Balancing The Scales - Part 6 by MMB
"Jarod! Long time no hear from you, buddy!"
"Hey, Ethan! How are things going on the sane side of the globe?"
Ethan stretched back in his comfortable office chair and propped his feet on his desk. "Oh, you know - same-old, same-old. Same interesting types of quirks, same paranoias, a couple of simple clinical depression... How about on your end? What gives in the Land of Intrigue and Lies?"
"Well..." Jarod carried his cell phone to the couch and adopted his now-customary sprawled slouch propped against the comfortable pillows that were now generally kept on that one end of the couch. "Hang onto your hat, bro - our family tree has gotten a little more twisted."
"You're kidding!" Ethan shook his head in disbelief. "In what way?"
"Do you remember my telling you that old man Parker had had a baby about a year before we found you?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, it wasn't old man Parker's kid."
There was a pause while Ethan processed the information, and suddenly felt the familiar touch of his inner sense sound off in the back of his mind in a way that he hadn't felt in years. His feet came down from the desk, and he leaned forward. "Yours? And... my sister's?"
"Yeah."
He ran his hands through his thick, dark locks, so like his half-sister's. "I suppose that makes me a double-uncle, doesn't it?"
Jarod tucked his empty hand behind his head. "Something like that. And there's more."
"I figured things were getting interesting over there when you didn't call Monday night, like always," Ethan sighed. "So, when are you shipping Debbie and... I guess that makes this Davy the nephew, doesn't it... and Angelo off to us?"
"Uh... We're not going to." Jarod took a deep breath, then quickly explained the situation and the compromise solution that had been agreed upon earlier that evening.
"I think Em had decided that having the extra people in the house was going to be a good thing, Jarod - something to help Mom. She'll be disappointed that the plans have changed now."
"Only in the short term," Jarod reassured him. "Should everything go as planned, there should be no reason not to bring her newly-discovered grandson to visit in a couple of weeks, depending on how quickly the Triumverate acts on the information we're going to give them."
Ethan frowned as the voices in his head spoke again. "I hear Catherine saying that you need to wait a bit yet - that there's one more element to be coordinated first."
"I was wondering about that," Jarod nodded against the pillows. "Angelo is doing a damned good job at protecting SOMEBODY who is capable of hacking into the Centre mainframe and accessing some of Raines' prized sensitive data." Then he seemed to hear what Ethan had said once more and stiffened, pulling his arm back from its relaxed position behind his head. "CATHERINE? My God, Ethan, you haven't heard the voices for ages..."
"I know." The younger man sat back again, only he wasn't as relaxed as before. "But I've been getting whispers now for about a week, though, so I knew something big was up on your end and I needed to wait and you'd tell me about it." He paused, listening again to something only he could hear. "You need to wait too. You will be contacted."
"I want to have this fully in motion by Friday, so that Sydney's trip to White Cloud comes before or just as the first shock wave strikes." Jarod's voice was firm and decided.
"The voice say to be patient, and all will work out the way you want it to," Ethan insisted softly. "I know you don't trust them, Jarod, but..."
"I'll talk to the others, how's that?" the Pretender offered, then decided to change the subject. "How's Mom, and Em?"
"Mom's about the same. Em has been doing some freelance writing lately, and that has meant that Mom has been watching Sammy in the afternoons. I think having him around is helping."
"How about Jay?" Jarod asked, wondering that his brother hadn't mentioned their other sibling yet.
"He was accepted as an doctoral candidate at his alma mater, and will start teaching in the fall as well as start working on his dissertation."
"That's wonderful! But that means you're out a roommate again..." Jarod teased, remembering the trouble Ethan had had in finding honest roommates in college. After he had graduated, Jay had slipped quite easily into the spare bedroom of the house Ethan had been sharing with Jarod since their partnership had gotten off the ground.
"That's OK, big brother. I'm just waiting for you to get tired of playing Spy vs Spy and come back down to Earth again. Your patients miss you." Ethan was thinking of one big-eyed seven year old who had been severely abused by foster parents, and who was only beginning to interact with Jarod when the Pretender had turned her case over to him. Ethan, despite using all his charm, had yet to penetrate the little girl's defensive barriers.
"How is she?" Jarod knew instantly of whom his brother was thinking.
"Withdrawn, and withdrawing more every day. We need you back home, Jarod. You can't just leave Ginger like that..."
"You tell Ginger from me that Da-Ju-Ju says hi and to play nice with you. See if that doesn't crack the shell a bit."
Ethan ran his hand through his hair again. "Ginger isn't the only one who needs you home. I think part of Mom's depression is that you're gone again, and it's all because of the Centre again. You can't blame her for having nightmares about that, Jarod..."
"I know." Jarod's face had grown tight. "I'll be back as soon as my job here is finished, I promise."
"Even though you now have a son to take care of?" Ethan asked carefully.
Jarod thought hard for a long moment. "You know your sister almost as well as I do, Ethan. Hell, if you're hearing the voices again, you can probably touch her mind again too. We've already discussed how our lives simply don't mesh. She has hers here, and I have mine there."
"What happens to Davy, then?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, OK?" Jarod couldn't see his path so clearly when he put his son into the picture as a vital element. "Nothing's been cast in concrete."
"So..." Ethan sighed and let the time pass to break the painful stream of conversation. "Anything you want Jay or me to do for you from this end to 'help' matters along?"
Jarod shook his head. "Nope. Just sit tight and send good thoughts to us all over the next week or so. If everything goes as planned, I'll be calling about then with the good news."
"Jarod," Ethan began slowly, knowing that what he was about to ask was to tread on tender ground, "are you going to be able to live with the knowledge that you willingly and deliberately set out to cause the death of two individuals? I remember your telling me about that time with Damon..."
"I don't know why not," the Pretender responded, sitting up and throwing his legs over the edge of the couch. "I can remember both of them standing by and watching with great delight as they willingly and deliberately set out to stop my heart - not once, but many times. They created a child from Parker's and my genetics, just to see whether they could play God and get away with it - with no intent of treating Davy as anything but property. Now we find out they're getting ready to do it again. I tell you, Ethan, there IS a point past which a person can only be said to be 'evil', and I think Raines and Lyle both went past that line a very long time ago. Someone needs to make them answer for what they've done."
"Just be sure," his brother warned with an affectionate tone. "You don't want to come down with a horrible case of 'the guilts' when it's far too late to do anything to atone."
Jarod's mind immediately sought out and brought an image of Sydney to the forefront of his consciousness. "Trust me, Ethan, I know how hard it is to have to try to live with never being able to completely atone from having watched someone try to do just that lately. I don't intend to make the same mistake." His face grew grim. "I'm just balancing the scales here at last."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker sat at her vanity finishing up the one hundred strokes with the hairbrush that was an essential part of her nightly routine since her childhood. The last few times the bristles massaged her scalp were slower than the rest as she stared at her reflection in the huge, round mirror. ANOTHER attempt at a hybrid Pretender, using HER genetic material - and Jarod's - a true sibling for Davy. While the very idea of such an effort taking place without her knowledge or permission angered and frustrated her no end, she would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that giving her son a brother or sister wouldn't have its advantages. Damn Sydney for making her think through those possibilities, anyway! It was so much easier to just be angry about the whole thing.
She herself had grown up as an only child in a one-parent household, and she knew how lonely that life could be, especially as parent and child grew apart as the child grew older. She had been a central part of Davy's life now for six and a half years, and even now she could feel him moving every so slowly out of her sphere of total influence. He might tower head and shoulders above the other kids as school intellectually and academically, but he had already shown signs of a normal kid's need to fit in with his peers. Even the video game that he constantly excelled at with Broots and even Jarod was the result of word of mouth from his friends.
No! She put down her brush in disgust at the direction her mind had taken her without any warning. Redux was an abomination, a violation of the deepest and most intimate kind. A child, when brought into the world, should come as the result of loving parents - not as fodder for an over-achieving science project. As much as she loved Davy now, the pain of her reaction to finding out that he was her natural son and not her 'Daddy's' child was still acutely remembered. And if it had been difficult for her, knowing Davy as she had all that time, how much more so it must have been for Jarod - and Redux would be as much HIS child as hers.
Jarod - for so long a central part of her life, and now such a vital part of Davy's - Redux violated him as much as it did her, made them parents together against their will, AGAIN. They weren't together by any stretch of the word, and from the sounds of it, probably never would be - which meant that despite both of them loving him very much, Davy would grow up in a single-parent household just as she had. She couldn't see herself willingly leaving Broots and Sydney behind in Delaware to follow Jarod to wherever it was his life was established, nor did she see Jarod willingly leaving what he described as a healthy and happy existence in that wherever to be with her in Delaware.
And yet... Jarod had, in returning to Delaware, filled and repaired the chasm in her life he had left as a gaping, aching wound when he'd vanished so long ago. With him back in her life and as an ally and friend rather than a competitor or prey, her life felt complete for the very first time. Even now, despite the seven years' of separation, he knew her better than any other person alive did - except, perhaps, Sydney - and she knew she loved him in her own way and had since she was much younger. They shared a beautiful child, and it was plain to see that Jarod was just as devoted to Davy as she would want any man who would be his father to be. But she wasn't IN love with Jarod.
She stared at herself in the mirror. No, she wasn't in love with him - at least, not at the moment. But did she WANT to be - and if so, would it be because she wanted a father for Davy, or because she would want it for herself even if Davy weren't in the picture? Miss Parker drew in a deep breath of confusion and frustration. Things were too up in the air for her to know her own heart right now, and unless circumstances altered dramatically, she wasn't sure she could allow her heart to be the leader in this campaign.
With another sigh, she put the brush back down on her vanity in its appointed place and rose to go over to the light switch and turn off the overhead light in her room. It was a warm evening, and she peeled back the bedspread and blanket and prepared to slip beneath just the one sheet so as not to overheat and perspire during the night. She was just settling down and preparing to turn off the lamp on her nightstand and tip over into her pillows when her phone rang.
"What?" she answered, much as she always had, but without the hard, brittle tone. She had fully expected to hear from Jarod tonight. The Committee discussion had gone late into the evening, and she had sensed that Jarod had wanted to talk to her without being overheard - probably about Redux.
"Miss Parker?"
"Ethan?!" Her eyes stared out into the room in amazement without seeing a thing. "My God! Ethan, is that you?"
"I just had to talk to you." The young man's voice sounded troubled.
Miss Parker picked up on that note of distress instantly. "What's wrong?"
"I talked to Jarod tonight. He told me..." The young man rubbed his hands tiredly over his eyes. "He told me about Davy, about... the new project... But..."
"Ethan..."
"I'm hearing them again, after years of their having been quiet."
She sat up on the edge of her bed. "The voices?"
"Our mother's most of all. Do you still hear her?" Ethan's question was plaintive.
She shook her head slowly. "I haven't heard her for a very long time, Ethan, not since the explosion in Maryland. Why?"
Ethan took a very deep breath and marshaled his emotional control. "Have you ever killed anyone, Miss Parker?"
The question took her aback. In her mind's eye, she flashed back to a night many years earlier on a dock, facing a man who was then and still was a stone-cold killer himself, and remembering the shot and the sound of a body falling into the water. "I thought I had, at one time," she answered softly. "Why?"
"She worries about your being able to live with the consequences of what you're intending," he said with a small shudder, "with the idea that you are very systematically and deliberately setting out to cause the deaths of others."
"Ethan," Miss Parker began, finding the question as disturbing to consider as Ethan did, "what we're doing is to simply inform the Triumverate of what is going on behind their backs. What THEY decide to do about it, really, is their business and not ours."
"But you know what will probably happen, and are actually counting on it."
