Chapter Three

imag1ne intrigued huh? That's intriguing.

bloodymary2: Your review made me vewy vewy happy, so thankyou! You're saying just the right things that I've been aiming for people to say, and it made me squeal like a teenage school-girl. Whenever I write stories, I'm always aiming for unpredictability, so it's nice to know I'm at least halfway there. :D

Momo20: French Canadian, or just French French. Neither is American. Thankyou for your review, you speak excellent english, if it is your second language.

Annette: Don't ask me. Tissues maybe?

pretender fan: Wink wink indeed.

Rev2004: Thankyou, oh Rev who is always the first to review ;)

'Jarod.'

'Mmpf'

'Jarod, wake up.' Sydney waited a moment longer until he could see a pair of brown eyes blinking groggily at him, reflecting the light shining into the dark room from the open doorway that he stood in.

'There's been an incident up in corporate. Someone's destroyed a major data bank.'

'Destroyed? They didn't steal anything?'

'As far as the technicians can work out, they just surged the power, blowing all the memory circuits.'

'Odd.' Jarod sat up in his bed and ran a hand through his sleep tousled hair. 'Do they want me to take a look at it?'

'They want you to sim it.'

'Now? What time is it?'

'The sooner you tell them who it was, the sooner they can start chasing them.'

'Alright.' Jarod rubbed his eyes with one hand and stumbled out of bed, looking tired and haggard. Sydney backed out of the room and closed the door so he could dress, then walked with him to one of the sim labs. Jarod eyed the folder that sat on one of the tables.

'Can't you just take me up and let me see the scene of the crime? If they're going for speed…'

Sydney paused for a moment, and then gave a brief 'wait here.'

Jarod waited. After a moment, Sydney re-entered, presumably having just talked to a higher-up, and nodded.

Up in the tower, the room where the data banks were stored was cleared of techs so the pretender could examine the scene. The old psychiatrist waited patiently to one side whilst Jarod ghosted about the room, looking at everything, murmuring quietly to himself, occasionally measuring something roughly with one hand. He could see what had happened clearly in his mind.

Parker entered the room and flicked the lights on with her right hand, a small electronic device held in her left. Acting as though she had every right to be there, she sauntered casually over to the second bank of hard-drives and read down the labels until she found the one she wanted. A wicked smile on her face, she clipped the device into one of the multitude of blue wires that ran from place to place. It gave a beep and she pressed a few buttons.

Standing, she surveyed the room, sashayed over to data bank three, yanked two separate wires out of their sockets and connected them. There was sizzling sound, and small puffs of smoke emanated from various points in the bank of machines as plastic melted.

Jarod suppressed his smile, as, in his mind's eye, Parker surveyed the damage.

'Oops.' She said, looking somewhat smug, before sauntering back out, leaving behind her one smoking data bank, and a very small device, that no one would think to look for.

To Sydney, he said; 'I see it.'

'How did they get in?' Asked Sydney. Silently, Jarod exited the room, then re-entered through the door, hand going over to the light switch to mime flicking it on. As he did so, he covertly wiped of the fingerprint that she had left there. Sydney watched as Jarod looked cautiously about the room, shutting the door carefully behind himself and jumping at the sound as the latch clicked into place.

Carefully, slowly, the pretender crept along the four rows of data banks, as though examining the labels on each one. When he reached three, he stopped, and walked down the row, throwing a glance behind himself. Clearly nervous, he sought out the wires he needed, miming levering them carefully out of their sockets one by one. He finished by indicating where the two wires had been crossed, thus causing the power surge that destroyed the memory circuits.

'Thankyou Jarod. What can you tell me about who did it?'

'A technician, someone who knows how to cause a surge like this, but doesn't work in this room, because he didn't know just what he wanted. There was possibly something on that drive that incriminated him in something. He didn't mean to short the whole data bank, he was just going for this drive- he didn't know that there was no fuses between the drives. This drive held security camera recording, including the one from this room.

The damage was intended but the extent was accidental. If you don't want something like this to happen again, install fuses between separate drives, and put a camera in this room that routes to a source outside of this room.'

'Is that all?'

'All that I can see.'

'OK. I'll take you back to bed now.'

Jarod nodded, and allowed himself to be escorted out of the room, trying very hard not to glance at where he knew a small device to be secreted in the masses of wires and drives.

oo00OO00oo

Two Weeks Ago

Parker listened to a set of foot steps coming down the alley, feeling slightly relieved. Jimmy the snitch needed soaking in a bath of antiseptic and detergent for about a week, before being rinsed off with a fireman's hose. Thankfully, he seemed reasonably cooperative. At least, he didn't try to yell out and warn Jarod, who was now pushing through a hole in an old fence. He took two steps towards them, calling outhis challenge, before he realised that she was standing, waiting for him. His face registered pure panic for a moment, before he suppressed it with a clear effort.

'His life isn't so good, but yours is about to be infinitely worse.' She allowed all the satisfaction of finally being allowed to catch him to rise in her voice.

Jarod fell back a step, but went no further, held by the threat of damage to an innocent person. He was clearly thinking hard.

'Come on Miss Parker. I saved your life last week. Besides, I thought you were meant to be on holiday.' He was confused as to why she was doing this, and in manifested itself in his pleading tone.

'And I thought you were a genius.' She knocked back his attempt to connect with her, still holding a gun to Jimmy's head to remind him that he was Jarod, not some other pretend who might do something rash that would end up with him having the upper hand.

