A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? -- Albert Einstein

Riley entered the room cautiously; her brave façade slipping as she unconsciously gave in to her nervousness. She hated meeting new people; it was enough of a rare occurrence that she hardly had any people skills. This coupled with the fact that very few of the people she had met brought with them good events hardly improved her feelings on the matter.

She allowed herself a restrained glance around the office. Mr. Parker sat behind a large desk across from her. There was a doorway off in the corner of the room, but it probably only held a washroom. The only escape from this room was the door she had entered by. Of course, Riley couldn't have run away even if there was a way out; but she still liked the illusion of having a choice in the matter. Two people were standing off to her immediate right, a young woman and an older man. The woman looked to be Mr. Lyle's age, and the man slightly younger than Mr. Raines, but older than Mr. Parker. Mind you, it was hard to gage, considering that Mr. Raines had no hair and was living off what could be termed life support. She gave up trying to discern their respective ages, that wasn't what she was here for after all.

The first thing that struck her as she entered was the noise; she had never heard any two people be that loud before in her life. The woman was yelling at Mr. Parker, the man she had met only a little while ago, and he seemed to be trying to pacify her-- with absolutely no luck. It was a good thing that Riley had managed to restrain her empathic abilities for the moment, because if she hadn't, coming into this room would have landed her in even worse pain than she had felt out in the hallway. As it was, the hairs on the back of her arms and neck were standing at attention, and her nerves felt as though they had been rubbed raw. She stifled the urge to place her hands over her ears, and tensed up every time the woman opened her mouth to speak. She was reminded at that moment that her head was still aching dully from the sedatives she had been given.

"Daddy I will not tolerate this!"

"Angel, we already discussed this. This project is going to help return Jarod to the Centre, and if I'm not mistaken our deal says that when you catch Jarod, you are free to go, I thought you'd be ecstatic over this." The man sounded placating, though Riley knew from the emotions she could read off of him, that he wasn't really worried so much about what his daughter thought of the subject, as what she was going to do about it. He was angry on the inside. Anxious on the inside.

"You let the Marlboro Man out there create life! Human life! Daddy this isn't right."

What's a Marlboro Man?

-

-

Sydney watched the young pretender enter the room, looking over her appraisingly.She was around five foot nothing with dark hair and eyes. He could easily pick out several of Jarod's more predominant features. His eyes for one, but while they were the same in the physical sense, her eyes held none of Jarod's arrogant playfulness; instead they showed an odd blend of fearful curiosity. It was strange seeing an expression in those eyes that he doubted he had ever seen in Jarod's. Indeed, as she watched Parker yelling with her father she looked nothing short of terrified. Her muscles were tensed, and her eyebrows shot up in surprise, eyes wide in fright. Her fight or flee instinct looked as though it were about to kick in at any moment. As he scanned her over he noticed a red mark spanning across her cheek, and was reminded of what Raines had said about obedience. He frowned darkly at the thought of what might have happened. He watched as she instantaneously seemed to take in her surroundings, eyes flickering from the large window behind Mr. Parker's desk, to the pair fighting in front of it.

"Ahem, Parker." The man whom Riley could only assume was Sydney (as he obviously wasn't a Miss anything) drew her attention away from the heated argument and pointed out Riley's entrance into the room. It was then that she noticed he had been staring at her since she had entered. Everyone was looking at her. Riley paled slightly at the sudden attention but held her ground... barely... just barely held her ground. Where was Mr. Lyle? She needed him in here. Especially since Miss Parker seemed to become even more infuriated with Riley's simple appearance if her look was anything to go by. Riley took an unconscious step backward. Something within her told her that if she were really as smart as she was supposed to be, she would be running away right now. Fast. It was unusual enough for Riley to meet anyone outside of Mr. Raines and Mr. Lyle, but here she was, alone, in a room with three new people, one of whom looked like she wished Riley nothing but illness. Riley was really beginning to contemplate the idea of just running away, direct order or not, Miss Parker was scary. She placed a neutral mask on her face however and calmed down upon hearing Mr. Lyle enter behind her, Mr. Raines on his heels. She turned around as she saw them enter, the terror of moments before forgotten. Mr. Lyle walked up behind her and with a nudge at her back, ignoring the instinctual tense of muscles at the touch, maneuvered her over to a chair in front of the desk.

