Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

The low light in Raines' office was making Lyle's eyes sting as he and Raines discussed his project with Pops. Whatever nonchalant declarations he had made to Riley in the elevator, he wasn't nearly so confident here-- and he just couldn't make them see that. Riley might not be ready. He sat on a corner of the desk, hands in his pockets, mind racing a mile a minute. They had just finished watching both Riley and Jarod's versions of the simulation, doing a final comparison. Lyle hadn't actually watched Riley's that closely, he really didn't need to; he remembered everything that went on in that room. Come to think of it, he had almost all of Riley's entire life burned into the back of his mind. She was his project and he had seen almost all of her life like it was his own.

"You called the Triumvirate." He spat at the older man, wondering what Raines could have been thinking. This could be the death of all of them. "What if this was a fluke? Riley's hardly practiced enough to be capable of what you want out of her. She isn't ready for a presentation in front of the Triumvirate. She hasn't even successfully Simmed Jarod yet--"

"It wasn't a fluke." Raines hissed, interupting Lyle mid-sentence. "If she can reach a conclusion once, she can reach it again. She knows what's at stake. She won't dissapoint us."

"Oh, she won't want to. But you can't force her to be smarter than she is by threatening her." Lyle argued, trying to impress on the man what a suicidal error this might be.

"She has already proven herself to posess that grade of intelligence. All she needs is a motivation to maintain that level of performance. She won't push herself if we do not drive her to."

"The spotlight this news will bring from the Triumvirate certainly will change things." Lyle conceded, tired of trying to make his point to a resisting audience. There wasn't much he could do anyway, Raines had already notified the Triumvirate-- it wasn't as though they could take back the information. In any case, his opinion on the matter was obviously a moot point where Raines and Mr. Parker were concerned; Lyle may have been Riley's mentor, but Raines was the director of her project, and unfortunately, what he said went. Every other decision they had ever made concerning Riley's project, Raines had held something over Lyle's head-- he knew too much. He couldn't truly argue against the man without fear of placing himself in danger. One tip to the feds about Lyle's extracuricular activities and his life was shot.

Still, this damnable project could unravel every bit of hard work he had done over the past eleven years, and he couldn't afford that. Riley was his ticket to the top. He wouldn't lose that now.

"I don't see how this could possibly change things for anything other than the better." Mr. Parker couldn't help but smile at the thought of having a pretender with the potential to become greater than Jarod.

"No, you see this could have negative effects on her psyche; having her pretend to be a pretender that was better than she was, well that was just a learning experience." Lyle tried explaining, though his frustration was evident in the muscle ticking in his jaw. He got up from the desk, running his hands through his hair, frustrated by the unforeseen problem. All these years thinking she was lesser than Jarod, and here, on this first SIM, she had managed to surpass him. She had a better understanding of the current technologies, but it shouldn't have affected her timing by that much. With the Gemini Project, it had only given him an edge by something under a minute, hadn't it? Maybe she just had a better tap into her abilities than Jarod or his clone did. They'd certainly done enough experiments on her for that to happen... "Having her pretend to be a pretender that is not as good as she is, could cause her abilities to diminish. I for one do not want to see that happen." He said, looking pointedly at Raines.

"That won't happen." Mr. Parker stated determinedly. "She becomes people of lower intelligence in all of her other SIM's and it has never effected her, this won't be any different."

"Riley was only pretending to be those people for a short period of time." He argued. "This will be prolonged exposure to the same mentality. She will react like any other pretender; she will adapt her psyche to fit his." He motioned over at Raines with his right hand, keeping the thumbless one firmly in his pants pocket. "We have proof of that; the whole reason Kyle became a psychopath was because he was exposed to the mentality of a psychopathic killer for an extended period of time." He told his 'father', sneering inwardly at the man's seeming incompetence. He couldn't believe sometimes that Mr. Parker had managed to hold onto the Centre as long as he had, but as he had also managed to thwart Lyle's own attempts at a coup, he must have been doing something right. Lyle turned away from the window he had taken to staring out of. "Now what we need to decide is if catching Jarod is worth losing the mental abilities of a Pretender who could surpass him."

"Catching Jarod is the most important issue, always has been, we need her to find him." Mr. Parker said, looking at Lyle as though challenging him to even attempt to pull Riley from the project.

"Hey," Lyle stepped back from the window with an indignant expression, "I want Jarod back just as much as you do, but I'm not willing to sacrifice a project I've worked eleven years on-"

"Who said that you had a choice in the matter?" Raines shot at the murderous young man, "Need I remind you that you are not in control of this project."

Lyle was staring daggers at the man, sweet thoughts of murder and mayhem twisting themselves around his mind. He advanced a few steps on the older man, repressing those instincts for the moment with brutal force.

"I have more control over Riley than you ever will, Raines."

The older man sneered at him, before hissing in a low breath. "You control the girl, and I control you."

Mr. Parker looked about ready to tell Raines to shove it- no one controls a Parker, but Lyle cut in before he could. He didn't need dear old dad to fight his battles for him. He was practically shaking in anger at the mere insinuation, but didn't rise to the bait entirely- deciding instead to attack the man on a much more personal level. "I can't believe you agree with him," He said, indicating Mr. Parker with a sweep of his hand. "You've wanted an opportunity like this your whole life, a chance for one of your precious projects to surpass Jarod. If she continues with this program without any changes her abilities will diminish, and we can't be sure that it won't cause her to go into a full mental regression." He spewed. "What would you do if you forced her to continue with this program and you turned her into another Angelo, barely even able to form a complete sentence? You've gotten close enough to it with her in the past and you know it."

Raines approached him slowly, the squeaking wheels of his oxygen tank screaming for oil. "You know Lyle, you are completely replaceable, all I have to do is pick up with her where you left off."

"Oh, I'd love to see you try it; Riley wouldn't work with you even if she wanted to." Lyle spat at the man, "She wouldn't know how. Or don't you remember how long it took for me to get her to stop getting startled out of the SIM whenever I talked to her? And this time it would be worse, Sarah only worked with her for two years, I've worked with her for eleven. Face it, you need me, otherwise your precious little project is useless."

Mr. Parker now used his moment to step between the two of them, forced to literally pry the incensed men apart with a hand on each of their chests. "Okay, calm down, there has to be a way for the subject to work on this project and keep her sense of self, we just have to adapt the program." Mr. Parker attempted to calm down the dangerous men before him, wondering for a short moment why he had thought it would ever be so easy as just a 'have her do the project, nothing can go wrong.'

"I'm listening." Lyle stepped away from Raines, and away from his rancid breath, straightening his shirt as he did so.

By the end of the night they had neither a real plan, nor a real compromise-- not to Lyle's standards. He had been outvoted two-to-one that the assignment should be scrapped and given to a less extraordinary young mind; Riley wasn't the only genius at their disposal. Raines and Parker were both adamant though, that they should have their best project put to work on it, that returning Jarod was the sole objective. Lyle could understand their drive to have the irreverent man back in hand, but not at the cost of this project-- his project. All-in-all, Lyle felt he had lost a lot, won very little, and overall wasted the last three hours on pointless debate. He was feeling murderous, and it was not generally a good thing when Lyle was feeing murderous.

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