Copyright warnings in the 1st chapter. Now it's getting interesting. This
chapter'll show why Jarod did not escape from the Centre until he was in
his thirties.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE :
The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware
"I want to watch," said the boy as he sat on the chair, kicking his feet and fidgeting while his father straightened his tie. "I can't go anywhere. Every time I come to a door, Uncle Nigel says you're not supposed to be there. What's downstairs? What's going on there? Why does the elevator just stop at the basement? When I press the button for the sublevels, it flashes a red light and Nigel and that other man come running?"
"I'll explain it all to you another time," said Parker, "now go with Miss Wentworth."
"Tell me about my twin brother," said the boy grabbing his father's shirt.
"Listen Cain, your brother Abel is dead. Now leave me alone, I've got work to do."
The teacher bent over, being the tall and willowy type, and towering over Mr. Parker. With the air of familiarity, she spoke. "Look Lamech, you have to be with the boy more often. People are beginning to shun him. I dare say anyone who gives him a name like that should have their head examined."
Lamech Parker shrugged. "It's from the Bible. Okay, Cain, if anyone asks who you are, tell them your name is John."
"But John's so common!"
Mr. Parker ignored him and went back into his office. Once he shut the door, he pressed another button that opened a separate door revealing an elevator going down several flights below. He descended down past the natural water level until he came to a corridor. He walked along it, and entered another room. This observation room overlooked the laboratory. He turned on a speaker, now able to hear as well as see what went on below.
There were three rooms below. In the one below left an eight-year old boy with reddish brown hair and light blue eyes sat on a chair, kicking his feet. His name was Patrick, the son of Ed Gallagher. A sweeper stood behind him, the latter being at least two hundred pounds, and totally unnecessary to guard such a small child. Nigel stood in the centre room with two sweepers who looked as if they were contenders for the wrestling ring. The room on the right also had another eight-year old boy, this one looked similar to the first boy, but one could tell they were strangers.
Ed's son had escaped the Centre until he was six when it was time for him to go to school. All the Centre had to do was to have two men pretend to be Truant Officers and the boy was in their clutches. However, Mr. Parker did not want the boy to be suspicious so he pawned him off on a family whose son unbeknownst to them, had drowned as a toddler. Patrick looked exactly what they imagined their lost child would look like, and, acted exactly like him. Two days before the Centre sent out a couple of Cleaners who killed the parents after grabbing the boy.
Mr. Parker talked through the microphone. "Take the one at the left first."
The sweeper brought in Ed, and sat him on a chair while Nigel got the hypodermic needle ready.
"What am I doing here?" he demanded. . Nigel just ignored him and talked into the microphone. "We're about to start with the injection." He motioned to the attendants. "Grab him."
The two attendants, both husky men, had a hard time holding the boy.
"He's unusually strong," said the first one who kept out of reach of the boy's kicks.
The other man was not as careful, for when he got closer, Patrick chomped down on him with his teeth. "Ouch He bit me!"
"I'll handle this," said Nigel, picking up a club, he knocked the boy down.. "Now he's subdued." He took out a needle and thrust it into the boy's arm. "It won't take long."
Mr. Parker spoke into the speaker. "I hope it is more successful than the last time. That one almost died."
"We revised the formula, making it a lesser dosage, one that can be maintained, although it is based on the child's weight."
"Well then you have to make it so weight is not an issue."
"We can't do that until we find if it works." He went over to Ed's son and waved his hand. "Are you all right son?"
"Yes sir."
Nigel smiled and raised his right hand, pointing his index finger.
"Success, he's ready."
"We'll test this brat first. Get Crazy Hughie."
"Right sir," said Nigel with a smile and went out the room. He soon appeared with another man. .
The stranger was about five feet nine inches tall, very elegant in his suit, but there was something ominous and depraved about him. You did not notice it at first. There was no sign on his forehead that said, "I am a pervert," no blazing neon light with the words "Beware," and he had a boyish face. It was, instead, in the way his eyes shifted to the boys, aimed not at his face, but that part of the body below the waist and the way his mouth gaped open in anticipation.
"Hello, little boy."
Nigel quietly left the room, leaving the man advancing on the boy, not all at once, but in a way of a natural predator, to keep them at ease. He took out a photograph from his pocket and went over to Patrick, "Could you help me look for my dog?" he asked with an obvious leer.
"Yes sir," said the boy, the signals that normally would have warned him to beware of strangers now gone; the admonition of his parents forgotten.
