Behind every little problem there's a larger problem, waiting for the little problem to get out of the way

Parker watched her father pace in front of his desk, hand held up to his chin, covering his mouth as his eyebrows fixed together, meeting in the middle of his forehead with a wrinkled V.

"You don't think the Triumvirate really has a reason to bring anyone else into this mess, do you Daddy?" She asked with an arched eyebrow. By anyone else she meant 'us', and by us she meant 'we', and by we she of course meant 'you'. Parker was, naturally, always ready for a few rounds with anything the African bastards wanted to dish out, her father on the other hand... Parker had great faith in her father, but for all his machinations, each time something like this happened at the Centre it showed up on only one man's personnel report, and that was Mr. Charles Parker. The Triumvirate could only act stupid for so long. If they wanted her father out of his position, it would be an easy matter—there would be a fight of course, but the Triumvirate had the cards stacked against him.

Her father gave a dry chuckle, "Since when did the Triumvirate need a reason to do anything?" He said with a shake of his head. "No, they'll go through everyone here until they find what they're looking for. That rat, Raines has somehow managed to get himself off the hook, now it's your brother they're after."

"And if they can't get Lyle to crack?" She asked, picking up a silver framed picture of her and her father and running her thumb along the edge.

"Good for Lyle," he answered, sitting down in the leather swivel chair behind his desk, "Bad for us."

"And if he does?"

"Bad for Lyle, bad for us." He told her seriously and Parker could tell he was about to blow into full lecture-mode. "You need to understand Angel, this family is linked together, what happens to one of us affects us all." He held up a hand in a hushing motion before plowing on and Parker settled for rolling her eyes towards the ceiling rather than telling her father how she felt about that particular link in their chain.

"Now, I know you and your brother have had a few differences in the past--"

"--I hear that threatening people at gunpoint will do that to almost any relationship--"

"He's a part of this family Angel, he and you are the future—we need both of you to keep this legacy going. The Centre must stay in the hands of a Parker."

Parker stood up from her perch on the edge of the desk and paced slowly in front of it, tracing the pattern her father mere moments before had been cutting into the floor. "So what do we do?" She asked, irritated. There was nothing they could do.

Her father gave her another dry look, "We pray to God Lyle knows how to bluff."

Parker clenched her hands unconsciously; she wanted a cigarette. "So if Lyle does, by some stretch of all probability, manage to get himself off the hook and the Triumvirate continues tearing this place up, hypothetically, what do I do?"

"You, Angel, are already taken care of."

Parker stopped her pacing and looked at her father inquisitively.

"Angel, when skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed." He quoted with a small quirk to his lips, under less stressed conditions he might have been smiling.

"Thoreau?" She asked.

"Emerson."

-

-

The side door off the house pushed open with a prolonged creak and Riley peeked out the small crack she had made. Wind was whipping outside, bending the trees at the edge of the woods. The sky was a gloomy grey and dark, heavy clouds spit tiny rain smatters downwards in a way that Will called 'sprinkling'. Will was insane.

It had been raining for the past two days straight, the power had failed early on, and Riley's less-than-adequate immune system had decided to crash around the same time. No one knew where she might have contracted a virus from, without another person for miles, but Riley suspected she had caught it in one of the motel rooms she and Jarod had stayed in. Riley had never had a cold in her life. The Facility was sterile. The Centre sub-levels were sterile. Riley had never before received an immunization shot. She had never coughed, sneezed, or had a fever. She had never built up any of the basic defenses most children did, and it only figured that her first foray into the world would take place in the middle of the cold season, in a dusty old house, during the wettest two days that fall had yet seen.

The past day had been spent sequestered in Will's room, working their way through twelve consecutive chess games that ended in a tie of six wins and six losses for each of them. The major had handed Will a thermometer silently sometime around ten o'clock, after Riley had battled her way through her fifth coughing fit in as many hours, and Will had somehow managed to coax her into keeping an eye on her temperature from that point on. The only bottle of cold medicine in the house had been scrounged up, half empty, and handed to Will in a similar fashion as the thermometer. It seemed that Will had officially been labeled nurse-maid/delegate-on-behalf-of-the-household when it came to Riley, he and her shadow had involved themselves in a sordid love affair over that past week that showed no signs of stopping. Riley surprised even herself by being happy for the near-constant company.