She frowned slightly. "Well, yes..."
"That means you'll be responsible too."
"Perhaps," she conceded reluctantly. "But which is the worse evil? Is it better to bring the truth of a situation to light to an important party being harmed? Is it easier to live with the consequences falling as they may on the heads of two individuals who have done immeasurable harm over the years to many, MANY people, and knowing that we're directly or indirectly responsible for any harm that came to those two? Or would we be better off just to let the situation continue as is to avoid being directly responsible for harming Raines and Lyle? Is it better to live with knowing that these men would continue to threaten you and your family, me and mine, not to mention many others we cannot know about now and in the future? Would it be easier to live with knowing our inaction makes us directly or indirectly responsible for THAT harm instead? Which IS the greater evil?"
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair to pull it out of her face. "Look, it's way too late at night to debate the ethics of this with you, Ethan. I didn't join this effort at the drop of the hat; I thought about it long and hard and eventually had to be convinced that it was the right thing to do. In the end, all I know is that I want and need Davy to have a safe life - and that this is probably the only way open to me to GIVE him that safe life. As a mother, my son's life and the safety of my family has got to come first." She smiled sadly. "And I think my - our - mother would understand that."
Ethan was silent for a long moment, thinking through what she had said. "Can you help Jarod, then, so he doesn't let this become more about revenge and pay-back than self-defense and defense of family? Finding out about the other Pretender and the new attempt to create another child has made him angrier and more bitter than I've ever known him to be - and I don't know that he's talking it out to anybody there."
Miss Parker nodded. "I had a hunch it was like that. I was lucky, then. Sydney took me aside before anybody got here and gave me the news about the possibility of another child - and I was able to..."
"Sydney is a good man," Ethan commented softly. "But Jarod hasn't talked to him about this since he found out - not really. And when everything there is finished, I want my brother back whole and healthy, not poisoned with regrets."
"I'll put a bug in Syd's ear to broach the subject, how's that? Or if Jarod happens to call me, which I almost expected tonight, I'll talk to him or steer him to talk to Sydney before things get too far along."
"Thank you," her half-brother sighed in relief. "I look forward to meeting this nephew of mine someday."
"I think you two would get along famously," Miss Parker smiled at the thought. "Don't be such a stranger, though. Keep in touch, please? Call every once in a while, to let me know you're OK?"
Ethan was silent for a while. "I will," he answered finally, giving Miss Parker her own reason to sigh in relief. "Good night, Miss Parker."
"Take care, Ethan, and good night." She disconnected and replaced the handset on the nightstand and was reaching for the lamp when the phone rang again. With a deep sigh she resigned herself to not getting to sleep when she wanted to after all, felt a stab of gratitude that it WAS a Friday night and she could actually sleep in the next morning, and put the phone to her ear again. "Hello, Jarod," she said and breathed out a gentle sigh as she tipped herself over into her pillow to get more comfortable this time.
The silence on the other end of the line amused her. "I had no idea you were psychic," he commented dryly after a while.
"I knew you were wanting to talk," she explained patiently, "and I talked to Ethan."
"He called you?" Jarod was surprised. "Really?"
"He was worried about you. About me too, for that matter, but more about you." She paused, her brows furrowing when he had no response to that. "Did you know that he's hearing the voices again?"
"He told me," he admitted. "He thinks we should wait in getting things started. He told me that I would be contacted - whatever that meant." He paused. "Have you started hearing your mother again too?"
"No," she told him quickly. "I think when... When Sydney became... She didn't need to be in my mind when I wasn't alone in the world anymore, Jarod. And maybe because I'm not alone in this - because I have you and Sydney and Broots and Debbie helping to keep me focused and on the right track - she hasn't needed to be there for me." Now it was her turn to pause. "You'd think with all of your family around him, Ethan wouldn't need her either."
"Maybe she's talking to him again because events on both sides of his life are affecting him," Jarod suggested, once more stretching out on Sydney's couch. "He has two families, you know - with you, and now Davy, being the other side of his nature."
"Jarod..." How was she going to broach the topic with him other than just forge straight ahead? "He was worried about whether or not we would be able to..."
"...live with ourselves when things are finished, I know. He said so to me too."
"He has a point, Jarod."
Jarod gave a deep sigh. "I know he does, Parker." He put his hand behind his head and studied the popcorn spackling on Sydney's living room ceiling in the dim light of the floor lamp next to him. "Are you changing your mind? Do you want out?"
"No, of course not," she reassured him quickly. "And that really isn't the issue. I think what Ethan's worried about is how we're going to feel about ourselves when it's all over and done with - and Raines and Lyle are out of the picture." Miss Parker rolled onto her back and studied the smooth ceiling above her head. "Jarod... about Redux..."
"We're not going to let it happen again, Parker, I promise..."
"That isn't what I meant." She slipped her hand behind her head. "I was thinking of the advice you gave me right after I found out that Davy was ours, and heard my fa... Mr. Parker's plans for me. We need to think, use our heads and not give in to our tempers. We have too much riding on this to go off half-cocked."
"And you think we are?" Jarod's question was asked in a droll tone, but she knew she had struck a nerve.
She took a deep breath, and hoped that she knew her friend even half as well as he knew her. "If you're even half as human as I am, Jarod, you're pissed as hell that they're trying to create another Davy. What's more, you especially have a personal and emotional stake in discovering that Raines has been keeping another natural Pretender for so long - and that he was kidnapped from HIS family the same way you were. Admit it. There's no disgrace in recognizing that you're angry and that you have every right to be..."
"You're damned right I'm mad," Jarod snapped, no longer trying to hide his emotions behind a veil of reason or logic. "It never changes with them - they play God with impunity and put their avaricious agendas ahead of any other ethical or moral consideration known to man."
"Jarod! Jarod! We know it never changes with them. That's why we're doing this - so that the immorality will stop. BUT..." She rubbed her finger beneath her nose, struggling to put things into words in such a way to reach him effectively. "Jarod, we can't let the motivation behind what we're doing change. We started out, we began walking down this road, to protect our families, remember? It had nothing to do with what had been done in the past, to us or to others. It was all about preventing anything further from happening that would threaten or harm us or those we love. Remember?"
"I remember," Jarod admitted, finding her rapid-fire argument an effective counter to the heat of his ire. "But..."
"No, Jarod. Even now, we have to keep our eyes on what we started out to do. Yes, Redux is a violation of the worst kind; yes, Shadow brings back nightmares for you of what you've been through. We WILL be addressing those issues - but we can NOT forget that we're doing what we're doing to protect those we love now from what might happen in the future if we do nothing. We can't let our own agendas of anger and revenge take over our reason. If we do, we become no better than those we're working on removing."
"Parker..."
"No. Listen to me, Jarod. When I shot Lyle, when I thought I'd killed him, the ONLY reason I was able to live with myself was because I thought I'd shot him in self-defense - that if I hadn't shot him, he would have shot ME. Daddy may have ordered me to be an assassin, but I was not then and I am not now a cold-blooded killer. When you killed Damon, Sydney told me once that you were haunted for a long time afterwards with the very idea of having taken a life - no matter how much justification you thought you had at the time. You'd killed Damon to save Broots' life, remember?"
"Alright." Jarod finally managed to get a word in edgewise and break her train of thought. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your point is valid. How are YOU going to be able to file away your anger and sense of violation so that it has no bearing on what we're up to?"
That stopped her. Miss Parker pulled her hand from behind her head and slowly brought it to help cradle the phone handset against her ear. "By remembering that I'm doing this to prevent others from being harmed - and setting aside any harm that has been done or might be done to me. I can't let this be about me; it has to stay being about Davy, and Syd, and Debbie, and Angelo."
"And Kevin?"
She thought for a long while. "Yes, even about Kevin. But it's about Kevin in the same way it's about Angelo. The harm that angers us about both of them has already been done. Neither you nor I had any way of preventing it at the time, nor will anything we might do in the future change what happened then. What we do now has to be all about preventing harm from happening to them later on and have nothing to do with our being angry about the past." She paused, waiting to see if he had any argument. Then, "Do you see what I'm saying?"
"I want to hurt them, Parker." Jarod's voice was dark and agonized. "They have hurt so many people I love. Look what they've done to you, to Syd, to your mother..."
"I know, Jarod, I know." For a brief moment, Miss Parker found herself wishing that he were sitting next to her and not across town, so she could put her arms around him and hold him close. Inexplicably she found herself wishing she could offer him the kind of comfort that Sydney had so liberally and freely been providing for her for years now. He probably had had that same kind of comfort from his own family for that same amount of time, but being HERE in Delaware and far from his family, he was now functioning at a disadvantage again. "But that's in the past. We need to remember that we do what we do for the sake of the future. So we all can live without fear anymore. Without guilt."
She heard Jarod take in and expel a deep breath. "You're right," he conceded finally. "It has to be about prevention, not pay-back."
"That's right." She relaxed and closed her eyes as relief washed over her. "Remind me too, if I forget. OK?"
"If you insist," Jarod chuckled warmly into her ear. "I'm glad we're on the same side of this."
"I am too, Jarod." She opened her eyes and rolled on her side, toward her nightstand. "Are you OK?"
"I'm still angry, if that's what you mean..."
"I am too, Jarod. Angry - and scared that we won't put a halt to things in time." She pulled the hair back out of her face. "Jarod... What if..."
"We'll stop it," Jarod insisted. "I told you - it won't happen, Parker, I promise."
"But what if we don't stop it soon enough?" She sighed. "Sydney asked me this same question earlier tonight, when he told me about Redux in the first place. You need to think it through too, I think, as unthinkable as it is to even consider..."
"What was your answer?"
"Uh-unh. You first."
The Pretender put his hand over his face and let his mind entertain the unthinkable for the first time. "I'd say... we take care of the mother until she has the baby, and then we raise it as Davy's brother or sister... I guess..." He moved his hand so he could stare at the ceiling again. "Or I could take the baby back with me, and you would only have to be responsible for Davy, if you feel strongly about it... I suppose..." His words ground to a halt. "What was your answer?" he asked again in a smaller, more hesitant tone.
"The same as yours, mostly," she admitted, feeling just as hesitant. "The only thing I know for sure is that the baby - if it comes along - shouldn't be asked to suffer because of the way it came into the world."
"Agreed. But would you..." Again, he didn't quite know how to ask such an intimate question. "Would you want me to take it, or would you want..."
"I'd be the mother, whether you were raising it or I was," she answered softly. "I'd love it, just like I love Davy."
"But a baby should stay with its mother, Parker. Are you saying you'd be willing to take on that much work?"
"Yes," she whispered, a tear suddenly spilling to her cheek. "If you'd let me."
"I'd never think of... Are YOU OK about this, then?" he asked softly. "We agree, then, IF we aren't in time, we take care of the surrogate until the baby's born, and then raise the baby with Davy?"
"I'm OK with that part of it, I suppose," she answered honestly. "I'm just scared to death we won't be in time, and we'll have to face those questions again - for real."
"That makes two of us, Parker." Jarod closed his eyes as he felt a tear hit his cheek. "That makes two of us."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sydney?"
The psychiatrist looked up from his morning paper at Jarod, who was still in the process of pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Hmmm?"
"When it comes to our motives in any given action..." Jarod stumbled to a halt, not exactly sure how to ask his question.
The greying eyebrows rose half-way to where the hairline used to be. "Are you asking whether motives in any given action are important?"
The dark head nodded emphatically. "That, and can the wrong motives affect a person negatively after the fact?"
"Absolutely. A person would have to be completely amoral not to be affected ultimately by the reasons why they behave the way they do. Guilt is often the consequence of an otherwise moral person realizing that they did something for the wrong reasons and/or that what they did had unforeseen and unwanted consequences, as well as realizing that the consequences cannot be taken back or ameliorated." The chestnut eyes seemed determined to bore holes in Jarod's face. "Why?"