Just as he was about to grab him, Nigel came up behind and thrust a hypodermic needle in the pedophile's arm. As two sweepers dragged the man out, he signaled to Mr. Parker.
"Then inoculate the other boy," ordered Lamech.
"Right sir," said Nigel, leaving Patrick with his keepers and entering the other room.
The neighborhood boy sat on his chair, unaware of why he was here. They told him it was to do with Vince, that sick kid, but why here in the Centre? Probably the sick kid's dad worked here. He knew he was a doctor or something. He turned to see the man approach him with a hypodermic needle.
"Is it a small pox vaccination, sir? I already had one last year."
"A booster shot," lied Nigel. "We're giving that to all of Vince's friends."
"Well you better be not giving me the runaround or I'll report you to my old man!"
"Of course not." Nigel took out the needle and pricked the boy's arm. "We have to be extra careful, son." He smiled. "Normally the nurse would have given it to you at school, but we don't want to panic the other students."
"I guess not sir."
Mr. Parker waited until the drug coursed through the boy's veins. If he, like little Edward, was of that cursed New Species, the boy would look up to Nigel with complete trust and innocence.
This time, the boy's reaction did not change. "I don't believe that Vince's father works here. And why all the secrecy. I bet you're Commies."
Nigel looked for a signal from upstairs and then nodded. "I have to leave the room for a while."
"If you harm me, my dad'll beat you up. He was in the army!" He got down from his chair and walked around the room for about ten minutes until the door opened and a man
"Now for the test," said Nigel who opened the door and invited crazy Hughie in once more.
The pervert used the same approach on the boy. He took out the photograph of his 'dog' and asked in an innocently if he could help him look for it.
"Why don't you ask a grownup?" asked the boy.
"Well I was talking to your dad and he said that you loved dogs, Johnny" The Centre did its work well. The neighborhood boy had a collie which he doted on.
Johnny wrinkled his brow. "Howja know my name?"
Still unperturbed, the pedophile answered. "I work with your father." This information was also supplied by the Centre. "In the factory."
Johnny shook his head. "I don't believe you."
It was only when he was about to give in after the strange man tried for half an hour that Nigel came in, and stuck a needle in Hughie's arm.
"All right, he acted like any normal eight year old." said Mr. Parker from above, "Take him back to his parents after he sees the 'doctor'." The doctor would implant deep ingraiHughie memories into the boy so the only recall of the Centre would be in a dream. Mr. Parker left his observation tower and waited for Nigel to appear.
"Well sir, the other boy is properly sedated and ready for instruction. As you suspected, Neogenesis has destroyed his intuition. . What he learns from now on will have to be out of books and we do need someone to teach him."
"Yes, but we're going to release him."
"What? He'll die."
"So? If you're that worried, get a trainer for him, but quietly. For our program to work to use these things, we have to get them before six years old. Remember the Church rule, give a boy to me before six and he's ours for life? In ten years, he will have children, and four years from then, they will be ready. If not, we wait a few more years. I have a lot of patience, Nigel and we can use the other recruits."
"What about others, the ones whose parents we ah eliminated?"
"Do you think they'll be any good after they've been in the Centre all their lives? They need references, so they can believe a story that their parents either abandoHughie them or sold them to us." He waved his hand. "If they survive, put them on work detail. The Centre needs lower levels."
"Why sir?"
Lamech looked at Nigel as if he were a snake. "Do you think I want our property to see the light of day? No once we get them working for us, we want to make sure they're locked down so far that they do not know there is a world up here!"
The next day, Parker and Nigel, now dressed in workmen's clothes, left in a truck piled high with boxes. They into town, each man looking for a likely place to drop off their supplies. "I would say a corner store," said Nigel.
"No."
"Why because you hate Chinamen?"
"No. We want a place with a large distribution not a store where they have a limited supply and where kids just come in to get strawberries and bubblegum!" he stormed. He pointed towards a gray building where a woman in shabby clothing helped her husband up the stairs. "The doctor there helps the poor. Since we conveniently destroyed those creature's identification and means to get a decent job, they'll be vagrants and that'll be the only place where they can go in case, one of them gets sick or injured."
They drove up to the building. While Nigel took out one of the boxes, Lamech went inside.
"Wait your turn," said the receptionist, a tall woman with blonde hair in a bun.
"Excuse me, but I work for the president of the Western Pharmacy Company," said Lamech with a hypocritical bow. "He's decided to donate some medicine for children." He opened up one of the boxes that had several bottles of a drug supplied by the firm and gave the receptionist an envelope. .
She examined the contents, took one look at a rather unruly boy and then pressed the intercom. "Doctor, could you come here a moment?"
