Disclaimer: Not mine. (Short, sweet, and to the point. I like it!)
Rating: PG
Summary: When a project that Raines has kept hidden for thirteen years is unveiled, the Centre decides to use it to their advantage…and Jarod's capture. ~~ In this chapter Elf 17 and Broots will finally arrive in Los Angelus, and Elf 17 will begin to realize that her world's no longer in shades of black and white, but a frighteningly dark gray…
Feedback: (ShadowElf has left Tokyo in one piece and is back in her more medieval home. She has been asked to tell her story in front of the king's soldier's camp. Needing feedback, she hastily accepted) "Welcome Lad- um, gentlemen and…more gentleman. Before I get the story started I need to tell you about Feedback. Feedback is the battery that keeps me going and--
Soldier: Just shut up wench and tell it already!
"Wench?! I'll have you know you pig-headed, barbaric fool of a man that I-" (soldier draws his sword and holds it at her throat)
[Laughing nervously] Heh heh, did I say barbaric and pigheaded? I meant civ-civilized and pigheaded" [sword is thrust closer] Heh, nice pointy object. ~Damn, for a bard you think I'd know when to keep my trap shut~
*****Authors Note: Thanks ever so much for all of the feedback! And to that one college person who talked to me about the relationship between Elf 17's thoughts and actions, I think you might find my answer to that in this chapter.
------ShadowElf
On To Chapter Five!
1:00 PM
Route 15, California
On Road
In Jeep
Elf 17 sighed in boredom as she watched the other cars zip by. They had been driving for hours. They'd left early in the morning, packed up what little things they'd taken out, and gone. Poof. Just like that. Elf 17 had of course brought her puffy Cheetos, but they had been finished a while back and she'd already cleaned her face and hands (with a napkin though, because Broots got freaked out watching her lick it off like a cat). She had foolishly left behind her Les Miserables at the casino, setting it down on the bench and forgetting it. With her pretender skills she found she knew how the book ended, but still, actually reading it would have taken at least half an hour off of this seemingly ever-lasting trip.
Her growing anxiety she also knew was not just boredom. She was afraid. She knew she would catch Jarod, of that there was no doubt. She'd run through the scenario nearly thirty-two different times and analyzed possible flaws and how they could be prevented and avoided. But knowing that it was going to be over so soon, that she would be returning to the Centre in barely a day's time was, for some reason, frightening to her. Best to ignore it, she thought. The time will come, and you'll have absolutely no say in it whatsoever. Just accept the truth and move on.
Broots heard her sigh for a second time and carefully looked over at her as best he could while still keeping a watchful eye on the road.
"Oh come on, cheer up Elf 17." He struggled to find something to be cheery about. "We'll, uh, we'll be arriving in Los Angelus soon." Wrong thing to say Broots! He chided himself.
He heard Elf 17 give a soft snort. "Wonderful. I suppose I'll then be able to look forward to dragging back a perfectly innocent man kicking and screaming to a prison he doesn't deserve to be in."
Broots clenched the wheel tighter, not in anger, but in frustrating curiosity. What she had just done had been something that he'd been meaning to ask her about since the first time he'd had a conversation with her.
"That's it." He grumbled and swerved over to the side of the road and parked.
Elf 17 jerked her head up and looked around fearfully. "Have we popped a tire? What's wrong?"
He ignored her questions and turned to look at her, trying to grow the backbone that Ms. Parker ha always pestered him about.
"Look, I need to know something. Ever since I've met you I've noticed how different you are from other pretenders and projects that Raines has created. I've watched what that man turns children into and believe me it isn't pretty. Even Jarod didn't act as human as you do and he was raised by Sydney! Now I've heard you use sarcasm, modern lingo, and understand most humor and jokes. Sure you are still learning, but you understand and act more like a teenager that Jarod ever had. And you have been brought up without any human contact besides Raines!" He looked exasperated. "How?" He finished weakly.
Elf 17 bit her lip and closed her eyes, as if searching how best to tell this man her answer. She opened her eyes and looked at him, having seemingly formed a plausible explanation. "Well, first off, you're wrong."
"Huh?"
"I mean Raines was not the only human contact I had while growing up in the Centre. That's the main part of it. I was raised by Raines yes, but I was also raised, and in a large part I might add, by Willie."
"Willie? The sweeper?"
