and agonized betrayal. "I..."
"Parker..." Jarod reached up toward her, but she pulled away from him as if from a too-hot flame.
"That's it, then," she said stonily, unwilling to let herself feel yet. "I was just resource material for him to use to... He didn't...give a damn..."
"Parker..." Sydney rose and stepped towards her, but again she backed away from any human contact with hands raised as shields, too traumatized by the revelations on the DSA to want to interact with anyone. Her entire being had been rocked to its very foundations, and there was an inner shaking that pushed her to reject any form of comfort as yet.
"It must have amused him no end when I ended up delivering the baby myself," she mused as she continued her pacing., her voice dripping agonized sarcasm. "I bet that son of a bitch got a real thrill when he saw how I had her blood all over my hands..." She stared, her memory very effectively retrieving the entire setting of Davy's birth in the remote cabin, and all that had followed. For the first time, reviewing that memory, the inner shaking finally began to express itself outwardly as she considered the ramifications of everything that HAD happened there. "And that... BASTARD... took my baby from me..."
Sydney stepped forward again, unwilling to allow her to face this corrosive discovery in ways that had proven so disastrous to her in the past. He wrapped his arms around Miss Parker before she could start to fall apart completely and held on tightly when she would have pushed him away anyway. "I know," he hushed her, closing his eyes and holding her very close in order to keep her physically reminded that she no longer had to face these trials alone. "I'm am SO sorry, Parker." He felt the tautness in her body slowly ease beneath his hands as he rubbed her back, and he sighed silently in relief when she finally leaned into him, accepting his comfort and support.
"What does Davy know of his heritage?" Jarod asked quietly from the couch.
Sydney opened his eyes and watched the younger man remove his eyeglasses and rub his eyes, and he then knew Jarod had been heavily affected by what he'd seen as well. He tightened his hold on Miss Parker protectively. "We... got custody of Davy when he was three," the psychiatrist answered slowly. "We've always been open with him about being adopted, but he's never asked that many questions, really..." He tipped his face down so that he could see that Miss Parker was looking at Jarod too. "Parker? Has he ever asked..."
"Not really, not yet." She shook her head against his chest. "But I should have known," she mused aloud to herself. "The moment that baby was born, he looked into my eyes - and it was like everything inside me fell into place and said 'Mine!' And then, when I'd go down and visit him in the Centre nursery, he'd pitch a fit every time I had to put him down or leave..."
She closed her eyes and leaned into Sydney hard for a moment, gathering strength, and then pushed herself out of his arms to stand on her own again. "I'm OK, Syd," she announced finally, kissing him on the cheek to assuage any feelings of rejection for being pushed away after all. "Because in the end, it doesn't matter. That bastard is dead, floating somewhere in the Atlantic. And besides, I got my baby back. Davy is my son - by adoption or blood really doesn't make a difference now, by adoption AND blood only means that NOBODY will ever take him away from me again! He calls me 'Mommy', he lives in my house without really remembering ever living anywhere else, and I'm seeing to it that he gets all the love and respect that I never did after my mother died." She looked over at the younger man, her eyes filled with almost a defiant challenge as she struggled to rally against the despair with which the DSA had filled her.
Jarod rose and walked over to her. "I don't doubt that, Parker, and I would never do anything to change that. You're giving him a good life - a loving family - you and Sydney and Broots. He's a happy and well-adjusted kid well on his way to growing up strong and free, regardless of the perverse way he was brought into the world. Trust me, I'm not going to try to do anything to mess with what's obviously working. It's just..."
"Yes?" Her voice was still defiant, defensive. "But...?"
Jarod looked back and forth between Miss Parker and Sydney with a confident evenness. "But he is MY son too, Parker - whatever that means in your estimation, it makes him doubly precious to me. He will tie us together in a way that will make it impossible for me to just drop out of your life entirely ever again."
She opened her mouth to comment, but Jarod interrupted her before she could get a word out. "Look, I'm not stupid, nor am I completely selfish. I'm not going to ask you to walk away from your life here with your family, and frankly, I have no intention of permanently walking away from the life I have back there with mine. Whatever is to be between the two of US is something we'll have to figure out when we have the time and luxury to do it right. But for now, I feel I have the right to ask to be included in making important decisions in Davy's life because I AM his father. I'd like to think that you could consider me an extra resource as well when any needs arise that you or Broots or Sydney can't satisfy yourselves. That would be only right and reasonable for Davy's sake, don't you agree?"
Miss Parker glanced at Sydney, then nodded and dropped most of her defensive stance. "You're right, that is reasonable. I'm sorry to be so..."
Jarod shook his head. "Don't be. You're his mother - Davy's lucky to have you in his corner, so ready to fight for him."
Miss Parker took a deep, cleansing breath and forced herself to release much of her inner darkness. She looked back over at Sydney and noted that while the older man did look a little less worried, he still hadn't lost the expression of a man standing on the edge of imparting more bad news. "Hey! Cheer up, Sydney. We're handling the news. As you so pointedly observed the other night, there's no blood splatters..." She peered more closely into his face. "Sydney?"
The psychiatrist glanced at Jarod and sighed. "There was one more piece of truth to come out of those tests. It was mentioned on the DSA too, but I don't think you heard it, in amongst all the other lies being exposed..."
She blinked and glanced at Jarod in confusion. "What? What did I miss?"
Sydney had no strength left in him to attempt to soften the blow. "That Lyle isn't your twin, Miss Parker - that he IS Mr. Parker's natural son, but that Catherine wasn't his mother. In other words, that at best he's related to you only distantly."
Jarod nodded, catching his former mentor's drift almost immediately. "And that means that Angelo is your twin after all, Miss Parker," he finished for the older man.
She looked over at him, surprised that she indeed had not paid attention to her father's off-handed comment about Lyle's not being Catherine's son and remembering the tone with which the comment had been made. "That's right!" She turned her gaze on Sydney, and while he could see clearly that she was intensely angry, the man knew instinctively that her anger was not aimed at him. "God, Syd, is there ANYTHING about my life that I haven't been lied to about at one time or another? My mother's 'suicide', just who IS my father, just who IS my brother..."
"For my part all of that, I'm sorry, Parker," Sydney responded sadly. "And I know I didn't help..."
"Stop that, right now!" she demanded sharply and protectively. She strode to his side and put her arms around him tightly and pulled him into her for a change. "There's a huge difference between keeping a promise you made to my mother to keep your mouth shut in order to protect me on the one hand and deliberately misleading me to satisfy an agenda on the other. When you kept things from me, Syd, you had what you felt were good reasons, and you've damned well spent the past seven years more than making up for any damage caused accidentally in the process. I will NOT have you beating yourself up over this, do you hear me?"
Jarod smiled softly to himself to see her be as fiercely protective of Sydney as he himself might be in similar circumstances, and even happier to see Sydney accept that gruff love and protection as well. Miss Parker gave Sydney another quick hug and then let him go in order to resume her pacing. "But 'Daddy'... I know now that he didn't have reasons, he had agendas. Its HIM I hold responsible for all of this, him and Raines and Lyle. All of them have done nothing but..." She shook her head. "I can hardly believe that they sat around his desk, as if this were nothing more than another project staff meeting, as if what they were creating were just another building or fence rather than a human being..."
"What are you going to do?" Jarod asked her quietly, bringing her up short and cutting off the tirade as if turning off a faucet.
"Get Angelo the hell outta the Centre as soon as humanly possible," she retorted immediately. "He deserves better. We all do." She turned and looked Jarod in the eye, then sidled closer to him as her face hardened into stony anger. "I want Lyle and Raines GONE," she said in a lethal hiss, "And I want them gone in the WORST kind of way. We need to get the kids and Angelo safely out of the way, and then we need to get this show on the road. Now."
"I know we do," Jarod nodded. "But use your head and don't let your temper get in the way. Think! Don't just react!" He reached out and with a gentle set of knuckles knocked softly on her forehead. "We need to finish the prep work first, Parker. You said you've brought Sam in - and frankly, I agree that the best way for him to help us all is for him to go with the kids and Angelo and then help my family keep them all safe for us. In the meanwhile, Broots and I need to finish our digging around in the mainframe - and we need YOU to help tell us where else to dig to bring up the stuff those two are keeping hidden from the Triumverate the most successfully. Only after all that's done can we all begin to strategize on how we're going to bring these things to the Triumverate's attention without calling attention to ourselves at the same time."
