Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.
Epilogue
Riley woke with a jolt, jerking upright in bed, met by the pre-dawn light filtering in through the cracks in the boarded up window next to her. The thin blanket was twisted around her legs, a testimony to her thrashing, and as she rolled over it dropped off the mattress entirely. The shirt she was wearing clung to the light sheen of sweat on her back and she shivered lightly in the cool air. The watch strapped around her left wrist was too large and the result of a scam she'd pulled in a department store, much like everything else she owned, and the dials pointed to five-thirty in the morning.
The bare wooden boards of the floor were practically frozen as she swung her legs over the side of the mattress, and she pulled her feet back to the bed quickly, rummaging for socks from the black duffel bag at the foot. She grabbed a shirt from the bag as well, getting up from her warm nest of blankets and moving over to the cracked mirror that hung on the opposite wall. The ugly pink scar on her right shoulder throbbed painfully and she traced the jagged flesh with a finger, fishing for the pain pills she kept in her pocket. She had slept in her clothes again—a grey tank top and blue jeans, from the day before. Her clothes at the Centre had been baggy and androgynous, with day clothes nearly the same as nightclothes, and her mind held little distinction between the two out here either. She pried open the lid of the orange prescription bottle and tossed two pills back into her throat, swallowing them dry with a slight grimace.
She could hear the beginning hum of traffic outside the run down building, and figured a black town car would probably show up in the parking lot later that day. Today would be the day to leave. She shrugged into a shirt and pulled on a pair of shoes—sneakers: black lace-ups, running shoes.
She looked around the barren room contemplatively; the paint on the walls was chipped, and while she thought it might have once been white, there was little evidence of that unspoiled color now. The floorboards were a mouldy and washed-out gray, and sent up small puffs of dust with her every step. There was no furniture, exempting the mattress that lay on the floor, in the corner of the room. Her bag rested at the foot of it, a small black duffel containing everything she owned. Riley stole a peek out of a crack in the middle board covering the window, checking the lot below her hidey-hole for any sign of sweepers. She itched to move, though there weren't any down there. She could wait a bit longer, before going outside.
Her thoughts turned to the dream that woke her up. She could remember precious little about it, though she had been having this same dream for years on end now. It was a simple remembrance of the first time she had ever faced the Triumvirate. She had been four, and it had been directly after her first attempt at running away. It had haunted her dreams for as long as she cared to remember. The nightmares had been even worse lately than they were usually, spawned, Riley thought, by the more recent events with the Triumvirate, and her more recent escape. They left her drained and shaking long after she woke, and seemed to speak from the deepest regions of her memory. They turned her into a sobbing little girl again, a pitiful little mass of weak behavior, with every anxiety held on the surface for her enemies to see. She hated that she had once been like that. And she hated that they were turning her back into that again. She would not allow them to. Never again.
She could only remember bits and pieces from the day the Triumvirate had shown up at the Major's house in Colorado. After killing Zurbin she had stolen the woman's car, all of the sweepers were otherwise occupied up at the house, and no one had been there to stop her. After watching Jarod at the wheel for the better part of three days, it had been easy enough to drive, though the throbbing pain in her shoulder was nearly blinding, and she found herself swerving on the road more than once. She had made it to the town within half an hour, and ditched the car in a side alley, grabbing a left-behind suit jacket from the back seat to cover her bleeding shoulder.
Breaking into a vet's office had been easy work. It was a Sunday, and nearly every place of business in the town had been closed. She had stopped the bleeding and broken into a glass case containing various pain meds for cats and dogs, using the only thing available; the doctor's small metal stool. The glass had cracked and splintered, but the edges still held in their frame, and Riley managed to cut her arm up pretty badly in the process of getting the pain pills, but by that point, she was beyond caring. She had stitched the bullet wound in the front of her shoulder, making a horribly amateurish job of it, forced to use her left hand, and was shaking badly from the loss of blood. She had only been able to wrap the back of her shoulder, the exit wound, in gauze and hope it was enough. She had stumbled away from the vet clinic dizzily, without an idea of where to go or what to do when she got there. She had ended up sleeping at a bus depot, and caught the first lift out of town in the morning. The suit jacket had a wallet in the pocket, and she used the money to pay her fare and buy a sandwich once she reached the next stop. She couldn't take the Triumvirate car any farther than she already had—the Centre's fleet had tracking devices in the event that they were stolen. The break in at the vet clinic had made it into the neighboring town's newspaper, and Riley hadn't even stayed the night. She picked another bus and went to another town, and another, and another.
