Broots hadn't dared to budge an inch since the start of his and Sydney's cop-imposed time-out. He had been staring at a blank white wall for a good fifteen minutes when he first caught the name 'Parker'.

"You thinking it could be Parker's?" said a gravelly voice. It came from over by the dead leg.

Broots jerked his head over to look at Sydney, who nodded minutely to show he'd heard. Broots strained his ears to catch the rest of the conversation.

"… be, yeah. Doesn't match the wife's story, of course, but neither does Lorefice ending up dead."

Beside Broots, Sydney let out a long, shuddering exhale. So, the dead leg was Lorefice's after all. More to the point, it wasn't Jarod's.

"Definitely not all Lorefice's blood."

"You figure?"

"Definitely. Drag marks don't make sense otherwise."

Broots ached to turn around. He had a thousand questions he burned to ask; barring that, he'd at least like to match a voice to a face. Drag marks. So someone else, not Lorefice, had been dragged from the scene. Behind Broots, footsteps retreated down the hallway. All he caught before the speakers were out of ear shot were the words warrant and test, and either spittle or hospital. He was betting on the latter.

"Let's go," said a voice just over his shoulder. Startled, Broots jumped about a foot off his chair.

"Uh!" he said, eloquently.

"Whoa, relax," said the voice. Broots craned around to look; it was Officer Jennings. Her clipboard had vanished. "You sure are jumpy. We're headed back to the station now."

Sydney stood, re-buttoned his suit, and drew himself up to his considerable height.

"Are we being detained? Are we under arrest?"

Jennings's smile was an attempt at disarming, but there was a look of warning in her eye.

"No, sir. I'm just going to take down your contact details, we'll debrief, make sure we can discount you from involvement in a homicide. I'm sure you'd rather not be involved in a homicide investigation, right?" She didn't pause for their reply. "So we'd all rather get this red tape over with, so you can get home and go to bed. That's what you stayed on-site for, right? You were waiting for a ride to the station."

"No, officer," said Sydney.

Jennings blinked. "No?"

"No, we'll be off now. Thank you so much."

Not for the first time, Broots wished he could be half as unflappable as his friend. But he wasn't, so he stayed mute.

"Hang on one minute," said Jennings, bristling. "I need to get your names, Mr…?"

"There is no stop and identify statute in the state of Pennsylvania, so we are under no obligation to give our names," said Sydney. "Have a pleasant evening."

And he turned on his heel and exited the stairwell door. Broots gaped like a fish at Jennings for a half a second, then scrambled to catch up.

"Can we do that?" he hissed once they'd put one flight of stairs between them and Officer Jennings.

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"I'll be quite honest, I don't know if stop-and-identify is applicable to people who stumble into crime scenes. But! I'm also pretty sure Officer Jennings does not know either."

"I hope you're right, Sydney. She had a point, though. Why did we stay all that time if we weren't going back to the station?"

"Intel."

Intel. As he descended the final flight of stairs to the parking garage, Broots mentally recapped. They knew Lorefice, a person of interest in Jarod's latest Pretend, was dead in what looked like a violent altercation. They knew the cops had connected Miss Parker to Lorefice in some capacity. They knew at least two other people had been present at Lorefice's death — the dragger and the drag-ee — and one of them had been hurt enough to bleed all over the lobby. And there had been that half-caught word, something about a hospital.

"Something about a hospital," he repeated to himself aloud, and nearly bumped into Sydney, who was peering out through the exit to the darkened parking garage. Sydney nodded and pushed his way through the door.

"Yes, I heard that too. Shame we don't know which hospital. But it's a start."

Miss Parker stared at the phone in her hand.

It was Sunday morning. The nurse had been around early to check on Jarod's vitals and re-dress his wounds. The doctor had dropped by a half-hour later to deliver some poorly-received optimism.

"We'd like to keep an eye on you until this afternoon, Mr. Parker, to be absolutely certain your lungs are clear. I've also scheduled you with a physiotherapist after lunch to make sure you can perform your activities of daily living," the doctor had said. "But, I am confident that you should be able to sleep in your own bed again tonight. That'll be nice, won't it?"

In a rare slip of the mask, Jarod had grimaced.

"That's what he's afraid of, doc." Miss Parker's comment had earned her a glare from Jarod and an awkward titter from the doctor, who had no way of understanding the joke.

So, they'd be leaving for Blue Cove today. There was no way around it. They'd need a helicopter ride out, and for that she'd need to call the Centre. Which led her to this moment, staring at her phone.

Do it, her brain shouted at her. Do it now, while he's in the bathroom.

Before she could over-think the matter, she punched in the number.

"Sam speaking." It was Sam, the sweeper.

"Sam, I need you to arrange a pick-up this afternoon. I have Jarod," she said, without preamble.

A short in-take of breath from the other end of the line.

"Congratulations, Miss Parker."

"Sure. Thanks. Now, the pick-up? We'll need a chopper to land on the roof. I'm planning on skipping out on a hospital bill, and I'll need someone to help me get Jarod up to the roof. He's injured. We need to be in and out fast." She gave him the address to the hospital. Through the bathroom door, Miss Parker heard Jarod fumbling with the faucet.