Jarod had stopped by once or twice during the previous day, to watch the chess matches and Riley had ignored him with the statue-like indifference she had adopted from the beginning. After her third successive loss while he was watching, Jarod left, and only stopped in again with soup and a cracker called saltines at lunch, then sandwiches at dinner. She ducked back inside and looked around the kitchen, gazing at the brown wooden cabinets and white walls with a look of tremendous reluctance. She swallowed against the sore and scratchy throat she had woken to that morning, licked her lips, summoned her courage; she hated this part. Riley dashed out of the door in a sprint, focusing on the door to the garage and trying to tune out the grass at her ankles and raindrops spattering on her face. She shouldn't be outside, it wasn't allowed. Mr. Raines was going to have a fit when he found out. They had warned her; outside was a dangerous, dangerous, place. She had to get back inside, had to, now.

She attained the cracking white painted side door of the garage, reached in through the broken pane of glass, and flipped the lock on the inside. The hinges protested mightily as she shoved the door open and rushed in, pushing it closed once she had made it over the entryway. She shoved a box over in front of the door and latched it again to keep it from blowing open.

She coughed wetly, entire body shuddering in the effort, and winced at the uncomfortable, sore feeling in her chest. She rubbed her hair dry with a towel taken from a box full of bathroom accoutrements, and shifted a pot on top of another box to catch the drips leaking through the roof. The water hit the bottom of the saucepan with a steady pit-pat and joined in the small noise made by similarly styled water catchers scattered around the structure.

The garage was gloomy, the overhead light bulb was broken and the wiring had long ago short-circuited, so the only sources of light were the flashlights that she and Will had set up strategically around the room. There were few windows, a broken pane of glass in the side door she had just rushed through and a few lined up along the top of the garage door. Will appeased her by covering these with towels and blankets they had found stacked away in a moldy box in the corner. Vents in the corners led outside, and let a little light and fresh air in, but she didn't mind those so very much; The Centre had vents too.

Riley walked over to an upended moving box and sat down on top of it, ensconcing herself amidst the other debris along the wall. She watched as Will tinkered with something in the engine of the truck, metallic sounds bouncing around as he knocked something with a monkey-wrench. He popped her a look from over the opened hood of the car. Will hadn't wanted Riley to come out today; he seemed to think that she'd only get sicker; he was probably right. Riley had been adamant though, insisting, arguing, and cajoling her way to the garage. It was the only place in the tumbledown house that felt remotely right, and she had already been kept inside the entire day before.

It was early in the morning now, Jarod was out running, and the Major still in bed, Will had only agreed to come to the garage for a little while, while no one else was up.

"Dad's going to skin me alive if he finds out I let you out of the house." He said, "We should really go back inside."

Riley picked up something heavy-feeling from next to her in the box and threw it at him to communicate her thoughts on the subject. He ducked easily and the old softball clattered against the wall behind him harmlessly. Riley had aimed wide; it wasn't as though she actually wanted to hurt him, not anymore.

Will stood up from where he was leaning against the truck and moved over to one of the windows in the garage door. He lifted up a towel and peaked out, Riley tensed a bit as the stormy-weathered torrential grey sky, and wind whipping around the trees at the edge of the woods came into view from her perch. Will let the makeshift blind drop a bit when he noticed her edginess, though he kept stealing looks through the small gap he held open at the bottom.

"This is the first time you've ever seen rain, isn't it?" He asked, though the question was really a rhetorical one. Riley had never seen rain before, not even through a window at the facility, and the drops pattering on the roof and against her window had woken her up last night.

"I noticed the glow from your flashlight under your door last night." He told her, looking away from the window and leaning with his back to the garage door, arms crossed over his chest. "You were scared, weren't you."