It had taken nearly three days of staring at the cloth-backed seat in front of her for her to come to terms with the fact that she was never going back home—if that place could even be considered home any longer. Riley knew Mr. Raines would never sanction her termination, but it seemed the Triumvirate hadn't cared about his opinion one way or another. And now she had killed one of their own, there was simply no coming back from anything like that. The African outfit would be out for her blood, and she had no way of protecting herself from them. She had no knowledge of the outside world, no birth certificate, no driver's license, no guardian over the age of 18, no money, no place to stay, no place of employment, and no real desire to acquire any of them. All Riley wanted was to be able to go home. She wanted to erase the past three months from existence. She wanted to have her old life back. But of course, none of this was possible.
Riley had snuck into a pharmacy at one point, pocketing at least five full bottles of pain meds from behind the counter while the attendant was in the bathroom. That had helped her deal with the spiking pain in her shoulder, and allowed her to function well enough to begin taking a mild interest in the people around her. For the longest time she just watched them, afraid to get too close, afraid to let them get too close to her. Occasionally she interacted, talking to the food vendor on the streets, playing mind tricks with the saleslady at the department store as she made off with unpaid merchandise. The money in the wallet had run out within a week, and Riley hadn't felt right about siphoning off Centre funds as Jarod did. Instead, she stole from Jarod's bank account, fitting justice she thought.
It had been months since then, months of avoiding Triumvirate sweepers, and months of strangely running into sweepers from the Centre. It seemed that someone from the Centre felt her continued existence was necessary, and Willie and various other "friendlies" had baled Riley out as she was attempting escape from the Triumvirate lackeys on at least two occasions already. Despite the offered help, they hadn't communicated with her at all during those brief times, ignoring her persistent questions. It was strange.
A loud honk sounded outside the building and Riley nearly jumped out of her skin. She moved across the room after checking the door to see that the numerous padlocks she'd drilled in place were still holding, and stole a glance out the cracked window to the lone car in the parking lot—a dark blue Toyota truck, beat up and an old model, it fit in well with the surroundings. The black sweeper in the driver's seat sent her a short wave as he drank a cup of drive-thru coffee. Riley shuddered at the thought that she hadn't heard him pull in. He started up the car as she watched and pulled out of the lot, passing surreptitiously by a small caravan of black towncars. Riley sank down the wall, banging the back of her head against it in self-remonstration.
"Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid." At least Willie had given her some warning.
Riley grabbed up her bag from the floor next to her with a frustrated jerk and hurried across the room, listening to the sounds of the parking cars and muffled voices outside. She could easily imagine the set of dark sweepers, exiting the cars with shoes that tapped and clicked against the pavement, scowling upwards at her window, directing different teams to cut off different exits of the building. She had to move fast. She sped through the dials of the padlocks on her door, unlatching them and pulling it open roughly. The room at the end of the hall held easy access to the fire escape off the side of the building, and Riley headed off towards it, ducking inside the door just as she heard several pairs of footsteps begin pounding up the stairs. Taking a calming breath before pushing the window open, forcing it up through grimy sliders, she stepped outside. The platform was old and rusted, and gave her the impression that it would fall to pieces at any moment. She threw her duffel down to the street level—there was nothing in it even remotely breakable, and slid down the sides of the ladder, not bothering with rungs. She hopped the last few feet and headed over to the industrial size trash bin pushed up against the building. Uncovering a small car battery with a demonic smirk, she walked over and attached the live clamps to the bottom rung of the escape ladder. After this was done, she scooped up her small bag and sprinted down the street, to the alleyway by the next building over. After a few moments, she heard a pained shout coming from behind her, just as she gained the darkened lane. She could hear the footsteps behind her of the team that was left outside the building and dashed further down the alley, sparing a glance behind her, but no one had quite caught up yet.