He gazed at her sympathetically. "I understand how you feel. I really do. But now is not the time to go off half-cocked." He sat back down on the couch and patted the space next to him. "Frankly, Parker, sit down. Our first concern should be to discuss what we're going to tell our son about who he really is, and how we're going to go about telling him what he needs to know before we ship him off to his 'other' family."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Oh hi, Miss P," Broots said as he opened his front door. "Jarod..." He stepped aside and let both of them in, and could see that both seemed just a bit on edge - but in a very 'together' way. He didn't have to ask; he knew what the change had been, and could see that the pain from the revelation was still fresh for the both of them.
"Is Davy still up?" Miss Parker asked gently, her eyes circling the house that was open to her. She listened, and could hear soft voices speaking in the back of the house.
Broots nodded. "Yeah. He and Debbie got themselves involved in TV about an hour or so ago - after he'd finished his homework. I figured that I'd let him watch with her for a while, in case you decided to pick him up rather than let him overnight here."
Jarod touched Miss Parker lightly on her shoulder. "In that case, how about I meet you at your place in about a half-hour. I think when we talk to him, it would best take place on 'home turf', as it were." He saw her nod distractedly, then looked over at Broots. "See ya later," he said with a wave and let himself out of the house again.
"You OK?" Broots asked Miss Parker with a soft voice and a hand on an arm to catch her full attention.
"No," she replied with unadorned honesty and a small shake of her head, "I'm not. But you'd think I'd get used to this having to rearrange relationships in my head all the time, wouldn't you?"
Her friend shook his head vehemently. "I don't know anybody who could. You know, I almost wish I hadn't insisted on having the full familial relationship testing done," Broots mused aloud in sympathy, "And I sure as hell wish I'd never found that damned DSA..."
"No. Despite everything, I'm glad you did," she contradicted him quickly. "Its time the truth came out."
"You and Jarod going to tell Davy now?" Broots inquired, then closed his eyes and shook his head at the sight of her slow nod. "Oh, man!" He breathed deeply. "I'll go get him for you, then." Broots couldn't help but admire the stoic way she was apparently dealing with all of the discoveries of the day, and contemplated calling Sydney to see whether the stoicism was just an act.
Either way, he didn't envy her the discussion she and Jarod were going to have to have with their son. Considering the input he'd already had in the events of their evening, he also needed to distance himself from her before he could say anything and make a fool of himself in the process. She didn't need that - not now.
"Thanks, Broots," she replied softly, then added, "for everything, OK?"
The balding technician ducked his head, completely unconvinced that he'd done anything deserving of gratitude, and continued on his way toward the back of the house.
Miss Parker ran her fingers through her hair in nervousness, trying to set herself in an emotionally neutral place before her son came out. Her question to Broots about rearranging relationships in her head hadn't really been a rhetorical one. Rather, it had been one that she'd been asking herself ever since she and Jarod had left Sydney's to pick up Davy.
Now that she thought about it, what was the most hurtful of anything she'd ever experienced was the idea that 'Daddy' could have so deliberately and callously perpetrated such a horrifying act. She was appalled and devastated at the thought that he felt empowered to take - steal - hers and Jarod's genetic material and create a child that he then claimed as his own. And lest she forget, the fact that she'd been so taken with her wish to believe him that she hadn't questioned the situation at all at the time was almost beyond belief.
She KNEW Brigitte was unable to conceive - after all, that was the diagnosis of Brigitte's own OB-GYN in the Centre report she had purloined and read. How did a woman otherwise incapable of conceiving manage to conceive a Parker heir at all - whether her father's or Lyle's being a moot issue? And why had the question not presented itself to her before now? Then again, she knew that 'Daddy' had been virtually infertile as well - her own paternity had been discovered to be highly suspect a long time ago. How did a man virtually incapable of being a father - who in fact WASN'T her father - father a son on a woman incapable of conceiving?
How blind could she have been all these years?
She quickly set her inner struggle aside as she heard the sounds of her young son's tripping footsteps down the hall toward her. She put on what she hoped was a convincing smile and bent with her arms open to gather in the young child that broke into a run and threw himself at her with a cheerful "Mommy!"
"Hey there!" she exclaimed and lifted him up onto her hip after giving him a kiss on the cheek. "Uncle Broots says you have your homework done. Are you hungry?"
"Uh-unh. Debbie made hotdogs for us." Davy's eyes were bright. "But you know, Mommy, I was really into that episode of..."
"Well," Miss Parker interrupted, knowing her son's favorite syndicated TV show which just happened to be on at this hour, "I know you've seen that thing hundreds of times. Besides, I happen to know that Jarod intends on stopping by this evening before you go to bed, so...." She smiled when she felt her son begin to squirm in her arms in excitement.
"Jarod's coming over? C'mon, Mommy!" Davy finally got his mother to let him regain his feet, and he dove for his backpack. "Let's go! Goodnight, Uncle Broots, Debbie," he called into the house in a loud voice that would carry over the TV.
"Goodnight, Davy," "See you later, kiddo," came two voices from out of sight.
"See you tomorrow, Broots," Miss Parker called out as well, taking her son firmly in hand.
"You take care, Miss P," Broots came from the back of the house at that and walked quickly so that he could open the door for his boss and friend. "I'll be thinking of you."
"Thanks," she responded quietly with a meaningful look, then let Davy drag her excitedly down the steps towards her car.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
There would no contest when the doorbell rang; Miss Parker stood stock still in the kitchen door and watched as Davy dashed excitedly for the door with a shout and threw it open.
"Hi, Davy," Jarod said gently at the sight of the boy, then blinked in complete surprise as the child threw himself up into his arms.
"Jarod! Mommy said you were coming!" The little boy laid his head on Jarod's shoulder and closed his eyes in pure contentment. "I'm glad you're here!"
"Well, I told her I'd come by because we have a few things we want to talk about with you. And considering what happened the last time, I don't think I should disappoint her anymore, do you, son?" Jarod asked, his words carrying much more than just the surface meaning. He had closed his eyes and was returning the tight hug that Davy was giving him.
Miss Parker caught her breath at the expression of absolute and unconditional love and pride that had suddenly painted the Pretender's face as he settled into his first KNOWING embrace of a child who was his son. She indulgently stepped past the oblivious males to close the door against the night's chill, firm in the knowledge that after tonight, Jarod would be a very important and permanent part of her son's life. There was no way in the world that she would even want to keep these two apart, and no way that she'd stand better than a snowball's chance in Hell of succeeding if she tried.
Her son had gained a very potent ally and protector in Jarod, someone whom she could trust implicitly to be a real father to him in fact as well as in role-model influence. Jarod was also someone to whom she could trust Davy's care should anything happen to her, knowing that he'd never keep either Broots or Sydney from continuing in their familial roles either. Davy's nuclear family circle was now complete; Mommy, Uncle, Cousin, Grandpa - and now Dad.
Besides, this meant that Jarod would never be too far removed from having an important role to play in her life as well as a consequence - something she could appreciate even more from having suffered so desperately from the lack for so long. And for the first time that evening, she allowed herself to consider that sharing a son with her childhood best friend might not be such a bad thing at all. She would hate and despise the man who had raised her as his own for as long as she lived for what he had done to her, both as a battered child and as a betrayed adult; but she could live with, and love dearly, the results of her mistreatment.
Now all they needed to do was to get to a place and time where exploring just exactly what all this would mean to each of them in the long run could happen in peace and safety.
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail
"Broots? Can I talk to you for a moment?"
The technician looked up from his computer screen and the flow of the discussion in the chat room he'd been visiting to see Sydney standing in his doorway. He popped the last, large, piece of donut into his mouth and waved the older man in, then dusted his hand off on his pant leg. "What's up?" he somehow managed around the half-chewed pastry.
"I need you to do me a HUGE favor." Sydney reached into his shirt pocket and removed a tiny vial of red liquid that Broots knew instantly was blood. "I want you to run this through DNA analysis - quietly. Stand there and watch them do it, if need be - but I want real results, and not convenient lies."
"What's going on?" Broots was instantly alert, and concerned. "Whose blood is this?"
"Davy's."
The computer technician stared at his old friend in consternation. "Does Parker know what you're doing..."
"No, she doesn't - and I don't want her to know. Not yet, anyway - not until the analysis is finished and I have my answers." Sydney's face was a study in conflicted emotions. "Something occurred to me last night, just before our 'discussion', and I want to follow through on it before saying anything to anybody else."
"What's that?" Broots was genuinely curious. He'd been there - what had Syd seen that he'd missed?