Riley curled herself a little more firmly into a ball, sending him another sullen look. "You were worried too; you st-stayed up all night." She changed the subject, hating the stuttering she still hadn't managed to tame. She had been scared, but Riley wasn't going to tell him that. To be honest, Riley really wasn't sure what he had been feeling. It had been something like the opposite of every other emotion she could ever remember picking up on. The closest she could link it with was worry, but even that seemed a stretch.

Will's eyebrows knit together and his head cocked to one side inquisitively. "My light wasn't on. How did you know I was awake?"

Riley shrugged and pulled her knees closer to her chin a bit. "I-I could feel you. You were worried." She reiterated and watched as Will pushed himself off the wall to walk back over to the truck.

"I was concerned about you."

"Oh." She hadn't realized there was that much of a difference before.

"What's that like? Being an empath, I mean." He asked her, picking up the tools he had been working with and placing them back on the tool racks behind him, wiping off grease and grime as he worked.

"W-What's that like? Being a clone, I mean." She responded sullenly, hoping he would drop it."

Instead, he just rolled his eyes at her. "Jarod described Angelo to me. You aren't like him."

Riley's eyebrows knit together at the thought of Angelo.

"...no more Timmy..."

Riley felt fear spike off to the left of her and followed the live emotion into the room it was coming from. She strained in the gloom to make out Jarod's tall form, though the room was too dark even to see those objects hardly an arms length away. Riley held her hands out in front of her, stretching nimbly to avoid anything she might bump into. Her hand connected with something and emotions raced along her nerve endings like electricity, exploding behind her eyes in a wisp of memory that was not hers.

"...no more Timmy. From now on..."

Riley ripped her hand away from whatever she was touching, feeling as though the flesh might melt from her bones. She stumbled backward out into the corridor with a strangled, but loud, cry, running into a rolling tray against the far wall. The metal contraption clattered to the ground, sending up a raucous din behind her. Her hand flew to cover her mouth as though her very soul would escape and she looked to Jarod guiltily. He stood about ten feet away from her with a horrorstruck expression on his face. Riley listened to her heart drumming wildly in her chest and the roaring sound of blood rushing through her ears, the sounds of running footsteps and a startled cry came from up the corridor, and Riley subconsciously tried to melt into the wall as she listened to the voices up around the bend.

"Listen! Did you hear that?"

"How could I not hear it Parker- It sounded like someone was being murdered!"

Jarod pulled Riley out of her state of shock, tugging her forward. "Go!"

Riley shook herself from the memory, unconsciously running her thumb along the tips of her fingers, tracing the perfectly circular burn marks, scalded red and black where her brain thought the electric current had entered her body. She had never actually been burnt, that chair hadn't worked in decades, but her mind thought it had. Her empathic senses would do that sometimes, creating things that weren't real; her eye color might change slightly, or she might become temporarily asthmatic, or she might lose all feeling in one of her limbs; it all depended on who her senses were picking up on. The night Mr. Lyle had disappeared nearly three years ago, and what she deduced to be the night his hand was mangled, Riley's thumb had gone numb for hours. Riley knew what Will was trying to get at. She wouldn't tell him. That secret was hers.

"I know what an empath is Riley," Will tried again, leaning forward over the hood of the truck. "It's not something that just happens normally."

Riley glared at him angrily. "There are a lot of things that aren't normal, William." She emphasized the name, dragging it out so that he couldn't miss the highlighting of the word. Will looked put off by the sudden change of topic. Good. Riley watched as his eyes narrowed in suspicion, and continued talking, "Say, d-does The Major know? I mean, it's a bit of a strange coincidence isn't it? P-Picking that particular name, out of millions. Come to th-think of it, isn't Mr. Raines' first name-?"

Will slammed the hood of the truck down angrily and threw the greasy rag he had been working with over on top of the tool bench, striding towards the side door with long angry steps. "You-- You're a real trip, you know that?" He shoved the box she had placed in front of it out of the way and fiddled with the rusted old lock, trying to jimmy it into complacent behavior. "I mean; if you didn't want to talk about it you could have just told me, I would have listened." He fought the rusty hinges and stuck lock to get the door open and stomped outside in the direction of the house.