A strong arm snaked out and grabbed her as she passed a pile of abandoned bins, it wrapped around her middle and a hand was pressed tightly over her mouth before she could scream. The man pulled her back behind the bins with him, kicking in a small window at ground level, and pushing her down in front of him to slip through the jagged glass first. The glass scratched her back and tore a small slit into her shirt, but she paid it little notice as she spun around to meet her attacker, her chest heaving in fear. She couldn't scream for help—that would alert the Triumvirate sweepers outside, and she didn't know her way around this building, the man would catch her before she even reached the door out of the basement. She picked a large camping knife out of her pocket, this one lifted from a hunting store, and raised it chin level, waiting for the man to come into reaching distance. This knife wasn't nearly as nice as the one she had left behind in the Centre, nor did it give her that same level of comfort—she had known it wouldn't even as she was stealing it, but she didn't need comfort from it, she needed a way to defend herself. This knife had already begun gathering its own history with her, even after only a month, and it didn't feel so strange in her hand now.
The small amount of light filtering into the room was completely doused as her attacker crawled through the window after her. The dim glow from the casement behind him lit up the side of his face and Riley recognized Willie's familiar visage. She lowered her knife a bit, but didn't move out of her defensive posture. He shot her an annoyed look, and covered her mouth with a hand again, one arm wrapped around the back of her head and one hand in front of it, so that she couldn't pull away. He dragged her away from the window angrily with a hissed, "Don't make a sound."
Riley nodded her understanding against his rough palm and he released her, grabbing her uninjured shoulder and steering them both further back into the shadows of the cellar as shiny shoes passed by the window up at the street level. Riley's heart raced quicker with each passing second, but the men left the alley after a few minutes, uttering muffled curses as they went. Riley turned to Willie after they were gone and asked the question that she had asked each other time.
"Why are you helping me?"
Willie turned away from the window with an irritated snarl. "Would you prefer it if I didn't?"
Riley didn't answer him. Her experiences outside had given her a good enough understanding of sarcasm now, and she recognized the dig for what it was. He moved off around the perimeter of the room, navigating through the strange accumulation of debris down there, and Riley followed after him. He barked his shin more than once on some dark and looming bit of furniture, squinting his eyes in the gloom, but Riley's eyes preferred the dimness more than anything and she had no such problem in shadowing him.
"How is the Jarod pursuit coming?" Riley asked from behind his back, purposely wanting to aggravate the man for his last comment. She had heard through the rumor mill that Jarod, the Major, and Will had gotten away, managing to sprint out the side kitchen door minutes after she had been caught by the sweeper who took her to Zurbin. Where two sweepers may have been able to catch one of them—which really would have been like catching all of them—one sweeper was no match for the three men. The Centre had underestimated their own experiments again, and they had lost because of it.
Jarod hadn't contacted her; Riley doubted whether Jarod really knew where she was. It didn't matter; Riley knew that it must have become painfully obvious in a way that he had never been willing to accept before, that she did not want to be with him. They were not her family. She didn't belong with them. She had nearly gotten them all caught, it had been time to cut their losses.
Willie pulled up short at her question, and Riley had to do the same or risk walking headlong into his back. He shot her a glare over his shoulder before pressing on again, and Riley continued to follow him at a slightly slower pace.
"Have you ever heard of minding your own beeswax?" He asked her, irritated, when she dared to repeat the question.
"No." She answered him truthfully.
He let out a huff of frustration and she could imagine the man rolling his eyes. "Well, now you have."
A few more moments passed in exasperated silence before Willie turned around with a frustrated glare. He grabbed her by the arms and pushed her towards the chair he had just stubbed his toe on.
"Sit."
Riley sat.
He reached inside the inner fold of his jacket and Riley tensed automatically, her heart rate quickened inside her chest though she knew her reaction was absurd. Willie would hardly pull a gun on her directly after helping her avoid just such a fate, but she still stiffened. Riley had grown wary over the past month, and with all of the nightmares she had had of being caught by a dark suited man with a gun, the reaction really shouldn't have come as a shock. He only pulled out a piece of paper though, wrapped around a small cellular phone with a rubber band. He shoved both items into her hand and started walking away.
