Balancing The Scales - 4
by MMB
Jarod stood by the hearth in Miss Parker's living room, staring at the cold bed of ashes behind the screened grate. He could hear the sounds of voices still talking softly upstairs, where Miss Parker had taken her son after the long heart-to-heart discussion that had informed the boy that he did, indeed, have a real father that cared deeply for him. Davy displayed some confusion about how the relationship defined by an adoption and the relationships defined by genetics worked in a practical sense, seeming apparently uninterested in HOW they had come about. Miss Parker, however, was firm and loving about pointing out that this news only meant that he was just that much more loved and wanted by the one who had just found out he was his father, as well as her as his mother. Jarod gave her as much support as she needed or wanted throughout the explanation without stepping on what she had wanted to say to her son, then spent some time introducing Davy to a side of his family that he hadn't yet had a chance to meet.
Both adults had agreed, prior to picking their son up from Broots, that they would not distress him with the idea that he would be leaving the area - and them - very soon as yet. There was plenty of time for that later. For now, getting the boy used to the idea that he had a father, and that his father and his mother, while close friends, were not together turned out to be the more complex problem. Davy knew the standard definition of family, and knew that his family never HAD exactly fit the mold; but this latest revelation taxed even his ability to comprehend until Jarod equated the separation of years that had kept him out of Delaware in the terms of an unofficial divorce. As uncomfortable as the idea was to Miss Parker in its subtler implications, the explanation worked and answered more of the problematic questions.
"He wants you to tuck him in too," Miss Parker announced from the top of the stairs, then began coming down. "I can't say I don't understand why."
Jarod nodded and stepped over to move past her on the stairs, then turned and caught at her arm. "Can I talk you into making some of that delicious tea from the other night?" he asked quietly. "We should probably talk for a while when I'm done."
She nodded tiredly, then continued down the stairs as Jarod released her arm and finished going up to the second floor and finding the boy's bedroom still lit and the door open.
"Are you going to stay with us now?" Davy asked immediately, once Jarod had parked himself on the very edge of the bed.
Jarod shook his head. "I don't think that's such a good idea at the moment," he admitted honestly. "Besides, I'm all moved in with your Grandpa at the moment - and your Mom is running out of spare bedrooms for house guests."
Davy's dark eyes gazed at his father hungrily. "But you won't just leave us now and go away again, will you? I mean, now that you know you have a kid, you'll stick around?"
"I won't be leaving anytime soon, Davy, don't worry," Jarod said warmly and ran his hand over his son's dark head. "Your Mom and I will be doing a lot of talking about how things are going to work before anything extreme like that happens, OK?"
That seemed to satisfy the boy. "Good. I always wanted a Daddy, and I don't want to lose you just after I find you. Just wait until I tell all the kids at school."
"Uh." Jarod's brow wrinkled in a frown that he deliberately smoothed away before it could catch his son's attention. "I'd really rather you didn't say anything about any of this for a little while, OK? We can kinda keep it as a secret between us as family, can't we?"
"Why?" The dark eyes, so like his own, drilled holes of curiosity into his conscience.
"Because there are people who might want to hurt either you or your Mom or me. If they found out we were really related, that would just give them that much more to work with." Jarod took a stab at an explanation that, while certainly contained elements of the truth, glossed over many of the real horrors of the situation. "I know it might seem funny or crazy to you, but I'd really appreciate it if you could keep it quiet for the time being. Can you do that for me, Davy?"
"I suppose." The boy sounded disappointed, but then looked up and smiled. "A secret, huh?"
"For a little while," Jarod nodded. Davy was definitely his son - for he'd always enjoyed keeping and uncovering secrets as a boy himself.
"OK." Davy settled himself back into his pillow. "Jar. uh. Daddy?"
The form of address, used for the first time in direct address without warning, caught Jarod off-guard; and suddenly he had to swallow hard against the tears of anguish and happiness that they aroused in the back of his throat. "What, son?"
"Will you come over tomorrow night to tuck me in again? Please?"
Jarod quickly leaned over the boy and gave him a tight hug, letting himself once more thrill at the sensation of small arms wrapped tightly around his neck that belonged to a child of his. "You'll be seeing me far more often, I promise," he swore with his eyes squeezed shut in fervency. "Now you lay down and get some sleep - you have school in the morning."
"Goodnight, Daddy."
"Goodnight, Davy. Sweet dreams, son."
Jarod lay his boy back into his bedding and rose, tucked in the blankets tightly, then walked to the doorway and waved at the boy before extinguishing the overhead light and closing the door behind him. He leaned against the doorjamb for a long moment, eyes closed in sheer amazement at the developments of the day. Never in a million years had he expected his return to Delaware to have brought him such an embarrassment of riches. A son. His genius mind boggled at the thought, and the experience, of having to begin to carry out the duties of parenthood to a very bright 8 year old.
He sighed and straightened up again, then made his way to the stairway and back downstairs and towards the back of the house, where he knew Miss Parker was probably making that tea he had requested. He paused just outside the kitchen door and watched her moving smoothly and knowingly about her kitchen making the preparations.
"Are you OK?" he asked quietly, then stepped into the kitchen and pulled out a chair to take his seat.
She shrugged. "I'm not sure yet," she admitted ruefully, turning a face with a chagrined expression to him over her shoulder for a moment. "I think it's going to take me some time to absorb everything."
"I called my sister while I was waiting for you to get home, to give her the news," he announced, watching her reactions closely. "She said she'd break it to my mother later today - and maybe knowing that she has another grandson will help snap Mom out of her latest depression."
"What about Ethan and. what's his name. Jay?"
"I'll call them myself in the morning. Right now, I'm like you - I think I need to absorb some of this for a while first." Jarod fell silent and watched her continue to prepare the tea for a moment. "He wants me to tuck him in tomorrow night too, Parker. Are you going to be OK with me flitting in and out of your house more often, or should we be arranging a schedule so that I'm not getting in your way at an inappropriate time?."
Miss Parker turned with two empty mugs in her one hand and a full teapot in the other and walked over to her table. "I'm not seeing anybody, Jarod. Considering that, and under the circumstances, I can't think of any truly 'inappropriate' time short of when I'm just waking up or stepping out of the shower - and I really don't expect you'd be here at that time of day anyway."
"I just." Jarod's awkward explanation skidded to a halt, and then he accepted a full mug of tea from his hostess.
"No, I know," she said, finally sitting down across the table from him and filling her own mug. "I appreciate the thoughtfulness, really. But I figure." She blinked and then looked down into her tea. "Do I need to get you a front door key, or."
"That would probably be easier in the long run," Jarod agreed, sipping at the delicately flavored liquid carefully. "And how about I just promise that I'll call before I come, if for no other reason than to warn you I'm just about on my way? That way, if something SHOULD be up."
She nodded. "That sounds reasonable. Thanks." She sipped at her tea with a thoughtful expression, then looked up in mild frustration. "Geez, Jarod, you'd think we were really divorced or something here, the way we're dancing around each other and."
"I know," he snorted softly. "I've never felt quite so awkward with you before in my life!" He put his mug down and rubbed his eyes tiredly with both hands.
"What about you?" Miss Parker asked, feeling just a little insecure about having exposed the dearth of her social life outside the family and wanting to see if he was doing any better in that department than she was. "How badly is this going to interfere with your relationship with. what was her name. Zoë?"
"After Lyle and Cox kidnapped her, I gave her a new identity and convinced her to move far away," Jarod explained quietly. "I didn't want anybody to be using her to get to me ever again. Zoë hasn't been in my life for. oh. more than six years now." He looked up at her and shrugged. "I'm not seeing anybody either at the moment. I've been too busy establishing my practice and helping Ethan get his going too."
She nodded, then looked down at her tea. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
"It's OK. Better we have this stuff out in the open."
"Jarod, what are we going to do - about us and Davy, I mean?" She looked up at him, her eyes full of questions and insecurities.
Jarod shook his head slowly. "I honestly don't know, Parker. You have your life here, and I have my life there - and really, 'never the twain shall meet'. The most important thing, to me, is that Davy's happy HERE. God knows I've no intention of taking him away from his Grandpa Sydney - or Uncle Broots, for that matter."
"But."
"But." He gazed at her evenly. "We'll work it out eventually, Parker, I promise - and we'll work it out in a way that makes everybody as happy as possible within reason. We just need to get over this one little hump first."
"'LITTLE hump', he says," she commented dryly.
"OK, HUGE hump," he amended with a twinkle of mischief finally sparking in his eyes, then sobered. "Fact is, how we handle a so-called 'normal' life with Davy is a topic for more in-depth debate AFTER we have taken care of Raines and Lyle."
"After we get THEM to take care of Raines and Lyle," she corrected in the same, dry tone.
"Picky, picky, picky!"
She wadded up and tossed a paper napkin across the table at him in frustration. "This isn't a joking matter, Lab-rat."
"I know that," he said, tossing the wad back at her. "You're still being picky."
"I'm being thorough. There's a difference." The wad flew back at him.
Only the aerodynamics of the wad itself kept its next return trip from landing handily in her mug this time. "Picky, picky, picky!"
She picked up the wad and held it as if to throw it, then took a look at the playfully expectant expression in Jarod's face and broke out in a chuckle. "You're incorrigible, you know," she remarked, carefully putting the wad down safely out of his reach - she hoped. "At least now I know that Davy at least comes by some of this stuff legitimately."
Jarod chuckled back. "I think the cliché goes 'the nut never falls very far from the tree.'" He took up his mug and sipped for a moment, then brought it down cradled in both hands thoughtfully. "Tell me about him, Parker. I've missed out on eight years of his life already. That's his entire lifetime." He sighed. "Now I know how my dad felt, meeting me after so many years and missing out on my entire lifetime. I remember spending hours talking to him, especially after we were all together, each of us telling the other everything." He looked up at her imploringly. "I need to know."
Miss Parker gazed at her old friend and couldn't help but notice the intense curiosity and wistful hunger in his expression, and then her face smoothed into an expression of fondness and remembrance as she thought through how to describe Davy to Jarod. "Well, for one thing - surprise, surprise - he's addicted to ice cream."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"But Dad."
Broots put his mug of morning coffee down with a thud on the table. "Dang it, Deb, I said 'No!' and I mean it! I'm not going to take a chance that."
"I'm not a kid anymore," Debbie reminded her father bluntly, "and what's more, this whole thing was MY idea to start with. I'd kinda like to."
Broots fumed for a brief moment as he realized that his daughter had a legitimate point, then let go of his frustration and wrapped a hopefully convincing arm around her shoulder. "Look. I'm not saying that you aren't smart, and I'm not saying that I don't think you can take care of yourself. But you're one of the few people on this end of things that stand a good chance of coming out of this safe and sound - at least realize that I'm more concerned that it stays that way."