Riley watched him go with a stubborn feeling of Serves-You-Right. A moment passed and Riley shifted on her perch, shifting back when she felt something dig into her back. She pulled the sheaf of memos out from where they were tucked into the waistband of her jeans and regarded them contemplatively. The tiniest nudge of remorse prodded at her, slowly growing in its insistence. He didn't deserve that. He was only curious. Will hadn't been trying to hurt anyone, she on the other hand... Riley jumped down off her box and headed over to the door that was still thrown open, standing back from it a ways, as she viewed the outdoor scenery as though it might bite. She could still make out Will's retreating form through the rain that was falling much harder now.

"Will, wait!" She called out, her voice muffled through her sore throat and the torrential weather outside. She wanted to apologize, but either he really hadn't heard her or he was choosing not to, because he didn't pause or turn around.

"Please wait! I'm sorry!" She tried again, "I need to t-talk to you!" Riley tried making her voice heard through the wind and rain; it wasn't much use though, she could hardly hear herself from where she stood. She looked reluctantly around the garage for a moment, trying to tell herself that she hadn't come out to the garage that morning with anything particular on her mind, that she didn't actually need to talk to Will, that she didn't need to go outside again. The sheaf of memos nudged her uncomfortably in the back.

Riley pelted out into the rain, shivering wetly in the thin baseball shirt she wore, and trying not to think that if she were caught out here she would be in so much trouble. She caught up to Will within three feet of the house and he rewarded her by turning around with a guarded expression, as though he expected her to pry into more deeply hidden feelings than those she had already touched upon.

It might have been better to come out here with something to say, she thought. Yes, that definitely would have been more intelligent than running outside without knowing what to say or how to say it and then standing on the lawn getting drenched, water dripping off of the bill to the baseball cap she wore, with her mouth hanging open as she tried to decide what exactly the best way to apologize was. Riley had apologized before of course; she had apologized for being disobedient, and she had apologized for being disrespectful, and she had apologized for not doing something well enough, and disappointing people. Unfortunately, Riley gathered that apologizing for intentionally being mean to a person was quite a bit different than those and therefore had no idea how to begin.

"Just forget about it." Will muttered, granting her some reprieve with a sort of half-hurt shielded look that told her everything was forgiven, if not entirely forgotten.

Riley sagged slightly in relief before giving an apprehensive look around her at the mud soaked grass and dead, wet leaves strewing the ground. "C-can we g-go inside now?"

-

-

Some time later, Riley sat cross-legged atop the rag-rug in the center of her room, the warmest bit of floor on a day like this, given that the rest of her bedroom was covered in barely-insulated hardwood. Will sat across from her, both of them clutching at steaming mugs of tea, which Will had managed to fix from the boxes they had found of variously flavored bags in the high cupboards of the kitchen. It was, but not quite, entirely unlike anything she had ever tasted before. Riley decided she liked it, a lot.

They had both changed into dryer clothing, Riley pulling on an outsize sweatshirt found in her closet that had air-force insignia across the front. It seemed to be the first piece of clothing she had found that was actually improved upon by being large-as-a-circus-tent-- the extra air inside warmed up quickly and now Riley felt just about ready to nod off in the comfortable warmth that incurred between the warm sweatshirt and even warmer tea.

The memos lay spread out between them and she waited as she watched Will pour over each one individually, elbows resting on his knees, chin resting on his fisted hands, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. His hair was still wet from the rain and spiked out at odd angles, halfway dry for its shortness, and well on its way to making him look as though he had just rolled out of bed.

Will finished reading and looked up at her with a puzzled expression. "Okay... So the Triumvirate has it in for Raines...well, wait a sec..." He shuffled papers and reread something "O.K., not anymore... The Triumvirate only has it in for Lyle. What do you want to do about it?"

Riley shrugged. "I don't really know what to do about it." She admitted slowly, that was why she had decided to get Will's help.

"Well then what was the point of—"

"I want to t-try contacting him at the Centre." She said, calmly as possible-- short, simple, to-the-point.