"It suddenly occurred to me that Mr. Parker was functionally sterile," Sydney stated flatly. "And that we've never seriously questioned just how a man who mostly likely couldn't be the father of our Miss Parker in his prime could, at a much older and less capable age, father a son." Chestnut eyes bored holes into Broots' ice-blues. "We've toyed with the idea that it was Lyle, once upon a time... but we never tested to prove anything. I think we need to know before too much more time passes."
"Alright," Broots replied in a confused but agreeable tone and then pocketed the vial. "What brought this on?"
Sydney shrugged with deceptive calm; he had been anything but ever since he had awakened in the middle of the night, unable to set the wondering aside enough to sleep. "I was watching Davy and Jarod playing that stupid video game last night, and I had the most horrible thought. What if Jarod were..." He looked at Broots sharply. "We all know Davy's bright - too bright for his age, as a matter of fact. And while I was watching the two of them together, I saw..." He paused, his mind replaying the moment and pondering how to put the evidence he'd seen into plain English. He settled for blunt. "Davy has Jarod's smile."
"Oh man!" Broots put his face in his hands and then rubbed his eyes. "That would..." He looked up at the psychiatrist. "Are you ready to break the news, if it turns out..."
"We can't keep it from them both," Sydney replied, equally tiredly for that early in the morning. "I'm praying with my whole heart that I'm wrong - that my eyes were just playing tricks on me on account of the surgery or something."
"Oh man, Syd!" Broots' mind hadn't stopped considering possibilities. "And what if that DNA test tells us that Miss P actually IS Davy's mother?" He stared up at the older man. "I mean if they could create a clone of Jarod, who's to say that they couldn't just do a little old-fashioned in- vitro and..." He stopped. "Man oh man, that would tear her up BIG time!"
"She won't be the only one," Sydney said softly. "It was bad enough for Jarod to know that they cloned him. To think that they actually took something far more private from him and created another original human being without his knowledge or permission..." He shrugged again. "I don't know how he'll react. You know how important family and families being together is to him. As for Miss Parker..." His voice died away as he plodded heavily from the office. "Prove me wrong, Broots. Please."
Broots looked after his friend with a worried look until he'd moved out of sight, then stared at his monitor screen without seeing anything written on it. "Man O man..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy turned off the TV with the remote, then got to his feet and went in search of his mother. He found her sitting at the dining table, a cup of her evening herbal tea cooling in front of her, staring into space. "Mommy?"
The small voice never failed to make her smile when he called her that. Miss Parker turned to her son with a smile. "What is it, sweetie?"
The child moved towards her and watched her unfold in his direction and then hold her arms out for him. He moved with the sureness of a well-loved child into his mother's arms, then peered up into her face. "Are you still mad at Jarod?" he asked, curious.
"No," she answered after a moment to examine her response. "Not anymore." She peeked down at her son's expression of intense curiosity. "Why?"
"Why were you mad at him?"
"Oh, baby, I was only mad at him because he went away a long time ago without saying goodbye," she explained. It was the truth, but left a lot out. "After I got used to him being gone, I didn't think I'd ever see him again - and having Grandpa Sydney bring him by like that, without warning me, was a shock." She ruffled his dark hair fondly. "But what has you so interested in Jarod?"
"I like him," the boy answered with open enthusiasm. "He's funny, and he's better at Demon Riders than even Uncle Broots." The child snuggled down against his mother. "Can we have him over again sometime, or is he going to leave again?"
"I think he's staying with Grandpa right now," Miss Parker responded, dropping a kiss onto the top of her son's head. "I would imagine that we'll be seeing him again."
"Did Grandpa know him too?"
"Oh yeah," Miss Parker nodded with the memory. "Grandpa practically raised him from a small boy."
"How come you guys never talked about him before now?" Davy wanted to know.
"Because it made us sad, sweetie." Miss Parker cradled her son more tightly against her. "We both missed him a lot, and talking about him would only make that worse."
"Did Uncle Broots know him too?"
Miss Parker shook her head gently. "Not as well as your Grandpa and I did. Broots met Jarod only a few years before he went away."
Davy rested quietly in his mother's arms for a while. "I wish he lived closer," the boy remarked eventually. "He's fun. I like being around him."
"Yes, he can be lots of fun," his mother agreed, then kissed him and pushed him from her lap. "Time for bed, young man. You have school in the morning."
"Can you invite him over for supper tomorrow night?" Davy twisted to look at her imploringly. "Please, Mommy?"
"I'll think about it, I promise," Miss Parker chuckled at him, then stood and turned her son in the direction of the front of the house and its staircase. "Bed now. Scoot!" she ordered and gave him a slight push to get him started moving.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots didn't often bring work home from the Centre, but this night he had packed up several files full of paper in his briefcase and also brought along a Halliburton viewer with few assorted DSA's to peruse once Debbie had retired for the evening. This was research he didn't necessarily want anyone at the Centre itself to know he was doing - the files and Halliburton and DSA's had been very quietly lifted from Records without signing them out. He would have to make sure they made it back with the same level of notice and fuss.
Sydney's strange request had started the technician thinking, and the thoughts had led him to take a number of related actions. First off, it had occurred to him that so many of the assumptions about Miss Parker's family tree had been proven inaccurate or misleading over the past few years - most recently the discovery of her not being Mr. Parker's progeny. He imagined that getting her some definitive word on just who she was and wasn't related to, and in what way, might not be such a bad idea. And since he was already going to have the lab running DNA tests to settle Sydney's question, getting a complete family relationship profile for an entire set of samples wouldn't be such a far stretch - especially if he could hide all the subject names with code of his own invention. In a rare fit of courage, he'd secretly visited the vault that held genetic fluids and semen samples for all the major Centre players and taken samples from a number of them. Small samples of each were put in vials marked with his own coding, relabeled Davy's blood sample, and then taken the lot to the lab together.
Also, if Sydney were right, and Davy was yet another Centre eugenics experiment or project, then there would have to be supporting paperwork - a project name, progress notes - to document the effort that led to his birth. Davy's date of birth was well known to all the members of the little family that had coalesced around Miss Parker, so using the power of logic and deduction, he had counted back ten months from the birthday and rounded up a list of all projects just getting started. There had been seven projects begun between nine and ten months prior to Davy's birthday, and Broots had located paperwork on all of them and digital archives on four of them.
With a tall glass of heavily caffeinated cola at his elbow, Broots flipped open the Halliburton to begin a superficial scan of the DSA's. With any luck, just watching some of the related activities and meetings pertaining to each project should enable him to eliminate all unrelated projects quickly, so as to make his reading task more easy.
But within two minutes of viewing the first DSA, he knew he had the right project. "Reflection". And by the time he'd seen the end of the DSA, he was sick to his stomach. He wasn't going to need the lab tech's answer to Sydney's question - the DSA had given the answer all too clearly, and then some. He would wait until he had the DNA test results before telling Sydney what he'd discovered, though. He doubted he'd have the intestinal fortitude to bring two sets of disturbing news to his friend.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney set the psychiatric journal he'd been reading aside for the evening and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He'd been pushing his eyes as hard as he dared, and knew better than to keep reading once the burning started. He looked across the room to where Jarod was sprawled half-way across his long leather couch. The younger man had several throw pillows piled haphazardly behind his head, held there by hands folded behind his head in comfortable repose. But Jarod wasn't asleep at all. Sydney could see his eyes looking at the ceiling, but knew that the man's mind was anything but calm and sedate.
Not that his own mind was all that calm either. Broots wouldn't have any report on the DNA testing for another day at least, and Sydney knew that his patience would be just about stretched to its limits by then. "Still doing sims in your head, I see," he said aloud to his former protégé, knowing that he needed to find something else to occupy his mind before he went nuts.
Jarod's eyes focussed, then the bearded face turned briefly in his direction. "It's the only place to do them," he commented back, then ran both hands down his face. "The only time I needed props, REALLY, was in trying to crawl into somebody else's mind - to know what they were thinking at some point in the past. Planning strategies, when it had to do with physical realities and physics, could be done both ways." He sat up and stretched his arms out. "It's late, Syd."
"I know. My eyes have just about had it for the day." Sydney rose and stretched out his back with a groan. "Don't get old, Jarod. Old age sucks."
Jarod's dark eyes watched his former mentor carefully. "You've been distracted all evening, haven't you?"
"What gives you that idea?" Sydney looked over sharply.
"You don't normally sigh every five to ten minutes when you're really engrossed in an article," Jarod informed him.
"It's just been a very long day," Sydney explained lamely, knowing exactly what Jarod was referring to and disgusted with himself that he wasn't more successful at keeping his impatience better hidden.