Debbie sighed and leaned against her father. She knew he was just behaving protectively - she'd even had the same argument with Miss Parker a few evenings earlier, with much the same reasoning popping up at her like a persistent brick wall that she hadn't figured a reasonable counter to yet. She had even considered taking her case to Jarod and Sydney at one point, as she grew more frustrated and aware that the time was rapidly approaching when she and the rest of the exiles would be put on a plane headed for somewhere in the direction of the other side of the continent. But she knew from experience that the older psychiatrist was extremely protective of his little adopted family, especially when it came to the younger members of that family. What was more, in the space of time he'd been there, she'd seen that Jarod was in many ways very much a younger version of his old mentor - and so she hadn't even tried approaching the Pretender, assuming ahead of time that it was hopeless.
"You might also think of it this way," Broots added, as he had all the other times this topic had arisen lately, "Miss Parker is looking to both you and Sam taking care of Davy for her. She NEEDS you, Deb."
"I know that. But Dad, this isn't JUST another babysitting job. I'm afraid that if I leave, I won't see you again. Something will happen." There. The real and, to her, most pressing reason she was feeling driven to argue leaving before any plans were set in motion was finally revealed. "I know this was my idea to start with, and I know what you guys are going to do is dangerous." Her ice-blue eyes, so like her father's, clouded. "I'm afraid for you - for what could happen if I'm not here..."
"I know, baby." Broots' arm around his daughter tightened just that much more. "I really do. That's how I've been feeling about you for a very long time now. You know that. Just do this for me - for all of us - and when its all over, none of us will have to feel this way ever again. Once Raines and Lyle are gone."
She moved to another already-tried argument. "But it's such a long way away."
"Yeah, but its pretty there, Jarod said," Broots reminded her quietly. "And there will be lots for you to see and do with Emily and her family."
"I don't know them." Debbie knew she sounded whiny and childish, but couldn't refrain from making the comment.
"Neither do I, Deb - but I'm sure they're very nice. Besides, you'll have Davy and Sam with you; and you'll finally get a chance to spend a little time with Angelo. And Jarod has a. younger brother." Broots stuck to the family tree explanation Jarod had given for his young clone - Debbie, while having become very aware of many of the more objectionable aspects of Centre involvement over the past few years, didn't need to know EVERYTHING. "He looks a lot like Jarod, and is really smart. Maybe you two will hit it off."
"Daddy! Really!" She sighed again. At long last, she'd run completely out of arguments - and still managed not to budge her father one inch from his decision to send her away soon. As a matter of fact, now he was coming up with newer and even better arguments to counter hers. She'd have to go back and think things over again - surely there was something she'd missed so far that would convince him. In the meanwhile. "Have you guys decided when we're going yet?"
"Soon," was all her father would answer, kissing her forehead gently and moving away so he could pick up and drain the rest of his coffee before putting the mug in the sink. "Soon now. I've got to get ready for work now, sweetheart."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Miss Parker? Could I talk to you for a moment?"
Miss Parker raised her head and looked at her personal sweeper. "Something on your mind, Sam?"
"Yeah." The man's expressive dark eyes communicated his nervousness. "I was wondering if you would please come with me while I show you something I discovered outside this morning? A security concern has arisen you need to know about."
"Ah." She nodded, then closed down her computer terminal. "You know, I think I could use a breath of fresh air anyway," she commented in an off- handed tone, just in case the people behind the omnipresent cameras and microphones were paying attention. "I'll meet you in the lobby in about fifteen minutes."
Sam nodded and turned and left. Miss Parker sighed as she moved to put back on the stilettos that she'd quietly shed beneath her desk while she worked. They were expensive shoes, but they were pinching lately - a likely consequence of her having begun to either wear running shoes or go barefoot at home far more often now. She had considered wearing something else that morning - she should have followed her inner guidance. She rose to her feet and began the trek to the elevator, her face grimacing as her toes squished together painfully.
"Going somewhere?" Lyle's oily voice reached out to her from behind.
She turned to him with a sigh. Evidently it was going to be one of THOSE days. "Yeah. As a matter of fact, I am. Do you need something?"
"Not really, just hadn't seen you for a while," he responded, his blue eyes studying her features carefully, with the same expression that a scientist would use studying a bug. "I don't see you very much at all anymore, Sis - I was thinking we should do something to remedy that."
Miss Parker's grey gaze pierced through him, and he nearly shivered from the naked coldness that had re-emerged in her expression - it was the same naked, emotionless coldness that he's seen in her eyes while she held a gun on him on a pier so long ago. "Don't bother, 'Bro'" she said simply, and the expressionless tone that matched the expression in her eyes was more threatening in nature than any hiss she could have made. Sharks gave a person a warmer reception. "From where I sit, I see altogether far too much of you already. You can remedy THAT anytime - just take yourself out of my life entirely, and I'd appreciate it far more."
Lyle grasped at his upper left chest with two hands melodramatically. "Ouch!"
She blatantly and coldly followed his gesture, then looked up at his face. "Nice try, but everybody knows you can't hurt what doesn't exist," she commented dryly. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
"Want some company?" He stepped up next to her.
"No, as a matter of fact, I don't." She punched at the elevator button fiercely. "Go crawl back into a hole, Lyle. I'm busy, and I don't want to play."
He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her towards him. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're acting awfully suspiciously."
It was to his detriment that he'd momentarily forgotten she had a black belt. She continued turning, and took one of his arms with her and spun him around until she could yank the arm behind him and up until his wrist was almost at neck level. Then, with his shoulder only a fraction from being dislocated, she shoved him face-first into the wall and pinned him there with a knee pressed painfully into the small of his back. "Look, asshole," she hissed at him, no longer even trying to hide her disdain. "YOU may have time to strut around here like a damned banty rooster and bother the shit out of everybody else, but the Triumverate pays me VERY well to spend MY work day taking care of Centre Security. So consider this a gentle reminder NOT to get in my way when I'm working again, or I may have to report YOU as a security concern."
She hauled him away from the wall by the twisted arm and gave him a vicious shove that had him staggering down the hall away from her several paces as the elevator door slid open. By the time he had regained his balance and turned with a murderous expression on his face to face her again, she was already in the elevator car. Hands propped jauntily on her hips, she smiled a toothy shark's smile at him cradling his one arm carefully and glowering at her as the metal door slid closed again.
Inside the elevator car, Miss Parker relaxed her stance as she felt the elevator begin to more, ran her fingers through her hair and then bent forward to hold her temples between her palms for a short time to try to calm down again. Lyle could rile her in ways very few others in this world could - and since she'd seen that DSA at Sydney's, what little patience she had forced herself to develop with the man over the years was completely gone. It had taken every ounce of effort to keep herself from snapping the man's neck just a few moments ago, remembering that the only way Davy had of being completely free was to let the Triumverate take him out for her - him and his fellow ghoul, Raines.
She took a couple of deep breaths to try to get her heart out of her throat and still the beginnings of a throbbing headache, then straightened to face the world again when the elevator door slid open again. She knew she needed a clear head for her talk with Sam.
The sweeper was waiting for her, as she'd requested, by the front door of the lobby. He watched her exit the elevator and noted all the subtle clues he knew so well now that told him that in the time between when he'd left her and this moment, something had happened to heighten her stress levels dramatically. "You OK, ma'am?" he asked quietly as they walked from the building with him in the lead for a change, as would be expected from their previous discussion.
"I just had a run-in with Lyle," she explained quickly, spitting out the name as if it were a bit of rotten meat.
"I figured it was something like that." Sam led her over to a manhole cover and opened it, motioning for her to squat down next to him. "I need to run something past someone."
She looked over at him sharply. He was talking about Jarod. "You figured it out?
"Angelo did."
"Angelo?!" she gaped. "You found him?"
"Actually, he found me," Sam admitted with a shrug, "and then solved the problem you'd set me without even breaking a sweat. That guy's SPOOKY."
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. "There are times when I wonder just." Her voice died away, and then she stood up again and signaled for Sam to drop the manhole cover. "OK. When do you get off tonight?"
"Normal time, ma'am - seven." The sweeper dropped the heavy piece of metal at her gesture, and the manhole fell closed with a loud clang.
"Come over after work, then. He should be by sometime after that to tuck Davy in for the night." Miss Parker noted the slight expression of confusion on Sam's face. "Long story," she explained lamely. "We'll fill you in tonight, after you show him what you have and let him do his stuff."
"Seven-thirty-ish then, your place." Sam's dark head nodded. "Now, shall I make a show of trying to secure whatever is inside this manhole a little better?" he suggested with a crooked grin.
"It doesn't play any part in what you and Angelo have planned, does it?" she asked quietly.
"Nope."
"Then make a big show of it. Give Lyle something to think about." She smiled coldly. "As if he didn't have anything else to bend his mind around."
"No, ma'am." Sam truly enjoyed the way his boss' mind worked every once in a while, and was REALLY enjoying being 'in the loop' with her on this. For the first time in a very long time, he was getting the sense of having joined 'the good guys'.
"Tell you what: I'll send you out some flunkies - and maybe even Willy, if I can catch him standing around not doing much. It would be good to see that man doing something genuinely constructive, don't you think?" She smiled a little more broadly now, and the two of them exchanged a healthy chuckle before she headed back towards the front door of the Centre lobby.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Hey, Broots?"
The tech pulled himself out of his funk and turned at the sound of his boss' voice. "Yeah?
Miss Parker eased herself into his office and let the door close softly behind her. "I think Lyle's feeling guilty again."
The balding man looked at her for a moment, then began to grin. "Came looking and dishing, did he?"
"Isn't it nice that he's getting so predictable?" she chuckled coldly.
Broots blinked. "Uh. Miss Parker?"
She took one look at the expression on his face, and her blood chilled immediately. "What is it?"
"Since when is Lyle predictable?"
The two of them stared at each other in consternation. "Do you think he knows something?" she whispered anxiously.
"I think we'd better watch our backs carefully," Broots responded, turning back to his computer screen. "And I think I'd better do some hacking in a new direction. I don't like this. I don't like this BIG time!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam sat back with his arms crossed over his chest and watched with interest as Jarod absorbed everything he'd told him like a sponge. His previous experience in interacting with the Centre's prized Pretender had been limited, at best - this was the first time that he could remember being close to Jarod without the Pretender being at a full run in any direction that led away from him. When Parker had introduced them earlier that evening, it was like meeting a stranger he had only seen in photographs and heard of from others for years, and finding that he genuinely felt a liking for the guy. After a firm and warm handshake between the two men, Jarod had very graciously waved aside Sam's apologies for the years of relentless pursuit with a simple, "That was in another lifetime. Forget it."
Then, after Jarod had swept an excited Davy up into his arms, then cackled and dangled him upside down over his shoulder by the feet to carry him upstairs to bed, Parker had sat the sweeper down and inexplicably served him a tall and stiff shot of bourbon. Then she sat down across the table from him and proceeded to finish off any remaining loyalty to Centre interests he might have had remaining by filling him in on all the discoveries she and the others had made. Her voice had been steady and strong, but the expression in her eyes had been remote, guarded. By the time she'd stopped talking, he'd needed the second shot of bourbon she was offering - and he'd noticed that she'd joined him with a very minimal shot for herself after shooting him a cautionary and conspiratorial glance that warned him against informing Sydney of her slight infraction. He honestly didn't blame her for needing a little liquid courage - the story she had told him was worthy of Alfred Hitchcock or the Twilight Zone.