"Yes. Raines had to keep me a secret from the Centre and therefore was not able to come in contact with me too often. People would wonder where he went. So, the duty went to his personal sweeper, Willie." She paused. " I'm not entirely sure of his reasons, or his initial motivation, but Willie felt the need to protect me. He'd seen me, a small, helpless and far-too trusting little girl, and he remembered all too well what others before me had been turned into. He didn't want me to be a sadistic psychopath, or a golem without emotion; he wanted me to be more, as you put it, human. So he'd talk to me and teach me of the outside world and phrases, and as I learned more, he even taught me knock-knock jokes and riddles." Broots' eyebrows shot up but Elf 17 continued. "I became more like a teenager than anyone unfortunate enough to be raised in the Centre had. And I was also taught to hide it from Raines at all costs. Ever since then, Willie and I have been, for all practical purposes, friends."
Broots looked like he'd bitten into a hot chili pepper covered in Tabasco sauce. His eyes widened comically, and he began opening and closing his mouth. After some struggle, he managed to get his mouth working again.
"W-Willie felt sorry for you? A pretender? He actually wanted to help you?"
She nodded.
"B-But he hates Jarod! He'd kill him if he could! How could he be so, so nice to you when-"
"When I'm a pretender." She finished for him.
Broots nodded mutely; still slightly shocked that Willie could be so compassionate to another human being, a pretender no less!
"I knew that Willie hated a certain pretender," Elf 17 said thoughtfully, "but I never knew who it was. So it's Jarod. Hmm. Makes sense if you think about it. Though he never did tell me why he hates him. I'll have to remember to ask him."
"Uh, huh," Broots said, not even listening.
Elf 17gently laid a hand on his shoulder. "Oh Broots, it's not that bad. At least I didn't say that Mr. Lyle taught me how to be normal."
Broots managed a laugh. " I don't think he knows how to be normal himself." He started up the jeep's engine and began looking for a gap in traffic. "You know, I guess there's more to Willie than meets the eye."
Elf 17 remembered all that Willie had done for her. From consoling her when she was frightened, to being as much of a friend as he could without getting Raines' attention.
"Without a doubt. " She whispered to herself. "Without a doubt."
Broots steered the Jeep back onto the road and they began driving once more to their rapidly approaching destination. But whether going was for better or worse, neither could truthfully say.
2:03 PM
Los Angelus, California
Hollywood
Broots and Elf 17 had entered Los Angelus, and were now in the almost world-renowned, gold-paved streets of Hollywood. The area was all right, if a bit crowded, and Elf 17 found the air much too thick.
The first thing they'd done was gone down looking for newspapers. At a newsstand, they'd bought maybe six or seven different papers, both local and citywide. After scanning scrupulously through every article, both Broots and Elf 17 were surprised to find exactly the same thing.
Nothing.
No crimes had been pulled, at least, none of the large ones that or any of the type that might attract Jarod's eye.
Broots was at first afraid that they'd misinterpreted the clues, but Elf 17 assured him that coming to Los Angelus was not a mistake. He was here, and apparently he hadn't yet found what he was looking for. Which of course, raised another question. What was he looking for?
Elf 17 and Broots were at the moment parked outside of a famous hotel that they'd just checked for registries under the name Jarod. Of course, they'd found nothing. So Broots was now furiously typing away on his laptop and searching the web for any clues at all. Elf 17 was leaned up against the jeep, her arms crossed as she brooded in silence.
Elf 17 knew that she didn't have much time left. The clock was ticking so to speak, and every day she was becoming less and less certain about her life. She had to finish and get back before her emotions got in the way. It was time to use one of her more "unique" gifts that had been added on to her pretender skills.
"Broots!" she called.
"Yeah?"
"Could you bring out the bag we put Jarod's clues in?"
He gave her a skeptical look, but then set down his laptop, grabbed his backpack and came out.
She thanked him and dug through the bag to pull out the box that Jarod had put the "motel" clue in.
She opened the box, closed her eyes, and transformed. She then began taking in the smells of the box.
She could smell hay, and country air, and Elmer's glue and…Jarod. He had a distinctive smell, and he smelled almost sweet, a lot like sugar. Though from what she'd heard from Broots, it was probably all of the PEZ that he ate. She smiled though. To her sensitive nose he smelled very, very good. She opened her eyes and looked over at Broots who seemed thoroughly confused and curious as to what she was doing.
" I have his scent. I'll be able to track him now. How many bus routes are there into this city if you ride in from the east, like Jarod did?"
Broots turned and got back into the jeep and started searching on the web. He waited while the page he needed loaded.
"Um…it says here that the quickest routes coming in from the East…Oh! There are three."
"Could you write them down?"
He did so and came out to hand them to her. She stared at the names in her hand for a moment or two, envisioning their routes on the map and getting into the psyche she'd come to know so well.
Broots held out a pen for her and she took it. He'd known that she was getting into "pretender" mode. Elf 17 circled a name and handed him back the paper. She got into the Jeep, buckling up and waiting for Broots. He got in and looked at her expectantly.