Will choked into his tea mutely and looking as though he was trying not to spit the drink out on top of her papers. He finally managed to swallow. "You want to what? And how precisely did you want to do that-- you could end up getting us all caught!"

"Jarod does it all the time."

"Yeah, but..." Will felt rather stupid about wanting to say yeah, but that's Jarod, and scrambled about for a better argument.

"I've seen him on his laptop. I've watched him set up the c-connection—"

"Spied on him setting up the connection, is more like it."

She rolled her eyes "Semantics." Will gave her a half-glare that he couldn't quite make full-blown. He couldn't allow himself to get angry with her; it was the first time since arriving here that Riley had chosen to have an actual conversation with anyone. He couldn't be mad about that, could he? "It's not that d-difficult." Riley persisted.

"I don't know about this, Riley. We could get a lot of people in trouble with this." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter anyway; Jarod would never let us near his computer if he knew who you wanted to call. He'd throw a fit!"

"Exactly."

Will gave her a suspicious look, as though he knew that he had missed a giant leap in the thought process and felt he knew what he had missed hearing in spite of this. "Exactly... what?"

"Exactly why we c-can't tell him."

Will stood up from the floor, kicking at the papers on the ground with an impossible expression on his face. "I'm not hearing this."

Riley stood up from where she was sitting as well, and blocked his exit from the room. "D-Don't tell me it doesn't b-bother you that Jarod can dial up his own pursuers at the Centre any t-time he wants, and you and I can't simply be-because he's got insecurities about the people we'd like t-to call." She said, advancing on him slowly.

Will backed up in small stages, glancing furtively over his shoulder as the backs of his knees bumped into the bed behind him. He slumped down onto the mattress, crossing his arms over his chest a little apprehensively, his eyebrows knitting together in a slightly distrustful look. "I'd like to take a moment to point out that his insecurities about those people are rather well based." He told her defensively.

"Maybe I have insecurities about Miss Parker. I don't stop Jarod from c-calling her any time he gets the notion!"

Will looked at her curiously, "You have insecurities about Miss Parker?" He asked her, as though the mere notion was silly. "Why? She's wonderful."

Riley rolled her eyes. Miss Parker was an unknown entity to Riley even after working periodically with the woman for the better part of a month. Riley had felt her distinct loathing during those few times that Mr. Lyle had brought her to the pursuit team's main office, always directed at him with a hard glare. Mr. Lyle always seemed to shrug her distaste off easily, but Riley hadn't liked it. She hadn't liked it at all. "We can argue Miss Parker's status as a g-goddess in this household later. The point of the matter is that ju-just because Jarod doesn't like Mr. Lyle d-doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to—"

Will stood back up from his seat on the bed. "Hold on just one second, why the heck do you want to contact Lyle? He's... Well... That is to say..."

"He's what?" Riley asked challengingly.

"He's creepy." Will told her, deflating a bit. He looked as though he might want to tell her more about his experiences with the man, hovering on the edge of indecision, but a moment later the wavering look was gone. "I remember him, I met him, he was just... creepy."

Riley scowled at him, but didn't bother trying to dissuade him of the opinion.

Will gave her another probing glance. "I just don't get it Riley. Why do you want to talk to him so badly? Even if you get hold of him, if he's in trouble with the Triumvirate, there's nothing we can do to get him out."

Riley couldn't tell him that she wanted to go home. He'd never help her. He wouldn't understand. She gave him an exasperated glare and sidestepped his question with one of her own. "Will, didn't you ever feel like you j-just needed to talk to someone that you knew?" She asked him. "Someone who knew you? You were in my p-position hardly a year ago, didn't you ever want t-to talk to Mr. Raines--"

"That man can burn on his own cigarettes." Will told her bitterly, toeing his shoe into the carpet.

"Wouldn't you like to t-tell him that?" Riley asked him.

Will gave her a sidelong glance. "You're manipulating me, aren't you?"

"Is it working?" Riley asked hopefully.

A short smile tipped the corners of his mouth. "A little."