'Apparently not. How did you find me?' Jarod had dropped the pleading tone, although his blunt question betrayed his rampant curiosity.

'Jarod, you should know that the best hunter of all doesn't chase or track. The best hunter waits.' She dropped the clue, seeing how long it would take him to realise how she had found him.

'Because they know where the prey will be?' Asked the pretender meekly. He didn't understand, but his guess was still eerily accurate.

'Always' replied Miss Parker, smiling dangerously.

'So, there's not much point in me running, is there then?'

Parker shook her head, anticipation singing in her veins at the impending revelation she would dump on him. She drew back the gun from its unwavering aim on Jimmy's head, turning it so Jarod could see that the safety had been on the whole time. His wary demeanour didn't change as he now tried to figure out just what she was playing at. He cocked a questioning eyebrow at her as Jimmy scrambled up and dashed away from the both, quickly disappearing up the alley way. They both ignored him.

'The whole run/chase thing is getting a little old. I've got a better idea.'

'What might that be?' She had just changed not just the rules, but the whole game, and Jarod was treading carefully until he worked it out. He didn't run though, both because she had put the gun away, and because she had proven that he wouldn't get very far if she didn't want him to.

'Well, having nearly died many a time because of the people I work for, I've decided I don't like them very much.'

'Is that so?' Asked Jarod, the beginning of a smile playing about his lips. He could see where this was leading now.

'It is. And I figure, just quitting won't get me very far. So I was thinking I'd make sure there was no job left to quit from.'

'And how do you propose to do that?' Jarod's smile became a full blown grin, one that was mirrored on Parker's face as she saw the full realisation hit him.

'I need you to help me work out the details' she said after a moment.

'It's what I do best. But you have to tell me one thing first…'

'Uh uh. A magician never reveals her secrets.' Parker anticipated perfectly what he had been about to ask, and was rewarded with a pout. 'Oh, stop sulking. Come on, we'll start at my place.'

She didn't wait for a response, just turned and sauntered past him, ducking neatly through the hole in the fence. When she heard his footstep follow her after a moment, she finally allowed the triumphant smile to her face, having kept the upper hand throughout the encounter.

oo00OO00oo

The present

Jarod snuck glances both ways along the dim corridor to determine that no one was watching as he slipped through an inconspicuous doorway, into a dim, medium sized janitor's closet. A few times, footsteps passed in the corridor outside, but none slowed, and Jarod waited. The Centre was huge- actually escaping was no easy matter, but he wasn't trying to escape. Hiding, on the other hand, for someone that knew the premises like he did, was as easy as breathing. It was a huge building, and searching it all could take up to two days- assuming the object of the search did not move.

Finally what he had been waiting for appeared. The door opened and Miss Parker slipped in to join him, waiting a moment whilst her eyes adjusted, then pin-pointing Jarod in the semi-darkness. He was leaning back against a wall, arms crossed over his chest and an amused look on his face.

'What are you doing?' she hissed at him. He regarded her benignly for a moment, making sure she knew he wouldn't answer her question before speaking.

'The look you've been carrying around is unnecessary- you're a better actor than that.'

'What look?' Asked Parker innocently, deciding that if he wasn't going to respond to her scolding then there were better ways to manipulate him.

'Ugh. You know what I mean.'

'I might. I still don't see why you mind though. It's working isn't it?'

'It is. But it is perfectly obvious to everyone that you're involved somehow.'

'But they can't prove it.'

'Since when does the Centre care about proving guilt before it deals permanently with people?'

'Jarod?'

'Hmm?'

She closed the distance between then and kissed him thoroughly. 'Chill, OK?'

'You've got a persuasive argument.' He grinned down at her, pleased enough with the conclusion of their squabbling that he was willing to let it go. 'Now you've got the look.' Pointed out Parker evilly. Jarod raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. Obligingly she extrapolated.

'I'd call it a sort of smug, 'I know something you don't/I've got something you haven't' look.'

'Uh huh. Now, beloved of Satan, unfortunately, we can't stay here all day, as much as I would like to.'

Parker gave him a mock pout. 'Why not?'

'We've got the subversion of the Centre to finish, remember?'

'Oh, that. Can't we do it later?'

Jarod bit his bottom lip to keep from chuckling at her disgruntled tone, indulged in a longer and more heated, parting kiss, then pushed her back out into the corridor from the janitor's closet that they had met in.

The little meeting hadn't been strictly necessary for the completion of their plan, but it had answered one very important question for him. He hadn't told her that he would be briefly escaping his handlers to meet her in the broom closet just now- she had tracked him down herself. That meant Parker hadn't planted a bug on him, or even physically tracked him across the country. It meant she had simply known where he was. It meant she had some sort of psychic radar on him.

Satisfied at having determined this, Jarod counted to five hundred and then stepped out to meet the sweeper teams that were combing the Centre building looking for him. As the first blatant contradiction to the complete compliance he had been showing, his brief disappearance would probably result in much harsher measures of restraint. He didn't mind though; it had been worth it. Besides, he had his own personal God watching from on high. Miss Parker in Corporate would make sure that nothing too terrible happened to him, and therein lay the power of their plan- one above, one below, and they had all of the Centre covered. The evil corporation didn't know it yet, but it was completely at their mercy.

TBC…Erm... due to some... 'issues'... in production, the next chapter might be a while. Sorrysorrysorrypleasedon'thurtme?)