"He'll have come in on that bus line and on that route." She said, giving him her answer. "The first stop that that bus makes in Hollywood is only a few blocks away."
"Oh." He said and nodded in understanding.
They sat in silence.
Elf 17 looked over at him. "Could you drive us there?"
Broots jumped slightly. "Oh! Oops. Right. Sorry."
They arrived at the bus stop in less than six minutes. Broots parked on the other side of the street and put some money in the parking meter, giving them four hours worth of time. Elf 17 had told him that tracking Jarod on foot would be much easier than in the jeep, and considering that he knew nothing whatsoever about tracking by scent, he was inclined to follow her advice.
Elf 17 stood at the bus stop and sniffed the surrounding air. Come on, come on…there! Her eyes shot open and she suppressed the urge to howl like a hound and immediately run after her quarry.
"Broots! I got it!"
He jogged over to her. "I'll follow you," he told her.
She smiled at him before letting her transformation take hold. She sniffed the air, caught hold of the scent once more, and began steadily and speedily walking in the direction of the city, with Broots carrying both his backpack and her suitcase, and struggling to match her stride.
Elf 17 turned corners, crossed intersections and even went in and out of a store. The scent led her into a PEZ aisle and she rolled her eyes upward before continuing her hunt.
It had been nearly three hours since they had set out, and Broots was beginning to wonder what batteries Elf 17 ran on, because his sure weren't cutting it. For all the time they'd been out searching, Elf 17's strenuous pace had never once slackened, and Broots' was often quite a few steps behind her. Finally it became too much for Broots and he was forced to stop for a moment. He dropped the bags and clutched his knees as he stood slowly breathing in and out.
Elf 17 stopped when she heard he was no longer following. She looked back at him and Broots was surprised to see anger on her face. But that was not all he saw. He saw there, as plain as the hot sun overhead, pure exhaustion. Her breathing was shaky and her face was pale. She was sweating profusely and he imagined that the black outfit she was wearing didn't help any. She looked so tired and yet she seemed to be ignoring every protest her body made, brushing it away as though it were and annoying fly buzzing around her head.
Broots and Debbie liked to watch a lot of shows together. One of there favorite channels was animal planet, and he remembered a show they'd seen that had been done on police dogs. They had said that when the bloodhounds were tracking a subject, they had to be forced to rest or else they'd keep on tracking past the point of exhaustion and could end up collapsing from dehydration or muscle fatigue. Perhaps it was the same with Elf 17.
"Why are you stopping Broots?" She almost growled at him, and he became slightly worried as he saw her eyes were still the color of a harvest moon and spliced down the center. It meant she was still in her animal mode, the mode that she'd been in when she'd fought Lyle. Broots remembered all too well the beating Lyle had received from her.
He straightened up, tips from the shows he'd watched on how to scare off wild predatory animals swimming through his mind. Don't show fear, don't show fear, stand up straight and don't show fear…"Um, look I'm really tired could we possibly rest? For me?" Yeah right, like he was going to tell her that he was more worried about her. He liked living thank you very much.
She clenched and unclenched her hands in frustration, her ears moving back and forth and sideways and back…Broots became slightly disoriented just watching them. He heard a deep growl rising up from the back of her throat. He suddenly found it very hard not to show fear.
"His scent is getting strong by the moment. We are near. I can smell it! And," her eyes narrowed dangerously, "until we find him we. Will. Not. Stop." She slightly bared her teeth and Broots noticed fearfully that her canines were unusually thick, long, and sharp.
"Okay." He squeaked.
She waited patiently while he picked up the bags and then spun around to begin tracking once more.
Broots sighed mentally. I need to ask Sydney if he knows any good psychiatrists.
5:45 pm
Los Angelus, California
Near The Border Of Hollywood
The Last Place You'd Ever Expect The Search For Jarod To Lead To...
Elf 17 blinked, and her transformation washed away as easily as a sand castle before a wave. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly, and her emerald eyes filled with tears. She gave off a choked sob and collapsed to her knees in the grass.
After the single stop during her hunt, Elf 17 had sensed something wrong, even as Jarod's scent drew inexorably stronger. She'd known that she might not like where the search had led her, but never, never, had she expected that it would lead her here. She stared forward out past the lawn and sidewalk, past the fenced off old playground and past concrete steps of a gray building whose name would be forever burned in her memory.