As Jarod once more joined them at the table, Sam got down to business and dragged out the copies of the pertinent blueprints that Broots had quietly made for him. He unrolled the plan of the ventilation system of the facility and began spelling out what Angelo had slowly and haltingly explained. A lively discussion had followed, with questions asked and answered and worries expressed freely among the three of them.
Angelo's plan had been a delightfully simple one that took advantage of a flaw in the Centre's basic design. Despite all efforts to seal off the ventilation system from the outside to prevent just this scenario - that of escape using the system - there was one factor that could never be completely controlled: in order to properly ventilate 27 underground floors, massive access to ground-level atmosphere was necessary. There was a building several hundred yards from the above-ground Tower structure itself where, less than a sub-level's distance below ground, ventilation ducts from all the levels began to merge, with two shafts leading twenty feet straight upward towards the huge fans that forced air down into the facility. It was a redundant system where only one of the two fans needed to be operating at any one time to supply the entire underground facility, leaving the other as an only sparely barricaded obstacle to entry or exit. The building itself was in full sight of the entry gate sentry, so that anyone approaching or leaving the building would most likely be spotted and intercepted in short order.
Maintenance on these fans was a regularly scheduled affair. In order that both fans stayed in good working order, once a week the system switched from dependence on one to the other, and a repair crew was dispatched to check out the one shut down. The week's time had been deemed, rightly enough, sufficient to provide for any repair time for the redundant fan - but more often than not, the inspection took place on the first day and then the fan was left unguarded and alone for the next six days.
It had long been considered that all the internal sensors that had been installed in the individual level ducts would handle any potential escapee situations. What hadn't ever been considered was that Angelo had long since learned how to turn the sensors on and off without being detected, that being the reason his whereabouts was perpetually so difficult to pin down. His having nevertheless remained dependably within Centre walls for as long as he had had created an illusion of infallibility. Jarod's escape had resulted in the many sensors being installed at all levels in the first place - but the design flaw at the actual point of entry and exit had never been resolved.
It would be up to Jarod to come up with a feasible plan to get Angelo safely from the ventilation facility to freedom. Jarod, along with his fellow Pretender, had escaped at night and been immediately spotted and chased by sweepers. Angelo didn't have either the stamina or the physique of his Pretender friend - whatever plans would need to be carefully constructed to take that into account.
Parker and Sam suddenly realized that Jarod was no longer listening to their discussion and fell silent so as not to disturb his contemplation. Sam felt the hair on the back of his neck rise seeing the man staring at blueprint and then suddenly look off into space while contemplating options, possibilities, obstacles and weak points in the plan. It was both fascinating and disturbing at the same time. So this was what it meant for Jarod to 'run a sim' - only Sydney had once told him that in days gone by, Jarod would be narrating his thoughts as he followed each line of possibilities to his mentor as he went. Seeing the process be a silent one instead now was downright spooky.
The change happened gradually, over the course of a half-hour or so - but suddenly Sam and Miss Parker began to notice that Jarod was beginning to smile. He suddenly leaned forward over the blueprint again and began running his finger along to follow the path of a particular ventilation duct. The finger halted, and he stared at one spot on the plan for a long time, then sat back with what could best be described as a 'cat having eaten the canary' grin.
"Angelo had the right idea, and his plan would work without a doubt," he announced with little fanfare. "But I have an idea that changes just a couple of details of his plan and gives us a much higher probability of success." He leaned forward again and began explaining the workings of his mind.
And in less than fifteen minutes, he had both of the others agreeing with him. Miss Parker was already reaching for the telephone to summon Broots, without whose help none of this would succeed, while Jarod and Sam continued to discuss details and timing issues.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney looked up from his latest journal as he heard Jarod come into the house through the garage door in the kitchen. He sat, looking up expectantly as he heard his houseguest draw a glass of water from the tap, then footsteps that told him that the Pretender was coming toward the front of the house. "Well," the psychiatrist commented the moment Jarod's dark head came into view, "what did Sam have to say?"
"Angelo found him," Jarod stated evenly, then smiled at his old mentor's surprise, "and then showed him a fairly decent plan to get himself out of the Centre. After simming things, I found a couple of places where I could tighten up the details and give us a better chance of getting him out of there without raising even one eyebrow."
"So, we're set?"
"Pretty much," the Pretender sighed and found a place on the couch where he could stretch out his frame comfortably in a half-sitting, half-lying posture. "All we have to do now is wait until Lyle or Raines makes a mistake and gives us the kind of ammunition that would spur the Triumverate into action. I don't want to send anybody away until then, so that no warning flags can be raised that something's amiss."
Sydney set his journal aside and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. "Surely you and Broots have found plenty already."
"Oh, we've found that they've been busy little boys alright. But what we're waiting for is the kind of deed that is so potentially destabilizing, so contrary to the Triumverate's agenda that it would, on its own, be sufficient to make them seriously consider summarily eliminating the two of them on the spot. Everything else, then, would only be gravy and add fuel to the explosion to come." Jarod's face grew grim. "I don't want there to be any question about the outcome once we set things in motion. You told me you didn't want to be part of tilting at windmills."
Sydney nodded. "And you haven't found that one special dirty deed yet, I take it?"
"Not yet. But we will. I've simmed this too many times - Lyle and Raines won't be able to resist pushing the envelope too far. It's just in their natures to over-reach."
"And until then."
"We keep our eyes open, our heads down - and we wait."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"What do YOU want?" Raines wheezed as the glass door closed firmly behind Lyle.
"We may have a problem."
Deep-set ice-blue eyes riveted his son to his place directly in front of the massive and carved desk that was the center of power for the Chairman. "What kind of problem?" came the quick demand after the agonized gasp of oxygen from the little green tank beside him.
"I've had Willy doing computer maintenance lately, making sure that nobody we don't want is digging around."
"Get to the point."
"Some of our more. sensitive. files have been accessed recently." Lyle dropped his little bombshell with simple terms, then rubbed the stump of his amputated thumb while he waited for the inevitable explosion from his father.
"Which files?" Raines' voice was almost shrill.
"The ones dealing with the projects we've been giving Kevin lately, among others."
Raines leaned back in the comfortably stuffed leather chair that had become his when his brother had made his. departure. from the Centre power structure. Part of his self-assigned task as the new Chairman had been to reclaim some of the Centre's former financial health. Eventually he had found the Triumverate's insistence that the Pretender Project, with all its ancillary projects, be shut down completely to be contrary to what he felt was the best interests of the Centre. So he had cautiously renamed certain sensitive elements of that project and shifted resources and support staff from one location to another.
The Pretender Kevin had been central to those arrangements. Kevin had been a piece of luck - another natural Pretender acquired during childhood but never turned over to the Parker regime, or to Sydney as project coordinator. Raines had made the difficult decision not to subject his second talented Pretender to the same kinds of stresses that Jarod had been put through; he had assigned yet another morally ambiguous psychiatrist as mentor/keeper and kept Kevin busy with sims that made money when sold. Records of Kevin's existence had been carefully and systematically encrypted and buried within select unrelated data. The success of their efforts to keep Kevin from being discovered had been central to slowly winning back the Triumverate's trust and acquiescence in other areas of endeavor.
And now, if Kevin and his activities were on the verge of being uncovered.
"Who accessed the files?" Raines asked with narrowed eyes.
"We don't know," Lyle found himself having to admit. "The password used is an old one that we didn't know we needed to deactivate until now."
"Whose password?!" Raines was livid.
"Mr. Parker's." Lyle decided the rest of the bad news might as well come out now. "And access came from a terminal outside the Centre facility itself - untraceable."
"Unacceptable!" The ghoulish Chairman pounded a fist furiously on his desk and leaned forward. "Could it be either Miss Parker or Broots?"
Lyle shook his head and shrugged. "If it is, then they're privy to old man Parker's passwords - something I don't think either of them ever knew. The old man simply didn't trust her enough to give her any, and I'm pretty certain that he never wrote any of them down. Broots may be good at what he does, and he may have uncovered some of our less wise moves a few years ago, but I don't think even HE would have been able to hack the old man's passwords. Besides, neither of them should or could have any idea where to start looking with such success."
"Sydney?"
"Don't be silly!" Lyle dismissed that thought with a casual wave of his hand. "The old goat has been far too contented since we moved him to pure research and Miss Parker got custody of Davy to be interested in jeopardizing things."
Raines shook his head in disbelief. "Then who?"
"I don't know."
"Find out, and take care of them," the old man gasped, his stress and excitement making him draw on the oxygen tank harder than usual and make a sound that approached a death's rattle. "And while you're investigating, destroy all the encrypted records of Project Redux. We don't need to have this anonymous hacker trip over any of that. Include those negotiations with Japan in your purge. We're going to have to put things on hold for a while, until we figure out where the leak is."
"But." Lyle's brows furled in concern and frustration. "The Tanaka contingent is going to be here in less than three days. And I've been quietly talking to Tommy, getting him interested in investing serious funding in Redux - and possibly even providing physical facilities in Japan to house the project once its set in motion. We NEED to move Redux out of our usual facilities - the Triumverate would be really pissed if they knew we were still working toward creating a hybrid Pretender, especially since we can't use more mainstream means to get what we need."
"The more times we have to touch our organized crime partners for help, the more the Triumverate will want our heads," Raines pointed out with a broken gasp of oxygen. "We're perfectly capable of acquiring new facilities to carry out this latest project without the Yakuza, and you know it. The latest sweep of the New York underground netted us three females last week, one of whom should be able to serve as surrogate once their systems are purged of the heroin, a process ongoing even as we speak."
"Kevin said we'd find a suitable candidate," Lyle crossed his arms over his chest. "The guy has been right straight down the line. Too bad we don't have Jarod to double-check his work."
"We don't need Jarod to double-check Kevin," Raines informed the younger man with a wheeze. "We're lucky we don't need either Jarod or Miss Parker for any part of this anymore - at least, not for this one last try. And I'm still not anxious to let the Yakuza start calling shots with either Redux or Kevin. Selling sims to the Tanakas to keep their drug import business safe from the DEA is one thing - and it hasn't hurt our checking account balances at all. But selling part interest in our last chance at breeding a high-quality Pretender from two established and proven Red Files is something else yet again. Taking the Yakuza into our confidence to that extent will only increase the chance that the Triumverate find out we're dealing with them again. I've just about decided that doing more than simply selling sim information is playing with fire."
"I've made certain promises." Lyle uncrossed his arms. "You told me to, remember?"
"I don't care what I told you before. This hacker in the system changes everything. So you just forget about the Tanaka negotiators - let me worry about dealing with them when the time comes." Raines pointed a skeletal finger at the glass door at the back of his office. "You just do what I've told you to, and do it NOW. I'm sure you don't want to lose another finger over this."