The chair was wide and cushioned, the kind people were meant to sit back and sink into. Riley had to sit at the edge of the seat so that her feet would still touch the ground. Every one of the adults in the room was scrutinizing her, and she wished they wouldn't. She didn't know what they were looking for, and she didn't know how to give it to them. In particular she could feel Sydney staring at her down a crooked nose, boring holes in her face. She wished she could turn and meet him eye to eye, maybe say something to get him to back off, but such disrespect was sure to land her in the infirmary. She had to remind herself that she was here to receive an assignment, she didn't have time to wonder about the peculiar behavior of some of the other people in the room. Still, throughout the time she sat there his eyes never left her; as if he were searching for something he thought was lost.

"If you two don't mind... we have business to discuss." Riley didn't have to turn around and look at him to see that Mr. Raines was motioning for the man and woman to leave the room, or know that he was glaring at them as though he could remove them by sheer force of will.

"If you think for even an instant, that I'm leaving this room, then you--"

"Parker," Mr. Lyle moved between the verbally sparring adults, lowering his voice a bit, and looking back at Riley. "This doesn't concern you."

"The hell it doesn't!" She roared and Riley flinched in her seat as a lancing blow of the pain she had been feeling out in the hallway shot through her head. She clenched her hand in her pant leg and fixed her focus on a point just outside the window. That was a cloud. An actual cloud. It reminded her of nothing she had ever seen before, but it looked soft, or like it ought to be soft, even though she knew it was just a collection of rain droplets waiting to fall. The emotions in the room shifted and Riley realized the infernal woman had stopped yelling. Resentful feelings were practically oozing off of Mr. Raines though, so it seemed as though she would be staying.

"Well," Mr. Parker began, rubbing his hands together. Riley faced him, attentive and interested in learning about her newest assignment, just as they had trained her to be. "Let's begin."

Way to get to the point she thought irately. And she wanted them to get to the point. The sooner they did, the sooner she could get out of this room.

Mr. Raines voice turned her attention to him. "Riley, this is Dr. Sydney and Miss Parker; you're going to be working together for a while." She noticed that he hadn't followed that up with the two-bit 'respect them or die' that accompanied every other introduction he had ever given her before. She wondered if the oversight was because he was angry, or because he really didn't care for her to give them her obedience. She also had to wonder how long 'a while' was. Her regular assignments weren't very long usually. The longest simulation she could remember she had finished in a matter of days, and Mr. Raines had been angry with her for not finishing it more quickly.

"You're assignment is to track down and devise a strategy to capture a Pretender named Jarod."

She felt like she'd been dumped in a bucket of ice water. Capture a Pretender? But how? Why? If she had to recapture him, then he must have left the Centre of his own choosing. Was he insane? Why would he ever want to do something like that?

"Wonder-boy ran away 4 years ago." Miss Parker quipped.

He'd stayed outside for four years. And why hadn't they gotten him back yet? Surely they had been trying?

"You will be provided with information on his years in and out of the Centre over the next couple of weeks." Mr. Lyle began where Mr. Raines had left off.

Weeks?

"You are going to learn more about him progressively over that time, starting with his childhood, and ending with his adulthood now. You will also be helping the recapture unit when you aren't working a SIM. Miss Parker and Dr. Sydney are part of that unit. Any questions?"

Where do I begin?

"You did say that this... Jarod...is a Pretender, right?" Like me?

"I thought you said she was intelligent." Miss Parker shot over Riley's head towards Mr. Raines.

Riley felt resentment peak around Mr. Raines and resisted the urge to sink down into the chair. He would probably blame her for Miss Parker's slight. She chewed her lip as the two adults seemed to try to kill each other through sheer force of will. Maybe if she kept chewing on her lip she could swallow herself... that would certainly get rid of the problem.

You know, the faster you answer my questions the faster you can rid yourself of my presence Riley thought of telling her. Instead she opted for the marginally less rude, "Can I take that as a yes?" Riley could tell that Mr. Lyle still wasn't quite satisfied with her paltry attempt at cooling the tension, but he didn't seem angry, so she hoped the mishap would be forgotten.