Dark chocolate eyes gazed at the older man with both indulgence and mild frustration. "OK. I get the message. You don't want to talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about, Jarod. Broots is doing his digging, you're doing your share of hacking into the Centre mainframe too. We both know that we still need to bring Sam in on what's going on - and that the time is approaching when we're going to have to think about sending Debbie, Davy and Angelo to your family. What do YOU think there is to talk about?"
"I know you," the younger man said gently. "And even though I haven't spent that much time around you lately, I doubt your old habits would have changed THAT much." He gave the older man a knowing smile. "My knowing that you're distracted and bothered is the result of having been very close for a very long time, Syd - just like your knowing I was uptight the other night was."
Sydney shot Jarod a knowing look. "Familiarity does have its down sides, does it not?"
"You're changing the subject," Jarod shook his head, then rose. "It's OK. Maybe you'll feel more like talking tomorrow." He yawned. "I'm tired too, for that matter. I'll see you in the morning." With that, he walked slowly from the room and towards the stairs.
Sydney watched his former protégé walk away with sadness in his eyes. Much as he would have liked to voice his concerns, now was not the time. He needed to have the report from Broots, so that he'd know WHAT to say - and what Jarod's probable reaction would be if his gut feeling turned out to be right.
But Broots had a valid concern. Miss Parker would be a basket case if it were to happen that the test results pointed to her actually being Davy's mother - a situation that would only be made worse if the tests showed that he'd been right after all and Jarod was actually Davy's biological father as well. Jarod had another life, he remembered, whereas Miss Parker's life was here. The two didn't mix - at all.
He pushed his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. It never seemed to end, the repercussions of the many decades of subterfuge and experimentation the Centre had visited upon them all. He was getting too old to be able to keep picking up the pieces for loved ones when something else would come at them and shatter them.
God help me, he closed his eyes tightly and prayed with all his might, let me be wrong - please, just let me be wrong!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker glanced up from her paperwork as the glass doors to her office parted to admit her personal sweeper, Sam. "You sent for me, Miss Parker?" he asked in his usual, deferential tone.
"Yeah, Sam," she said, closing the folder of weekly security reports on which she'd been making notes in the margins. "Walk with me for a bit. I want to talk to you."
"Yes, ma'am," he responded, then stood at what was the Centre equivalent of attention while his boss stowed her paperwork and, with a crook of her finger, led him to wait at the elevator door. She didn't speak a word to him during the entire elevator ride down to the ground floor, and merely walked her stately, regal walk straight out the front doors of the Centre itself and down the wide steps toward the green lawns that stretched beyond. The day was warm and silky, and a light breeze ruffled Miss Parker's hair as she sedately led them off in a direction where there were few others around.
Only after they were about fifty yards from the steps and the nearest fellow Centre employee did she speak to him again. "Sam, I need a favor."
"Yes, ma'am. What can I do for you?"
Miss Parker gazed evenly at her personal sweeper. Sam had been with her now for nearly ten years, and had proven his loyalty to her time and time again during those years. Even Davy had a soft spot in his heart for the former wrestling champion and top Centre sharpshooter, for Sam, off-hours, had proven to be a real push-over for kids - little boys without fathers in particular.
"I need you to take care of Davy and Debbie for me for a while," she informed him quietly. "But before you do that, I need you to help me figure out a way to get Angelo out of the Centre without raising any alarms for a while."
Sam's heavy eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Angelo, Miss Parker?" He shrugged. "He's a hard one to locate half the time, much less shepherd around outside the Centre perimeter."
"I know that," her voice was only a mild retort. "It's important to me that we figure it out, though."
"Yes, ma'am." Sam watched his boss pace in front of him for a long moment as he pondered what he was being asked. "Miss Parker?"
"Mmmmmm?"
"What's going on?"
She looked up into his face warily. "What do you mean?"
"Just between us?"
"That's why we're out here, and not in my office," she snorted.
"You and Doctor Green and Mr. Broots have all been acting... distracted... somehow." Sam was finding putting his gut feelings and observations into words a more difficult task than he'd imagined. "And your temper..." He stopped; his boss' eyebrow had climbed into what he personally considered the 'red zone' that marked the barrier between simple annoyance and outright rage. "Sorry, ma'am..."
Miss Parker sighed, and her eyebrow dropped back down into the 'safe zone'. "No, Sam, you're right. I HAVE been distracted lately, and for very good reason. Things have..." She looked at her burly sweeper appraisingly. "I need to know something, Sam. If it ever came down to a choice between me or the Centre, where would you stand?"
Now Sam did blink in surprise, but he didn't hesitate with his answer. "With you, Miss Parker. No question."
She continued to study him carefully even after his answer, watching his emotions flit past his expressive dark eyes - the only sign that there was anything going on inside the man on an otherwise stoic face. After a long and silent pause, during which Sam had a strong urge to fidget nervously that he viciously suppressed, she moved close to him and put a hand uncharacteristically on his arm. "OK."
"OK?" The dark eyebrows had headed for the hairline again.
"Sam, I need you to do something very important for me, and I need to know that I can trust you implicitly."
"I'm your man, Miss Parker. Whatever you need..."
She nodded. "I think I know that now."
"What is it you need that's so important, then?" he asked her, finally daring to push at her a little to get to the point.
"Things here at the Centre are going to be getting... um... messy... after a while. And before that, I'm going to want you to escort Davy and Debbie and Angelo to a safe place and protect them until its OK for them to come home again." There. She'd laid half of the plan on the table. Aware of the risk she was taking in bringing him into the little conspiracy, she watched his reactions closely. Sam had been a completely loyal sweeper and acquaintance of her little family for quite a while now; this request would have him put that loyalty to the ultimate test.
Sam straightened. "Where do you need me to take them?"
She looked him square in the eye. "I need you to take them to Jarod's family."
THAT was a shock he couldn't easily pretend away. His mouth dropped open and he gaped at her wordlessly while his mind attempted to navigate its way through the many deductions that simple sentence had brought about. "J...JAROD'S family?"
"And I need you to stay with them once you arrive, and help keep the whole group safe and off the Centre's radar."
At last Sam's mind made a vital deduction, and the man gave Miss Parker a crooked smile. "What are you guys doing, taking down the Centre?"
Miss Parker shook her head. "Nope. Just Raines and Lyle."
Sam nodded in a broad gesture. "Ah." He drew himself up to his full height. "I'll start work on the problem of getting Angelo out of the Centre without attracting attention, and I'll let you know the moment I've figured it out."
"I'll probably have you run it past Jarod and let him do a sim on it," she mused, as much to herself as to her companion. "As long as we have his resources to draw on, it would be unwise not to make use of them."
The sweeper was beyond being any more surprised by now. He took the news that not only had Jarod reappeared after years of total absence, that not only did Miss Parker know he was back but was actively cooperating with him, completely in stride without batting an eye. "Yes, ma'am, I think that would be a very good idea."
Miss Parker gave her sweeper a smile and patted his arm again. "Let's head back," she suggested, her first steps obviously leading back in the direction of the front entrance to the Centre lobby. "If anybody asks what we were doing, you can tell them I was just feeling insecure today and wanted an escort."
"Yes, ma'am..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the end of a long, tiring and frustrating day of interviewing prospective fraternal twin subjects for the next stage of his current project when the phone on his desk rang. "This is Sydney."
"Syd?" Broots' voice sounded hesitant, almost frightened.
"What is it?" Sydney's blood ran cold. He knew the answer before the young technician answered.
"I have the DNA test results you wanted." Broots stopped. "Well, I don't know if they're what you WANTED, but I have them anyway..."
"Merde!"
Broots sighed on the other end of the line. "Yeah."
Sydney leaned forward heavily and put his forehead in his hand. "Both of them?
"Yeah." The psychiatrist could hear the distress in his friend's voice. "By the way, there was more..."
Sydney's head snapped up and he stared at the far wall of his office. "What do you mean, 'more'?"
"Well, I handed the technician the sample you gave me, and then decided maybe we needed to do a fresh comparison with known samples otherwise. You know, get the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the whole thing, once and for all? Anyway, I went back to the vault, took several vials, and then told him to just run a simple family relationship analysis on everything." Sydney's eyebrows climbed his forehead. Broots wasn't often either that brave or forward-thinking.
"I figured that at best, the only change - if any - would have been to confirm your suspicions. But..." Broots' voice got even softer and more sympathetic. "Syd, Lyle isn't her brother - he's Mr. Parker's son alright, one of that guy's "one chance in ten"s, but definitely NOT Miss Parker's twin. Catherine wasn't his mother at all." Broots was quiet for a long moment, knowing he'd just dropped a major bomb on the Parker family tree. "You know what that means, don't you?