"Wait! What are these for?" She shouted after him, hurrying to keep up. Willie didn't stop though, speaking with his back turned to her as he gained the door that led upstairs and outside again.
"I'm not your babysitter, kid. Just go to the address they gave you and wait."
Riley frowned at the instructions, unfolding the paper with a scowl. It was a simple address and phone number, the place she was going was an apartment building.
In Blue Cove.
-
-
Riley sank down onto the couch in the apartment, looking around her with interest. The air smelled like cleaning products, foreign scents to Riley all mixing as one in the air. Didn't smell bad exactly, not in the way that the infirmary at the Centre had, or the renewal wing, or the vet clinic in Crested Butte. She supposed she should be thankful for that. The surfaces of the shelves and tables were polished enough that she could see the outlined reflection of her form in the wood as she stood over them. Someone had steam cleaned the carpet, and mopped the floor in the kitchen recently. There wasn't a speck of dust in the place. The couch she sat on faced a large entertainment area, with a streamlined, flat TV and modern stereo system. There was an Asian styled painting above the cabinet, though the low lighting of the room didn't allow Riley to get a good picture of it from where she sat. There were no overhead lights in the apartment, but rather several desk lamps, each with a distinctly oriental feel. Riley had felt strange about turning any of them on, and the oddly red light atop the television cabinet, which had been left on when the owner of the apartment left, was the only source of illumination.
She had entered the apartment through a back window, walking down a short hallway and through some Japanese screens to get to the room she was in now. A bedroom was back there, with the door open a crack, and she had been able to see the made bed with a neatly pressed suit lying out at the foot. She had passed it thinking about how much she liked that tie on him, but didn't enter. A bathroom had been across the hall from it, with all the accoutrements one usually finds lying around the sink, instead tucked up neatly in the medicine cabinet. The kitchen was an open affair, with tile countertops and a nice set of chef's knives, set off to the side of the kitchen next to the refrigerator. It seemed a little odd to Riley, this abundance of cutlery, when there was hardly any food in the cooler. In fact, it seemed as though the appliance's real function was to display the numerous telephone numbers and magnets of different dining establishments, blending into the motif of the apartment rather well, they were once again all Asian. There was a linen cabinet set at the opposite end of the living room, hidden behind white doors that blended in with the pristine color of the walls. It seemed to her as though the apartment should be bigger than it was—the dimensions didn't seem to fit congruently, as though there should be an extra room in the apartment, but she couldn't see it. Riley restrained brutally her natural curiosity and did not go snooping around the apartment any more than it had taken her to reach from the back window to the living room, to sit here on the couch. She knew what a gross invasion of privacy that it would be for him. And the disrespect it would show. She could only imagine what he would do if he caught her at it.
Riley could tell from the wall designs, the décor, and the strange affinity for Asian restaurants, that it was his apartment, but her mind was still trying to wrap around the idea that this was his home. It had a cold feel to it, an unlived-in feel, which she couldn't quite fit into her mental picture of him. It was interesting though, to find this part of him—there was much to be said about a person by what they chose to surround themselves with.
She waited there for a time unknown. Her eyes itched with tiredness as she caught her head from nodding against her chest. The light green glow of the clock on the TV stand charted the minutes, and the whole place was deathly quiet. Even at the Centre Riley had been used to more noise than this; sweepers passing by her door, calling in checks on their radios. She pricked her ears for any noise, but could only faintly hear the cars outside. After a while, even the hum of traffic from the street outside seemed to slow. And as she sank lower onto the couch, she realized with a contented smile, that the cushions smelled like his aftershave.
-
-
The first thing he noticed upon entering his house was the young girl sleeping on his couch. Her form was curled up on itself, arms wrapped tightly around one of the small couch pillows, and her nose buried in the cushions. It was a little endearing actually. It seemed that she had fallen asleep waiting for him. He scowled when he noticed she still had her shoes on.
"Really now, I thought I taught you some manners..." He muttered beneath his breath as he crossed the room to wake her. When he reached her sleeping form though, he hesitated. She was shivering lightly. Rolling his eyes to himself, he moved to the end of the couch and unlaced the sneakers she was wearing, slipping them off her feet and setting them by the door. He next retrieved a blanket from his room and draped it over her. He could afford to let her sleep for a while.