The LA Institution For Child Welfare
She gave a pained smile at the irony of it. She'd spent her whole life trying to forget this place this, institute, and her she was again, practically at the front steps. It was the symbol of every inner pain she held locked away. It was the symbol that reminded her that she had been forgotten, forsaken, and practically thrown away to be handed over like a present to another family. Her own parents had abandoned her, and she could never stop asking herself why. She'd probably never find out their motivation, and she wasn't all that sure she wanted to. It was that very abandonment that had led to the life she led now. If she hadn't been in the orphanage on that day, if Raines hadn't had a contact at the Institute who'd been specifically assigned to look for children who might have possessed the Pretender gene, than she wouldn't be living in the hell her parents had unknowingly sent her into.
She knelt crying for nearly five minutes when a huffing and puffing Broots jogged over, extremely winded.
"God, I never knew I was that out of shape…Hey are you, are you crying? Hey are you all right? What's…" he broke off and saw the sign of the building she was crying in front of. He read its name. It was an orphanage. Now how could an orphanage get her so riled up like that? How could…
Then it came back in a flash, from the first time he'd seen her at the T-board Meeting.
"Raines, where did…Elf 17 come from?"
Raines smiled. "She was an orphan from a child care services in California…
"Oh my God." He whispered to himself.
Elf 17 raised her head, tears still streaming down. She pointed to the doors of the building in front of them.
"His scent leads in there and comes back out if you're wondering." She drew up her knees and hugged them tightly, fighting with all her willpower against an onslaught of memories that were best off forgotten.
Broots gave a puzzled frown. "But why would Jarod come here? He couldn't have known about you could he?"
She shook her head and flung tiny crystalline tears. "No, he couldn't have known about me. He wouldn't have come here even if he had found out about me. With the exception of going to get food or supplies, he has a purpose to everywhere he goes that-" her head suddenly shot up and the tears stopped forming instantly. Her eyes opened wide, as realization dawned on her. "That relates to his pretend," she finished in a whisper.
"Elf 17?" Boots asked timidly.
She hadn't even heard him speak. A million possibilities of the implications of this new discovery were racing through her mind at incomprehensible speeds. Jarod had come here purposely, which meant that it had something to do with his reasons to come to Los Angelus in the first place. But that would mean that he felt something was going on at the orphanage, that something wrong, (most likely illegal), was happening.
Her mind told her to stop right there, not to go on any farther and to let the dead remain buried. But her heart, her wounded, hole filled and bleeding heart, told her that she could no longer stay back and turn a blind eye this. So following what she hoped was the right path, she faced a possibility that in her naiveté, she'd ignored completely.
Perhaps her coincidental drop off at an orphanage that had been watched by a Centre operative hadn't been so coincidental after all.
"Broots?" she asked quietly.
The technician stopped the nervous pacing that he'd taken up. "Yes?"
"Where is the closest cabin rental?"
This time he didn't pause in confusement but immediately pulled his laptop out from its case. After a few minutes of searching he found one. He told her the location of a two-bed cabin out in the woods about five miles North out of Hollywood, and she mentally stored its location away.
"Broots, I know this will not make sense, and I doubt you'll fully trust me, but I need you to do something."
He nodded, wishing he could tell her how easy it would be to give her his trust.
"I need you to go back to the jeep and book that cabin for two days, three at the most. Drive there and stay there. I-I have something I have to do. I'll meet you there in a few hours."
"Okay. I trust you."
And from the look on her face, Broots realized just how much those words meant to her.
6:47 PM
Los Angelus, California
Hollywood
Jarod's Lair, (Abandoned Parking Garage Basement.)
Jarod walked down the cold and concrete steps, descending into darkness, his every step ringing out like a proclamation of his arrival.
He'd spent the past three or four days searching for answers on his newest mission, and for once, the pretender was becoming worried.
He wasn't on an official pretend, where he'd play out a role to solve the crime or mystery, and so at the moment he wasn't really worried that Ms. Parker and the others would locate him. Although, if he didn't find something soon and stayed any longer, that could easily change.
For all his searching, questioning, and snooping, he hadn't found out what was going on at the institution, except that something was definitely going on. And that made him nervous.
He sighed when he reached the bottom of the steps and he opened the basement door. He had his eyes down as he walked down, mulling over anything he might have missed on his search today. He closed the door behind him and flicked on the lights. And when he looked up, he was thoroughly surprised to see a fifteen-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on his bed with her hands neatly folded in her lap.
Elf 17 lifted her head and gave her fellow pretender a half-hearted smile.
"Hello Jarod."
************************************************************************************
Gasp! What's going to happen now? Will Jarod escape her in time? Will Elf 17 find out the truth about her past? Will Frodo ever destroy the one ring? Oops! Sorry, wrong story.
(In cheesy radio announcer voice) Find out all these and more, next time on: Elf 17!