"Yeah."
"There's something else... something..." Broots' voice had dropped several decibels, and Sydney had to strain to hear his friend.
"That wasn't all of it?" Sydney gaped, already practically with his head in his hands.
"Are you by yourself?"
The psychiatrist frowned. "At this time of day? Of course I am..."
"Good," Broots interrupted the minor peeved lecture. "Get your DSA viewer out. You just gotta see this before doing or saying anything else. I'll be down there in about ten minutes."
Sydney hung up the phone after Broots had abruptly disconnected the call, and he sat back in his comfortable leather chair and stared at the ceiling. Something was up, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was going to like what Broots had to show him no more than he like the test results he'd just been given.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam yawned and let the blueprints of the Centre ventilation ducts slowly roll themselves back up into a tube. The complicated system of heating, air conditioning and infrastructure access tunnels and conduits had been the playground and private domain of the Centre's elusive empath for more years than Sam had been employed there. But the dedicated sweeper was determined to find a way to track Angelo down. Once that was accomplished, finding a way out of the Centre without setting off alarms for taking one of their projects AWOL would be a piece of cake.
Still, there was no guarantee which sublevel Angelo might be choosing to inhabit at any point in time. Sam had had the plans for entire complex delivered to his postage-stamp sized office area and then slowly and meticulously studied them for the better part of the day since his talk with Miss Parker. He had paused only briefly, while waiting for the plans to be delivered, to contemplate why Miss Parker would be including Angelo in a grouping of children destined for a safe house retreat. Then he had shrugged. Knowing Miss Parker, she had her reasons, and they were most likely good ones. His job was to do what she'd asked of him.
As he yawned and stretched, he finally noticed the shadow behind the ventilation grate near his office door. He moved to it; and there, behind the heavy mesh, sat the object of his search, looking out at him with innocent yet knowing blue-grey eyes. "Angelo," the sweeper breathed.
"Angelo here," the empath nodded as if he knew what Sam needed. "Angelo be here, when the time comes." Then the child-man smiled a crooked smile that told the sweeper that there was a LOT more going on in his mind than most people ever gave him credit for. "Angelo knows the way out too."
"Can Angelo show me?" Sam asked skeptically.
Angelo just smiled wider and pushed at a particular spot on the mesh screen, and the screen opened on hidden hinges. And less than ten minutes later, Sam knew he had the answers Miss Parker wanted of him.
Sam watched the screen reclose after the empath had climbed nimbly back into the vent, then rolled up the blueprints to be taken back to Records. He'd need to take a walk with Miss Parker the next morning, and maybe with Jarod in the very near future.
It was almost too easy. Almost.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"You're awfully quiet tonight, Syd." Miss Parker remarked as she negotiated the car around the last corner before pulling into his driveway.
"I know," he said in a truly apologetic tone. "I've had a lot on my mind these last couple of days. Even Jarod was asking questions last night - questions I ducked shamelessly. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"Don't sweat it," she shook her head. "We all get in our moods at times. God knows you've put up with your share from me over the years - I've nothing to complain about."
Sydney waited until the car had pulled completely into the drive and then laid a very gentle hand on her shoulder. "Can I talk you into coming in for a bit tonight? I need to talk to you... talk to you and Jarod together."
She pushed her sun glasses up into her hair like a headband and peered at her old friend in worry. "Syd? Is everything OK with you? I mean, you're not..."
"No, no, nothing like that." He reached over and pulled her into a quick and gentle hug - and then didn't let go right away, but held her close just a little longer than normal. "You worry too much about me, Parker. I'm fine - really. I just need to talk to the two of you. Together. I asked Broots to pick up Davy for you, so that you'd have the time..."
Miss Parker pushed against his chest and straightened so that she could look at him directly again. "Sydney? What's going on?"
He used the distancing move she'd done as impetus to unbuckle himself and climb from the car, and then he bent down and peered across the interior at her as he took hold of his briefcase that sat upright on the floorboard of the car. "Please, Parker? Humor me?"
She stared at him with a slightly frustrated look on her face, as if it would convince him to be a little more forthcoming before committing herself to either agree or refuse, and then she shut off the motor and pulled the key from the ignition. "Alright, Freud, but I'm not really in the mood to put up with much crap from Jarod tonight, so I hope your mysterious whatever is really THAT important..."
"Trust me, it is..." Sydney responded, a sour taste arising from the pit of his stomach. He waited for her on by the front bumper, then captured her hand and tucked it into the bend of his arm. "I appreciate this." He escorted her up his front steps and into the unlocked house.
"Jarod!" Miss Parker called out loudly after the door was closed. "Your presence is requested in the living room, please." She heard the fall of footsteps above her head, and then on the stairs descending towards her. Jarod had shed his informal preppie look for his more habitual black T- shirt and jeans, but with the beard and glasses still only remotely resembled the man they had once known and pursued.
"What's up?" he asked brightly, with far more energy than either of the others in the room was showing.
"Sit down, the both of you," Sydney directed in a tired voice.
Jarod's boyish smile died on his face, and he gave Parker a questioning look. "Don't ask me," she responded with a shrug and reached out for his hand and dragged him over to the couch to sit next to her. "Let's not keep the man waiting, though, shall we? I have a little boy to get home to."
"Sydney?" Jarod's voice had now found the worried tone Parker's had had in the car. "Is everything OK?"
The older psychiatrist toyed with the idea of sitting down in one of his leather easy chairs, facing the pair on the couch, but discarded the idea almost immediately. He was nervous, and finally just allowed that nervousness to show plainly by pacing ever so slightly in front of the seated pair. "That depends on your definition of 'OK', Jarod," he started lamely.
"C'mon, Syd. Spill it," Parker advised with a shadow of impatience more suited to the relentless huntress she had been in years gone by.
"Damn!" Sydney swore to himself, and then parked himself on the very edge of the easy chair after all. He looked over at the two on the couch. "I hardly know where to begin."
"It helps if you start at the beginning," Jarod suggested with a glance at Parker, who nodded.
The older man took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, then expelled it noisily. "You're right. This started the night we had dinner together at your place, Parker - after dinner, while you and Debbie were cleaning up." The chestnut gaze landed on Jarod. "Do you remember what happened?"
"You mean when Davy gave me a run for my money at that video game?" Jarod asked with a dumbfounded look on his face. Sydney nodded. "Of course I remember. Why?"
"Well, it was the first time I'd seen Davy and you side by side. You two were having such fun, laughing, smiling..." Sydney's face was soft with memory, then creased with something akin to pain. "I was hoping that it was just a trick of the light, or my eyes were tired and playing tricks on me."
"For God's sake, Syd, will you draw a bulls-eye around the point and hit it?" Miss Parker frowned in frustration. "What did you see?"
Sydney rested his gaze on her. "I saw Jarod smile, and Davy smile, and with God as my witness, Parker, they were the same smile."
Miss Parker began to sputter in order to dismiss Sydney's statement, only to have Jarod land a hand on her arm. She fell silent at the look on his face, which was a cross between intense concentration and near anger, and then turned to face her old friend with a look of concerned bewilderment. "And you're trying to tell us it wasn't just a trick or illusion?"
Sydney shook his head, his face reflecting his true sorrow. "I wanted to be wrong so badly - I knew I wasn't - but I had to be sure. I had Broots run the tests that should have been run a long time ago. I pulled some of Davy's umbilical blood from the fluids vault, and later Broots took the lead and snatched some of your blood, Lyle's blood, Catherine's blood, your father's semen and Jarod's blood, just to make sure we were covering all the bases." He looked at Miss Parker and saw that she hadn't figured it out yet. "Davy IS Jarod's son, Parker. And..."
"What?!" Miss Parker exploded. "How can that be? He can't..." She looked at Jarod, who continued to concentrate on his former mentor, studying the lines of the Pretender's face that were visible through the beard and trying to remember what it looked like without the hair, then blanched. "But..." she looked back at Sydney, who continued to look at her sadly. "Oh God!" she realized. "That isn't all of it, is it?"
Jarod was bumped from his musings with that whispered revelation, and he glanced over at Miss Parker in concern and then back at Sydney. "There's more?"
Sydney nodded, and looked down to study his hands as they tried to fold together in calm and only managed to stay folded but a moment. "Davy is also your son, Miss Parker. He really IS your son, biologically-speaking."