There was a large suit jacket flung over a small black duffel bag next to the couch, and he moved into the kitchen and out of earshot to rifle through the contents. Most of the items were completely innocuous; clothes, a toothbrush, and the like, though a few did catch his interest. A small black handgun; Sig Sauer, a standard Triumvirate sweeper issue—the Centre went for the 9mm more often, but for those Triumvirate Zulus it had to be a Sig. A hunting knife as well, nice blade with a brown leather handle, it looked oddly proportioned for Riley's body though; she can't have been looking very long when she bought it. Next came four different bottles of pain meds—none of which had her name on the label—and all with rather high prescriptions he thought, given her build. These sorts of pills were for someone in a lot of pain. Walking back out into the living room, he turned her over—a bit roughly he admitted to himself, but she slept like the dead anyway; at least, she did with these pills in her system. It didn't take long to find the angry red scar on her shoulder. Damn thing still had stitches.
He poured himself a drink—if he kept this up he'd turn into his sister—and sat down at the kitchen table, looking over a file while he waited for her to wake. He could see her, through the door to the adjoining room, sleeping peacefully for the first time in nearly a month.
Lyle had had people following her of course. Sweepers, from the Centre, keeping tabs on where she went, whom she spoke with, what she ate, when she slept. She was still his ticket to the top after all was said and done; these were the sorts of things he needed to know. It was his own secret project now, and with the quagmire the Centre had begun sinking slowly into lately, everyone else was just busy enough that it should remain a secret. Raines was dead—or he was supposed to be, as long as everyone thought the old man was worm food then he might as well have been. Parker had begun hearing voices; Lyle was delighting in teasing her with that knowledge. Her inner sense, Sydney called it, Lyle just had to wonder where this inner nonsense had been for the other some odd 35 years of her life. And Lyle, well, Lyle had plans of his own for all of them... dear old dad especially.
Riley wasn't adjusting as well as one might have hoped, though her habits kept her pretty well under the radar. She stuck to the city, and while it seemed that the teeming masses had been overwhelming at first, she had gotten used to them over time—a lot of time. There were so many people that few paid her any attention, and her anonymity seemed to balance her fear out. She hadn't actually gotten a job yet, her age was a great inhibitor, there was nowhere she could go that people wouldn't ask questions. She was a bit of a recluse. He was just happy she hadn't been picked up for truancy yet. It was easy enough to see that she was drifting. Riley had always had a purpose before; a project to work on, someone to please, a problem to solve. When all these motivators were stripped away, she was simply left without a goal. Riley was truly and thoroughly institutionalized, that had been Raines' objective after all, he had wanted her dependent upon them. Lyle himself actually preferred survivors—they made better partners, better rivals. He could teach her survival skills—she'd always had them after all, they had just been buried. He'd start now. Tonight. He couldn't expect her to remain in the submissive role she had always had before. No matter how hard that self image was in her psyche, after time outside the Centre, she would naturally begin to question him, question her position, and begin to rebel. It would be difficult to deal with it then; she would be out of his control at that point. He could start changing her position tonight, and guide it to how he wanted her to be. Then he could make her a real adversary to the Triumvirate. Allied with him of course. Jarod had once asked him what he wanted, and Lyle had responded truthfully—
"I want everything"
And he would get everything. And she was going to help him.
-
-
Riley didn't like the sensation of waking up. It was a halting experience in her mind, being taken abruptly from one state of being to another, going from one setting and action to find yourself lying in a room you weren't in before. And besides, she rather liked it here—it was warm, and she was being kept warm, by a soft something on top of her. She snuggled a bit deeper into the... whatever it was that she was lying on... and hoped to fall back into that blissful state of no dreams and pure contentment. Where exactly was she anyway? She was lying on something soft, and, she pressed her palm flat into it, squishy. It was comfortable. It smelled good to. Smelled a bit like... soap... and shaving cream... and she didn't shave so where exactly had shaving cream come into the picture?
Oh. Right.