"I had a couple of interesting discussions last night - the most important one being with Parker."
Sydney sniffed as he folded the newspaper and put it down on the kitchen table. "I thought I heard you talking to somebody quite late..."
"Ethan had called her..."
"Ethan?! She hasn't heard from him since..."
"I know. But I had called him myself to bring him up to date with progress here, and he was more successful in voicing a reservation to HER, it seems, than he was with me - and she ended up hitting at the same point all over again when we talked later." Jarod leaned both elbows on the table and looked at his former mentor over the top of his coffee cup. "It seemed important to both of them that I put aside any thoughts of revenge for... some of the things we've uncovered..."
"Mmmm." Sydney nodded and sipped at his coffee. "Revenge is a very poor reason for doing things, Jarod. What's more, revenge usually ends up hurting the person attempting to accomplish it more than the one on the receiving end."
Jarod nodded. "Parker was most persuasive in her arguments on that point - I'm assuming because she's heard the same argument from the other side with you at least once or twice..."
The older man nodded thoughtfully. "While we were trying to gain permanent custody of Davy for her, she had her hands full trying to not let becoming his guardian be about getting back at Raines and Lyle. That would have poisoned her relationship with Davy eventually, because he would have become only a means to an end for her in her mind rather than an end in and of himself. The consequences of that attitude might have meant that his importance to her might have faded in a relatively short time, which would have been patently unfair to Davy." Sydney took another healthy sip of coffee. "That was part of why I asked her to think through her response to Redux moving forward before anything could be done about it. Many of the same feelings that drove her back then would have to be faced again."
"I thought so." Jarod fell silent, then used his forefinger to spin his coffee cup around and around absently for a long moment. "Syd, I don't know what I'm going to do when this is over."
"Really? I'd be surprised if you did know," his mentor responded dryly. "What do you want?"
"That's just it - I'm not sure anymore." Jarod rose and stalked to the sink and back. "I have a full and satisfying psychiatric practice just waiting for me to return. I have a mother who is going through serious emotional upheavals, I find out, because I'm gone again because of things the Centre is doing. I was happy there - my life had purpose, and I had people I loved around me."
"And now?" Sydney leaned back in his chair and watched his former protégé with interest.
"And now here I am a father, and God help me may end up being a father a second time, through no wish or fault of my own. I have people I love around me here that I have no right to ask to disrupt their lives here just to be with me in mine there, but whom I don't know I can bear to leave behind again when the time comes." Jarod's shoulders slumped, and he slouched back into his chair and scratched his beard in frustration.
"What about Parker?"
"She's three-quarters of my confusion, Syd. She's been so important to me for so long, and now we have a son we both love dearly. I left her once; I don't know that I can do it again."
"But do you love HER?" The question was soft but insistent.
"I've always loved her, I suppose," Jarod leaned his chin into one hand and took up his coffee cup again with the other. "She was my best friend for a very long time - even after she went away to school."
"But..."
Jarod stared at his mentor. "Be honest with me, Sydney. If you had found out about Michelle and Nicholas back when, would you have left the Centre - and me - to be with them?"
"That was a different situation, Jarod..."
The Pretender shook his head. "Not really. Whether or not you were happy in your life as my keeper, we had a father-son relationship that you were emotionally invested in to a certain extent. So answer the question, Sydney. Would you have turned your back on a career you were contented with, a job you loved in a manner of speaking, to be with your son if you had found out about him while he was a child - and Michelle were still free?"
Sydney rose from his chair and turned his back on Jarod to stare out his arcadia doors at the verdant green of his back yard. "You're asking me if I could turn my back on one son to be with another, Jarod, and I honestly can't answer that question." He turned and looked at the man sitting despondently at the table and sighed. "You have no idea how many times I've thought about that since you brought me evidence of Nicholas' birth - asked myself what WOULD I have done? After the long time it took me to be honest about how I felt about you, I discovered that if I'd been presented with the choice, I'd have done myself serious damage in the choosing."
His voice grew very quiet. "As painful as this is to admit, and as outrageous and immoral the reason it happened that way might be otherwise, I think my not knowing about Nicholas until much later was the best thing for me - and both of them - at the time. I would not have been able to walk away from you, and I would not have been able to stay away from Nicholas and Michelle. The Centre would have had to kill me after all."
"Help me, Sydney..." The plea was a whisper. "I don't know what to do."
Sydney swallowed hard as a feeling of helplessness filled him. "I wish to God I COULD help you, Jarod." The older man came around the table to put an understanding hand on his protégé's shoulder. "It's the Devil's own choice you have to make, my son. All I can tell you is to do as you think best when the time comes - best for you, best for her, and most of all, best for your son. Only one thing I'll ask as an... interested... third party: be sure to include Parker's input in making your decision. It will affect her life too, and she deserves a say."
Jarod took a deep breath as he considered Sydney's words, then nodded and rose to his feet. "Thanks, Sydney." He grabbed up his coffee cup and refilled it. "I think I'll go check my email and then do some more poking."
"You're welcome - I just wish I could be more help," Sydney answered, taking his own coffee cup over to the sink and rinsing it. "I'll be out watering plants if you need me."
Jarod walked slowly toward the stairs and then into the upstairs guestroom that he'd claimed as his for the time being and turned on his laptop. Sydney had actually helped some - he'd at least demonstrated that feeling confused and conflicted was a normal reaction to this seriously abnormal situation. Taking a deep breath to clear his mind for the task ahead, he clicked on the email icon and waited as the program loaded, then clicked on the announcement of incoming mail.
He read what was displayed on his screen, then sat down heavily and stared at the computer as if it were something he'd never seen before. The message was short, sweet, and most definitely to the point:
"Prodigy -
"A mutual friend tells me that you know where I could find refuge.
"Shadow"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"What?"
"Geez, Parker, you'd think you'd have learned how to answer the phone properly by now..."
Miss Parker leaned back in her kitchen chair after throwing down the pencil with which she had been working the Saturday crossword puzzle. "And give up one of the few pieces of continuity I can provide you with your past nowadays, Lab-rat? Not a chance!" She smiled and reached for her cup of coffee, grimacing in the direction of the living room as the volume on the televised cartoons rose a little higher than she would have liked. "What can I do you out of this morning?"
"You'll never believe who I heard from today." Jarod's fingers were racing across his computer keyboard as he spoke to her, formulating the beginnings of an email response to his message as he cradled his cell phone against his shoulder.
"And you're going to tell me, right?" She was enjoying this - the banter and teasing that had so characterized her relationship with Jarod for so many years had been one of the many things that had made his absence so painful. Lately, some of that bantering spirit had returned to some of their conversations, and it tickled her when it happened.
"Get serious, willya? I had an email from a very 'shadowy' person this morning in my inbox."
The coffee cup halted halfway from table to lips. "You're kidding!" She put the cup back down with a thud. "What did it say?"
"He wants refuge, and a 'mutual friend' told him I could help him find it." Jarod paused, then straightened and held the cell phone in one hand while staring at the first draft of his reply. Somehow, the words just weren't coming right.
"What are you going to tell him?"
"We need to not do this over the phone, Parker. Frankly, I think I could use some help on this. Can you come?"
"What's Sydney up to?"
"Watering plants in the back yard, why?"
Parker drained the last of her coffee. "Go tell him that he gets Grandpa duty today, then, and is on call for making lunch - and I'll see if I can get Davy out of his PJ's sometime before noon on a Saturday for a change."
Jarod stared out the window with a mischievous grin. "I can't believe that you'd let our son stay in his pajamas..."
"Oh shut up and let me get things moving," Parker's chuckle took the bite out of her tone of voice. "See you in a bit."
"Thanks, Parker. I owe you one."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Quietly the figure made its way through the darkened building, moving around every twist and turn and through each desired doorway as if in full daylight. His heart was beating wildly; for the first time in his memory, something incredibly new and interesting was sitting just out of sight and reach on the horizon of his life. Even locked doors and alarm systems were not going to stop him anymore. Besides, Vernon had never been very strict about his being locked down tightly at night because his charge had never shown any signs of wanderlust. With the perimeter of the building itself well enough guarded to take care of any attempted flights, interior security had been lax for years.
That had been ideal. He had never needed half as much sleep as Vernon scheduled for him, so roaming the house and discovering all the security weaknesses had long been a hobby. That was how he had found the computer terminal linked directly with the Centre mainframe - something he'd never been allowed to touch before. A whole new world of possibilities had opened with that discovery - not to mention a whole new chapter in his life had started when he'd discovered email, and CJ.
Suddenly, he'd had someone to talk to, to compare notes to - even though CJ's emails could sound a little more like gibberish sometimes. And it had been CJ that he'd told about finding his own records. He hadn't expected his short email to have caused such excitement in his friend. Suddenly the language of the emails had become dramatically clearer, alluding to events and people that might be interested in helping him to freedom.
Freedom. It was a foreign concept, this idea that he could come and go at any hour of the day or night to any place he wanted. The mere idea that it was possible to talk with anybody he wanted at any hour of the day, DO what HE wanted and not what Vernon had scheduled for him to sim was intoxicating, enticing. He was ready for new experiences, slowly withering from lack of stimulus. Yesterday, CJ had emailed him another email address, a name and a code word to insert in a short message - which he had immediately turned around and sent off. Hopefully, by now, he'd have an answer.
The monitor screen soon became the only source of light in the room. He quickly typed in the password of the house IT sysop to enter the system, then accessed the email client and brought up the hidden user account he had created as one of his first online projects. Yes! There was mail waiting, and not from CJ. With trembling fingers, he opened the message:
"Shadow -
"Refuge is a soiled linen bin on Thursday evening, 7PM. Patience.
"Prodigy"
Thursday - four whole days from now. No wonder Prodigy had cautioned patience; the wait, knowing that freedom was four days away, was going to be VERY difficult. Still, if it was all that it cracked up to be, it would be worth it.
Fingers moved quickly across the keyboard to reply:
"Shadows in the laundry. No starch, please..."
He clicked on the icon and sent the reply, then powered down the terminal before anyone in the Centre could notice activity from a supposedly down side facility. Taking pride in living up to his project name, Shadow moved surely through the house towards the laundry room. It wouldn't hurt to case the place - to find out where the baskets were kept. 7PM was still early enough that others would still be present in the house.
At last, Shadow would have to prove himself worthy of his name for real.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mr. Raines took in a deep gasp of oxygen as he clicked from one page to the next of the contract negotiations that had been ongoing with the Tanakas on his computer screen. The cost estimates for the successful implementation and follow-through for Redux had been substancial, and he wished he didn't have to cut off negotiations with an organization that would have gladly paid good money to be involved in it. But with security issues of a sort that he didn't dare bring to Miss Parker's attention, there was no way he wanted to be linked in any way to organized crime. Lyle's destruction of all the hard copies of these negotiations had been critical to making sure this information didn't fall into the wrong hands.
He reached for his intercom button and without waiting for his secretary's answer, demanded, "Have Mr. Lyle come to my office."
He took another deep hit of oxygen, knowing that it wouldn't help his racing heart. It was never a wise move to back out of business dealings with the Tanakas - they had been the best customers of Shadow's work for years, and anything that upset the Tanakas held the potential to disrupt other cash flow channels as well. His challenge today was to gently ease the Yakuza out of Redux while keeping them otherwise contentedly feeding in Shadow's trough of information and strategic planning.
Lyle's office in the Tower was directly adjacent to Raines', so the time between when he'd asked his secretary to summon his son and when the dark-haired young man was walking through the connecting door was not long. "You sent for me?" Lyle asked smoothly.