Lyle's eyes narrowed dangerously. The subject of his missing thumb was one guaranteed to anger him almost past the point of self-control, especially since the old ghoul had demanded the return of his digit as a demonstration of loyalty. Why the old geezer hadn't simply died when he was supposed to, rather than be well enough to take over the reins of the Centre, was also a sore point.
Then Lyle smoothed his face with effort. It wouldn't do for Mr. Raines to learn just how fragile his continued loyalty to a Raines-led chain of command had become, or how much he would just as soon do away with it entirely. He could be patient, however; the old man would slip up one of these days; and then, he promised himself, we would see what we would see.
He spun on his heel and headed for the glass doors without waiting for his dismissal. He would bide his time.
But time WAS on his side. Raines was old and in obviously precarious health - and despite all efforts to the contrary, HE would make sure the old ghoul didn't live forever.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Angelo scurried through the dimly lit ventilation shaft, the DSA he'd carefully removed from the day's collection as it had sat waiting to be archived clenched between tightly pinched lips. He was beginning to get frustrated; Daughter and Friend needed to see what was on this, and the Bad Men were making his efforts to get it to them nigh on futile. What was worse was that, today of all days, Sydney hadn't been in his office all day, and Broots had been sent to the Dover satellite facility.
The empath suddenly slid to a stop in the narrow metal corridor. There WAS one other to whom he could deliver his cargo - one other who could see to it that this disc would be viewed by Daughter and Friend before it was too late.
Blue-grey eyes glittering with purpose, Angelo carefully turned his body around in the duct and began scurrying off in the opposite direction.
He headed towards the vertical shaft that led downwards to the next sublevel, where Daughter's friend Sam had his little office. Sam would help him.
Fifteen minutes later, Angelo was sitting and staring out the grate and into Sam's office, which was empty, and the empath let out a another sigh of pure frustration. Nobody was where they were supposed to be today - not even Sam. Still, he settled himself down just inside the ventilation grate to wait for the sweeper's eventual return. Too much was riding on getting this disc to Daughter and Friend.
Soon he heard the sound of Sam's voice speaking to someone as he came close to his office door. "Look, I wasn't the one who ordered you out there for maintenance duty," the ex-wrestler was complaining, obviously answering back to something said by whoever it was he was talking to.
"Mr. Raines won't be happy to know that I was ordered away from my post to oversee welders putting a hinge and hasp on a utility manhole," Willy's voice growled back, and Angelo shrank back from the grating in a conditioned response. The black sweeper was one of the few at the Centre that the empath genuinely feared, with only his direct boss being more feared yet.
Sam stopped just outside his office door. "You can take that up with Miss Parker. All I did was point out the security lapse to her; she was the one who came looking for people to take care of the problem. It's not my fault she found you standing around with your thumb up your ass when she came looking for men to do the job."
Willy mumbled something in a threatening tone that Angelo couldn't make out, and Sam merely shrugged in response. "Take it up with him, then. See how far you get. Miss Parker takes her orders directly from the Triumverate now, not from your boss. And I'm sure that if you cause problems for her on this, she can bring your attitude to Triumverate attention."
Sam watched down the corridor, where Angelo couldn't see, and then eventually turned and slumped into his office and slammed the door shut. With a quick glance to see that the camera that recorded everything that went on in the tiny office was currently deactivated, Angelo tapped on the metal siding to the grate to let the sweeper know that he was there. Sam started at the sound, then watched with interest as the grate opened only far enough that Angelo could push the DSA disc through the slot and let it fall onto the desk.
"What's this, Angelo?" the sweeper asked quietly, so as not to call attention to someone else being in here with him.
"Take to Daughter, Friend. Important." Angelo's eyes glittered with intensity, communicating the urgency he felt far more effectively than his hesitating words ever could.
Sam nodded and slipped the little disc into his jacket pocket. "Is there anything else?"
Angelo nodded. "Angelo bring more tomorrow. This time?"
The sweeper nodded his agreement. "Be careful," he found himself warning the odd little man who made his home within the Centre walls. Suddenly he no longer wondered where and how Jarod always seemed to be two steps ahead of anything planned by the Centre, and he decided he would just as soon that status quo remain in place as long as possible. Angelo, strange as he was, had in their last two conversations become one of 'them' - one of 'the good guys'.
Angelo smiled suddenly and openly at the sweeper. "Sam be careful too," he responded slowly, surprising the sweeper at having his sentiment returned in kind, then pulled the grating closed again and moved away and back towards his lair on that level.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sam?" Sydney didn't bother to hide his astonishment at finding Miss Parker's sweeper at his front door.
"Can I come in, and is Jarod back from Miss Parker's yet?" Sam ran the two questions together.
Sydney stepped aside in an obvious invitation, then closed the door after a quick glance up and down the street to see if anyone was paying attention or had his house under surveillance. "This is a surprise."
"To me too," the dark-haired heavy-weight nodded his agreement. He reached into a pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a shining silver disc. "Angelo gave me this about an hour ago and asked me to get it to Miss P and Jarod."
"Any idea what's on it?"
"Nope," the sweeper shook his head. "I didn't think it was something I needed to check out while still there on the premises, if you know what I mean. Is Jarod back yet?" he repeated.
"Not yet. I'm expecting him any moment, though." Sydney indicated that Sam should accompany him toward the back of the house. "He enjoys these times with Davy, but never seems to stay very long afterwards."
As of the Pretender had been paying attention to their discussion, the garage door rumbled open as Sydney finished his comment. Within a few moments, the sound of Jarod's car purred into the enclosed space and the garage door began closing again. Jarod blinked at Sam standing with Sydney as he walked through the interior door. "Sam! What's up?"
Sam's hand came up holding the silver disc. Jarod looked from the disc to the sweeper's face. "Angelo wanted me to get this to you and Miss Parker. I figured it might be wise if I brought it by here first, instead of over there again."
He dropped the DSA into Jarod's outstretched hand, then followed as the Pretender jerked his head in the direction of the living room. From behind one of the cabinet doors in the built-in bookcases Jarod withdrew a silver Haliburton and put it on the coffeetable, where they all could view the screen at the same time. Sydney and Jarod seated themselves on the couch in front of the screen, with Sam standing sentinel behind them. Jarod slipped the little disc into the player and punched up the code that began the playback.
"What do YOU want?" The camera angle was focussed on the Chairman's desk, and Mr. Raines sitting behind it.
"I think we have a problem." Lyle moved into range.
"What kind of problem?"
The trio watched the scene from Raines' office earlier that day play out. Jarod turned off the screen once they had watched Lyle exit the office. "Syd? Who's Kevin?"
The psychiatrist threw his hands up. "I haven't the foggiest, but from the sounds of it, he must be another Pretender. But if he is, then he's one that Raines has managed to keep completely beneath the Centre radar." Sydney rose to his feet and paced over to lean on the mantle. "A better question is who has accessed the files and put those two on red alert. We don't need this right now."
"You don't suppose that Broots has tripped over something during his after- hours hacking, do you?" Sam looked from Pretender to mentor and back again.
"I would think that if he had, we'd have heard about it by now," Sydney shrugged. "The Triumverate put a great deal of effort into closing that entire project down. They let Miss Parker know that it was NOT to be reactivated under any conditions and gave her clear instructions to report any suspicions of that to them. Our finding out just a few examples of Pretender-related research Raines and Lyle kept active behind the scenes was sufficient to blackmail them into dropping their efforts to get custody of Davy. Broots knows this."
Jarod's eyes narrowed. "We may have another player in this game, then, it seems," he said softly, his mind examining the problem from every possible angle known at the moment. "Whoever it is has had dealings with the Centre before, and is smart enough to use an old password and prevent tracking of their connection."
"Another Pretender?" Sam suggested.
Jarod tipped his head and considered. "Possibly. We never knew for sure whether Alex died or not in that fall."
"Alex wasn't that intelligent, Jarod," Sydney shook his head. "His skill as a Pretender was always sub-par."
"Sydney, It wouldn't take intelligence to dig up an old password," Jarod reminded his mentor, "or to have even coerced it out of old man Parker while he held him hostage back then. And Alex would have an axe to grind with Raines at the very least."
"Well, whoever it is, they've done us a favor at the same time as putting a monkey wrench in our works." Sydney gazed at his protégé grimly. "Now that we have a name to work with, we can see about getting Broots on the trail of this Kevin while you can see what you can dig up on Redux from here. Not to mention we can let Miss Parker know that there are breadcrumbs to follow when she has the time and opportunity."
"You know, Miss Parker and Tommy Tanaka have a history together," Sam informed the other two quietly. "She and Tanaka seemed awfully chummy back before Lyle lost his thumb. You never know, maybe she can take advantage of that relationship again and get more than a thumb out of Lyle this time."
"I don't want her any closer to that action than necessary," Sydney spoke quickly and firmly. "The Tanakas are monsters."
"S'OK, Syd, neither do I," Jarod agreed quickly, appreciating the defensive stance Sydney had taken at the very idea of Miss Parker dealing with Yakuza again. He looked at the sweeper. "It isn't that it's a bad idea, Sam, it's that she has Davy to consider. We can maybe use her ability to understand Japanese to translate any materials we don't understand - but we want to keep her as far from any other connections the Triumverate would make between her and the Yakuza as possible. She has to stay completely above reproach. It's that impeccability that is going to give us what we want in the end, remember."
Sam nodded. "I can understand that."
"Did Angelo give you anything else?" Sydney asked, almost as an afterthought. "I mean, not that the DSA wasn't quite a bit."
"No," Sam shook his head, "but he said that he'd have more for me tomorrow." The sweeper blinked as an idea occurred. "Say, you don't suppose that the hacker that Raines and Lyle are looking for is." He thought about it, then discarded the idea. "Naw."
"Not so fast." Jarod's face was undecided and expressed reservation. "Angelo has talents that most of us don't even suspect. His getting me information was often the only thing that kept me ahead of the Centre's search parties. And he is quite arguably the loosest cannon of all of us."
Sydney turned to Sam. "Why don't you tell Angelo when you see him tomorrow that I want to talk to him. I'll see if I can get any information from him - and maybe warn him off if he's the one making inroads into the Raines- Parker subterfuge records." The psychiatrist looked at Jarod. "Or, at least, let him know that while we desperately need his information, he's going to have to hide his tracks better."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"We're going to have to tell her they're going to try it again." Jarod looked over at Sydney with a real expression of disgust.
"Is that the kind of smoking-gun ammunition mistake you need?" the psychiatrist asked in response, not really wanting to think about Miss Parker's response to a scenario that held the potential of a sibling for Davy.
"If the Triumverate is truly as set against resuming any part of the Pretender Project as you claim," Jarod replied, stretching his length out on the couch again in a comfortable slouch, "then this may well be just the kind of situation we've been waiting for." He closed his eyes. "Let's just hope we can get all the evidence we need to prove the allegations beyond any doubt before one of those homeless women they picked up in New York City is pregnant."