And that was the point that she remembered where she had fallen asleep. She cracked an eye open. Yes, definitely the room she had fallen asleep in. Riley sat upright with a groan, checking the watch around her wrist. Eleven forty-five, was he home yet? She heard the scraping of a chair on the floor.
Damn.
"Fully conscious, or did you want to try the bed next?"
Yes, that was definitely his voice behind her.
Damn.
She turned on the couch sheepishly, not quite meeting his eyes, fingering the blanket draped across her middle. "Sorry, Sir."
He moved from where he was leaning languidly against the doorframe of the adjoining room and beckoned her to follow him into the kitchen.
"Your shoes go by the door. I don't want to find them on my furniture again."
Riley got up and walked after him, her face flushing red. Oops. "Sorry, Sir." She hoped the night was not going to continue in this vein.
"Just don't do it again." He answered her shortly, taking a sip from a glass tumbler sitting at the table.
Riley looked at the glass curiously. The liquid inside was amber colored, poured over ice. "What is that?" She asked without even thinking of it, but the instant the question was out of her mouth she realized her error. She waited for a rebuke of some form but it didn't come and she frowned inwardly at the incongruity. He only shrugged at her question as though nothing had happened.
"This?" He gestured to the glass in his hand and she nodded hesitantly. He rolled his eyes. "This is alcohol. This is something you will not touch until you are twenty-one, and not a day before." He told her tersely. "I have a difficult enough time figuring out what to do with you when you're sober." This last bit was mumbled before he took another drink and motioned at a chair across the table. "Sit, if you like."
Riley sat. This was a bit awkward, talking to him outside of the Centre. Riley had expected him to act as he had within the Centre—as her superior, as her handler, but even through his annoyance at her, his behavior was supremely different from what she had expected. She expected punishment. She expected at least a remark as to the death of Miss Zurbin. She expected orders. It was odd though, that none of these things were forthcoming. He was talking to her; Riley didn't even know how to describe it, just differently. He'd let her sleep on his couch... after giving her a blanket and removing her shoes gently enough that she didn't wake up... She eyed the black duffel bag across the table from her, oh yes, and apparently, going through her things had been on the agenda as well. Hmm. That bit actually wasn't so different.
He picked something up from the table next to him and pushed it across to her. Riley took the thin slip of plastic from him and prepared herself for an argument. He raised an eyebrow as if to say 'well' but she didn't say anything. She waited for him to speak first, to see what his stance on the matter was. She wasn't trying to be impertinent, just... prepared. She expected that he might hit her, but he didn't. He didn't even move from his seat across the table, just took another sip of whatever it was that he was drinking and waited through the pregnant pause until he understood she wasn't going to speak. The way he was acting, it was strange. Riley decided to take her cues from him.
He looked at her meaningfully. "Parker?"
Riley looked down at the driver's license under her hand. She was sixteen now—had turned legal driving age almost a week ago. Birth date: December 24, 1984. And it was the year 2001 now. Yes, that made her sixteen. She looked at the name printed beside her picture.
"Yes Sir."
He gave her a long look. "Why?"
"It's my name... Isn't it?" She felt like asking his permission on the matter, because it put the control back into his hands. Riley still wasn't accustomed to steering the path of her own life, and she didn't really like it all that much. Or she hadn't so far. And when she was with him, he was supposed to be taking charge, wasn't he?
The corner of his mouth twitched up and he shrugged. "I guess it is. If you want it." He reached back across the table to get the card, left-handed owing to the glass that he still held in his right.
Riley's eyes widened in surprise at the thickly bandaged hand, taken from his pocket for the first time that evening, white medical gauze wrapped tightly around a thumb. A thumb that was certainly, and had certainly, not been there for the two years previous this night. She looked at him dumbly. "Well that's a recent development."
There was no mistaking the look he was sending her—the way his lips turned up only slightly in the corners, smugness written all over his face; he was smirking. "Things are changing, Riley."
Riley tried to read into his words. Why, after months of estrangement, had he suddenly summoned her like this. Whatever this was. It was strange, like everything else about him that night, that he hadn't yet mentioned at all what the meeting was about. Not that Riley minded meeting with him of course—she had wanted to see him since before she had even left the Centre. And now she was here, and she was seeing him, and she had absolutely nothing to say or ask. It seemed that in the past few months, every single one of the things, the problems, which before Riley had considered practically matters of life and death, had evaporated of their own accord. As though her mind had been working them through one by one subconsciously, and reached an internal solution for each. She had come to terms with them, it seemed.
