CHAPTER TEN
Margaret took one look at her son and saw a stranger. It was almost as if she was going back in time over thirty years ago when Jarod was a little boy, before the doctor came to visit, before they got the medicine to calm him down. "Your father told me everything." That was all she could say.
"I couldn't look for you after Miss Parker caught me."
"Caught you?" She could not believe it. Was her son so tired of running, that he allowed Miss Parker to drag him back to this hell? Only it was not a hell now. The tower had changed since it was first described to her. It was more like a home, a luxurious home. But perhaps that way her son had lived, in caves, in rented houses, being other people, he just gave up. Others had been like that, but not her Jarod.
"As long as I was free, I could look for you, but when Miss Parker captured me. ." He stopped for a moment, as if he was going to tell her something, but dared not.
His mother could see the children with dark blue eyes and hair ranging from light brown to dark brown with a reddish tinge. Their features were familiar, a combination of her son and Miss Parker's.
"Hello Margaret," said Miss Parker. Her voice was pleasant but a bit cool. She still had that haughty look of hers. Her voice became softer. "Margaret, I saw the photo of you and mother, I knew then that someone sent it to me, to frighten me, only I couldn't do anything about it."
"You tried to shoot me at Carthis."
"I know. You know about the curse, but it's gone now." She pointed to Jeremiah. "This is Jeremiah, my son and Jarod's, who I thought was Mr. Parker's and Brigitte's. I had to stay to protect him. Even if I caught Jarod, I could never leave to see the little boy change from a sweet child into a monster like Lyle or Raines."
Margaret clasped Miss Parker's hands. "It must've been horrible. You said the curse is no longer present."
"I succeeded at getting rid of it, but at a price and there's something about the soil here."
"Here," said Margaret, taking the copy of the scrolls out of her purse, "Read this. Don't worry, it won't hurt you, but I believe you have to read the warning first."
Miss Parker and Jarod did so; even the little children looked over and nodded at the words they understood. For clarity, Jarod read out the first part and gave explanations.
"I learned something from Charles that you own Jarod. How'd that happen?"
"Yes. Daddy gave him to me. The Pretenders are owned by the Centre. Did Major Charles tell you about the chip and the DSAs?"
"Yes and that marriage ceremony. What did they call it the Official Joining. How could they make him do those things at the Centre?" The words came out her mouth like water tumbling down a cliff and Margaret started to feel ill. But she kept her cool. Was Jarod's confinement in the Centre worse than what her husband told her? "So what'd you remember?"
"Everything. What Jarod really looked like, the things that happened to him and to me. Do you know he doesn't know what he really looked like, Margaret? They inserted a chip into a mirror and showed him a different boy. Those DSAs were doctored to make him believe his time in the Centre was not as bad as it really was."
"My father thought they were," Jarod retorted.
"Your father was reacting to not having you around. If you had gone to a reformed school or a boot camp, he would react the same way!"
"So Miss Parker how did they make you believe those lies?" Margaret asked.
"The Centre had a gas that caused mass hypnosis which they later sold to Saddam. That was how the people thought he was in two or three places at once. There were only so many duplicates and it would have cost too much money to do the plastic surgery and voice surgery on the others."
"Not to mention cut into their palace decorations, diamonds, rubies, and fancy carpets," said Jarod.
"Jarod!"
He sneered and noticed the children were acting up, but Broots pushed by and said, "I'm sorry Miss Parker, but need to update the computers. I'll start with the lap top."
"I thought you already did them."
The computer geek opened a package and showed the contents to Miss Parker and then to Jarod. "The last one only works with Photoshop, but this one's much better. It strips off the outer layer of the DSAs. Now I'm happy to say that this rivals the ones used in the FBI labs. It comes highly recommended. Of course, it's just out of beta and won't go into production until…"
Miss Parker tapped her fingernails against the case and leaned over him. "Get on with it Broots." She turned to Margaret. "I can get you some tea if you like."
"Thank you." Margaret sensed that her son was waiting to tell her something. Perhaps more of what he went through, but as soon as Broots had finished with that one and gone to the family computer, he shoved a disc into the lap top's computer tray."
"It contains background information and tells who we are really and why I'm a Pretender. Oh it's not because I have AB negative blood. Eddie had A positive and Danny had O positive."