She stared at her old friend, trying to wrap her mind around the magnitude of the cruel twist of fate that been exposed. "You're sure?" she breathed, not daring to even hazard a glance at the man sitting next to her.
"I had Broots baby-sit the medical technician while the tests were running," Sydney informed her quietly. "I didn't want any screw-ups or deliberate misreporting this time. If I was going to have to upset you, I wanted to have my facts utterly and unquestionably straight. But then Broots, in the process of conducting his own investigation, managed to find something even more concrete than even the DNA tests."
While Miss Parker rose and began pacing the floor in front of the hearth, her hands crossed over her chest like armor, Jarod leaned back into the couch and slouched, and for a long moment stared at the ceiling without seeing anything. Sydney rose and went over to a cabinet at the base of one of his floor-to-ceiling bookcases and withdrew a silver case and, with an air of complete desolation, carried it over and opened it with the view screen facing the couch. From his jacket pocket he withdrew an envelope and slid the shiny DSA disc into his hand, slipped it into the play slot. "You need to see this, Miss Parker," he called sadly, then waited until she had conceded to sit back down next to Jarod before he flipped the switch to activate the viewer, then backed away to let the pair on the couch see what he'd seen.
The setting was Mr. Parker's office, and the date stamped on the beginning segment of the video showed that the meeting had taken place a little more than ten months prior to Davy's birth. Mr. Parker was sitting behind his desk, as usual, with Lyle standing in attendance at his right hand while Mr. Raines sat in the comfortable chair in front of the desk, a sheaf of papers in his hands.
"We've already tried this once," Mr. Parker was telling a very animated Raines. "And you said that Mirage needed a little more work before we can make effective use of him. Why start another project now? Why not wait until we have the results from Mirage?"
"Contingencies," Raines replied in his gasping voice, then pulled more oxygen from his ever-present tank noisily into his lungs. "Each one of these projects has yielded a single individual - and so far, we've lost one already. Had we put all our hopes for the future in Gemini, we'd be screwed. We don't dare make that mistake with Mirage. Reflection will give us the kind of backup we need that we stand a decent chance of getting to use still within our lifetimes."
"But why not just use the same materials we used for Mirage? Why go to the trouble of collecting fresh samples?" Mr. Parker was frowning. "Every time we have to resort to medical procedures hidden within medical procedures, we run the risk of discovery."
"We cannot trust the integrity of the genetic material we harvested from either Catherine or Major Charles," Raines' voice was adamant. He dragged in more oxygen. "The samples are decades old, and we don't have the time to run the risk that they are no longer viable."
"Well, that means we'll need to talk to my daughter's surgeon before she gets that ulcer repaired," Mr. Parker sighed. "Convenient, isn't it, that she collapsed last night?"
"Not so convenient, Dad," Lyle moved in his serpentine way and parked his hip on the very edge of his father's desk. "I've been putting the pressure on her workwise - and I had Willy make sure that the coffee she's been guzzling lately had... well... a little something extra..."
Jarod glanced over at Miss Parker and found her staring at the little screen, her mouth agape. Something told him that Raines and Lyle would not be the sole recipients of their efforts after THAT little piece of news. Then again, he despised Willy almost as much as Miss Parker did, so it was no skin off of his nose to see to it that Willy didn't last any longer than his boss did. The next remark from the DSA quickly drew his attention again, however:
"Good thinking," Mr. Parker commented with an approving nod and gazed up at his son as if gaining a new appreciation of the man's capabilities. He then looked back over at Raines. "That takes care of the mother's material. But what about Jarod?"
"We COULD use material taken from Gemini," Lyle suggested, making both his father and Raines look up at him in surprise. "Technically speaking, it IS Jarod's material..."
"Too many other risks are involved with using cloned material," Raines shook his head vehemently. "There is the inevitable degradation that comes with cloning - the gene sequences become more fragile, more open to mutation or breakdown. No, the samples we collected from Jarod may not be completely fresh, but they are well within viability parameters." Raines' smile was wide. "We use Jarod, a proven natural Pretender, and we use Miss Parker, whose genetics were managed to enhance and augment her mother's natural psi abilities. The offspring of this pairing should more than fulfill any of the prophecies written in the scrolls - I'm sure fourth century prophets didn't have a full grasp on the technological capabilities of the times they were writing about."
"Well, we've got things planned to the petri dish stage. But we're going to need a surrogate mother to carry the child..." Mr. Parker sat back in his comfortable leather chair and steepled his fingers. "This child is too important to the future of the Centre to trust to our regular breeding program. I'm going to want to supervise the progress of the pregnancy directly."
"Are you sure that's wise, Dad?" Lyle asked in an oily tone. "You've managed to keep your involvement in all of this pretty distanced from the projects themselves until now. Why change tactics now?"
"Because this is TOO important to just farm out to subordinate supervision," the old man snapped at his son. "And I have to be realistic. If this is a final fall-back plan, and all our hopes end up resting on this child's abilities being proven and then given proper guidance, then its even MORE important that I be directly and personally involved at every step of the way."
"We still need to select a suitable surrogate," Raines reminded the others in his tired tones, yet again pulling noisily on the oxygen tank.
"I have just the candidate in mind," Mr. Parker smirked at the other two triumphantly. "She's infertile, so there would be no chance of error as to which child she'd be carrying; and like Catherine was, she's disposable once the baby is born - because technically I should have had her killed several weeks ago anyway."
"Aw, Dad..." Lyle breathed, catching on to just whom it was that his father was referring. "My 'sister' will have a shit fit when she finds out..."
"Let her!" Mr. Parker snapped. "I don't give a damn what she thinks. She's turning into a carbon copy of her mother - and in all the wrong ways, as far as I'm concerned. After all those years of training, and teaching her how to be ruthless as a Parker..." The old man gazed up at his son appraisingly. "I'm glad you aren't Catherine's son. I'd have to wonder about you too, eventually. Catherine's bloodline may be talented, but it's weak when it comes to taking and using the power of the Parker name and heritage."
Raines had sat looking from one to the other in confusion. "Who ARE you suggesting as the surrogate?" he demanded, trying to pull the conversation back on track and away from a family dissection of Miss Parker's attributes.
"Brigitte, of course!" Mr. Parker turned and snapped at him. "We'll start the psychological conditioning that will break down her resistance to me as a husband at once. Today, in fact. Just turn her loyalty from the Triumverate to me personally - and leave the rest of her nasty little personality intact. We don't want TOO many questions because she isn't the same person otherwise..." The old man put his hands behind his head calmly. "We'll do the marriage within a month, do you hear? I want her programmed and ready by then. Hell, she can even have undergone the insemination process just before the wedding, for all I care - provided she's psychologically sound at that point."
"What if she doesn't want to do this?" Lyle couldn't resist probing all the negative options to the plan.
"She won't refuse," Mr. Parker smirked. "Either she undergoes the conditioning willingly, or we do the conditioning without her permission - it makes no difference to me. That's the price she pays for trying to kill me." The old man's face twisted. "Its really quite a form of justice, when I'll be screwing her for having screwed with me..."
"How far do you want her conditioning to go?" Raines asked, and his eagerness to get busy with the psychological twisting of an individual was obvious in his tone.
Mr. Parker shrugged. "I don't care. Make her love me, if you think you can. Hell, if you manage that, I MIGHT just have you work on my daughter and do the same thing to her. God knows I'm starting to have real doubts about HER loyalty, just like I did her mother..."
The DSA viewer screen went black as it reached the end of the recording, and Jarod reached out a slightly trembling hand to turn off the viewer. He looked over at Miss Parker with trepidation, knowing that enough had been said in that meeting to blow a number of her favorite misconceptions about her 'father' completely to pieces, and he knew that Sydney was watching her very closely as well for much the same reasons.
Sydney had retreated back to sit on the edge of his chair while the DSA was playing and to watch both their reactions, but he had watched Miss Parker's reactions particularly carefully. Jarod, despite his unorthodox upbringing, was a far more stable person - he had weathered the many revelations about his familial relationships without much trouble. Over the years, Jarod had become cynical enough about the Centre's treatment of him otherwise that the idea that his genetic material would have been used without his permission to create a child, while upsetting, would not be emotionally crippling.