Riley breathed a short sigh of relief. "I just need to t-talk to him. I need to find out what's g-going on." She indicated the files littering the floor. "The last time he went away he came back minus a digit. I'm just..." She paused a moment, smiling inwardly at the memory from this morning. She wasn't just worried; she was "concerned."

Will nodded, "And you aren't going to tell him anything about where we are? I'm serious Riley, even if he orders you, you can't tell him about us, anything about us."

"I know that." She said, fighting internally with the thought of lying to Will about this. He was offering his help to her. He belongs there too. (He doesn't want to be there) It doesn't matter! He never had the right to leave! He belongs to the Centre. "I won't say anything." She finished the lie, her stomach twisting slightly. Turning him in had been part of the plan from the beginning, why was she having problems with it all of a sudden? (He's going to hate me.) He was never meant to leave in the first place. He'll go back to his life and he will understand. (He hates it there. Mr. Raines lied to him.) He would have had his reasons. (Like his reasons for lying to you?) He was protecting me. He said so. (He'll never forgive you for this.) I know. Riley could see the suspicious look in his eyes that said he didn't quite believe her. Will knew better than any of them how much she missed her life. Mr. Raines had raised him as well.

"I couldn't tell them where we were even if I wanted to Will. The Triumvirate has a termination order out on me. If they find us, I'm in an even worse situation than you are." She told him. No one in the house exempting Will knew about the order at all. And she still hadn't told him why. People knowing she had killed a man had forced her to flee the only home she had ever known, Riley shuddered at the thought of what telling might do here.

Will considered her statement, coming to a decision. "We're leaving this place in two days," He told her. "We've already stayed here longer than we ever do, and I think Jarod's a little spooked. You should try calling the night before we run. That way if they set up a trace before you can get off the line, we'll be gone in the morning in any case, and Jarod and the Major never need to know."

Riley nodded at his plan, it was a good one. They were far enough away from Delaware, and in a remote enough area, that it would take the Centre several hours to get to the house, even with the jet. It could be close, but Riley was confident they would get away. She couldn't allow herself to be caught yet; not before her termination order was revoked. So unless she could force the Triumvirate into a decision quickly, which was rather unlikely, she would have to be able to get away this time. They didn't need very much time, (did they?) she couldn't stay on the line that long anyway. And with all the encryptions on Jarod's equipment, it wasn't very likely that the Centre would get a trace at all.

How would they get the Major and Jarod out of the house?

Riley picked up the papers from the floor and stacked them together as she thought about it. It was a good plan. It would work. It had to work. She needed to go home. Riley didn't allow any of her desperation to show as she heaved up the mattress with some help from Will to put the memos back in their hiding place.

A floorboard creaked out in the hallway and Riley dropped the mattress onto the bed frame quickly, looking over at Will as he grabbed a deck of cards from beneath the bed and sat down in his previous seat, she dropped into her own position opposite him and Will made like he was teaching her a game. He was halfway through explaining the theory behind a poker face, apt topic that it was, when Major Charles opened the door to the room.

He looked from Riley to Will with a semi-hopeful look on his face. "I thought I heard you two talking in here." He said. Riley clenched her jaw shut and looked down at the hand Will had just dealt her. The major's hopeful look dissipated. With a look from the elder man, Will got up from his seat and walked out of the room. The Major entered and took a seat in her desk chair, pulling it out from her desk so that he was facing her. Riley dropped the cards in her hand down onto the floor. Now that her partner-in-crime had left (traitor), they no longer served as a viable distraction from the man. The Major looked at her contemplatively before he started speaking. "Still not feeling too talkative, eh?"

Riley had been taught from childhood to be respectful towards adults, speak when spoken to, despite her feelings towards them. She had also been taught only recently that Jarod and anyone he was associated with was not to be trusted. She settled for a middle ground and shook her head in the negative.

"Well that's okay kiddo; you'll figure things out soon enough. No one here wants to hurt you, you'll learn that given time, and if you give us a chance, you might find you like it out here." He told her with a small smile.

Riley doubted it.