After a call to the Western Pharmacy Company, a call rerouted to the Centre, of course, the doctor agreed to take the bottles and told his assistant to prepare some syringes. "We don't have much trouble with young mental patients and I'm not an authority in that matter."
"Well rather than send them to an institution, perhaps we can keep them calm and send them home to their parents," said the receptionist. She read the letter again. "It says they've had excellent success on their first trials. The girl's now having a 95 percent average compared to 60 percent in her school grades."
"It says that if it doesn't work, then it proves for those patients, sterner methods are needed," added Nigel. "I had to send my son to reform school."
The doctor told the receptionist to give them a receipt Mr. Parker gladly took. A moment later, they drove up to a grocery store.
This time, they approached the manager, gave him a box of suckers after accepting money and getting the addresses of other stores in the location. Of course, Parker and his goon did not need that, but it was fun seeing how that balding idiot with the fat belly could be such a fool.
"I want a way to introduce the drug in the food supply," said Mr. Parker, "We'll need several men and women of certain character to take jobs in the food and agricultural industry."
"Why sir?" asked Nigel. "We've already dropped the boxes off on all the stores here."
"We still have much way to travel. What's the next area on the map?"
"The capital."
"And after that?"
"New Jersey, and then New York. I doubt they'll move farther. If they do, then we set up a subsidiary to donate the drugs. I have to get someone on the bases, just in case any of them try to enlist. Oh and since I know what they look like, and their blood types, I can find them anywhere." He drove back past the doctor's clinic. "Looks like that nun has a handful," he said.
Mr. Parker glanced out the window and saw a nun with a couple of unruly hillbilly kids, the boy was swearing and kicking while the girl punched the sister in the arm. "Brats!" He never heard such language and both children seemed spoiling for a fight.
Suddenly the boy ran off. "Charles get back here!"
"Here he is," said a policeman who grabbed the boy by his collar.
"Thank you. I don't know what to do about him and Margaret's just as bad." She looked at the girl, a red haired hellion and with the help of the cop, escorted both of them into the doctor's office.
"I wonder what that was about?" asked Parker and started to turn his head around, but Nigel stopped him.
"We have to get back to the clinic."
And so the two men drove up, and did not notice that five minutes later, the nun came out of the clinic with her now two very docile charges.
.
. . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE :
The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware
"I want to watch," said the boy as he sat on the chair, kicking his feet and fidgeting while his father straightened his tie. "I can't go anywhere. Every time I come to a door, Uncle Nigel says you're not supposed to be there. What's downstairs? What's going on there? Why does the elevator just stop at the basement? When I press the button for the sublevels, it flashes a red light and Nigel and that other man come running?"
"I'll explain it all to you another time," said Parker, "now go with Miss Wentworth."
"Tell me about my twin brother," said the boy grabbing his father's shirt.
"Listen Cain, your brother Abel is dead. Now leave me alone, I've got work to do."
The teacher bent over, being the tall and willowy type, and towering over Mr. Parker. With the air of familiarity, she spoke. "Look Lamech, you have to be with the boy more often. People are beginning to shun him. I dare say anyone who gives him a name like that should have their head examined."
Lamech Parker shrugged. "It's from the Bible. Okay, Cain, if anyone asks who you are, tell them your name is John."
"But John's so common!"
Mr. Parker ignored him and went back into his office. Once he shut the door, he pressed another button that opened a separate door revealing an elevator going down several flights below. He descended down past the natural water level until he came to a corridor. He walked along it, and entered another room. This observation room overlooked the laboratory. He turned on a speaker, now able to hear as well as see what went on below.
There were three rooms below. In the one below left an eight-year old boy with reddish brown hair and light blue eyes sat on a chair, kicking his feet. His name was Patrick, the son of Ed Gallagher. A sweeper stood behind him, the latter being at least two hundred pounds, and totally unnecessary to guard such a small child. Nigel stood in the centre room with two sweepers who looked as if they were contenders for the wrestling ring. The room on the right also had another eight-year old boy, this one looked similar to the first boy, but one could tell they were strangers.
Ed's son had escaped the Centre until he was six when it was time for him to go to school. All the Centre had to do was to have two men pretend to be Truant Officers and the boy was in their clutches. However, Mr. Parker did not want the boy to be suspicious so he pawned him off on a family whose son unbeknownst to them, had drowned as a toddler. Patrick looked exactly what they imagined their lost child would look like, and, acted exactly like him. Two days before the Centre sent out a couple of Cleaners who killed the parents after grabbing the boy.