Miss Parker, on the other hand, had never been given the tools to help her cope well with the idea of how blatantly she'd been used. She had buried her memories of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of an apparently vindictive father so deeply that she had needed to suffer a complete emotional breakdown before she could confess that dark secret to anyone. Growing up as the Princess of the Centre completely overshadowed by that same all-powerful father had predisposed her to want to believe she'd been given only the best of treatments at all times. The broadside bombshells in her understanding of what was real and unreal about her family and her life in the Centre since Jarod's escape inevitably and consistently had taken a weighty and unpredictable toll on her. The psychiatrist was very much aware that what she'd just witnessed and heard would constitute as messy and huge an explosion in her life as the faked suicide of her Mother that she'd witnessed as a child ever had.
She rose from her seat, her face completely expressionless and without a touch of color, and resumed her pacing in front of the hearth. Her eyes were fixed on the floor in front of her, but it was obvious that her mind was replaying the explosive DSA. There was an inner coldness that was threatening to overwhelm her every time she reviewed the callousness that 'Daddy' had demonstrated toward her on that damning DSA. He hadn't even flinched when informed that her ulcer problems had had artificial help in becoming life-threatening, but rather congratulated Lyle on his creative thinking. And THEN he had discussed her genetic contribution to the project as if she were nothing more than just another Centre lab-rat to be exploited without conscience.
Lab-rat. She looked over at Jarod, hearing her own voice throw that epithet at him repeatedly over the years and marveling at the irony of discovering herself to be no less a subject of experimentation than he had ever been. Her eyes met Jarod's, and his sympathetic understanding was met by her utter and agonized betrayal. "I..."
"Parker..." Jarod reached up toward her, but she pulled away from him as if from a too-hot flame.
"That's it, then," she said stonily, unwilling to let herself feel yet. "I was just resource material for him to use to... He didn't...give a damn..."
"Parker..." Sydney rose and stepped towards her, but again she backed away from any human contact with hands raised as shields, too traumatized by the revelations on the DSA to want to interact with anyone. Her entire being had been rocked to its very foundations, and there was an inner shaking that pushed her to reject any form of comfort as yet.
"It must have amused him no end when I ended up delivering the baby myself," she mused as she continued her pacing., her voice dripping agonized sarcasm. "I bet that son of a bitch got a real thrill when he saw how I had her blood all over my hands..." She stared, her memory very effectively retrieving the entire setting of Davy's birth in the remote cabin, and all that had followed. For the first time, reviewing that memory, the inner shaking finally began to express itself outwardly as she considered the ramifications of everything that HAD happened there. "And that... BASTARD... took my baby from me..."
Sydney stepped forward again, unwilling to allow her to face this corrosive discovery in ways that had proven so disastrous to her in the past. He wrapped his arms around Miss Parker before she could start to fall apart completely and held on tightly when she would have pushed him away anyway. "I know," he hushed her, closing his eyes and holding her very close in order to keep her physically reminded that she no longer had to face these trials alone. "I'm am SO sorry, Parker." He felt the tautness in her body slowly ease beneath his hands as he rubbed her back, and he sighed silently in relief when she finally leaned into him, accepting his comfort and support.
"What does Davy know of his heritage?" Jarod asked quietly from the couch.
Sydney opened his eyes and watched the younger man remove his eyeglasses and rub his eyes, and he then knew Jarod had been heavily affected by what he'd seen as well. He tightened his hold on Miss Parker protectively. "We... got custody of Davy when he was three," the psychiatrist answered slowly. "We've always been open with him about being adopted, but he's never asked that many questions, really..." He tipped his face down so that he could see that Miss Parker was looking at Jarod too. "Parker? Has he ever asked..."
"Not really, not yet." She shook her head against his chest. "But I should have known," she mused aloud to herself. "The moment that baby was born, he looked into my eyes - and it was like everything inside me fell into place and said 'Mine!' And then, when I'd go down and visit him in the Centre nursery, he'd pitch a fit every time I had to put him down or leave..."
She closed her eyes and leaned into Sydney hard for a moment, gathering strength, and then pushed herself out of his arms to stand on her own again. "I'm OK, Syd," she announced finally, kissing him on the cheek to assuage any feelings of rejection for being pushed away after all. "Because in the end, it doesn't matter. That bastard is dead, floating somewhere in the Atlantic. And besides, I got my baby back. Davy is my son - by adoption or blood really doesn't make a difference now, by adoption AND blood only means that NOBODY will ever take him away from me again! He calls me 'Mommy', he lives in my house without really remembering ever living anywhere else, and I'm seeing to it that he gets all the love and respect that I never did after my mother died." She looked over at the younger man, her eyes filled with almost a defiant challenge as she struggled to rally against the despair with which the DSA had filled her.
Jarod rose and walked over to her. "I don't doubt that, Parker, and I would never do anything to change that. You're giving him a good life - a loving family - you and Sydney and Broots. He's a happy and well-adjusted kid well on his way to growing up strong and free, regardless of the perverse way he was brought into the world. Trust me, I'm not going to try to do anything to mess with what's obviously working. It's just..."
"Yes?" Her voice was still defiant, defensive. "But...?"
Jarod looked back and forth between Miss Parker and Sydney with a confident evenness. "But he is MY son too, Parker - whatever that means in your estimation, it makes him doubly precious to me. He will tie us together in a way that will make it impossible for me to just drop out of your life entirely ever again."
She opened her mouth to comment, but Jarod interrupted her before she could get a word out. "Look, I'm not stupid, nor am I completely selfish. I'm not going to ask you to walk away from your life here with your family, and frankly, I have no intention of permanently walking away from the life I have back there with mine. Whatever is to be between the two of US is something we'll have to figure out when we have the time and luxury to do it right. But for now, I feel I have the right to ask to be included in making important decisions in Davy's life because I AM his father. I'd like to think that you could consider me an extra resource as well when any needs arise that you or Broots or Sydney can't satisfy yourselves. That would be only right and reasonable for Davy's sake, don't you agree?"
Miss Parker glanced at Sydney, then nodded and dropped most of her defensive stance. "You're right, that is reasonable. I'm sorry to be so..."
Jarod shook his head. "Don't be. You're his mother - Davy's lucky to have you in his corner, so ready to fight for him."
Miss Parker took a deep, cleansing breath and forced herself to release much of her inner darkness. She looked back over at Sydney and noted that while the older man did look a little less worried, he still hadn't lost the expression of a man standing on the edge of imparting more bad news. "Hey! Cheer up, Sydney. We're handling the news. As you so pointedly observed the other night, there's no blood splatters..." She peered more closely into his face. "Sydney?"
The psychiatrist glanced at Jarod and sighed. "There was one more piece of truth to come out of those tests. It was mentioned on the DSA too, but I don't think you heard it, in amongst all the other lies being exposed..."
She blinked and glanced at Jarod in confusion. "What? What did I miss?"
Sydney had no strength left in him to attempt to soften the blow. "That Lyle isn't your twin, Miss Parker - that he IS Mr. Parker's natural son, but that Catherine wasn't his mother. In other words, that at best he's related to you only distantly."
Jarod nodded, catching his former mentor's drift almost immediately. "And that means that Angelo is your twin after all, Miss Parker," he finished for the older man.
She looked over at him, surprised that she indeed had not paid attention to her father's off-handed comment about Lyle's not being Catherine's son and remembering the tone with which the comment had been made. "That's right!" She turned her gaze on Sydney, and while he could see clearly that she was intensely angry, the man knew instinctively that her anger was not aimed at him. "God, Syd, is there ANYTHING about my life that I haven't been lied to about at one time or another? My mother's 'suicide', just who IS my father, just who IS my brother..."
"For my part all of that, I'm sorry, Parker," Sydney responded sadly. "And I know I didn't help..."
"Stop that, right now!" she demanded sharply and protectively. She strode to his side and put her arms around him tightly and pulled him into her for a change. "There's a huge difference between keeping a promise you made to my mother to keep your mouth shut in order to protect me on the one hand and deliberately misleading me to satisfy an agenda on the other. When you kept things from me, Syd, you had what you felt were good reasons, and you've damned well spent the past seven years more than making up for any damage caused accidentally in the process. I will NOT have you beating yourself up over this, do you hear me?"
Jarod smiled softly to himself to see her be as fiercely protective of Sydney as he himself might be in similar circumstances, and even happier to see Sydney accept that gruff love and protection as well. Miss Parker gave Sydney another quick hug and then let him go in order to resume her pacing. "But 'Daddy'... I know now that he didn't have reasons, he had agendas. Its HIM I hold responsible for all of this, him and Raines and Lyle. All of them have done nothing but..." She shook her head. "I can hardly believe that they sat around his desk, as if this were nothing more than another project staff meeting, as if what they were creating were just another building or fence rather than a human being..."
"What are you going to do?" Jarod asked her quietly, bringing her up short and cutting off the tirade as if turning off a faucet.