Riley rushed into the next part of her question quickly, without waiting for an answer. She knew that it would irritate Mr. Raines, but she also needed to know the answer. She couldn't allow them to negate her request yet.

"How exactly am I supposed to become, be, a person who doesn't know how to be himself?" Miss Parker raised an eyebrow at her question. Mr. Lyle was giving her a similar look and she decided she ought to explain herself further. He obviously thought that she was trying to disobey again, and she really didn't want to make him any madder than he already was. She was definitely pushing it today.

"I mean, one of the basic principles to a good pretender, and I'm assuming he's a good pretender if you want him back so badly, is that they don't have much of a core personality, and that they have the ability to change that core personality to fit another persons. So how am I supposed to latch onto his core personality if he doesn't have one?"

Mr. Lyle moved around to lean against the edge of the desk, facing her. "You aren't the first person to think of that problem." He said, looking coolly past her to Mr. Raines. So they'd fought over this? Riley knew her keepers rarely agreed on anything, especially when it involved her, but their choice of simulations usually wasn't one of them. "We are going to have you do some of the same simulations he did while at the Centre, I don't expect the way you find the answers to be the same the first few times, but there should be similarities between them, seeing as there should be only one correct conclusion you can reach." Riley would have had to be deaf in order to miss the unspoken and you'd better reach it.

"You will be allowed to view his simulations after you perform them. I expect you can unravel how thinks--by the end of this you should know him as well as he knows himself. You will then SIM his recapture. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but I... I do have a few more questions." Part of her hoped he wouldn't let her ask them; insist that she had all of the information necessary, because she knew her questions would not be met by a happy audience.

"Go ahead." Of course. Just so long as it applies to the simulation, I'm allowed to talk all I want.

She took a breath, settling her gaze to look at a spot just below his eyes, so she wouldn't have to meet them. "For how long did he live here?"

Mr. Lyle seemed to play with the idea of telling her for a few moments. Riley hoped the man thought what she was asking pertained to her simulation; she was more likely to get an answer from him that way, she knew she was pushing it though. It didn't really, not in such a way that she thought it could affect the simulation, but she was still curious. Something was warning her that things here weren't all what they seemed, and she had learned over time that if there was something they weren't telling her, it was usually rather significant. Finally Mr. Lyle seemed to come to his decision, sending her something of a subdued look of suspicion, one that she caught, though no one else seemed to.

"About thirty years. Why?"

Riley knew that he had caught her out, though she tried to present her reasoning in a way that would sound applicable to the SIM, if only to save face. Riley understood that her behavior reflected directly on her keepers, and it simply wouldn't do to seem rebelious like this in front of the others in the room; it would look as though Mr. Lyle and Mr. Raines couldn't control their own subject- and that was never good. She swallowed before speaking, making up an excuse on the spot.

"Well it's just that, if someone has spent their whole life in one place, they tend to become familiar with it. So if he was here for thirty years... something had to have happened to make him leave. Something must have really unnerved him to make him leave the one place he has ever known..." She paused there, leaving the sentence hanging, letting them figure out what she was asking without actually having to say it. She had basically just accused the people in this room of forcing him to run away... had just said 'someone messed up and made him want to leave'... it seemed that she would be pushing it if she added on the final, accusatory, so what happened?

Then again, going by the look she was now receiving from every person in the room, it didn't seem to matter that she had left the end off anymore, they all seemed to know exactly what she was saying. Even the little metal bunny rabbit on the desk looked like it was glaring at her.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you that right now Riley," Mr. Lyle said, and she could tell from the tone of his voice that he was uneasy. And that he was displeased by her impudence. She wished now that she hadn't asked the question.

"Are those all of your questions?"

Riley quailed slightly under his muted glower. "I... I actually... I have one more."

"Fine." He gave her a pointed look and she began to second guess the question she was about to ask, she had already angered him enough for one day.

"What's gonna happen when I bring him back?" She asked quickly. Riley knew what would happen to her if she escaped (not that she'd ever want to) and had the misfortune to be found, and she wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of bringing Jarod back if all they were going to do was thrash him as a form of 're-education'. It seemed like... a waste.