Mr. Parker talked through the microphone. "Take the one at the left first."
The sweeper brought in Ed, and sat him on a chair while Nigel got the hypodermic needle ready.
"What am I doing here?" he demanded. . Nigel just ignored him and talked into the microphone. "We're about to start with the injection." He motioned to the attendants. "Grab him."
The two attendants, both husky men, had a hard time holding the boy.
"He's unusually strong," said the first one who kept out of reach of the boy's kicks.
The other man was not as careful, for when he got closer, Patrick chomped down on him with his teeth. "Ouch He bit me!"
"I'll handle this," said Nigel, picking up a club, he knocked the boy down.. "Now he's subdued." He took out a needle and thrust it into the boy's arm. "It won't take long."
Mr. Parker spoke into the speaker. "I hope it is more successful than the last time. That one almost died."
"We revised the formula, making it a lesser dosage, one that can be maintained, although it is based on the child's weight."
"Well then you have to make it so weight is not an issue."
"We can't do that until we find if it works." He went over to Ed's son and waved his hand. "Are you all right son?"
"Yes sir."
Nigel smiled and raised his right hand, pointing his index finger.
"Success, he's ready."
"We'll test this brat first. Get Crazy Hughie."
"Right sir," said Nigel with a smile and went out the room. He soon appeared with another man. .
The stranger was about five feet nine inches tall, very elegant in his suit, but there was something ominous and depraved about him. You did not notice it at first. There was no sign on his forehead that said, "I am a pervert," no blazing neon light with the words "Beware," and he had a boyish face. It was, instead, in the way his eyes shifted to the boys, aimed not at his face, but that part of the body below the waist and the way his mouth gaped open in anticipation.
"Hello, little boy."
Nigel quietly left the room, leaving the man advancing on the boy, not all at once, but in a way of a natural predator, to keep them at ease. He took out a photograph from his pocket and went over to Patrick, "Could you help me look for my dog?" he asked with an obvious leer.
"Yes sir," said the boy, the signals that normally would have warned him to beware of strangers now gone; the admonition of his parents forgotten.
Just as he was about to grab him, Nigel came up behind and thrust a hypodermic needle in the pedophile's arm. As two sweepers dragged the man out, he signaled to Mr. Parker.
"Then inoculate the other boy," ordered Lamech.
"Right sir," said Nigel, leaving Patrick with his keepers and entering the other room.
The neighborhood boy sat on his chair, unaware of why he was here. They told him it was to do with Vince, that sick kid, but why here in the Centre? Probably the sick kid's dad worked here. He knew he was a doctor or something. He turned to see the man approach him with a hypodermic needle.
"Is it a small pox vaccination, sir? I already had one last year."
"A booster shot," lied Nigel. "We're giving that to all of Vince's friends."
"Well you better be not giving me the runaround or I'll report you to my old man!"
"Of course not." Nigel took out the needle and pricked the boy's arm. "We have to be extra careful, son." He smiled. "Normally the nurse would have given it to you at school, but we don't want to panic the other students."
"I guess not sir."
Mr. Parker waited until the drug coursed through the boy's veins. If he, like little Edward, was of that cursed New Species, the boy would look up to Nigel with complete trust and innocence.
This time, the boy's reaction did not change. "I don't believe that Vince's father works here. And why all the secrecy. I bet you're Commies."
Nigel looked for a signal from upstairs and then nodded. "I have to leave the room for a while."
"If you harm me, my dad'll beat you up. He was in the army!" He got down from his chair and walked around the room for about ten minutes until the door opened and a man
"Now for the test," said Nigel who opened the door and invited crazy Hughie in once more.
The pervert used the same approach on the boy. He took out the photograph of his 'dog' and asked in an innocently if he could help him look for it.
"Why don't you ask a grownup?" asked the boy.
"Well I was talking to your dad and he said that you loved dogs, Johnny" The Centre did its work well. The neighborhood boy had a collie which he doted on.
Johnny wrinkled his brow. "Howja know my name?"
Still unperturbed, the pedophile answered. "I work with your father." This information was also supplied by the Centre. "In the factory."
Johnny shook his head. "I don't believe you."
It was only when he was about to give in after the strange man tried for half an hour that Nigel came in, and stuck a needle in Hughie's arm.
"All right, he acted like any normal eight year old." said Mr. Parker from above, "Take him back to his parents after he sees the 'doctor'." The doctor would implant deep ingraiHughie memories into the boy so the only recall of the Centre would be in a dream. Mr. Parker left his observation tower and waited for Nigel to appear.