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
Jarod stood by the hearth in Miss Parker's living room, staring at the cold bed of ashes behind the screened grate. He could hear the sounds of voices still talking softly upstairs, where Miss Parker had taken her son after the long heart-to-heart discussion that had informed the boy that he did, indeed, have a real father that cared deeply for him. Davy displayed some confusion about how the relationship defined by an adoption and the relationships defined by genetics worked in a practical sense, seeming apparently uninterested in HOW they had come about. Miss Parker, however, was firm and loving about pointing out that this news only meant that he was just that much more loved and wanted by the one who had just found out he was his father, as well as her as his mother. Jarod gave her as much support as she needed or wanted throughout the explanation without stepping on what she had wanted to say to her son, then spent some time introducing Davy to a side of his family that he hadn't yet had a chance to meet.
Both adults had agreed, prior to picking their son up from Broots, that they would not distress him with the idea that he would be leaving the area - and them - very soon as yet. There was plenty of time for that later. For now, getting the boy used to the idea that he had a father, and that his father and his mother, while close friends, were not together turned out to be the more complex problem. Davy knew the standard definition of family, and knew that his family never HAD exactly fit the mold; but this latest revelation taxed even his ability to comprehend until Jarod equated the separation of years that had kept him out of Delaware in the terms of an unofficial divorce. As uncomfortable as the idea was to Miss Parker in its subtler implications, the explanation worked and answered more of the problematic questions.
"He wants you to tuck him in too," Miss Parker announced from the top of the stairs, then began coming down. "I can't say I don't understand why."
Jarod nodded and stepped over to move past her on the stairs, then turned and caught at her arm. "Can I talk you into making some of that delicious tea from the other night?" he asked quietly. "We should probably talk for a while when I'm done."
She nodded tiredly, then continued down the stairs as Jarod released her arm and finished going up to the second floor and finding the boy's bedroom still lit and the door open.
"Are you going to stay with us now?" Davy asked immediately, once Jarod had parked himself on the very edge of the bed.
Jarod shook his head. "I don't think that's such a good idea at the moment," he admitted honestly. "Besides, I'm all moved in with your Grandpa at the moment - and your Mom is running out of spare bedrooms for house guests."
Davy's dark eyes gazed at his father hungrily. "But you won't just leave us now and go away again, will you? I mean, now that you know you have a kid, you'll stick around?"
"I won't be leaving anytime soon, Davy, don't worry," Jarod said warmly and ran his hand over his son's dark head. "Your Mom and I will be doing a lot of talking about how things are going to work before anything extreme like that happens, OK?"
That seemed to satisfy the boy. "Good. I always wanted a Daddy, and I don't want to lose you just after I find you. Just wait until I tell all the kids at school."
"Uh." Jarod's brow wrinkled in a frown that he deliberately smoothed away before it could catch his son's attention. "I'd really rather you didn't say anything about any of this for a little while, OK? We can kinda keep it as a secret between us as family, can't we?"
"Why?" The dark eyes, so like his own, drilled holes of curiosity into his conscience.
"Because there are people who might want to hurt either you or your Mom or me. If they found out we were really related, that would just give them that much more to work with." Jarod took a stab at an explanation that, while certainly contained elements of the truth, glossed over many of the real horrors of the situation. "I know it might seem funny or crazy to you, but I'd really appreciate it if you could keep it quiet for the time being. Can you do that for me, Davy?"
"I suppose." The boy sounded disappointed, but then looked up and smiled. "A secret, huh?"
"For a little while," Jarod nodded. Davy was definitely his son - for he'd always enjoyed keeping and uncovering secrets as a boy himself.
"OK." Davy settled himself back into his pillow. "Jar. uh. Daddy?"
The form of address, used for the first time in direct address without warning, caught Jarod off-guard; and suddenly he had to swallow hard against the tears of anguish and happiness that they aroused in the back of his throat. "What, son?"
"Will you come over tomorrow night to tuck me in again? Please?"
Jarod quickly leaned over the boy and gave him a tight hug, letting himself once more thrill at the sensation of small arms wrapped tightly around his neck that belonged to a child of his. "You'll be seeing me far more often, I promise," he swore with his eyes squeezed shut in fervency. "Now you lay down and get some sleep - you have school in the morning."
"Goodnight, Daddy."
"Goodnight, Davy. Sweet dreams, son."
Jarod lay his boy back into his bedding and rose, tucked in the blankets tightly, then walked to the doorway and waved at the boy before extinguishing the overhead light and closing the door behind him. He leaned against the doorjamb for a long moment, eyes closed in sheer amazement at the developments of the day. Never in a million years had he expected his return to Delaware to have brought him such an embarrassment of riches. A son. His genius mind boggled at the thought, and the experience, of having to begin to carry out the duties of parenthood to a very bright 8 year old.
He sighed and straightened up again, then made his way to the stairway and back downstairs and towards the back of the house, where he knew Miss Parker was probably making that tea he had requested. He paused just outside the kitchen door and watched her moving smoothly and knowingly about her kitchen making the preparations.
"Are you OK?" he asked quietly, then stepped into the kitchen and pulled out a chair to take his seat.
She shrugged. "I'm not sure yet," she admitted ruefully, turning a face with a chagrined expression to him over her shoulder for a moment. "I think it's going to take me some time to absorb everything."
"I called my sister while I was waiting for you to get home, to give her the news," he announced, watching her reactions closely. "She said she'd break it to my mother later today - and maybe knowing that she has another grandson will help snap Mom out of her latest depression."
"What about Ethan and. what's his name. Jay?"
"I'll call them myself in the morning. Right now, I'm like you - I think I need to absorb some of this for a while first." Jarod fell silent and watched her continue to prepare the tea for a moment. "He wants me to tuck him in tomorrow night too, Parker. Are you going to be OK with me flitting in and out of your house more often, or should we be arranging a schedule so that I'm not getting in your way at an inappropriate time?."
Miss Parker turned with two empty mugs in her one hand and a full teapot in the other and walked over to her table. "I'm not seeing anybody, Jarod. Considering that, and under the circumstances, I can't think of any truly 'inappropriate' time short of when I'm just waking up or stepping out of the shower - and I really don't expect you'd be here at that time of day anyway."
"I just." Jarod's awkward explanation skidded to a halt, and then he accepted a full mug of tea from his hostess.
"No, I know," she said, finally sitting down across the table from him and filling her own mug. "I appreciate the thoughtfulness, really. But I figure." She blinked and then looked down into her tea. "Do I need to get you a front door key, or."
"That would probably be easier in the long run," Jarod agreed, sipping at the delicately flavored liquid carefully. "And how about I just promise that I'll call before I come, if for no other reason than to warn you I'm just about on my way? That way, if something SHOULD be up."
She nodded. "That sounds reasonable. Thanks." She sipped at her tea with a thoughtful expression, then looked up in mild frustration. "Geez, Jarod, you'd think we were really divorced or something here, the way we're dancing around each other and."
"I know," he snorted softly. "I've never felt quite so awkward with you before in my life!" He put his mug down and rubbed his eyes tiredly with both hands.
"What about you?" Miss Parker asked, feeling just a little insecure about having exposed the dearth of her social life outside the family and wanting to see if he was doing any better in that department than she was. "How badly is this going to interfere with your relationship with. what was her name. Zoë?"
"After Lyle and Cox kidnapped her, I gave her a new identity and convinced her to move far away," Jarod explained quietly. "I didn't want anybody to be using her to get to me ever again. Zoë hasn't been in my life for. oh. more than six years now." He looked up at her and shrugged. "I'm not seeing anybody either at the moment. I've been too busy establishing my practice and helping Ethan get his going too."
She nodded, then looked down at her tea. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
"It's OK. Better we have this stuff out in the open."
"Jarod, what are we going to do - about us and Davy, I mean?" She looked up at him, her eyes full of questions and insecurities.
Jarod shook his head slowly. "I honestly don't know, Parker. You have your life here, and I have my life there - and really, 'never the twain shall meet'. The most important thing, to me, is that Davy's happy HERE. God knows I've no intention of taking him away from his Grandpa Sydney - or Uncle Broots, for that matter."
"But."
"But." He gazed at her evenly. "We'll work it out eventually, Parker, I promise - and we'll work it out in a way that makes everybody as happy as possible within reason. We just need to get over this one little hump first."
"'LITTLE hump', he says," she commented dryly.
"OK, HUGE hump," he amended with a twinkle of mischief finally sparking in his eyes, then sobered. "Fact is, how we handle a so-called 'normal' life with Davy is a topic for more in-depth debate AFTER we have taken care of Raines and Lyle."
"After we get THEM to take care of Raines and Lyle," she corrected in the same, dry tone.
"Picky, picky, picky!"
She wadded up and tossed a paper napkin across the table at him in frustration. "This isn't a joking matter, Lab-rat."
"I know that," he said, tossing the wad back at her. "You're still being picky."
"I'm being thorough. There's a difference." The wad flew back at him.
Only the aerodynamics of the wad itself kept its next return trip from landing handily in her mug this time. "Picky, picky, picky!"
She picked up the wad and held it as if to throw it, then took a look at the playfully expectant expression in Jarod's face and broke out in a chuckle. "You're incorrigible, you know," she remarked, carefully putting the wad down safely out of his reach - she hoped. "At least now I know that Davy at least comes by some of this stuff legitimately."
Jarod chuckled back. "I think the cliché goes 'the nut never falls very far from the tree.'" He took up his mug and sipped for a moment, then brought it down cradled in both hands thoughtfully. "Tell me about him, Parker. I've missed out on eight years of his life already. That's his entire lifetime." He sighed. "Now I know how my dad felt, meeting me after so many years and missing out on my entire lifetime. I remember spending hours talking to him, especially after we were all together, each of us telling the other everything." He looked up at her imploringly. "I need to know."
Miss Parker gazed at her old friend and couldn't help but notice the intense curiosity and wistful hunger in his expression, and then her face smoothed into an expression of fondness and remembrance as she thought through how to describe Davy to Jarod. "Well, for one thing - surprise, surprise - he's addicted to ice cream."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"But Dad."
Broots put his mug of morning coffee down with a thud on the table. "Dang it, Deb, I said 'No!' and I mean it! I'm not going to take a chance that."
"I'm not a kid anymore," Debbie reminded her father bluntly, "and what's more, this whole thing was MY idea to start with. I'd kinda like to."
Broots fumed for a brief moment as he realized that his daughter had a legitimate point, then let go of his frustration and wrapped a hopefully convincing arm around her shoulder. "Look. I'm not saying that you aren't smart, and I'm not saying that I don't think you can take care of yourself. But you're one of the few people on this end of things that stand a good chance of coming out of this safe and sound - at least realize that I'm more concerned that it stays that way."