Sarah was dead; she couldn't do anything to change that now. The truth was that she had been dead to Riley long before she had learned of it— she hadn't seen the woman in years, and whatever memories she had of her only surfaced in distorted dreams. Nothing about her had been real for some time now. Riley remembered why she had been terminated, recognized now that that was simply the way things at the Centre, at the Facility, at the Triumvirate worked. Sarah had been preparing to take Riley away. And for that, Riley could almost hate the woman. She had been plotting to take Riley away from the only place she could ever be safe. Riley could hate Sarah for that the same way that she could hate Zurbin for that, and in some small measure, hate herself for running away in the first place, and for doing everything to get her to this point she now found herself at. They had killed Sarah to protect her, just as they had always said.
Riley viewed the world around her; the world that she was now forced to live in, with a wary kind of respect. The kind that you use while petting a trained attack dog—they weren't going to bite your hand off just now, but they could. This idea that the world was dangerous had actually been the subject matter of an argument between herself and Jarod one evening at the lake house. Jarod insisted that the world was a wonderful place, if she would only allow it to be. He had even tried using himself, Will, the Major, as examples. Examples that the world wasn't going to hurt her. Riley had realized that evening just how naïve Jarod could be when he wanted, that he didn't realize just how screwed up he was. The world wasn't safe. Most regular people couldn't even make it through on their own without popping medication, or seeing counseling. And for a pretender, the stakes were only raised. They didn't exist as real people, according to the government they didn't exist at all. And if the government ever did find out about them, anything could happen. They would be turned into criminals, mutants or something. People would never understand. And for an empath, it was even worse. She couldn't even walk down the block without being accosted by the emotions of the guy who had just got laid off, or landed himself a parking ticket, spilled coffee down his shirt. Riley had never really been able to grasp that inside the Centre, or the Facility. Mr. Raines had explained so many times, but she hadn't been able to truly comprehend until she left. Of course, the world didn't offer the immediate danger that she had always imagined; there weren't people trying to kill her on the streets or the like, and she could exist in it as long as she stayed under the radar. It was staying under the radar that was the problem.
"How are things changing Sir?" She asked him quickly, hopefully. "Does that mean that I can come home?" Was that why he had called her here?
He slammed his glass down on the table in front of him, and it thumped with a hollow sound, ice cubes sloshing and clinking around in the glass. Riley slid back in her seat, away from him, frightened of the way he was looking at her—angry and frustrated in a way she couldn't remember him ever being before, not with her anyway. "The Centre is not your home anymore Riley! Try to understand that!" He looked so positively disappointed in her, so angry that she had actually made him say it.
She returned his anger force for force in a way that surprised her. Spurred on by a desperate thing clawing inside her chest that could not believe what he was saying, and absolutely hated him for agreeing with Them. For agreeing that she could not go back. "It will always be my home! It's the only place I belong!" She retorted, anger causing her to rise to her feet, fists clenched at her sides.
"You don't belong there any more Riley!"
"But-" But she needed it.
He looked across the table at her sadly, his voice dropping to a poison edge that she didn't want to listen to, yet seemed to be penetrating further in her mind than even his yelling had. "There is no argument Riley. As it is, there is a standing order for you to be shot on sight. You have no allies at the Centre any longer. No one save me."
Riley shook her head in the negative, willing him to be lying, which was strange, because she had never wanted him to lie to her before. "But—Mr. Raines—" she tried again.
"—is gone." He interrupted. "Out of the picture. And Mr. Parker, well, he'll be joining him soon." There was something conspiratorial about this last that made Riley wonder what he was going to do.
Riley slumped back down into her seat at the table, holding her head in her hands, trying to wrap her mind around the confusion she was feeling.
"I don't think I understand."