"Send in the Tanaka delegation," Raines said, holding down the intercom button again. He looked up as he released it. "Stand behind me and let me know when I'm treading on promises you've already made to these people," he ordered breathlessly.
Lyle flinched inwardly. When Raines had said that he didn't need to worry about the deal with the Yakuza being nixed, he had hoped that he wouldn't have to be included in the final moment of ignominy. What a helluva way to begin a Monday morning. He moved slowly to a spot to the left and behind the skeletal Centre Chairman, rubbing the stump where his thumb had been all the way.
The impeccably dressed trio of Japanese gentlemen filed primly into the office and lined themselves up in front of Raines' desk, one dignified younger gentleman standing slightly ahead of the other two. Lyle recognized the dignified man immediately - it was a slightly older, much more self-assured Tommy Tanaka. As if a unit, all bowed slightly from the waist. Lyle bowed too, while Raines bowed from his sitting position. "One of you speaks English?" Raines asked without preamble.
"Hai." The taller Japanese gentleman on the left bowed again. "I am Fujimori Torii, and it is my honor to serve as translator for Tanaka-sama." He indicated the younger, shorter gentleman standing closer to the desk. "My colleague is Yoshikata Haruo-san, from the financial services department." The man with the salt and pepper hair now bowed as his name was spoken.
"I am William Raines, Chairman of the Centre; and this is my associate, Mr. Lyle." Raines gasped raggedly, and Lyle bowed his head in much the same way the other subordinates of Tanaka had.
The dignified-looking head of the Japanese delegation spoke a quick sentence in a growling voice. "Tanaka-sama asks if the latest offer has been examined and found satisfactory," Fujimori translated for his boss.
"Unfortunately, there has been a change in plans on this end," Raines grated out, then drew in a desperate-sounding gasp of air. "We are going to have to shelve plans for Project Redux for the near future, canceling any prospective plans that were scheduled to go into motion after this meeting." He waited for Fujimori to translate his words into Japanese, sucking in another hit of oxygen as he did.
Tanaka's eyes narrowed, and his growl was even more menacing. "We have already committed several hundreds of thousands of American dollars toward implementation of this project, Raines-san."
Raines opened a wooden box on his desk and withdrew a cashier's check, already filled in and signed. "This represents a refund of all monies that were paid to us by your organization in anticipation of participation, as well as a ten thousand dollar apology for having to cancel the deal at this late date."
Tanaka eyed the cashier's check suspiciously and issued another tirade in Japanese with an angry tone added to the growl. "A mere fifty thousand American does not compensate us for investments made in Japan in anticipation of housing this project. There are buildings currently under construction in Nagasaki and Osaka intended as bases of operations that cost millions of yen. Our personnel department has been very busy interviewing prospective employees to man those facilities."
Raines' eyes narrowed now. "The Centre cannot be responsible for plans your organization made prematurely. Our deal was still under negotiation. Nothing had been signed yet." He drew in another agonized gasp of air. "Certainly an organization such as yours can make alternative use of facilities and employees - the effort need not be a wasted one. But the Centre cannot and will not be responsible for the impatience or over-eagerness of others."
Lyle, standing quietly behind Raines, flinched inwardly yet again. While Raines had not specifically tread close at all to promises made as yet, calling the preparations that had been underway 'impatience' and/or 'over-eagerness' was insulting. He quietly rubbed the stump of his thumb again, glad it was Raines who would catch most of any Yakuza heat for this debacle.
"Perhaps our organization can also be reconsidering the necessity of buying other Centre products as well," Tanaka's words were translated from a yelling voice into soft and fluid English. "We had been able to run many of our operations quite well without the strategic information we've been purchasing from you. Perhaps it is time for Yakuza to trust to their own sources."
"Our information has kept you below the DEA radar better than any you've ever had, up to and including from your own inside informants, and you know it," Raines snapped back in his desperate wheeze. "It would be unfortunate for Yakuza to throw the baby out in the bath water - cut off all intelligence along with the negotiations for a shelved science project."
"That which is unfortunate for the Yakuza would also be unfortunate for the Centre," Fujimori translated in a cold voice. "We will be reassessing our business dealings with your organization immediately, and we'll get back to you if we decide that continuing our... partnership... in certain areas is to our advantage. Good day to you." The three Japanese gentlemen all bowed again in unison - although quite obviously not half as deeply as at first - then turned and silently left the room.
"You had nothing to say?" Raines wheezed at Lyle.
"What? You didn't go near anything other than just the contract itself. Most of the promises I made were ancillary to the negotiations themselves, and so don't have to be reneged on." Lyle continued to rub his stump inconspicuously.
Raines grunted and jerked his head in abrupt dismissal, and Lyle beat a hasty retreat through his connecting door and straight out into the hallway where he hoped to catch the Japanese delegation before they left the Tower.
"Uh... Fujimori-san?" he said, bowing deeply to the three as they stood waiting for the elevator.
"What do you want, Lyle-san?" the translator asked bluntly.
"Tell your boss that I apologize for Mr. Raines' lack of prudence in deciding to cancel Redux. I had no part in making that decision."
Fujimori leaned toward Tanaka-sama. "It seems we may have stumbled into a small executive disagreement here. This one apologizes for a decision that wasn't his to make."
Tanaka sniffed. "It makes no difference. The last time we tried to deal with him, my father lost millions of dollars and ended up behind American prison bars, with THIS one as one of the buffoons responsible for the unfortunate incident."
"Tanaka-sama accepts your apology, but regrets to inform you that with Redux no longer on the table, he has no reason to continue to stand here in Centre hallways with lackies."
Lyle bristled. So the weasel remembered the last time they'd had dealings, did he? Well, this time HE was going to call the shots from now on, and not the semi-senile idiots who had been sitting in the Chairman's office for the last few years. He pasted a smile on his face, determined not to let the insult spur him to reactions that would jeopardize his plans Too many things were riding on his playing this latest hand properly - his life being chief among them.
"Please tell Tanaka-san that there's no need to be quite hasty in returning to Japan." Lyle glanced around, and up at the surveillance camera nervously, a gesture not lost on the Yakuza boss. "The project we were speaking of hasn't necessarily been canceled entirely - it is only Yakuza funding that has my boss nervous, for security reasons."
Fujimori translated the American's words precisely. Tanaka turned and looked at Yoshikata this time. "The Centre must have fallen on hard times to need to pull the plug on profitable ventures to save its ass from unwanted attention. Something's going on here." He turned to his translator again. "Ask him what he wants."
Lyle glanced at the camera again, wishing this conversation could take place elsewhere. "I am interested in... uh... considering new employment opportunities outside the Centre. I was thinking that perhaps if I could see to it that... uh... certain key elements... of the project we were discussing were delivered to your offices..." Lyle discretely brought forth his left hand, with its missing thumb. "I think I could be an asset to your organization - and I'd like the opportunity to perhaps make up for the unfortunate 'accident' that cost me this. Do you think your boss would be interested?"
Fujimori bent his head toward his boss and began speaking in quick and very quiet Japanese. Tanaka cast his eyes up at the younger American appraisingly, then listened closely further before answering. Fujimori turned to Lyle. "Tanaka-sama is intrigued by your information and offer. Please to accompany us to lunch, where we can discuss this further?"
Lyle's smile was brilliant. "Let me let my secretary know I'm out for rest of the day, and I'll be right with you," he agreed quickly, bowed deeply directly at Tanaka, and trotted off toward his office.
"This one is a snake, Tanaka-sama," Fujimori commented wryly. "He lost a thumb to us years ago, and seeks to put his balls on the line this time instead."
Yoshikata nodded. "If this ronin can deliver the vital components of Redux into our keeping and management, Fujimori-san, he thinks he redeems his thumb and his balls besides. But, Tanaka-sama, allow me to point out that once we have Redux in our possession, this honor-less pig will have outlived his usefulness."
"I agree," Tanaka nodded with narrowed eyes. "Let's let him THINK we think he has balls so big he has trouble walking a straight line and keeping his kimono closed. When the time comes, however - AFTER he betrays his people by bringing us Redux - we'll show him his error. Men without honor have no balls; one wonders how the Americans breed so prolifically," Tanaka growled, then chuckled coldly at his own macabre humor. At the proper time, the other two chuckled as well.
Lyle's step as he walked down the corridor towards the Japanese again was lighter, springier. Here was his escape - and all he would have to do is deliver a vial of frozen embryos and a couple of vagrant women to pay for it. Raines would never know what was missing until he, Lyle, was long out of the picture.
The Japanese all smiled widely at Lyle and bowed to him again, then gestured him to take the lead into the elevator car. Feeling as if he had just conquered the world, Lyle did exactly that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Walking down the same corridor, toward the same elevator, with Sam at her heels, Miss Parker skidded to a halt when she saw the younger Tanaka and two of his father's finest assassins bowing to Lyle so shallowly that it constituted a deadly insult by Japanese etiquette standards. When Sam nearly plowed into her shoulder, she threw up the back of her hand and swatted him in the chest. "Sam, I have a chore for you."
The sweeper looked up and followed his boss' line of sight, then watched with equal fascination as Lyle ingratiatingly led the Japanese contingent into the elevator. "You want to know what he's up to," he guessed with a nod.
"There's a surveillance camera and microphone aimed at the elevator door. I want the DSA for this past hour's activity on my desk in fifteen minutes, no later."
"Yes, ma'am!" Sam moved agilely around Miss Parker and headed off in the opposite direction, towards the main Tower surveillance office where the recordings of all the cameras on that floor were saved to disc.
"What ARE you up to, Lyle?" she asked herself in a low voice, "and what are you up to with Tanaka, of all people?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney frowned as he heard the sliding doors to his Sim Lab open; the sound meant that somebody that knew better had not read the sign he'd clearly posted outside that there was an experiment on-going in the Lab that could not be disrupted. He turned, ready to chew nails and butts, then choked back any utterance as he saw Miss Parker moving silently across the Sim Lab floor, making a direct line for his office. She was pale and moving with jerky motions that spoke of deep shock and upset. Behind her, still standing in the hallway outside the automatic doors, he could see Sam watching her with concern written all over his countenance.
The psychiatrist quickly put the clipboard he'd been carrying down on the counter and, with an abrupt gesture, summoned his lab assistant and with curt instructions put the continuity of the current project into another's hands. For the moment unencumbered, he strode to his office and closed the door behind him.
Miss Parker had moved to the narrow space beyond Sydney's desk and was pacing back and forth, her arms across her chest protectively.
"Parker..." he reached out a hand to put a halt to her pacing. "What..."
At his touch, her panicked grey eyes met his. "He's... stealing... Redux... Yakuza..."
Immediately, Sydney grasped her arms and pulled her close, knowing that the movement would disrupt her from saying more. "Hush now. Don't say another word - not here." He could feel the violent trembling that she was fighting mightily, and wished that they were in a more private place where he could speak more freely. He maneuvered her into a chair in front of his desk, then moved to the office door, flung it open, and beckoned across the Sim Lab to Sam, still standing waiting in the corridor. "Get her to my house, NOW!" he ordered harshly, once the sweeper was close enough to hear a harsh stage whisper. "Don't let anyone stop her or you; just get her out of here and get her home."
"Yes, sir." Sam reached down and helped his boss to her feet, then awkwardly wrapped an arm about her to help her stay upright. "C'mon, Miss Parker. I'll take you home." She looked up into her sweeper's face blankly and put up no resistance as he ushered her out the door.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Sydney called after them, then turned and dialed a number from memory. He waited until he heard the voice on the other end pick up, and then announced without preamble: "We have a problem."