Debbie sighed and leaned against her father. She knew he was just behaving protectively - she'd even had the same argument with Miss Parker a few evenings earlier, with much the same reasoning popping up at her like a persistent brick wall that she hadn't figured a reasonable counter to yet. She had even considered taking her case to Jarod and Sydney at one point, as she grew more frustrated and aware that the time was rapidly approaching when she and the rest of the exiles would be put on a plane headed for somewhere in the direction of the other side of the continent. But she knew from experience that the older psychiatrist was extremely protective of his little adopted family, especially when it came to the younger members of that family. What was more, in the space of time he'd been there, she'd seen that Jarod was in many ways very much a younger version of his old mentor - and so she hadn't even tried approaching the Pretender, assuming ahead of time that it was hopeless.
"You might also think of it this way," Broots added, as he had all the other times this topic had arisen lately, "Miss Parker is looking to both you and Sam taking care of Davy for her. She NEEDS you, Deb."
"I know that. But Dad, this isn't JUST another babysitting job. I'm afraid that if I leave, I won't see you again. Something will happen." There. The real and, to her, most pressing reason she was feeling driven to argue leaving before any plans were set in motion was finally revealed. "I know this was my idea to start with, and I know what you guys are going to do is dangerous." Her ice-blue eyes, so like her father's, clouded. "I'm afraid for you - for what could happen if I'm not here..."
"I know, baby." Broots' arm around his daughter tightened just that much more. "I really do. That's how I've been feeling about you for a very long time now. You know that. Just do this for me - for all of us - and when its all over, none of us will have to feel this way ever again. Once Raines and Lyle are gone."
She moved to another already-tried argument. "But it's such a long way away."
"Yeah, but its pretty there, Jarod said," Broots reminded her quietly. "And there will be lots for you to see and do with Emily and her family."
"I don't know them." Debbie knew she sounded whiny and childish, but couldn't refrain from making the comment.
"Neither do I, Deb - but I'm sure they're very nice. Besides, you'll have Davy and Sam with you; and you'll finally get a chance to spend a little time with Angelo. And Jarod has a. younger brother." Broots stuck to the family tree explanation Jarod had given for his young clone - Debbie, while having become very aware of many of the more objectionable aspects of Centre involvement over the past few years, didn't need to know EVERYTHING. "He looks a lot like Jarod, and is really smart. Maybe you two will hit it off."
"Daddy! Really!" She sighed again. At long last, she'd run completely out of arguments - and still managed not to budge her father one inch from his decision to send her away soon. As a matter of fact, now he was coming up with newer and even better arguments to counter hers. She'd have to go back and think things over again - surely there was something she'd missed so far that would convince him. In the meanwhile. "Have you guys decided when we're going yet?"
"Soon," was all her father would answer, kissing her forehead gently and moving away so he could pick up and drain the rest of his coffee before putting the mug in the sink. "Soon now. I've got to get ready for work now, sweetheart."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Miss Parker? Could I talk to you for a moment?"
Miss Parker raised her head and looked at her personal sweeper. "Something on your mind, Sam?"
"Yeah." The man's expressive dark eyes communicated his nervousness. "I was wondering if you would please come with me while I show you something I discovered outside this morning? A security concern has arisen you need to know about."
"Ah." She nodded, then closed down her computer terminal. "You know, I think I could use a breath of fresh air anyway," she commented in an off- handed tone, just in case the people behind the omnipresent cameras and microphones were paying attention. "I'll meet you in the lobby in about fifteen minutes."
Sam nodded and turned and left. Miss Parker sighed as she moved to put back on the stilettos that she'd quietly shed beneath her desk while she worked. They were expensive shoes, but they were pinching lately - a likely consequence of her having begun to either wear running shoes or go barefoot at home far more often now. She had considered wearing something else that morning - she should have followed her inner guidance. She rose to her feet and began the trek to the elevator, her face grimacing as her toes squished together painfully.
"Going somewhere?" Lyle's oily voice reached out to her from behind.
She turned to him with a sigh. Evidently it was going to be one of THOSE days. "Yeah. As a matter of fact, I am. Do you need something?"
"Not really, just hadn't seen you for a while," he responded, his blue eyes studying her features carefully, with the same expression that a scientist would use studying a bug. "I don't see you very much at all anymore, Sis - I was thinking we should do something to remedy that."
Miss Parker's grey gaze pierced through him, and he nearly shivered from the naked coldness that had re-emerged in her expression - it was the same naked, emotionless coldness that he's seen in her eyes while she held a gun on him on a pier so long ago. "Don't bother, 'Bro'" she said simply, and the expressionless tone that matched the expression in her eyes was more threatening in nature than any hiss she could have made. Sharks gave a person a warmer reception. "From where I sit, I see altogether far too much of you already. You can remedy THAT anytime - just take yourself out of my life entirely, and I'd appreciate it far more."
Lyle grasped at his upper left chest with two hands melodramatically. "Ouch!"
She blatantly and coldly followed his gesture, then looked up at his face. "Nice try, but everybody knows you can't hurt what doesn't exist," she commented dryly. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
"Want some company?" He stepped up next to her.
"No, as a matter of fact, I don't." She punched at the elevator button fiercely. "Go crawl back into a hole, Lyle. I'm busy, and I don't want to play."
He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her towards him. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're acting awfully suspiciously."
It was to his detriment that he'd momentarily forgotten she had a black belt. She continued turning, and took one of his arms with her and spun him around until she could yank the arm behind him and up until his wrist was almost at neck level. Then, with his shoulder only a fraction from being dislocated, she shoved him face-first into the wall and pinned him there with a knee pressed painfully into the small of his back. "Look, asshole," she hissed at him, no longer even trying to hide her disdain. "YOU may have time to strut around here like a damned banty rooster and bother the shit out of everybody else, but the Triumverate pays me VERY well to spend MY work day taking care of Centre Security. So consider this a gentle reminder NOT to get in my way when I'm working again, or I may have to report YOU as a security concern."
She hauled him away from the wall by the twisted arm and gave him a vicious shove that had him staggering down the hall away from her several paces as the elevator door slid open. By the time he had regained his balance and turned with a murderous expression on his face to face her again, she was already in the elevator car. Hands propped jauntily on her hips, she smiled a toothy shark's smile at him cradling his one arm carefully and glowering at her as the metal door slid closed again.
Inside the elevator car, Miss Parker relaxed her stance as she felt the elevator begin to more, ran her fingers through her hair and then bent forward to hold her temples between her palms for a short time to try to calm down again. Lyle could rile her in ways very few others in this world could - and since she'd seen that DSA at Sydney's, what little patience she had forced herself to develop with the man over the years was completely gone. It had taken every ounce of effort to keep herself from snapping the man's neck just a few moments ago, remembering that the only way Davy had of being completely free was to let the Triumverate take him out for her - him and his fellow ghoul, Raines.
She took a couple of deep breaths to try to get her heart out of her throat and still the beginnings of a throbbing headache, then straightened to face the world again when the elevator door slid open again. She knew she needed a clear head for her talk with Sam.
The sweeper was waiting for her, as she'd requested, by the front door of the lobby. He watched her exit the elevator and noted all the subtle clues he knew so well now that told him that in the time between when he'd left her and this moment, something had happened to heighten her stress levels dramatically. "You OK, ma'am?" he asked quietly as they walked from the building with him in the lead for a change, as would be expected from their previous discussion.
"I just had a run-in with Lyle," she explained quickly, spitting out the name as if it were a bit of rotten meat.
"I figured it was something like that." Sam led her over to a manhole cover and opened it, motioning for her to squat down next to him. "I need to run something past someone."
She looked over at him sharply. He was talking about Jarod. "You figured it out?
"Angelo did."
"Angelo?!" she gaped. "You found him?"
"Actually, he found me," Sam admitted with a shrug, "and then solved the problem you'd set me without even breaking a sweat. That guy's SPOOKY."
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. "There are times when I wonder just." Her voice died away, and then she stood up again and signaled for Sam to drop the manhole cover. "OK. When do you get off tonight?"
"Normal time, ma'am - seven." The sweeper dropped the heavy piece of metal at her gesture, and the manhole fell closed with a loud clang.
"Come over after work, then. He should be by sometime after that to tuck Davy in for the night." Miss Parker noted the slight expression of confusion on Sam's face. "Long story," she explained lamely. "We'll fill you in tonight, after you show him what you have and let him do his stuff."
"Seven-thirty-ish then, your place." Sam's dark head nodded. "Now, shall I make a show of trying to secure whatever is inside this manhole a little better?" he suggested with a crooked grin.
"It doesn't play any part in what you and Angelo have planned, does it?" she asked quietly.
"Nope."
"Then make a big show of it. Give Lyle something to think about." She smiled coldly. "As if he didn't have anything else to bend his mind around."
"No, ma'am." Sam truly enjoyed the way his boss' mind worked every once in a while, and was REALLY enjoying being 'in the loop' with her on this. For the first time in a very long time, he was getting the sense of having joined 'the good guys'.
"Tell you what: I'll send you out some flunkies - and maybe even Willy, if I can catch him standing around not doing much. It would be good to see that man doing something genuinely constructive, don't you think?" She smiled a little more broadly now, and the two of them exchanged a healthy chuckle before she headed back towards the front door of the Centre lobby.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Hey, Broots?"
The tech pulled himself out of his funk and turned at the sound of his boss' voice. "Yeah?
Miss Parker eased herself into his office and let the door close softly behind her. "I think Lyle's feeling guilty again."
The balding man looked at her for a moment, then began to grin. "Came looking and dishing, did he?"
"Isn't it nice that he's getting so predictable?" she chuckled coldly.
Broots blinked. "Uh. Miss Parker?"
She took one look at the expression on his face, and her blood chilled immediately. "What is it?"
"Since when is Lyle predictable?"
The two of them stared at each other in consternation. "Do you think he knows something?" she whispered anxiously.
"I think we'd better watch our backs carefully," Broots responded, turning back to his computer screen. "And I think I'd better do some hacking in a new direction. I don't like this. I don't like this BIG time!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam sat back with his arms crossed over his chest and watched with interest as Jarod absorbed everything he'd told him like a sponge. His previous experience in interacting with the Centre's prized Pretender had been limited, at best - this was the first time that he could remember being close to Jarod without the Pretender being at a full run in any direction that led away from him. When Parker had introduced them earlier that evening, it was like meeting a stranger he had only seen in photographs and heard of from others for years, and finding that he genuinely felt a liking for the guy. After a firm and warm handshake between the two men, Jarod had very graciously waved aside Sam's apologies for the years of relentless pursuit with a simple, "That was in another lifetime. Forget it."
Then, after Jarod had swept an excited Davy up into his arms, then cackled and dangled him upside down over his shoulder by the feet to carry him upstairs to bed, Parker had sat the sweeper down and inexplicably served him a tall and stiff shot of bourbon. Then she sat down across the table from him and proceeded to finish off any remaining loyalty to Centre interests he might have had remaining by filling him in on all the discoveries she and the others had made. Her voice had been steady and strong, but the expression in her eyes had been remote, guarded. By the time she'd stopped talking, he'd needed the second shot of bourbon she was offering - and he'd noticed that she'd joined him with a very minimal shot for herself after shooting him a cautionary and conspiratorial glance that warned him against informing Sydney of her slight infraction. He honestly didn't blame her for needing a little liquid courage - the story she had told him was worthy of Alfred Hitchcock or the Twilight Zone.