"-If you bring him back." Miss Parker shot her a disbelieving look.

There's only so many places he can hide Lady, I'm bound to find him at some point. Riley wanted to return, but she restrained her tongue at the last moment. Still, the statement had been stupid; really, it was absurd to think that she wouldn't find him. If Riley didn't locate and capture this man Jarod, the only person paying for it, would be her.

"Actually, I...uh... I sort of did mean when..." Riley said, not meeting the woman's eyes.

"When you bring him back," Mr. Parker said, "He will be put to work on SIMs like he should have been doing for the past four years. Jarod belongs here. He is the property of the Centre, just as you are. He should never have left in the first place."

Put to work on SIM's... Riley wondered skeptically if she was actually supposed to believe that.

"Has you curiousity been satisfied now, Riley?" Mr. Lyle asked her and Riley just nodded, understanding that his question was a warning. You are crossing a line into insolence Riley... Do not make me punish you. You will not like it.

"Good. Then I think we're done here." Mr. Lyle got up from his seat and Riley mimicked him, heading for the door. She wanted to go to her room and sleep, maybe get rid of the headache pulsing between her temples.

"Lyle-" Dr. Sydney called out after them, and surprisingly, Mr. Lyle did turn around to wait for whatever the older man had to say. Riley stopped over by the door, anxious at the prospect of finally being able to leave. The morning had been more eventful than her last month at the facility, and she was still reeling from it.

"I was just wondering if I could have a word with Riley in my office for few moments." The older man asked, hands coming up to his jacket pockets casually, as though he were proposing they take the stairs instead of the elevators, because they offered better exercise.

Mr. Lyle walked over to him to make the discussion more private. Riley watched him go with a slightly disappointed feeling growing in her stomach. She hoped he'd forbid it, she hoped he'd tell Dr. Sydney to go lose himself down in the renewal wing where no one could find him, because in all honesty, she did not feel up to dealing with a psychiatrist. She didn't feel up to measuring her words, or watching him take notes as he asked her about her feelings. She didn't feel up to lowering her defenses in front of a person she didn't know, long enough to cooperate with them, and she didn't feel up to having her mind scoured by a complete stranger. She most certainly did not feel up to receiving the same psychiatric evaluation, like all the others, that she was a withdrawn, hostile, painfully shy young person who desperately needed traumatic counseling.

Waves of irritation and anger were sweeping off Mr. Lyle as he talked with Dr. Sydney, and if he thought that moving not three feet away would stop Riley from hearing the older men speak, he was sorely mistaken. He paused a moment, shifting from one foot to another in a way that Riley recognized. He was trying to decide, which meant he wasn't going to outright forbid anything. He was considering it. "Make it either my office or Miss Parker's office and I don't see the harm."

"Afraid she'll find something in my office by transcendentalists and have an epiphany of free thought?"

"No, just afraid you might have dismantled the camera in your clock. So slip the Freudian discussion over to another room and I'll allow it--but keep in mind that the topic of this little chat had better be something I would approve of, because if it isn't-"

"The topic of discussion will meet with your approval. I merely want to get to know her better."

Lyle could have growled. If he refused, it would signal to Parker that he was hiding something about Riley from them. That would never do-- it would only cause Parker to go snooping around. The shrink had him cornered and he knew it.

"Fine, alright, talk to her, but keep it brief, no two hour sessions, she has a SIM to perform this afternoon before we get too deep into this latest venture."

"Lyle, he's a psychiatrist—" Miss Parker shot from the other side of the room "by all outward purposes he's just going to ask her a question and then mumble 'uh-huh" and 'how does this make you feel?' how much damage could he possibly do?"

Riley could have laughed. She'd had enough profiles done by men like Dr. Sydney to know that it was quite a bit more complicated than that.

"Alright, Riley, Dr. Sydney would like to talk with you before this afternoon's SIM, I want you to go with him and Sydney," He said, turning back to the older man, "Have a sweeper direct her back to her room when you two are finished."

With that Lyle walked out of the door. Upon catching up with Raines he told him what a transpired in the office and made sure Willie would be watching on the security monitors. If anything happened in that office, Sydney would pay, he'd make sure of it.

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