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
"Jarod! Long time no hear from you, buddy!"
"Hey, Ethan! How are things going on the sane side of the globe?"
Ethan stretched back in his comfortable office chair and propped his feet on his desk. "Oh, you know - same-old, same-old. Same interesting types of quirks, same paranoias, a couple of simple clinical depression... How about on your end? What gives in the Land of Intrigue and Lies?"
"Well..." Jarod carried his cell phone to the couch and adopted his now-customary sprawled slouch propped against the comfortable pillows that were now generally kept on that one end of the couch. "Hang onto your hat, bro - our family tree has gotten a little more twisted."
"You're kidding!" Ethan shook his head in disbelief. "In what way?"
"Do you remember my telling you that old man Parker had had a baby about a year before we found you?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, it wasn't old man Parker's kid."
There was a pause while Ethan processed the information, and suddenly felt the familiar touch of his inner sense sound off in the back of his mind in a way that he hadn't felt in years. His feet came down from the desk, and he leaned forward. "Yours? And... my sister's?"
"Yeah."
He ran his hands through his thick, dark locks, so like his half-sister's. "I suppose that makes me a double-uncle, doesn't it?"
Jarod tucked his empty hand behind his head. "Something like that. And there's more."
"I figured things were getting interesting over there when you didn't call Monday night, like always," Ethan sighed. "So, when are you shipping Debbie and... I guess that makes this Davy the nephew, doesn't it... and Angelo off to us?"
"Uh... We're not going to." Jarod took a deep breath, then quickly explained the situation and the compromise solution that had been agreed upon earlier that evening.
"I think Em had decided that having the extra people in the house was going to be a good thing, Jarod - something to help Mom. She'll be disappointed that the plans have changed now."
"Only in the short term," Jarod reassured him. "Should everything go as planned, there should be no reason not to bring her newly-discovered grandson to visit in a couple of weeks, depending on how quickly the Triumverate acts on the information we're going to give them."
Ethan frowned as the voices in his head spoke again. "I hear Catherine saying that you need to wait a bit yet - that there's one more element to be coordinated first."
"I was wondering about that," Jarod nodded against the pillows. "Angelo is doing a damned good job at protecting SOMEBODY who is capable of hacking into the Centre mainframe and accessing some of Raines' prized sensitive data." Then he seemed to hear what Ethan had said once more and stiffened, pulling his arm back from its relaxed position behind his head. "CATHERINE? My God, Ethan, you haven't heard the voices for ages..."
"I know." The younger man sat back again, only he wasn't as relaxed as before. "But I've been getting whispers now for about a week, though, so I knew something big was up on your end and I needed to wait and you'd tell me about it." He paused, listening again to something only he could hear. "You need to wait too. You will be contacted."
"I want to have this fully in motion by Friday, so that Sydney's trip to White Cloud comes before or just as the first shock wave strikes." Jarod's voice was firm and decided.
"The voice say to be patient, and all will work out the way you want it to," Ethan insisted softly. "I know you don't trust them, Jarod, but..."
"I'll talk to the others, how's that?" the Pretender offered, then decided to change the subject. "How's Mom, and Em?"
"Mom's about the same. Em has been doing some freelance writing lately, and that has meant that Mom has been watching Sammy in the afternoons. I think having him around is helping."
"How about Jay?" Jarod asked, wondering that his brother hadn't mentioned their other sibling yet.
"He was accepted as an doctoral candidate at his alma mater, and will start teaching in the fall as well as start working on his dissertation."
"That's wonderful! But that means you're out a roommate again..." Jarod teased, remembering the trouble Ethan had had in finding honest roommates in college. After he had graduated, Jay had slipped quite easily into the spare bedroom of the house Ethan had been sharing with Jarod since their partnership had gotten off the ground.
"That's OK, big brother. I'm just waiting for you to get tired of playing Spy vs Spy and come back down to Earth again. Your patients miss you." Ethan was thinking of one big-eyed seven year old who had been severely abused by foster parents, and who was only beginning to interact with Jarod when the Pretender had turned her case over to him. Ethan, despite using all his charm, had yet to penetrate the little girl's defensive barriers.
"How is she?" Jarod knew instantly of whom his brother was thinking.
"Withdrawn, and withdrawing more every day. We need you back home, Jarod. You can't just leave Ginger like that..."
"You tell Ginger from me that Da-Ju-Ju says hi and to play nice with you. See if that doesn't crack the shell a bit."
Ethan ran his hand through his hair again. "Ginger isn't the only one who needs you home. I think part of Mom's depression is that you're gone again, and it's all because of the Centre again. You can't blame her for having nightmares about that, Jarod..."
"I know." Jarod's face had grown tight. "I'll be back as soon as my job here is finished, I promise."
"Even though you now have a son to take care of?" Ethan asked carefully.
Jarod thought hard for a long moment. "You know your sister almost as well as I do, Ethan. Hell, if you're hearing the voices again, you can probably touch her mind again too. We've already discussed how our lives simply don't mesh. She has hers here, and I have mine there."
"What happens to Davy, then?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, OK?" Jarod couldn't see his path so clearly when he put his son into the picture as a vital element. "Nothing's been cast in concrete."
"So..." Ethan sighed and let the time pass to break the painful stream of conversation. "Anything you want Jay or me to do for you from this end to 'help' matters along?"
Jarod shook his head. "Nope. Just sit tight and send good thoughts to us all over the next week or so. If everything goes as planned, I'll be calling about then with the good news."
"Jarod," Ethan began slowly, knowing that what he was about to ask was to tread on tender ground, "are you going to be able to live with the knowledge that you willingly and deliberately set out to cause the death of two individuals? I remember your telling me about that time with Damon..."
"I don't know why not," the Pretender responded, sitting up and throwing his legs over the edge of the couch. "I can remember both of them standing by and watching with great delight as they willingly and deliberately set out to stop my heart - not once, but many times. They created a child from Parker's and my genetics, just to see whether they could play God and get away with it - with no intent of treating Davy as anything but property. Now we find out they're getting ready to do it again. I tell you, Ethan, there IS a point past which a person can only be said to be 'evil', and I think Raines and Lyle both went past that line a very long time ago. Someone needs to make them answer for what they've done."
"Just be sure," his brother warned with an affectionate tone. "You don't want to come down with a horrible case of 'the guilts' when it's far too late to do anything to atone."
Jarod's mind immediately sought out and brought an image of Sydney to the forefront of his consciousness. "Trust me, Ethan, I know how hard it is to have to try to live with never being able to completely atone from having watched someone try to do just that lately. I don't intend to make the same mistake." His face grew grim. "I'm just balancing the scales here at last."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker sat at her vanity finishing up the one hundred strokes with the hairbrush that was an essential part of her nightly routine since her childhood. The last few times the bristles massaged her scalp were slower than the rest as she stared at her reflection in the huge, round mirror. ANOTHER attempt at a hybrid Pretender, using HER genetic material - and Jarod's - a true sibling for Davy. While the very idea of such an effort taking place without her knowledge or permission angered and frustrated her no end, she would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that giving her son a brother or sister wouldn't have its advantages. Damn Sydney for making her think through those possibilities, anyway! It was so much easier to just be angry about the whole thing.
She herself had grown up as an only child in a one-parent household, and she knew how lonely that life could be, especially as parent and child grew apart as the child grew older. She had been a central part of Davy's life now for six and a half years, and even now she could feel him moving every so slowly out of her sphere of total influence. He might tower head and shoulders above the other kids as school intellectually and academically, but he had already shown signs of a normal kid's need to fit in with his peers. Even the video game that he constantly excelled at with Broots and even Jarod was the result of word of mouth from his friends.
No! She put down her brush in disgust at the direction her mind had taken her without any warning. Redux was an abomination, a violation of the deepest and most intimate kind. A child, when brought into the world, should come as the result of loving parents - not as fodder for an over-achieving science project. As much as she loved Davy now, the pain of her reaction to finding out that he was her natural son and not her 'Daddy's' child was still acutely remembered. And if it had been difficult for her, knowing Davy as she had all that time, how much more so it must have been for Jarod - and Redux would be as much HIS child as hers.
Jarod - for so long a central part of her life, and now such a vital part of Davy's - Redux violated him as much as it did her, made them parents together against their will, AGAIN. They weren't together by any stretch of the word, and from the sounds of it, probably never would be - which meant that despite both of them loving him very much, Davy would grow up in a single-parent household just as she had. She couldn't see herself willingly leaving Broots and Sydney behind in Delaware to follow Jarod to wherever it was his life was established, nor did she see Jarod willingly leaving what he described as a healthy and happy existence in that wherever to be with her in Delaware.
And yet... Jarod had, in returning to Delaware, filled and repaired the chasm in her life he had left as a gaping, aching wound when he'd vanished so long ago. With him back in her life and as an ally and friend rather than a competitor or prey, her life felt complete for the very first time. Even now, despite the seven years' of separation, he knew her better than any other person alive did - except, perhaps, Sydney - and she knew she loved him in her own way and had since she was much younger. They shared a beautiful child, and it was plain to see that Jarod was just as devoted to Davy as she would want any man who would be his father to be. But she wasn't IN love with Jarod.
She stared at herself in the mirror. No, she wasn't in love with him - at least, not at the moment. But did she WANT to be - and if so, would it be because she wanted a father for Davy, or because she would want it for herself even if Davy weren't in the picture? Miss Parker drew in a deep breath of confusion and frustration. Things were too up in the air for her to know her own heart right now, and unless circumstances altered dramatically, she wasn't sure she could allow her heart to be the leader in this campaign.
With another sigh, she put the brush back down on her vanity in its appointed place and rose to go over to the light switch and turn off the overhead light in her room. It was a warm evening, and she peeled back the bedspread and blanket and prepared to slip beneath just the one sheet so as not to overheat and perspire during the night. She was just settling down and preparing to turn off the lamp on her nightstand and tip over into her pillows when her phone rang.
"What?" she answered, much as she always had, but without the hard, brittle tone. She had fully expected to hear from Jarod tonight. The Committee discussion had gone late into the evening, and she had sensed that Jarod had wanted to talk to her without being overheard - probably about Redux.
"Miss Parker?"
"Ethan?!" Her eyes stared out into the room in amazement without seeing a thing. "My God! Ethan, is that you?"
"I just had to talk to you." The young man's voice sounded troubled.
Miss Parker picked up on that note of distress instantly. "What's wrong?"
"I talked to Jarod tonight. He told me..." The young man rubbed his hands tiredly over his eyes. "He told me about Davy, about... the new project... But..."
"Ethan..."
"I'm hearing them again, after years of their having been quiet."
She sat up on the edge of her bed. "The voices?"
"Our mother's most of all. Do you still hear her?" Ethan's question was plaintive.
She shook her head slowly. "I haven't heard her for a very long time, Ethan, not since the explosion in Maryland. Why?"
Ethan took a very deep breath and marshaled his emotional control. "Have you ever killed anyone, Miss Parker?"
The question took her aback. In her mind's eye, she flashed back to a night many years earlier on a dock, facing a man who was then and still was a stone-cold killer himself, and remembering the shot and the sound of a body falling into the water. "I thought I had, at one time," she answered softly. "Why?"
"She worries about your being able to live with the consequences of what you're intending," he said with a small shudder, "with the idea that you are very systematically and deliberately setting out to cause the deaths of others."
"Ethan," Miss Parker began, finding the question as disturbing to consider as Ethan did, "what we're doing is to simply inform the Triumverate of what is going on behind their backs. What THEY decide to do about it, really, is their business and not ours."
"But you know what will probably happen, and are actually counting on it."
She frowned slightly. "Well, yes..."