As Jarod once more joined them at the table, Sam got down to business and dragged out the copies of the pertinent blueprints that Broots had quietly made for him. He unrolled the plan of the ventilation system of the facility and began spelling out what Angelo had slowly and haltingly explained. A lively discussion had followed, with questions asked and answered and worries expressed freely among the three of them.
Angelo's plan had been a delightfully simple one that took advantage of a flaw in the Centre's basic design. Despite all efforts to seal off the ventilation system from the outside to prevent just this scenario - that of escape using the system - there was one factor that could never be completely controlled: in order to properly ventilate 27 underground floors, massive access to ground-level atmosphere was necessary. There was a building several hundred yards from the above-ground Tower structure itself where, less than a sub-level's distance below ground, ventilation ducts from all the levels began to merge, with two shafts leading twenty feet straight upward towards the huge fans that forced air down into the facility. It was a redundant system where only one of the two fans needed to be operating at any one time to supply the entire underground facility, leaving the other as an only sparely barricaded obstacle to entry or exit. The building itself was in full sight of the entry gate sentry, so that anyone approaching or leaving the building would most likely be spotted and intercepted in short order.
Maintenance on these fans was a regularly scheduled affair. In order that both fans stayed in good working order, once a week the system switched from dependence on one to the other, and a repair crew was dispatched to check out the one shut down. The week's time had been deemed, rightly enough, sufficient to provide for any repair time for the redundant fan - but more often than not, the inspection took place on the first day and then the fan was left unguarded and alone for the next six days.
It had long been considered that all the internal sensors that had been installed in the individual level ducts would handle any potential escapee situations. What hadn't ever been considered was that Angelo had long since learned how to turn the sensors on and off without being detected, that being the reason his whereabouts was perpetually so difficult to pin down. His having nevertheless remained dependably within Centre walls for as long as he had had created an illusion of infallibility. Jarod's escape had resulted in the many sensors being installed at all levels in the first place - but the design flaw at the actual point of entry and exit had never been resolved.
It would be up to Jarod to come up with a feasible plan to get Angelo safely from the ventilation facility to freedom. Jarod, along with his fellow Pretender, had escaped at night and been immediately spotted and chased by sweepers. Angelo didn't have either the stamina or the physique of his Pretender friend - whatever plans would need to be carefully constructed to take that into account.
Parker and Sam suddenly realized that Jarod was no longer listening to their discussion and fell silent so as not to disturb his contemplation. Sam felt the hair on the back of his neck rise seeing the man staring at blueprint and then suddenly look off into space while contemplating options, possibilities, obstacles and weak points in the plan. It was both fascinating and disturbing at the same time. So this was what it meant for Jarod to 'run a sim' - only Sydney had once told him that in days gone by, Jarod would be narrating his thoughts as he followed each line of possibilities to his mentor as he went. Seeing the process be a silent one instead now was downright spooky.
The change happened gradually, over the course of a half-hour or so - but suddenly Sam and Miss Parker began to notice that Jarod was beginning to smile. He suddenly leaned forward over the blueprint again and began running his finger along to follow the path of a particular ventilation duct. The finger halted, and he stared at one spot on the plan for a long time, then sat back with what could best be described as a 'cat having eaten the canary' grin.
"Angelo had the right idea, and his plan would work without a doubt," he announced with little fanfare. "But I have an idea that changes just a couple of details of his plan and gives us a much higher probability of success." He leaned forward again and began explaining the workings of his mind.
And in less than fifteen minutes, he had both of the others agreeing with him. Miss Parker was already reaching for the telephone to summon Broots, without whose help none of this would succeed, while Jarod and Sam continued to discuss details and timing issues.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney looked up from his latest journal as he heard Jarod come into the house through the garage door in the kitchen. He sat, looking up expectantly as he heard his houseguest draw a glass of water from the tap, then footsteps that told him that the Pretender was coming toward the front of the house. "Well," the psychiatrist commented the moment Jarod's dark head came into view, "what did Sam have to say?"
"Angelo found him," Jarod stated evenly, then smiled at his old mentor's surprise, "and then showed him a fairly decent plan to get himself out of the Centre. After simming things, I found a couple of places where I could tighten up the details and give us a better chance of getting him out of there without raising even one eyebrow."
"So, we're set?"
"Pretty much," the Pretender sighed and found a place on the couch where he could stretch out his frame comfortably in a half-sitting, half-lying posture. "All we have to do now is wait until Lyle or Raines makes a mistake and gives us the kind of ammunition that would spur the Triumverate into action. I don't want to send anybody away until then, so that no warning flags can be raised that something's amiss."
Sydney set his journal aside and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. "Surely you and Broots have found plenty already."
"Oh, we've found that they've been busy little boys alright. But what we're waiting for is the kind of deed that is so potentially destabilizing, so contrary to the Triumverate's agenda that it would, on its own, be sufficient to make them seriously consider summarily eliminating the two of them on the spot. Everything else, then, would only be gravy and add fuel to the explosion to come." Jarod's face grew grim. "I don't want there to be any question about the outcome once we set things in motion. You told me you didn't want to be part of tilting at windmills."
Sydney nodded. "And you haven't found that one special dirty deed yet, I take it?"
"Not yet. But we will. I've simmed this too many times - Lyle and Raines won't be able to resist pushing the envelope too far. It's just in their natures to over-reach."
"And until then."
"We keep our eyes open, our heads down - and we wait."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"What do YOU want?" Raines wheezed as the glass door closed firmly behind Lyle.
"We may have a problem."
Deep-set ice-blue eyes riveted his son to his place directly in front of the massive and carved desk that was the center of power for the Chairman. "What kind of problem?" came the quick demand after the agonized gasp of oxygen from the little green tank beside him.
"I've had Willy doing computer maintenance lately, making sure that nobody we don't want is digging around."
"Get to the point."
"Some of our more. sensitive. files have been accessed recently." Lyle dropped his little bombshell with simple terms, then rubbed the stump of his amputated thumb while he waited for the inevitable explosion from his father.
"Which files?" Raines' voice was almost shrill.
"The ones dealing with the projects we've been giving Kevin lately, among others."
Raines leaned back in the comfortably stuffed leather chair that had become his when his brother had made his. departure. from the Centre power structure. Part of his self-assigned task as the new Chairman had been to reclaim some of the Centre's former financial health. Eventually he had found the Triumverate's insistence that the Pretender Project, with all its ancillary projects, be shut down completely to be contrary to what he felt was the best interests of the Centre. So he had cautiously renamed certain sensitive elements of that project and shifted resources and support staff from one location to another.
The Pretender Kevin had been central to those arrangements. Kevin had been a piece of luck - another natural Pretender acquired during childhood but never turned over to the Parker regime, or to Sydney as project coordinator. Raines had made the difficult decision not to subject his second talented Pretender to the same kinds of stresses that Jarod had been put through; he had assigned yet another morally ambiguous psychiatrist as mentor/keeper and kept Kevin busy with sims that made money when sold. Records of Kevin's existence had been carefully and systematically encrypted and buried within select unrelated data. The success of their efforts to keep Kevin from being discovered had been central to slowly winning back the Triumverate's trust and acquiescence in other areas of endeavor.
And now, if Kevin and his activities were on the verge of being uncovered.
"Who accessed the files?" Raines asked with narrowed eyes.
"We don't know," Lyle found himself having to admit. "The password used is an old one that we didn't know we needed to deactivate until now."
"Whose password?!" Raines was livid.
"Mr. Parker's." Lyle decided the rest of the bad news might as well come out now. "And access came from a terminal outside the Centre facility itself - untraceable."
"Unacceptable!" The ghoulish Chairman pounded a fist furiously on his desk and leaned forward. "Could it be either Miss Parker or Broots?"
Lyle shook his head and shrugged. "If it is, then they're privy to old man Parker's passwords - something I don't think either of them ever knew. The old man simply didn't trust her enough to give her any, and I'm pretty certain that he never wrote any of them down. Broots may be good at what he does, and he may have uncovered some of our less wise moves a few years ago, but I don't think even HE would have been able to hack the old man's passwords. Besides, neither of them should or could have any idea where to start looking with such success."
"Sydney?"
"Don't be silly!" Lyle dismissed that thought with a casual wave of his hand. "The old goat has been far too contented since we moved him to pure research and Miss Parker got custody of Davy to be interested in jeopardizing things."
Raines shook his head in disbelief. "Then who?"
"I don't know."
"Find out, and take care of them," the old man gasped, his stress and excitement making him draw on the oxygen tank harder than usual and make a sound that approached a death's rattle. "And while you're investigating, destroy all the encrypted records of Project Redux. We don't need to have this anonymous hacker trip over any of that. Include those negotiations with Japan in your purge. We're going to have to put things on hold for a while, until we figure out where the leak is."
"But." Lyle's brows furled in concern and frustration. "The Tanaka contingent is going to be here in less than three days. And I've been quietly talking to Tommy, getting him interested in investing serious funding in Redux - and possibly even providing physical facilities in Japan to house the project once its set in motion. We NEED to move Redux out of our usual facilities - the Triumverate would be really pissed if they knew we were still working toward creating a hybrid Pretender, especially since we can't use more mainstream means to get what we need."
"The more times we have to touch our organized crime partners for help, the more the Triumverate will want our heads," Raines pointed out with a broken gasp of oxygen. "We're perfectly capable of acquiring new facilities to carry out this latest project without the Yakuza, and you know it. The latest sweep of the New York underground netted us three females last week, one of whom should be able to serve as surrogate once their systems are purged of the heroin, a process ongoing even as we speak."
"Kevin said we'd find a suitable candidate," Lyle crossed his arms over his chest. "The guy has been right straight down the line. Too bad we don't have Jarod to double-check his work."
"We don't need Jarod to double-check Kevin," Raines informed the younger man with a wheeze. "We're lucky we don't need either Jarod or Miss Parker for any part of this anymore - at least, not for this one last try. And I'm still not anxious to let the Yakuza start calling shots with either Redux or Kevin. Selling sims to the Tanakas to keep their drug import business safe from the DEA is one thing - and it hasn't hurt our checking account balances at all. But selling part interest in our last chance at breeding a high-quality Pretender from two established and proven Red Files is something else yet again. Taking the Yakuza into our confidence to that extent will only increase the chance that the Triumverate find out we're dealing with them again. I've just about decided that doing more than simply selling sim information is playing with fire."
"I've made certain promises." Lyle uncrossed his arms. "You told me to, remember?"
"I don't care what I told you before. This hacker in the system changes everything. So you just forget about the Tanaka negotiators - let me worry about dealing with them when the time comes." Raines pointed a skeletal finger at the glass door at the back of his office. "You just do what I've told you to, and do it NOW. I'm sure you don't want to lose another finger over this."