"Get Angelo the hell outta the Centre as soon as humanly possible," she retorted immediately. "He deserves better. We all do." She turned and looked Jarod in the eye, then sidled closer to him as her face hardened into stony anger. "I want Lyle and Raines GONE," she said in a lethal hiss, "And I want them gone in the WORST kind of way. We need to get the kids and Angelo safely out of the way, and then we need to get this show on the road. Now."
"I know we do," Jarod nodded. "But use your head and don't let your temper get in the way. Think! Don't just react!" He reached out and with a gentle set of knuckles knocked softly on her forehead. "We need to finish the prep work first, Parker. You said you've brought Sam in - and frankly, I agree that the best way for him to help us all is for him to go with the kids and Angelo and then help my family keep them all safe for us. In the meanwhile, Broots and I need to finish our digging around in the mainframe - and we need YOU to help tell us where else to dig to bring up the stuff those two are keeping hidden from the Triumverate the most successfully. Only after all that's done can we all begin to strategize on how we're going to bring these things to the Triumverate's attention without calling attention to ourselves at the same time."
He gazed at her sympathetically. "I understand how you feel. I really do. But now is not the time to go off half-cocked." He sat back down on the couch and patted the space next to him. "Frankly, Parker, sit down. Our first concern should be to discuss what we're going to tell our son about who he really is, and how we're going to go about telling him what he needs to know before we ship him off to his 'other' family."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Oh hi, Miss P," Broots said as he opened his front door. "Jarod..." He stepped aside and let both of them in, and could see that both seemed just a bit on edge - but in a very 'together' way. He didn't have to ask; he knew what the change had been, and could see that the pain from the revelation was still fresh for the both of them.
"Is Davy still up?" Miss Parker asked gently, her eyes circling the house that was open to her. She listened, and could hear soft voices speaking in the back of the house.
Broots nodded. "Yeah. He and Debbie got themselves involved in TV about an hour or so ago - after he'd finished his homework. I figured that I'd let him watch with her for a while, in case you decided to pick him up rather than let him overnight here."
Jarod touched Miss Parker lightly on her shoulder. "In that case, how about I meet you at your place in about a half-hour. I think when we talk to him, it would best take place on 'home turf', as it were." He saw her nod distractedly, then looked over at Broots. "See ya later," he said with a wave and let himself out of the house again.
"You OK?" Broots asked Miss Parker with a soft voice and a hand on an arm to catch her full attention.
"No," she replied with unadorned honesty and a small shake of her head, "I'm not. But you'd think I'd get used to this having to rearrange relationships in my head all the time, wouldn't you?"
Her friend shook his head vehemently. "I don't know anybody who could. You know, I almost wish I hadn't insisted on having the full familial relationship testing done," Broots mused aloud in sympathy, "And I sure as hell wish I'd never found that damned DSA..."
"No. Despite everything, I'm glad you did," she contradicted him quickly. "Its time the truth came out."
"You and Jarod going to tell Davy now?" Broots inquired, then closed his eyes and shook his head at the sight of her slow nod. "Oh, man!" He breathed deeply. "I'll go get him for you, then." Broots couldn't help but admire the stoic way she was apparently dealing with all of the discoveries of the day, and contemplated calling Sydney to see whether the stoicism was just an act.
Either way, he didn't envy her the discussion she and Jarod were going to have to have with their son. Considering the input he'd already had in the events of their evening, he also needed to distance himself from her before he could say anything and make a fool of himself in the process. She didn't need that - not now.
"Thanks, Broots," she replied softly, then added, "for everything, OK?"
The balding technician ducked his head, completely unconvinced that he'd done anything deserving of gratitude, and continued on his way toward the back of the house.
Miss Parker ran her fingers through her hair in nervousness, trying to set herself in an emotionally neutral place before her son came out. Her question to Broots about rearranging relationships in her head hadn't really been a rhetorical one. Rather, it had been one that she'd been asking herself ever since she and Jarod had left Sydney's to pick up Davy.
Now that she thought about it, what was the most hurtful of anything she'd ever experienced was the idea that 'Daddy' could have so deliberately and callously perpetrated such a horrifying act. She was appalled and devastated at the thought that he felt empowered to take - steal - hers and Jarod's genetic material and create a child that he then claimed as his own. And lest she forget, the fact that she'd been so taken with her wish to believe him that she hadn't questioned the situation at all at the time was almost beyond belief.
She KNEW Brigitte was unable to conceive - after all, that was the diagnosis of Brigitte's own OB-GYN in the Centre report she had purloined and read. How did a woman otherwise incapable of conceiving manage to conceive a Parker heir at all - whether her father's or Lyle's being a moot issue? And why had the question not presented itself to her before now? Then again, she knew that 'Daddy' had been virtually infertile as well - her own paternity had been discovered to be highly suspect a long time ago. How did a man virtually incapable of being a father - who in fact WASN'T her father - father a son on a woman incapable of conceiving?
How blind could she have been all these years?
She quickly set her inner struggle aside as she heard the sounds of her young son's tripping footsteps down the hall toward her. She put on what she hoped was a convincing smile and bent with her arms open to gather in the young child that broke into a run and threw himself at her with a cheerful "Mommy!"
"Hey there!" she exclaimed and lifted him up onto her hip after giving him a kiss on the cheek. "Uncle Broots says you have your homework done. Are you hungry?"
"Uh-unh. Debbie made hotdogs for us." Davy's eyes were bright. "But you know, Mommy, I was really into that episode of..."
"Well," Miss Parker interrupted, knowing her son's favorite syndicated TV show which just happened to be on at this hour, "I know you've seen that thing hundreds of times. Besides, I happen to know that Jarod intends on stopping by this evening before you go to bed, so...." She smiled when she felt her son begin to squirm in her arms in excitement.
"Jarod's coming over? C'mon, Mommy!" Davy finally got his mother to let him regain his feet, and he dove for his backpack. "Let's go! Goodnight, Uncle Broots, Debbie," he called into the house in a loud voice that would carry over the TV.
"Goodnight, Davy," "See you later, kiddo," came two voices from out of sight.
"See you tomorrow, Broots," Miss Parker called out as well, taking her son firmly in hand.
"You take care, Miss P," Broots came from the back of the house at that and walked quickly so that he could open the door for his boss and friend. "I'll be thinking of you."
"Thanks," she responded quietly with a meaningful look, then let Davy drag her excitedly down the steps towards her car.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
There would no contest when the doorbell rang; Miss Parker stood stock still in the kitchen door and watched as Davy dashed excitedly for the door with a shout and threw it open.
"Hi, Davy," Jarod said gently at the sight of the boy, then blinked in complete surprise as the child threw himself up into his arms.
"Jarod! Mommy said you were coming!" The little boy laid his head on Jarod's shoulder and closed his eyes in pure contentment. "I'm glad you're here!"
"Well, I told her I'd come by because we have a few things we want to talk about with you. And considering what happened the last time, I don't think I should disappoint her anymore, do you, son?" Jarod asked, his words carrying much more than just the surface meaning. He had closed his eyes and was returning the tight hug that Davy was giving him.
Miss Parker caught her breath at the expression of absolute and unconditional love and pride that had suddenly painted the Pretender's face as he settled into his first KNOWING embrace of a child who was his son. She indulgently stepped past the oblivious males to close the door against the night's chill, firm in the knowledge that after tonight, Jarod would be a very important and permanent part of her son's life. There was no way in the world that she would even want to keep these two apart, and no way that she'd stand better than a snowball's chance in Hell of succeeding if she tried.
Her son had gained a very potent ally and protector in Jarod, someone whom she could trust implicitly to be a real father to him in fact as well as in role-model influence. Jarod was also someone to whom she could trust Davy's care should anything happen to her, knowing that he'd never keep either Broots or Sydney from continuing in their familial roles either. Davy's nuclear family circle was now complete; Mommy, Uncle, Cousin, Grandpa - and now Dad.
Besides, this meant that Jarod would never be too far removed from having an important role to play in her life as well as a consequence - something she could appreciate even more from having suffered so desperately from the lack for so long. And for the first time that evening, she allowed herself to consider that sharing a son with her childhood best friend might not be such a bad thing at all. She would hate and despise the man who had raised her as his own for as long as she lived for what he had done to her, both as a battered child and as a betrayed adult; but she could live with, and love dearly, the results of her mistreatment.
Now all they needed to do was to get to a place and time where exploring just exactly what all this would mean to each of them in the long run could happen in peace and safety.
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