"That means you'll be responsible too."
"Perhaps," she conceded reluctantly. "But which is the worse evil? Is it better to bring the truth of a situation to light to an important party being harmed? Is it easier to live with the consequences falling as they may on the heads of two individuals who have done immeasurable harm over the years to many, MANY people, and knowing that we're directly or indirectly responsible for any harm that came to those two? Or would we be better off just to let the situation continue as is to avoid being directly responsible for harming Raines and Lyle? Is it better to live with knowing that these men would continue to threaten you and your family, me and mine, not to mention many others we cannot know about now and in the future? Would it be easier to live with knowing our inaction makes us directly or indirectly responsible for THAT harm instead? Which IS the greater evil?"
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair to pull it out of her face. "Look, it's way too late at night to debate the ethics of this with you, Ethan. I didn't join this effort at the drop of the hat; I thought about it long and hard and eventually had to be convinced that it was the right thing to do. In the end, all I know is that I want and need Davy to have a safe life - and that this is probably the only way open to me to GIVE him that safe life. As a mother, my son's life and the safety of my family has got to come first." She smiled sadly. "And I think my - our - mother would understand that."
Ethan was silent for a long moment, thinking through what she had said. "Can you help Jarod, then, so he doesn't let this become more about revenge and pay-back than self-defense and defense of family? Finding out about the other Pretender and the new attempt to create another child has made him angrier and more bitter than I've ever known him to be - and I don't know that he's talking it out to anybody there."
Miss Parker nodded. "I had a hunch it was like that. I was lucky, then. Sydney took me aside before anybody got here and gave me the news about the possibility of another child - and I was able to..."
"Sydney is a good man," Ethan commented softly. "But Jarod hasn't talked to him about this since he found out - not really. And when everything there is finished, I want my brother back whole and healthy, not poisoned with regrets."
"I'll put a bug in Syd's ear to broach the subject, how's that? Or if Jarod happens to call me, which I almost expected tonight, I'll talk to him or steer him to talk to Sydney before things get too far along."
"Thank you," her half-brother sighed in relief. "I look forward to meeting this nephew of mine someday."
"I think you two would get along famously," Miss Parker smiled at the thought. "Don't be such a stranger, though. Keep in touch, please? Call every once in a while, to let me know you're OK?"
Ethan was silent for a while. "I will," he answered finally, giving Miss Parker her own reason to sigh in relief. "Good night, Miss Parker."
"Take care, Ethan, and good night." She disconnected and replaced the handset on the nightstand and was reaching for the lamp when the phone rang again. With a deep sigh she resigned herself to not getting to sleep when she wanted to after all, felt a stab of gratitude that it WAS a Friday night and she could actually sleep in the next morning, and put the phone to her ear again. "Hello, Jarod," she said and breathed out a gentle sigh as she tipped herself over into her pillow to get more comfortable this time.
The silence on the other end of the line amused her. "I had no idea you were psychic," he commented dryly after a while.
"I knew you were wanting to talk," she explained patiently, "and I talked to Ethan."
"He called you?" Jarod was surprised. "Really?"
"He was worried about you. About me too, for that matter, but more about you." She paused, her brows furrowing when he had no response to that. "Did you know that he's hearing the voices again?"
"He told me," he admitted. "He thinks we should wait in getting things started. He told me that I would be contacted - whatever that meant." He paused. "Have you started hearing your mother again too?"
"No," she told him quickly. "I think when... When Sydney became... She didn't need to be in my mind when I wasn't alone in the world anymore, Jarod. And maybe because I'm not alone in this - because I have you and Sydney and Broots and Debbie helping to keep me focused and on the right track - she hasn't needed to be there for me." Now it was her turn to pause. "You'd think with all of your family around him, Ethan wouldn't need her either."
"Maybe she's talking to him again because events on both sides of his life are affecting him," Jarod suggested, once more stretching out on Sydney's couch. "He has two families, you know - with you, and now Davy, being the other side of his nature."
"Jarod..." How was she going to broach the topic with him other than just forge straight ahead? "He was worried about whether or not we would be able to..."
"...live with ourselves when things are finished, I know. He said so to me too."
"He has a point, Jarod."
Jarod gave a deep sigh. "I know he does, Parker." He put his hand behind his head and studied the popcorn spackling on Sydney's living room ceiling in the dim light of the floor lamp next to him. "Are you changing your mind? Do you want out?"
"No, of course not," she reassured him quickly. "And that really isn't the issue. I think what Ethan's worried about is how we're going to feel about ourselves when it's all over and done with - and Raines and Lyle are out of the picture." Miss Parker rolled onto her back and studied the smooth ceiling above her head. "Jarod... about Redux..."
"We're not going to let it happen again, Parker, I promise..."
"That isn't what I meant." She slipped her hand behind her head. "I was thinking of the advice you gave me right after I found out that Davy was ours, and heard my fa... Mr. Parker's plans for me. We need to think, use our heads and not give in to our tempers. We have too much riding on this to go off half-cocked."
"And you think we are?" Jarod's question was asked in a droll tone, but she knew she had struck a nerve.
She took a deep breath, and hoped that she knew her friend even half as well as he knew her. "If you're even half as human as I am, Jarod, you're pissed as hell that they're trying to create another Davy. What's more, you especially have a personal and emotional stake in discovering that Raines has been keeping another natural Pretender for so long - and that he was kidnapped from HIS family the same way you were. Admit it. There's no disgrace in recognizing that you're angry and that you have every right to be..."
"You're damned right I'm mad," Jarod snapped, no longer trying to hide his emotions behind a veil of reason or logic. "It never changes with them - they play God with impunity and put their avaricious agendas ahead of any other ethical or moral consideration known to man."
"Jarod! Jarod! We know it never changes with them. That's why we're doing this - so that the immorality will stop. BUT..." She rubbed her finger beneath her nose, struggling to put things into words in such a way to reach him effectively. "Jarod, we can't let the motivation behind what we're doing change. We started out, we began walking down this road, to protect our families, remember? It had nothing to do with what had been done in the past, to us or to others. It was all about preventing anything further from happening that would threaten or harm us or those we love. Remember?"
"I remember," Jarod admitted, finding her rapid-fire argument an effective counter to the heat of his ire. "But..."
"No, Jarod. Even now, we have to keep our eyes on what we started out to do. Yes, Redux is a violation of the worst kind; yes, Shadow brings back nightmares for you of what you've been through. We WILL be addressing those issues - but we can NOT forget that we're doing what we're doing to protect those we love now from what might happen in the future if we do nothing. We can't let our own agendas of anger and revenge take over our reason. If we do, we become no better than those we're working on removing."
"Parker..."
"No. Listen to me, Jarod. When I shot Lyle, when I thought I'd killed him, the ONLY reason I was able to live with myself was because I thought I'd shot him in self-defense - that if I hadn't shot him, he would have shot ME. Daddy may have ordered me to be an assassin, but I was not then and I am not now a cold-blooded killer. When you killed Damon, Sydney told me once that you were haunted for a long time afterwards with the very idea of having taken a life - no matter how much justification you thought you had at the time. You'd killed Damon to save Broots' life, remember?"
"Alright." Jarod finally managed to get a word in edgewise and break her train of thought. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your point is valid. How are YOU going to be able to file away your anger and sense of violation so that it has no bearing on what we're up to?"
That stopped her. Miss Parker pulled her hand from behind her head and slowly brought it to help cradle the phone handset against her ear. "By remembering that I'm doing this to prevent others from being harmed - and setting aside any harm that has been done or might be done to me. I can't let this be about me; it has to stay being about Davy, and Syd, and Debbie, and Angelo."
"And Kevin?"
She thought for a long while. "Yes, even about Kevin. But it's about Kevin in the same way it's about Angelo. The harm that angers us about both of them has already been done. Neither you nor I had any way of preventing it at the time, nor will anything we might do in the future change what happened then. What we do now has to be all about preventing harm from happening to them later on and have nothing to do with our being angry about the past." She paused, waiting to see if he had any argument. Then, "Do you see what I'm saying?"
"I want to hurt them, Parker." Jarod's voice was dark and agonized. "They have hurt so many people I love. Look what they've done to you, to Syd, to your mother..."
"I know, Jarod, I know." For a brief moment, Miss Parker found herself wishing that he were sitting next to her and not across town, so she could put her arms around him and hold him close. Inexplicably she found herself wishing she could offer him the kind of comfort that Sydney had so liberally and freely been providing for her for years now. He probably had had that same kind of comfort from his own family for that same amount of time, but being HERE in Delaware and far from his family, he was now functioning at a disadvantage again. "But that's in the past. We need to remember that we do what we do for the sake of the future. So we all can live without fear anymore. Without guilt."
She heard Jarod take in and expel a deep breath. "You're right," he conceded finally. "It has to be about prevention, not pay-back."
"That's right." She relaxed and closed her eyes as relief washed over her. "Remind me too, if I forget. OK?"
"If you insist," Jarod chuckled warmly into her ear. "I'm glad we're on the same side of this."
"I am too, Jarod." She opened her eyes and rolled on her side, toward her nightstand. "Are you OK?"
"I'm still angry, if that's what you mean..."
"I am too, Jarod. Angry - and scared that we won't put a halt to things in time." She pulled the hair back out of her face. "Jarod... What if..."
"We'll stop it," Jarod insisted. "I told you - it won't happen, Parker, I promise."
"But what if we don't stop it soon enough?" She sighed. "Sydney asked me this same question earlier tonight, when he told me about Redux in the first place. You need to think it through too, I think, as unthinkable as it is to even consider..."
"What was your answer?"
"Uh-unh. You first."
The Pretender put his hand over his face and let his mind entertain the unthinkable for the first time. "I'd say... we take care of the mother until she has the baby, and then we raise it as Davy's brother or sister... I guess..." He moved his hand so he could stare at the ceiling again. "Or I could take the baby back with me, and you would only have to be responsible for Davy, if you feel strongly about it... I suppose..." His words ground to a halt. "What was your answer?" he asked again in a smaller, more hesitant tone.
"The same as yours, mostly," she admitted, feeling just as hesitant. "The only thing I know for sure is that the baby - if it comes along - shouldn't be asked to suffer because of the way it came into the world."
"Agreed. But would you..." Again, he didn't quite know how to ask such an intimate question. "Would you want me to take it, or would you want..."
"I'd be the mother, whether you were raising it or I was," she answered softly. "I'd love it, just like I love Davy."
"But a baby should stay with its mother, Parker. Are you saying you'd be willing to take on that much work?"
"Yes," she whispered, a tear suddenly spilling to her cheek. "If you'd let me."
"I'd never think of... Are YOU OK about this, then?" he asked softly. "We agree, then, IF we aren't in time, we take care of the surrogate until the baby's born, and then raise the baby with Davy?"
"I'm OK with that part of it, I suppose," she answered honestly. "I'm just scared to death we won't be in time, and we'll have to face those questions again - for real."
"That makes two of us, Parker." Jarod closed his eyes as he felt a tear hit his cheek. "That makes two of us."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Sydney?"
The psychiatrist looked up from his morning paper at Jarod, who was still in the process of pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Hmmm?"
"When it comes to our motives in any given action..." Jarod stumbled to a halt, not exactly sure how to ask his question.
The greying eyebrows rose half-way to where the hairline used to be. "Are you asking whether motives in any given action are important?"
The dark head nodded emphatically. "That, and can the wrong motives affect a person negatively after the fact?"
"Absolutely. A person would have to be completely amoral not to be affected ultimately by the reasons why they behave the way they do. Guilt is often the consequence of an otherwise moral person realizing that they did something for the wrong reasons and/or that what they did had unforeseen and unwanted consequences, as well as realizing that the consequences cannot be taken back or ameliorated." The chestnut eyes seemed determined to bore holes in Jarod's face. "Why?"