Lyle's eyes narrowed dangerously. The subject of his missing thumb was one guaranteed to anger him almost past the point of self-control, especially since the old ghoul had demanded the return of his digit as a demonstration of loyalty. Why the old geezer hadn't simply died when he was supposed to, rather than be well enough to take over the reins of the Centre, was also a sore point.
Then Lyle smoothed his face with effort. It wouldn't do for Mr. Raines to learn just how fragile his continued loyalty to a Raines-led chain of command had become, or how much he would just as soon do away with it entirely. He could be patient, however; the old man would slip up one of these days; and then, he promised himself, we would see what we would see.
He spun on his heel and headed for the glass doors without waiting for his dismissal. He would bide his time.
But time WAS on his side. Raines was old and in obviously precarious health - and despite all efforts to the contrary, HE would make sure the old ghoul didn't live forever.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Angelo scurried through the dimly lit ventilation shaft, the DSA he'd carefully removed from the day's collection as it had sat waiting to be archived clenched between tightly pinched lips. He was beginning to get frustrated; Daughter and Friend needed to see what was on this, and the Bad Men were making his efforts to get it to them nigh on futile. What was worse was that, today of all days, Sydney hadn't been in his office all day, and Broots had been sent to the Dover satellite facility.
The empath suddenly slid to a stop in the narrow metal corridor. There WAS one other to whom he could deliver his cargo - one other who could see to it that this disc would be viewed by Daughter and Friend before it was too late.
Blue-grey eyes glittering with purpose, Angelo carefully turned his body around in the duct and began scurrying off in the opposite direction.
He headed towards the vertical shaft that led downwards to the next sublevel, where Daughter's friend Sam had his little office. Sam would help him.
Fifteen minutes later, Angelo was sitting and staring out the grate and into Sam's office, which was empty, and the empath let out a another sigh of pure frustration. Nobody was where they were supposed to be today - not even Sam. Still, he settled himself down just inside the ventilation grate to wait for the sweeper's eventual return. Too much was riding on getting this disc to Daughter and Friend.
Soon he heard the sound of Sam's voice speaking to someone as he came close to his office door. "Look, I wasn't the one who ordered you out there for maintenance duty," the ex-wrestler was complaining, obviously answering back to something said by whoever it was he was talking to.
"Mr. Raines won't be happy to know that I was ordered away from my post to oversee welders putting a hinge and hasp on a utility manhole," Willy's voice growled back, and Angelo shrank back from the grating in a conditioned response. The black sweeper was one of the few at the Centre that the empath genuinely feared, with only his direct boss being more feared yet.
Sam stopped just outside his office door. "You can take that up with Miss Parker. All I did was point out the security lapse to her; she was the one who came looking for people to take care of the problem. It's not my fault she found you standing around with your thumb up your ass when she came looking for men to do the job."
Willy mumbled something in a threatening tone that Angelo couldn't make out, and Sam merely shrugged in response. "Take it up with him, then. See how far you get. Miss Parker takes her orders directly from the Triumverate now, not from your boss. And I'm sure that if you cause problems for her on this, she can bring your attitude to Triumverate attention."
Sam watched down the corridor, where Angelo couldn't see, and then eventually turned and slumped into his office and slammed the door shut. With a quick glance to see that the camera that recorded everything that went on in the tiny office was currently deactivated, Angelo tapped on the metal siding to the grate to let the sweeper know that he was there. Sam started at the sound, then watched with interest as the grate opened only far enough that Angelo could push the DSA disc through the slot and let it fall onto the desk.
"What's this, Angelo?" the sweeper asked quietly, so as not to call attention to someone else being in here with him.
"Take to Daughter, Friend. Important." Angelo's eyes glittered with intensity, communicating the urgency he felt far more effectively than his hesitating words ever could.
Sam nodded and slipped the little disc into his jacket pocket. "Is there anything else?"
Angelo nodded. "Angelo bring more tomorrow. This time?"
The sweeper nodded his agreement. "Be careful," he found himself warning the odd little man who made his home within the Centre walls. Suddenly he no longer wondered where and how Jarod always seemed to be two steps ahead of anything planned by the Centre, and he decided he would just as soon that status quo remain in place as long as possible. Angelo, strange as he was, had in their last two conversations become one of 'them' - one of 'the good guys'.
Angelo smiled suddenly and openly at the sweeper. "Sam be careful too," he responded slowly, surprising the sweeper at having his sentiment returned in kind, then pulled the grating closed again and moved away and back towards his lair on that level.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sam?" Sydney didn't bother to hide his astonishment at finding Miss Parker's sweeper at his front door.
"Can I come in, and is Jarod back from Miss Parker's yet?" Sam ran the two questions together.
Sydney stepped aside in an obvious invitation, then closed the door after a quick glance up and down the street to see if anyone was paying attention or had his house under surveillance. "This is a surprise."
"To me too," the dark-haired heavy-weight nodded his agreement. He reached into a pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a shining silver disc. "Angelo gave me this about an hour ago and asked me to get it to Miss P and Jarod."
"Any idea what's on it?"
"Nope," the sweeper shook his head. "I didn't think it was something I needed to check out while still there on the premises, if you know what I mean. Is Jarod back yet?" he repeated.
"Not yet. I'm expecting him any moment, though." Sydney indicated that Sam should accompany him toward the back of the house. "He enjoys these times with Davy, but never seems to stay very long afterwards."
As of the Pretender had been paying attention to their discussion, the garage door rumbled open as Sydney finished his comment. Within a few moments, the sound of Jarod's car purred into the enclosed space and the garage door began closing again. Jarod blinked at Sam standing with Sydney as he walked through the interior door. "Sam! What's up?"
Sam's hand came up holding the silver disc. Jarod looked from the disc to the sweeper's face. "Angelo wanted me to get this to you and Miss Parker. I figured it might be wise if I brought it by here first, instead of over there again."
He dropped the DSA into Jarod's outstretched hand, then followed as the Pretender jerked his head in the direction of the living room. From behind one of the cabinet doors in the built-in bookcases Jarod withdrew a silver Haliburton and put it on the coffeetable, where they all could view the screen at the same time. Sydney and Jarod seated themselves on the couch in front of the screen, with Sam standing sentinel behind them. Jarod slipped the little disc into the player and punched up the code that began the playback.
"What do YOU want?" The camera angle was focussed on the Chairman's desk, and Mr. Raines sitting behind it.
"I think we have a problem." Lyle moved into range.
"What kind of problem?"
The trio watched the scene from Raines' office earlier that day play out. Jarod turned off the screen once they had watched Lyle exit the office. "Syd? Who's Kevin?"
The psychiatrist threw his hands up. "I haven't the foggiest, but from the sounds of it, he must be another Pretender. But if he is, then he's one that Raines has managed to keep completely beneath the Centre radar." Sydney rose to his feet and paced over to lean on the mantle. "A better question is who has accessed the files and put those two on red alert. We don't need this right now."
"You don't suppose that Broots has tripped over something during his after- hours hacking, do you?" Sam looked from Pretender to mentor and back again.
"I would think that if he had, we'd have heard about it by now," Sydney shrugged. "The Triumverate put a great deal of effort into closing that entire project down. They let Miss Parker know that it was NOT to be reactivated under any conditions and gave her clear instructions to report any suspicions of that to them. Our finding out just a few examples of Pretender-related research Raines and Lyle kept active behind the scenes was sufficient to blackmail them into dropping their efforts to get custody of Davy. Broots knows this."
Jarod's eyes narrowed. "We may have another player in this game, then, it seems," he said softly, his mind examining the problem from every possible angle known at the moment. "Whoever it is has had dealings with the Centre before, and is smart enough to use an old password and prevent tracking of their connection."
"Another Pretender?" Sam suggested.
Jarod tipped his head and considered. "Possibly. We never knew for sure whether Alex died or not in that fall."
"Alex wasn't that intelligent, Jarod," Sydney shook his head. "His skill as a Pretender was always sub-par."
"Sydney, It wouldn't take intelligence to dig up an old password," Jarod reminded his mentor, "or to have even coerced it out of old man Parker while he held him hostage back then. And Alex would have an axe to grind with Raines at the very least."
"Well, whoever it is, they've done us a favor at the same time as putting a monkey wrench in our works." Sydney gazed at his protégé grimly. "Now that we have a name to work with, we can see about getting Broots on the trail of this Kevin while you can see what you can dig up on Redux from here. Not to mention we can let Miss Parker know that there are breadcrumbs to follow when she has the time and opportunity."
"You know, Miss Parker and Tommy Tanaka have a history together," Sam informed the other two quietly. "She and Tanaka seemed awfully chummy back before Lyle lost his thumb. You never know, maybe she can take advantage of that relationship again and get more than a thumb out of Lyle this time."
"I don't want her any closer to that action than necessary," Sydney spoke quickly and firmly. "The Tanakas are monsters."
"S'OK, Syd, neither do I," Jarod agreed quickly, appreciating the defensive stance Sydney had taken at the very idea of Miss Parker dealing with Yakuza again. He looked at the sweeper. "It isn't that it's a bad idea, Sam, it's that she has Davy to consider. We can maybe use her ability to understand Japanese to translate any materials we don't understand - but we want to keep her as far from any other connections the Triumverate would make between her and the Yakuza as possible. She has to stay completely above reproach. It's that impeccability that is going to give us what we want in the end, remember."
Sam nodded. "I can understand that."
"Did Angelo give you anything else?" Sydney asked, almost as an afterthought. "I mean, not that the DSA wasn't quite a bit."
"No," Sam shook his head, "but he said that he'd have more for me tomorrow." The sweeper blinked as an idea occurred. "Say, you don't suppose that the hacker that Raines and Lyle are looking for is." He thought about it, then discarded the idea. "Naw."
"Not so fast." Jarod's face was undecided and expressed reservation. "Angelo has talents that most of us don't even suspect. His getting me information was often the only thing that kept me ahead of the Centre's search parties. And he is quite arguably the loosest cannon of all of us."
Sydney turned to Sam. "Why don't you tell Angelo when you see him tomorrow that I want to talk to him. I'll see if I can get any information from him - and maybe warn him off if he's the one making inroads into the Raines- Parker subterfuge records." The psychiatrist looked at Jarod. "Or, at least, let him know that while we desperately need his information, he's going to have to hide his tracks better."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"We're going to have to tell her they're going to try it again." Jarod looked over at Sydney with a real expression of disgust.
"Is that the kind of smoking-gun ammunition mistake you need?" the psychiatrist asked in response, not really wanting to think about Miss Parker's response to a scenario that held the potential of a sibling for Davy.
"If the Triumverate is truly as set against resuming any part of the Pretender Project as you claim," Jarod replied, stretching his length out on the couch again in a comfortable slouch, "then this may well be just the kind of situation we've been waiting for." He closed his eyes. "Let's just hope we can get all the evidence we need to prove the allegations beyond any doubt before one of those homeless women they picked up in New York City is pregnant."
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