He walked over to her side, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder that Riley shirked from out of habit. "I don't expect you to understand this." He told her indulgently, and it almost felt patronizing. "I expect you to understand your changing place in the scheme of things Riley. I expect you to adapt." He walked back over to his seat, strolled was more the word really, and sat across from her again, the heated anger from moments before burned out of both of them entirely. "Don't you worry though, they'll pay. They will all get exactly what they deserve."
She looked up at him timidly, almost afraid of having her hopes raised again only to be shot down. "How?"
He pushed a manila folder across the wooden tabletop to her and she opened it hesitantly, skimming through the reports without really taking it in. She understood it, to an extent, but the pieces wouldn't quite fit together properly. She had never really known that the chain of command at the Centre had been so convoluted. She looked up at him, questions held in her eyes, after looking over the first page of the file again. "This pretender then, Alex, he... he's going to exact revenge on every person he considers responsible for..." She stopped as Mr. Lyle nodded in affirmation, pausing to think a moment and clear things in her head. "But Sir... it says here that you worked with him, wouldn't that put you at risk?"
"He has bigger fish than me to fry." He wasn't telling her everything, and Riley scowled.
"Be careful." She warned, turning back to the files. This caused him to sit up in his seat and Riley dropped her pretense of being elsewhere engaged.
"Are you ordering me around?" He threatened lowly, leaning forward in his seat, and reaching across the table to pull the file away, so that she couldn't ignore him through it. Riley noted the hard line his mouth had formed and the menacing tone of his voice, and responded accordingly.
"No sir. I'm asking you not to underestimate him. He has a lot of anger. You can't know where he is going to attack first." She tried to placate him with a more subservient tone, one like she would have used at the Centre. It didn't seem to work, his eyes hardened and he moved back into his own seat. Riley tilted her head down to stare like a guilty five year old at her hands in her lap.
"I know how to take care of myself, Riley." He told her, irritated.
"Well, with all due respect Sir, you'd better." She reached across the table and pulled the file out from underneath his hand. She wasn't trying to be disrespectful, but she was worried. She had already lost him once and it had practically killed her, she wouldn't lose him again. She would be keeping an eye on his back during this assignment whether he liked it or not.
"Just follow through with your part of the assignment and let me worry about Alex once he is out." His tone held a finality to it and Riley knew it wouldn't be any good to press him further. Riley nodded her understanding while skimming again the following pages of the reports.
"So, with Mr. Raines out of commission, and Mr. Parker gone... well that leaves the path to the chairmanship clear for—"
You.
"I think you understand this better than you recognize, Riley." He told her with a knowing smile.
She looked at him in uncertainty "What's this all about then?"
"Answers."
"And, where is my place in it?" She asked him. She wanted to help, if only he would allow it.
He was playing with the light reflections coming through the liquid of his glass, revolving it slowly on the spot, before he looked up at her again with another cunning smile. It seemed that he had thought of everything.
"Well you see Riley, Alex hasn't escaped yet."
-
-
Hours later Riley stepped back out of his apartment, again coming through the back window, and again with more questions than answers. This time though, they were questions she could handle. It was like reaching a goal after miles of running—stopping to find she had evaded the sweepers chasing her, it was like finally winning. Her breath fogged in front of her mouth as she pocketed the small cell phone. His number was on the speed dial now. He said that they would talk later. She now also had a copy of the manila folder he had shown her inside, containing the shift changes and security information for the Triumvirate station in Africa. She couldn't begin to fathom where he might have learned all this from, but it seemed that half of her job had been done for her.
Things were going to be different, but not in the way that she had thought when coming to his house that night. She had expected forgiveness, an offer to reclaim her life, but he'd shown her that she didn't need it. He'd shown her that there was a way of taking more than just what they wanted to give her. And he deserved her loyalty for that. Things were changing in the world, but they would make the change work in their favor. And Alex... well Alex was just a pawn, much as she had been up to that night. She could honestly say now that she didn't envy his position.
Riley Parker walked down the street carrying a black duffel bag, a manila folder, and a plan—her newest assignment. And when she turned to look over her shoulder at his apartment, she could just see the lights going off in his windows.
And so, they would set out to change the world around themselves, but they would only really end up changing themselves, she knew that already. She was good at that—changing, and she would do it again. He was right, whatever the future held, she would change, adapt, and she would be ready for it.