"I had a couple of interesting discussions last night - the most important one being with Parker."
Sydney sniffed as he folded the newspaper and put it down on the kitchen table. "I thought I heard you talking to somebody quite late..."
"Ethan had called her..."
"Ethan?! She hasn't heard from him since..."
"I know. But I had called him myself to bring him up to date with progress here, and he was more successful in voicing a reservation to HER, it seems, than he was with me - and she ended up hitting at the same point all over again when we talked later." Jarod leaned both elbows on the table and looked at his former mentor over the top of his coffee cup. "It seemed important to both of them that I put aside any thoughts of revenge for... some of the things we've uncovered..."
"Mmmm." Sydney nodded and sipped at his coffee. "Revenge is a very poor reason for doing things, Jarod. What's more, revenge usually ends up hurting the person attempting to accomplish it more than the one on the receiving end."
Jarod nodded. "Parker was most persuasive in her arguments on that point - I'm assuming because she's heard the same argument from the other side with you at least once or twice..."
The older man nodded thoughtfully. "While we were trying to gain permanent custody of Davy for her, she had her hands full trying to not let becoming his guardian be about getting back at Raines and Lyle. That would have poisoned her relationship with Davy eventually, because he would have become only a means to an end for her in her mind rather than an end in and of himself. The consequences of that attitude might have meant that his importance to her might have faded in a relatively short time, which would have been patently unfair to Davy." Sydney took another healthy sip of coffee. "That was part of why I asked her to think through her response to Redux moving forward before anything could be done about it. Many of the same feelings that drove her back then would have to be faced again."
"I thought so." Jarod fell silent, then used his forefinger to spin his coffee cup around and around absently for a long moment. "Syd, I don't know what I'm going to do when this is over."
"Really? I'd be surprised if you did know," his mentor responded dryly. "What do you want?"
"That's just it - I'm not sure anymore." Jarod rose and stalked to the sink and back. "I have a full and satisfying psychiatric practice just waiting for me to return. I have a mother who is going through serious emotional upheavals, I find out, because I'm gone again because of things the Centre is doing. I was happy there - my life had purpose, and I had people I loved around me."
"And now?" Sydney leaned back in his chair and watched his former protégé with interest.
"And now here I am a father, and God help me may end up being a father a second time, through no wish or fault of my own. I have people I love around me here that I have no right to ask to disrupt their lives here just to be with me in mine there, but whom I don't know I can bear to leave behind again when the time comes." Jarod's shoulders slumped, and he slouched back into his chair and scratched his beard in frustration.
"What about Parker?"
"She's three-quarters of my confusion, Syd. She's been so important to me for so long, and now we have a son we both love dearly. I left her once; I don't know that I can do it again."
"But do you love HER?" The question was soft but insistent.
"I've always loved her, I suppose," Jarod leaned his chin into one hand and took up his coffee cup again with the other. "She was my best friend for a very long time - even after she went away to school."
"But..."
Jarod stared at his mentor. "Be honest with me, Sydney. If you had found out about Michelle and Nicholas back when, would you have left the Centre - and me - to be with them?"
"That was a different situation, Jarod..."
The Pretender shook his head. "Not really. Whether or not you were happy in your life as my keeper, we had a father-son relationship that you were emotionally invested in to a certain extent. So answer the question, Sydney. Would you have turned your back on a career you were contented with, a job you loved in a manner of speaking, to be with your son if you had found out about him while he was a child - and Michelle were still free?"
Sydney rose from his chair and turned his back on Jarod to stare out his arcadia doors at the verdant green of his back yard. "You're asking me if I could turn my back on one son to be with another, Jarod, and I honestly can't answer that question." He turned and looked at the man sitting despondently at the table and sighed. "You have no idea how many times I've thought about that since you brought me evidence of Nicholas' birth - asked myself what WOULD I have done? After the long time it took me to be honest about how I felt about you, I discovered that if I'd been presented with the choice, I'd have done myself serious damage in the choosing."
His voice grew very quiet. "As painful as this is to admit, and as outrageous and immoral the reason it happened that way might be otherwise, I think my not knowing about Nicholas until much later was the best thing for me - and both of them - at the time. I would not have been able to walk away from you, and I would not have been able to stay away from Nicholas and Michelle. The Centre would have had to kill me after all."
"Help me, Sydney..." The plea was a whisper. "I don't know what to do."
Sydney swallowed hard as a feeling of helplessness filled him. "I wish to God I COULD help you, Jarod." The older man came around the table to put an understanding hand on his protégé's shoulder. "It's the Devil's own choice you have to make, my son. All I can tell you is to do as you think best when the time comes - best for you, best for her, and most of all, best for your son. Only one thing I'll ask as an... interested... third party: be sure to include Parker's input in making your decision. It will affect her life too, and she deserves a say."
Jarod took a deep breath as he considered Sydney's words, then nodded and rose to his feet. "Thanks, Sydney." He grabbed up his coffee cup and refilled it. "I think I'll go check my email and then do some more poking."
"You're welcome - I just wish I could be more help," Sydney answered, taking his own coffee cup over to the sink and rinsing it. "I'll be out watering plants if you need me."
Jarod walked slowly toward the stairs and then into the upstairs guestroom that he'd claimed as his for the time being and turned on his laptop. Sydney had actually helped some - he'd at least demonstrated that feeling confused and conflicted was a normal reaction to this seriously abnormal situation. Taking a deep breath to clear his mind for the task ahead, he clicked on the email icon and waited as the program loaded, then clicked on the announcement of incoming mail.
He read what was displayed on his screen, then sat down heavily and stared at the computer as if it were something he'd never seen before. The message was short, sweet, and most definitely to the point:
"Prodigy -
"A mutual friend tells me that you know where I could find refuge.
"Shadow"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"What?"
"Geez, Parker, you'd think you'd have learned how to answer the phone properly by now..."
Miss Parker leaned back in her kitchen chair after throwing down the pencil with which she had been working the Saturday crossword puzzle. "And give up one of the few pieces of continuity I can provide you with your past nowadays, Lab-rat? Not a chance!" She smiled and reached for her cup of coffee, grimacing in the direction of the living room as the volume on the televised cartoons rose a little higher than she would have liked. "What can I do you out of this morning?"
"You'll never believe who I heard from today." Jarod's fingers were racing across his computer keyboard as he spoke to her, formulating the beginnings of an email response to his message as he cradled his cell phone against his shoulder.
"And you're going to tell me, right?" She was enjoying this - the banter and teasing that had so characterized her relationship with Jarod for so many years had been one of the many things that had made his absence so painful. Lately, some of that bantering spirit had returned to some of their conversations, and it tickled her when it happened.
"Get serious, willya? I had an email from a very 'shadowy' person this morning in my inbox."
The coffee cup halted halfway from table to lips. "You're kidding!" She put the cup back down with a thud. "What did it say?"
"He wants refuge, and a 'mutual friend' told him I could help him find it." Jarod paused, then straightened and held the cell phone in one hand while staring at the first draft of his reply. Somehow, the words just weren't coming right.
"What are you going to tell him?"
"We need to not do this over the phone, Parker. Frankly, I think I could use some help on this. Can you come?"
"What's Sydney up to?"
"Watering plants in the back yard, why?"
Parker drained the last of her coffee. "Go tell him that he gets Grandpa duty today, then, and is on call for making lunch - and I'll see if I can get Davy out of his PJ's sometime before noon on a Saturday for a change."
Jarod stared out the window with a mischievous grin. "I can't believe that you'd let our son stay in his pajamas..."
"Oh shut up and let me get things moving," Parker's chuckle took the bite out of her tone of voice. "See you in a bit."
"Thanks, Parker. I owe you one."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Quietly the figure made its way through the darkened building, moving around every twist and turn and through each desired doorway as if in full daylight. His heart was beating wildly; for the first time in his memory, something incredibly new and interesting was sitting just out of sight and reach on the horizon of his life. Even locked doors and alarm systems were not going to stop him anymore. Besides, Vernon had never been very strict about his being locked down tightly at night because his charge had never shown any signs of wanderlust. With the perimeter of the building itself well enough guarded to take care of any attempted flights, interior security had been lax for years.
That had been ideal. He had never needed half as much sleep as Vernon scheduled for him, so roaming the house and discovering all the security weaknesses had long been a hobby. That was how he had found the computer terminal linked directly with the Centre mainframe - something he'd never been allowed to touch before. A whole new world of possibilities had opened with that discovery - not to mention a whole new chapter in his life had started when he'd discovered email, and CJ.
Suddenly, he'd had someone to talk to, to compare notes to - even though CJ's emails could sound a little more like gibberish sometimes. And it had been CJ that he'd told about finding his own records. He hadn't expected his short email to have caused such excitement in his friend. Suddenly the language of the emails had become dramatically clearer, alluding to events and people that might be interested in helping him to freedom.
Freedom. It was a foreign concept, this idea that he could come and go at any hour of the day or night to any place he wanted. The mere idea that it was possible to talk with anybody he wanted at any hour of the day, DO what HE wanted and not what Vernon had scheduled for him to sim was intoxicating, enticing. He was ready for new experiences, slowly withering from lack of stimulus. Yesterday, CJ had emailed him another email address, a name and a code word to insert in a short message - which he had immediately turned around and sent off. Hopefully, by now, he'd have an answer.
The monitor screen soon became the only source of light in the room. He quickly typed in the password of the house IT sysop to enter the system, then accessed the email client and brought up the hidden user account he had created as one of his first online projects. Yes! There was mail waiting, and not from CJ. With trembling fingers, he opened the message:
"Shadow -
"Refuge is a soiled linen bin on Thursday evening, 7PM. Patience.
"Prodigy"
Thursday - four whole days from now. No wonder Prodigy had cautioned patience; the wait, knowing that freedom was four days away, was going to be VERY difficult. Still, if it was all that it cracked up to be, it would be worth it.
Fingers moved quickly across the keyboard to reply:
"Shadows in the laundry. No starch, please..."
He clicked on the icon and sent the reply, then powered down the terminal before anyone in the Centre could notice activity from a supposedly down side facility. Taking pride in living up to his project name, Shadow moved surely through the house towards the laundry room. It wouldn't hurt to case the place - to find out where the baskets were kept. 7PM was still early enough that others would still be present in the house.
At last, Shadow would have to prove himself worthy of his name for real.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mr. Raines took in a deep gasp of oxygen as he clicked from one page to the next of the contract negotiations that had been ongoing with the Tanakas on his computer screen. The cost estimates for the successful implementation and follow-through for Redux had been substancial, and he wished he didn't have to cut off negotiations with an organization that would have gladly paid good money to be involved in it. But with security issues of a sort that he didn't dare bring to Miss Parker's attention, there was no way he wanted to be linked in any way to organized crime. Lyle's destruction of all the hard copies of these negotiations had been critical to making sure this information didn't fall into the wrong hands.
He reached for his intercom button and without waiting for his secretary's answer, demanded, "Have Mr. Lyle come to my office."
He took another deep hit of oxygen, knowing that it wouldn't help his racing heart. It was never a wise move to back out of business dealings with the Tanakas - they had been the best customers of Shadow's work for years, and anything that upset the Tanakas held the potential to disrupt other cash flow channels as well. His challenge today was to gently ease the Yakuza out of Redux while keeping them otherwise contentedly feeding in Shadow's trough of information and strategic planning.
Lyle's office in the Tower was directly adjacent to Raines', so the time between when he'd asked his secretary to summon his son and when the dark-haired young man was walking through the connecting door was not long. "You sent for me?" Lyle asked smoothly.