Margaret looked through it as Jarod skipped from one scene to another, from the first experiment of the Hercules Project to the fall of the present Centre. She listened to his explanations of why they were different. By this time Miss Parker returned with a cup of tea and some Peek Freans.
"Thank you Miss Parker. Charles said you got the curse removed. How'd that happen?"
"I don't know how. If I got Jarod, I'd be free of the Centre. So I went to the priest and told him of the family curse. He said it was too powerful, but he could remove part of it. I said I was pursuing a man who stole something from the Centre and the curse meant me chasing him running. He said he could remove the curse so I'd catch this man, but there was one condition, I couldn't kill him. The rest, you know."
Margaret nodded. For some reason, she felt sympathy for Miss Parker, braving her father, uncle, and brother to remove a horrible curse and she knew herself the ramifications of the choice the crypt keeper did in delving into things that he wasn't supposed to touch. Had Miss Parker not done what she did, these children would turn out worse than Lyle or Raines because they had her son's intelligence in them. Even free from the curse, the kids still showed a certain amount of ingenuity even at their young age.
Jarvis and Patricia were trying to open the locked drawer where Miss Parker kept her gun. Luckily the bullets were on another shelf, but it the other two with the help of Jeremiah were getting a chair and pushing it towards it. The scraping sound aroused Jarod's suspicion. He started towards Jeremiah and his two coconspirators.
"How many other children did you have? Did the Centre create them without your knowledge?"
"Excuse me, Margaret." Miss Parker quickly got off her seat and turned to the other two.
"Don't let them near the gun," said Jarod with a slight smile and turning to his mother, continued with the story. "As Miss Parker said, we went through the Official Joining. Antonio Lambourni, the new Centre corporate lawyer was there as a witness plus this older woman about forty two, five feet six and nine and one eight inches, with a blue jacket over a print dress, red flowers on a dark navy pattern, oh she was one half Welsh, one quarter Italian, and one quarter French, had dark blue eyes almost hazel……"
Miss Parker made a motion across her throat as she came back from the other room.
"Okay so much for the preliminaries. After we got joined, we had the sprinkling on with holy water, but when the priest started to tell the demons to depart from Miss Parker and her issue, but not in those words, Antonio started to change."
"Father Ross told me that Antonio Lambourni was your son and Miss Parker's, but I didn't believe it at first."
"They kept Jarod ignorant of many things. He thought they took a sample from his arm or his mouth, put it in a petrie dish with a sample from a female's arm or mouth and presto baby," said Miss Parker.
"Lambourni son's Geraldo is almost like my name. He's the one spoken in the scrolls, not me," said Jarod.
Margaret smiled. "Of course not. The scrolls spoke of a boy called Jarod, not a man. It had to be someone else. You were named after your paternal grandfather, Jarold, only our parents, that is your father's and mine were killed when we were small and over time we let the L slip and were more concerned with surviving than how to spell. Am I a Pretender?"
"You are. I have something to show you." He flipped through the pages of the Dominant book and showed her the article about Neogeneis Two and how it made him more dependant, and more childlike. "I was afraid, I blamed myself for the Centre ills. I felt guilty that I did the simulations that were used to kill and hurt others. I later learned it was the result of Neogeneis Two inserted into my Nutritional Supplement and put in my Tomato Juice."
Margaret glanced through the book which gave in great detail the effects of Neogeneis Two on the Homo Dominants. It explained that it made the person affected more controllable by mentor, teacher, or instructor — although he didn't realize it. They colored his viewpoint on life, his decisions, and his judgments. "So how did you start to revert back to your true self?"
"First the Centre sent Sydney to Europe a year or so before I escaped. I remained in my cell, hungry. You see the Pretenders are not fed unless their handlers give the authorization. It's supposed to be a way of punishment. Of course, each nutritional supplement is designed so that if one doesn't get enough, one loses whatever little fat they have left and then the muscle tissue. Then Raines sent some sweepers to get me, put me in a cylinder and almost killed me. After that, I started to wonder about the sims. It's as if something inside me changed."
"They killed you?"
Although Jarod was calm, his eyes recalled the terror. He could not breathe, it became dark, and he lost consciousness. At that moment, he knew he was clinically dead, but his soul was still in his body, but he felt that in that one second, that it was about to depart permanently and go to a place of horrors. He had never known about God. Sydney was not allowed to teach him. In the Centre eyes, he was not even a person. And then suddenly he felt an enormous pain, and he was back in the Centre, Raines and the other man removed him from the canister, and the sweepers dragged him back to his cell.