"Well sir, the other boy is properly sedated and ready for instruction. As you suspected, Neogenesis has destroyed his intuition. . What he learns from now on will have to be out of books and we do need someone to teach him."
"Yes, but we're going to release him."
"What? He'll die."
"So? If you're that worried, get a trainer for him, but quietly. For our program to work to use these things, we have to get them before six years old. Remember the Church rule, give a boy to me before six and he's ours for life? In ten years, he will have children, and four years from then, they will be ready. If not, we wait a few more years. I have a lot of patience, Nigel and we can use the other recruits."
"What about others, the ones whose parents we ah eliminated?"
"Do you think they'll be any good after they've been in the Centre all their lives? They need references, so they can believe a story that their parents either abandoHughie them or sold them to us." He waved his hand. "If they survive, put them on work detail. The Centre needs lower levels."
"Why sir?"
Lamech looked at Nigel as if he were a snake. "Do you think I want our property to see the light of day? No once we get them working for us, we want to make sure they're locked down so far that they do not know there is a world up here!"
The next day, Parker and Nigel, now dressed in workmen's clothes, left in a truck piled high with boxes. They into town, each man looking for a likely place to drop off their supplies. "I would say a corner store," said Nigel.
"No."
"Why because you hate Chinamen?"
"No. We want a place with a large distribution not a store where they have a limited supply and where kids just come in to get strawberries and bubblegum!" he stormed. He pointed towards a gray building where a woman in shabby clothing helped her husband up the stairs. "The doctor there helps the poor. Since we conveniently destroyed those creature's identification and means to get a decent job, they'll be vagrants and that'll be the only place where they can go in case, one of them gets sick or injured."
They drove up to the building. While Nigel took out one of the boxes, Lamech went inside.
"Wait your turn," said the receptionist, a tall woman with blonde hair in a bun.
"Excuse me, but I work for the president of the Western Pharmacy Company," said Lamech with a hypocritical bow. "He's decided to donate some medicine for children." He opened up one of the boxes that had several bottles of a drug supplied by the firm and gave the receptionist an envelope. .
She examined the contents, took one look at a rather unruly boy and then pressed the intercom. "Doctor, could you come here a moment?"
After a call to the Western Pharmacy Company, a call rerouted to the Centre, of course, the doctor agreed to take the bottles and told his assistant to prepare some syringes. "We don't have much trouble with young mental patients and I'm not an authority in that matter."
"Well rather than send them to an institution, perhaps we can keep them calm and send them home to their parents," said the receptionist. She read the letter again. "It says they've had excellent success on their first trials. The girl's now having a 95 percent average compared to 60 percent in her school grades."
"It says that if it doesn't work, then it proves for those patients, sterner methods are needed," added Nigel. "I had to send my son to reform school."
The doctor told the receptionist to give them a receipt Mr. Parker gladly took. A moment later, they drove up to a grocery store.
This time, they approached the manager, gave him a box of suckers after accepting money and getting the addresses of other stores in the location. Of course, Parker and his goon did not need that, but it was fun seeing how that balding idiot with the fat belly could be such a fool.
"I want a way to introduce the drug in the food supply," said Mr. Parker, "We'll need several men and women of certain character to take jobs in the food and agricultural industry."
"Why sir?" asked Nigel. "We've already dropped the boxes off on all the stores here."
"We still have much way to travel. What's the next area on the map?"
"The capital."
"And after that?"
"New Jersey, and then New York. I doubt they'll move farther. If they do, then we set up a subsidiary to donate the drugs. I have to get someone on the bases, just in case any of them try to enlist. Oh and since I know what they look like, and their blood types, I can find them anywhere." He drove back past the doctor's clinic. "Looks like that nun has a handful," he said.
Mr. Parker glanced out the window and saw a nun with a couple of unruly hillbilly kids, the boy was swearing and kicking while the girl punched the sister in the arm. "Brats!" He never heard such language and both children seemed spoiling for a fight.
Suddenly the boy ran off. "Charles get back here!"
"Here he is," said a policeman who grabbed the boy by his collar.
"Thank you. I don't know what to do about him and Margaret's just as bad." She looked at the girl, a red haired hellion and with the help of the cop, escorted both of them into the doctor's office.
"I wonder what that was about?" asked Parker and started to turn his head around, but Nigel stopped him.
"We have to get back to the clinic."
And so the two men drove up, and did not notice that five minutes later, the nun came out of the clinic with her now two very docile charges.
.
. . . .