"Send in the Tanaka delegation," Raines said, holding down the intercom button again. He looked up as he released it. "Stand behind me and let me know when I'm treading on promises you've already made to these people," he ordered breathlessly.
Lyle flinched inwardly. When Raines had said that he didn't need to worry about the deal with the Yakuza being nixed, he had hoped that he wouldn't have to be included in the final moment of ignominy. What a helluva way to begin a Monday morning. He moved slowly to a spot to the left and behind the skeletal Centre Chairman, rubbing the stump where his thumb had been all the way.
The impeccably dressed trio of Japanese gentlemen filed primly into the office and lined themselves up in front of Raines' desk, one dignified younger gentleman standing slightly ahead of the other two. Lyle recognized the dignified man immediately - it was a slightly older, much more self-assured Tommy Tanaka. As if a unit, all bowed slightly from the waist. Lyle bowed too, while Raines bowed from his sitting position. "One of you speaks English?" Raines asked without preamble.
"Hai." The taller Japanese gentleman on the left bowed again. "I am Fujimori Torii, and it is my honor to serve as translator for Tanaka-sama." He indicated the younger, shorter gentleman standing closer to the desk. "My colleague is Yoshikata Haruo-san, from the financial services department." The man with the salt and pepper hair now bowed as his name was spoken.
"I am William Raines, Chairman of the Centre; and this is my associate, Mr. Lyle." Raines gasped raggedly, and Lyle bowed his head in much the same way the other subordinates of Tanaka had.
The dignified-looking head of the Japanese delegation spoke a quick sentence in a growling voice. "Tanaka-sama asks if the latest offer has been examined and found satisfactory," Fujimori translated for his boss.
"Unfortunately, there has been a change in plans on this end," Raines grated out, then drew in a desperate-sounding gasp of air. "We are going to have to shelve plans for Project Redux for the near future, canceling any prospective plans that were scheduled to go into motion after this meeting." He waited for Fujimori to translate his words into Japanese, sucking in another hit of oxygen as he did.
Tanaka's eyes narrowed, and his growl was even more menacing. "We have already committed several hundreds of thousands of American dollars toward implementation of this project, Raines-san."
Raines opened a wooden box on his desk and withdrew a cashier's check, already filled in and signed. "This represents a refund of all monies that were paid to us by your organization in anticipation of participation, as well as a ten thousand dollar apology for having to cancel the deal at this late date."
Tanaka eyed the cashier's check suspiciously and issued another tirade in Japanese with an angry tone added to the growl. "A mere fifty thousand American does not compensate us for investments made in Japan in anticipation of housing this project. There are buildings currently under construction in Nagasaki and Osaka intended as bases of operations that cost millions of yen. Our personnel department has been very busy interviewing prospective employees to man those facilities."
Raines' eyes narrowed now. "The Centre cannot be responsible for plans your organization made prematurely. Our deal was still under negotiation. Nothing had been signed yet." He drew in another agonized gasp of air. "Certainly an organization such as yours can make alternative use of facilities and employees - the effort need not be a wasted one. But the Centre cannot and will not be responsible for the impatience or over-eagerness of others."
Lyle, standing quietly behind Raines, flinched inwardly yet again. While Raines had not specifically tread close at all to promises made as yet, calling the preparations that had been underway 'impatience' and/or 'over-eagerness' was insulting. He quietly rubbed the stump of his thumb again, glad it was Raines who would catch most of any Yakuza heat for this debacle.
"Perhaps our organization can also be reconsidering the necessity of buying other Centre products as well," Tanaka's words were translated from a yelling voice into soft and fluid English. "We had been able to run many of our operations quite well without the strategic information we've been purchasing from you. Perhaps it is time for Yakuza to trust to their own sources."
"Our information has kept you below the DEA radar better than any you've ever had, up to and including from your own inside informants, and you know it," Raines snapped back in his desperate wheeze. "It would be unfortunate for Yakuza to throw the baby out in the bath water - cut off all intelligence along with the negotiations for a shelved science project."
"That which is unfortunate for the Yakuza would also be unfortunate for the Centre," Fujimori translated in a cold voice. "We will be reassessing our business dealings with your organization immediately, and we'll get back to you if we decide that continuing our... partnership... in certain areas is to our advantage. Good day to you." The three Japanese gentlemen all bowed again in unison - although quite obviously not half as deeply as at first - then turned and silently left the room.
"You had nothing to say?" Raines wheezed at Lyle.
"What? You didn't go near anything other than just the contract itself. Most of the promises I made were ancillary to the negotiations themselves, and so don't have to be reneged on." Lyle continued to rub his stump inconspicuously.
Raines grunted and jerked his head in abrupt dismissal, and Lyle beat a hasty retreat through his connecting door and straight out into the hallway where he hoped to catch the Japanese delegation before they left the Tower.
"Uh... Fujimori-san?" he said, bowing deeply to the three as they stood waiting for the elevator.
"What do you want, Lyle-san?" the translator asked bluntly.
"Tell your boss that I apologize for Mr. Raines' lack of prudence in deciding to cancel Redux. I had no part in making that decision."
Fujimori leaned toward Tanaka-sama. "It seems we may have stumbled into a small executive disagreement here. This one apologizes for a decision that wasn't his to make."
Tanaka sniffed. "It makes no difference. The last time we tried to deal with him, my father lost millions of dollars and ended up behind American prison bars, with THIS one as one of the buffoons responsible for the unfortunate incident."
"Tanaka-sama accepts your apology, but regrets to inform you that with Redux no longer on the table, he has no reason to continue to stand here in Centre hallways with lackies."
Lyle bristled. So the weasel remembered the last time they'd had dealings, did he? Well, this time HE was going to call the shots from now on, and not the semi-senile idiots who had been sitting in the Chairman's office for the last few years. He pasted a smile on his face, determined not to let the insult spur him to reactions that would jeopardize his plans Too many things were riding on his playing this latest hand properly - his life being chief among them.
"Please tell Tanaka-san that there's no need to be quite hasty in returning to Japan." Lyle glanced around, and up at the surveillance camera nervously, a gesture not lost on the Yakuza boss. "The project we were speaking of hasn't necessarily been canceled entirely - it is only Yakuza funding that has my boss nervous, for security reasons."
Fujimori translated the American's words precisely. Tanaka turned and looked at Yoshikata this time. "The Centre must have fallen on hard times to need to pull the plug on profitable ventures to save its ass from unwanted attention. Something's going on here." He turned to his translator again. "Ask him what he wants."
Lyle glanced at the camera again, wishing this conversation could take place elsewhere. "I am interested in... uh... considering new employment opportunities outside the Centre. I was thinking that perhaps if I could see to it that... uh... certain key elements... of the project we were discussing were delivered to your offices..." Lyle discretely brought forth his left hand, with its missing thumb. "I think I could be an asset to your organization - and I'd like the opportunity to perhaps make up for the unfortunate 'accident' that cost me this. Do you think your boss would be interested?"
Fujimori bent his head toward his boss and began speaking in quick and very quiet Japanese. Tanaka cast his eyes up at the younger American appraisingly, then listened closely further before answering. Fujimori turned to Lyle. "Tanaka-sama is intrigued by your information and offer. Please to accompany us to lunch, where we can discuss this further?"
Lyle's smile was brilliant. "Let me let my secretary know I'm out for rest of the day, and I'll be right with you," he agreed quickly, bowed deeply directly at Tanaka, and trotted off toward his office.
"This one is a snake, Tanaka-sama," Fujimori commented wryly. "He lost a thumb to us years ago, and seeks to put his balls on the line this time instead."
Yoshikata nodded. "If this ronin can deliver the vital components of Redux into our keeping and management, Fujimori-san, he thinks he redeems his thumb and his balls besides. But, Tanaka-sama, allow me to point out that once we have Redux in our possession, this honor-less pig will have outlived his usefulness."
"I agree," Tanaka nodded with narrowed eyes. "Let's let him THINK we think he has balls so big he has trouble walking a straight line and keeping his kimono closed. When the time comes, however - AFTER he betrays his people by bringing us Redux - we'll show him his error. Men without honor have no balls; one wonders how the Americans breed so prolifically," Tanaka growled, then chuckled coldly at his own macabre humor. At the proper time, the other two chuckled as well.
Lyle's step as he walked down the corridor towards the Japanese again was lighter, springier. Here was his escape - and all he would have to do is deliver a vial of frozen embryos and a couple of vagrant women to pay for it. Raines would never know what was missing until he, Lyle, was long out of the picture.
The Japanese all smiled widely at Lyle and bowed to him again, then gestured him to take the lead into the elevator car. Feeling as if he had just conquered the world, Lyle did exactly that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Walking down the same corridor, toward the same elevator, with Sam at her heels, Miss Parker skidded to a halt when she saw the younger Tanaka and two of his father's finest assassins bowing to Lyle so shallowly that it constituted a deadly insult by Japanese etiquette standards. When Sam nearly plowed into her shoulder, she threw up the back of her hand and swatted him in the chest. "Sam, I have a chore for you."
The sweeper looked up and followed his boss' line of sight, then watched with equal fascination as Lyle ingratiatingly led the Japanese contingent into the elevator. "You want to know what he's up to," he guessed with a nod.
"There's a surveillance camera and microphone aimed at the elevator door. I want the DSA for this past hour's activity on my desk in fifteen minutes, no later."
"Yes, ma'am!" Sam moved agilely around Miss Parker and headed off in the opposite direction, towards the main Tower surveillance office where the recordings of all the cameras on that floor were saved to disc.
"What ARE you up to, Lyle?" she asked herself in a low voice, "and what are you up to with Tanaka, of all people?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sydney frowned as he heard the sliding doors to his Sim Lab open; the sound meant that somebody that knew better had not read the sign he'd clearly posted outside that there was an experiment on-going in the Lab that could not be disrupted. He turned, ready to chew nails and butts, then choked back any utterance as he saw Miss Parker moving silently across the Sim Lab floor, making a direct line for his office. She was pale and moving with jerky motions that spoke of deep shock and upset. Behind her, still standing in the hallway outside the automatic doors, he could see Sam watching her with concern written all over his countenance.
The psychiatrist quickly put the clipboard he'd been carrying down on the counter and, with an abrupt gesture, summoned his lab assistant and with curt instructions put the continuity of the current project into another's hands. For the moment unencumbered, he strode to his office and closed the door behind him.
Miss Parker had moved to the narrow space beyond Sydney's desk and was pacing back and forth, her arms across her chest protectively.
"Parker..." he reached out a hand to put a halt to her pacing. "What..."
At his touch, her panicked grey eyes met his. "He's... stealing... Redux... Yakuza..."
Immediately, Sydney grasped her arms and pulled her close, knowing that the movement would disrupt her from saying more. "Hush now. Don't say another word - not here." He could feel the violent trembling that she was fighting mightily, and wished that they were in a more private place where he could speak more freely. He maneuvered her into a chair in front of his desk, then moved to the office door, flung it open, and beckoned across the Sim Lab to Sam, still standing waiting in the corridor. "Get her to my house, NOW!" he ordered harshly, once the sweeper was close enough to hear a harsh stage whisper. "Don't let anyone stop her or you; just get her out of here and get her home."
"Yes, sir." Sam reached down and helped his boss to her feet, then awkwardly wrapped an arm about her to help her stay upright. "C'mon, Miss Parker. I'll take you home." She looked up into her sweeper's face blankly and put up no resistance as he ushered her out the door.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Sydney called after them, then turned and dialed a number from memory. He waited until he heard the voice on the other end pick up, and then announced without preamble: "We have a problem."
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