Disclaimer: Sigh…Sadly, I do not own the characters of The Pretender. I in no way wish to defame any of its affiliates nor NBC or TNT. That's it. Read it now!
Summary: Clues to the past bring Ms. Parker and Jarod back together again. Very involved in IOTH, but you can understand it without having seen it. Ties up most story lines. Mostly from Ms. Parker's point of view. Chapters are short.
The Truth Is Waiting
By Bec-Bec
Chapter 16
Speaking with the Past
The Centre, Sydney's Office
"Jacob," Sydney thought to himself. "How is it possible that you would involve yourself in a project like Emptiness? Did you know what was being done? You couldn't have, you were the one trying to tell me what was really being done in the Pretender Program."
A black and white figure from the past was suddenly sitting on the couch in his office. As it sometimes happened, Sydney's imagination was allowing him to speak with his brother.
"Sydney, Project Emptiness, it's not something I am proud of."
"But, Jacob, how did you get involved in it in the first place?"
"Raines was relatively new at the Centre, but I had just started working there, he was looking for help on a new project and I figured it would be good to fraternize with other psychiatrists working at the Centre. I believed we were training the children to become spies, not assassins. The problem was, I was only involved after the children were released from the two-year seclusion. I didn't know what had happened before that time. Catherine Parker told me the truth when she found out…that's the same time I found out the truth about the Pretender Program as well. I couldn't tell you because it would put you at risk. Catherine made me promise never to tell you."
"Is it true that Project Emptiness was the precursor to the Pretender Program?"
"Yes…I was the one who noticed the ability in Tyrone Black. I had been doing a sort of SIM with him involving the assassination of a Russian diplomat. We were watching a film on what had happened when he started to point out exactly what had gone wrong. He figured out why the assassin had been caught. Of course, the Centre had been taping the session. They realized that if their assassins knew exactly what could go wrong and how to avoid it, they would become indestructible. Tyrone was taken from my care and put directly under Raines' authority."
There was a long time span of silence as Sydney absorbed all of what he had just heard. "How come Catherine went to you and not me?"
"Sydney…don't you know? She loved you. She was worried about what would happen if her husband realized that you were not just her doctor but her lover and confidante. She already had suspicions that he knew…she couldn't risk telling you any more than you already knew."
"Jacob, it's my fault she was murdered. I'm the one who trained her Inner Sense."
"Sydney, she wanted to help those children. It was her choice, just like it was mine."
"She would never have found out the truth about the Centre if I hadn't helped her."
"Sydney, aren't you happier knowing the truth?"
"But I still don't know all of the truth."
"You will find out soon enough. Catherine says it's almost time."
"You've spoken with Catherine?"
"All of the time, Sydney, who do you think has been looking out for you all of these years?"
Just then, Broots came bursting into Sydney's office.
"Soon, Sydney, soon." Jacob's voice echoed.
Sydney looked quickly to the door and when he looked back at the couch, the image of Jacob was gone.
"Syd what are you doing?" Broots asked nervously.
"Just speaking with the past, Broots."
Broots eyed Sydney skeptically, then remembered why he had come bursting in. "Syd, look what I've found. I've been running the ten words through various patterns. After about an hour, I realized they were meant to line up alphabetically. Look."
Broots handed Sydney a sheet of paper that said:
And
Benefit
Couldn't
Have
Helped
Man
Nurture
Parker's
Vengeful
Torment
"Interesting…do you suppose it's some sort of poem?"
"I don't know. It doesn't give me much to work on though. I've used the keywords vengeful and torment to run a search through the Centre's databases but I didn't come up with anything."
"No, I didn't think you would find something…that would be too simple. Jarod's trying to tell us something in the fact that they are arranged alphabetically." Sydney stopped a moment and looked rather pensive. "There was a game Jarod liked to play when he was younger. He would hide a word within a string of other words and see how long it took me to find the word he had hidden. I suppose it was his way of testing if I was a worthy adversary of the information he was going to give me. You might try running combinations of letters from the words in their alphabetical order."
****
Broots Desk, The Computer Tech Floor, The Centre
Sydney walked up behind Broots, who was typing furiously at his computer. "Broots, what have you found?"
"Sydney, there are 29,042,496 different combinations of letters. This is going to take a while."
"Well, isn't there some way that you can narrow it down?"
"Syd, that's kind of hard. I don't really have anything to go on."
Sydney stood for a moment watching the computer screen closely, hoping to catch a familiar word or phrase. "Broots wait!" He said, recognizing something on the screen. "Look, the word Parker."
"Do you think this has something to do with Ms. Parker?"
"I don't know Broots. How many combinations of letters are there from the first four words if you keep Parker as the last six letters?"
Broots quickly did some calculations. "504, if you don't count the combinations that occur twice."
"Okay, what are they?"
Ten minutes later, Broots had compiled a list of all the combinations of letters from the words And, Benefit, Couldn't, and Have. He printed it out and quickly read over it, highlighting any word or name that made sense.
"What did you find Broots?"
"The words Anna, Anne, Nice, Nile, Nina, Nine, Deca, De De, Dice, Dina, and Dine."
"Try scanning those, along with the name Parker, into the computer and see what you come up with."
"Nice Parker," Broots said, cocking his head to the side. "She'd hate that. It sounds like a dog command."
"Broots!" Sydney said anxiously.
"Right." Broots fingers flew wildly on the keyboard as he checked every Centre database he could get into. Suddenly, a file came up on the computer screen. "Syd look." He called the older man's attention to the screen. "There are records on an Anna Parker and a Nina Parker."
"Who are Anna and Nina Parker?"
Broots was just about to download the file to his hard drive when he heard a familiar squeaky wheel, accompanied by uneven breathing, behind him.
"Raines," Sydney said flatly.
Want more? Find out what Jarod and Ms. Parker are doing dressed as police officers and what Raines has to tell Broots and Sydney. Thanks to Kattran and Leanne, and for reading my first eight chapters! Please Review!