"I had an urge to escape, not the pranks I did before, not exploring, but I actually wanted to leave the Centre and I wanted to go after others like them, but it appears that after that, I was sent to the Renewal Room and they removed that part of my memory but not the horror nor the dreams." He turned to Miss Parker. "That's why I phoned you early in the morning, or after midnight. When one of the sweepers grabbed me, I saw his watch. It was 1:45 in the morning."
Miss Parker didn't show any sympathy, but she remembered having fallen asleep numerous times after using him, and then one night when the moon was quite large, turning and seeing him stare at the ceiling, his eyes wide open. It was two a.m. in the morning. She had threatened him, even struck him, but he didn't fall asleep until it was almost day break. The next night it was the same thing, Jarod's eyes suddenly coming awake as if he was waiting for something, footsteps. She had wanted to kill him, but she knew if she did, the curse would return tenfold, so she kicked him with her high heels, and chained him to the bed and raped him, but no matter how much punishment she gave him, Jarod wouldn't, couldn't change. The fear was too deep and she didn't want to resort to Lyle's battery charger or to have the sweepers beat Jarod senseless — besides it wouldn't do any good.
Margaret broke her reverie. "You mentioned Neogeneis."
Jarod held him mother's hands. "They gave you too much of the Neogeneis. It rendered you infertile, so they had to reduce it. That's why you gave birth to me, Kyle, and Emily later. And they wiped my memory." He had to tell her everything, and that he was not free even now. That none of the Pretenders were and that they had to remove the drug from her system .
Miss Parker came over and showed a photograph of Frederick and Margaret. "This is my second oldest Frederick, and my daughter Margaret." She pointed to a framed photograph of two men in front of a courthouse. 'The one on the left is Antonio Lambourni, my oldest. The one on the right is Jack McCoy, he's an assistant district attorney."
"Were they friends?"
"I don't think so," said Jarod and taking out the photo, read the inscription on the back. "Oh that's about the time, Lambourni got the Centre to pay for burning down his house. Apparently McCoy told his boss who pulled a few strings. We have a certain limitations on civil liabilities."
"Besides," said Miss Parker, "Both men are quite similar. They're always striking deals. No, Lambourni always tries to get his clients to plead guilty. The inscription on the back should read 'Saved the taxpayers one thousand dollars.'"
"I'd better get the door."
"You can wait another five minutes. I don't hear anything."
"Right." He went to his mother and explained a bit more, trying to keep her calm as the Neogeneis in her system made her fearful, and very obedient. If he were a homo sapien, he would say it was her choice, but he knew she did not want to be like this, always afraid and doing anything anyone told her. That was probably one of the reasons she went to Carthis, not just to return the Scrolls but to be under the influence of the Monks.
By the time, he finished, Roderick and a Medical were at the door.
"I've come to Raise the children," he said as Jarod pointed the appropriate mention of the ceremony in the Dominant Book.
"It seems incredible that my grandchildren will be able to do all this," said Margaret.
"And more," said Roderick, "children of homo sapiens and dominants have powers we don't have. No we cannot read minds, but can cloud thoughts. And they'll be good at it." He took four dollars from Miss Parker and with a very severe voice said, "By the will power of the Council, your newborns are now officially RAISED! May they strike fear into the heart of man! May they be honored among the New Species!"
:"What are their names?" Margaret asked Jarod.
"I don't know. I'm not free so I can't name them."
"I can, if I knew what Jarod's family background was."
"My husband's family was Dutch of the old Gaulish stock before the Franks invaded, but there's something else in him," said Margaret, "My mother said I was German.
"Then that settles it. I'll name them Johann, Lisa, Colin, and Catherina. My mother was part Swedish, I'm part Irish and French and Jarod's part German and Dutch, I think. Sorry I can't name one of them Charles because well Margaret's husband's called Charles. Oh well it appears to be quite popular. They'll be asking which one? Oh by the way, the baptism will be this Sunday, but first we have to find if the Centre killed your parents and the others."
"The others?" Margaret's face turned pale.
"I suspect that the Centre murdered my grandparents plus the other passengers that were on those two shipwrecked ships," said Jarod, "after we dig their bodies out of the Centre grounds, we're going to MI-5 headquarters and find out where we all came from."