"In and out fast, got it. But… you want the chopper this afternoon? We could get there before lunch, easy."

The doctor had said she needed to verify that Jarod's lungs were clear. He could skip the physio appointment; they wouldn't be well-versed on the typical 'activities of daily living' at the Centre.

"This afternoon, yeah."

"… Can you secure Jarod until then?"

Miss Parker tutted. "You questioning my abilities, Sam?"

"No, ma'am!"

"This afternoon, three o'clock would be ideal. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Excellent. Transfer me to Raines."

She had to be fast. Jarod would be out soon.

Why hide this? Jarod knows he's going home, asked a skeptical voice from a neglected corner of Miss Parker's subconscious. Yes, but the longer she could keep him relatively calm, the better. Confronted with the immediate reality of being shipped out to Blue Cove, he could get reckless. She'd heard about the second time he escaped from the Centre, the one she'd missed while recovering from her own gun shot wound. He'd shot a hole in an airplane window and plugged it with a man's arm. Miss Parker retreated to the far window, in an attempt to stay out of Jarod's range of hearing. There was a modest park below, where a few patients were walking or being wheeled down winding pathways by nurses and family members, enjoying the sunshine.

"What is it?" Raines was as hoarse and strained as ever.

"Jarod's coming home," said Miss Parker. She'd expected a surge of pride, but none came. She only felt tired.

"Hm. Wonderful. I'll believe it when I see it."

"Believe it," Miss Parker snapped reflexively. "I'll have Jarod back at the Centre by dinnertime."

Behind her, Miss Parker heard the soft click of a door closing. She spun around. Jarod stood there, hanging on to the doorknob to the bathroom one-handed to keep his balance. His face sagged with hurt and (absurdly) unmistakable betrayal.

"See you soon, Raines," she said into the phone, and hung up without waiting for an answer.

"So, we're headed to Blue Cove this afternoon," said Jarod softly. Apparently his hearing was better than she'd thought.

"Yep." On automatic, Miss Parker stepped close to offer her arm, so he could take his weight off his leg as he crossed back to the bed. It had become part of their rhythm, along with jury-rigged sleeping arrangements, awkward silences and sharing hospital food. Jarod frowned at the proffered arm, but did not take it. Miss Parker huffed in annoyance. "Don't be petty, Jarod. You knew this was coming."

Jarod laughed, a horribly hollow sound.

"Is this pettiness? I thought it was —" He broke off.

"What?"

Jarod took her arm without looking at her. Miss Parker did a quick two-step to stabilize the two of them without buckling under the weight.

"Fear."

He limped over and sank onto the bed.

"Fear?" Miss Parker echoed. She didn't want to hear more of this, but at the same time, she couldn't help her curiosity. "Is this about Lyle again? Forget Lyle. I'll handle Lyle."

Jarod carefully swung his legs onto the mattress, his teeth gritted against the pain.

"I decided over five years ago I wouldn't run simulations for them anymore. I won't do it, now that I know to what use the Centre — especially a Raines-run Centre — would put the results. You've seen what they've done?"

Miss Parker winced. This was going in a direction she didn't like. But then, she'd asked for it.

"Yes."

"Can you endorse it?"

Quieter. "No."

Jarod scrutinized her expression for a long, uncomfortable moment.

"That's something, I guess. That little girl's still in there somewhere."

Miss Parker scoffed. "That little girl didn't know a damn thing."

"I have to disagree. Faith would, too. Both of you have been buried too long." He was firing barbed arrows from his spot in bed. Miss Parker opened her mouth to throw back a poison-tipped retort, but Jarod continued. "You wonder what I'm afraid of, it's the uncertainty. They could take the Lyle approach, yes. But I'd take that over the most likely alternative."

"What's that?" asked Miss Parker, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Jarod looked down at his fingers, which were twisted around a fraying piece of bandage.

"During my last year at the Centre, I was acquainted with a man — he was my friend, maybe my only friend at the time. A sweet, earnest person. He was a —"

"Janitor," Miss Parker finished, feeling an ache spread through her chest as she followed his train of thought. Jarod jerked his head up to look at her. "I saw the DSA. It was… horrible."

"Then you know what they'll do," Jarod said with urgency. "If I refuse to cooperate, they'll threaten to kill someone I care about. And then kill them anyway to punish me for dragging my feet."

Miss Parker hadn't thought much about it before, but it bore consideration — once she returned Jarod to the Centre, what was the next step? Had it really never occurred to her? Or, looking at it another way, of course it had never occurred to her. There was nothing on the horizon for her except returning Jarod to the Centre. After that, something nebulous about freedom. Nothing about the future of the Pretender project. She'd never planned to have anything to do with it.

"Your parents? Or your sister?" she said.

Jarod shook his head. "I doubt it. Not unless the Centre lucks out and finds them, but it won't be a priority. More likely they'd target someone more convenient." He spat the last word.

Miss Parker's brain spun through every salient option, carefully ignoring the obvious for as long as possible. 'As long as possible' turned out to be about five seconds.

"Sydney," she breathed.

Jarod's silence was his answer. Then: "Half the reason Raines has kept him on is his emotional connection to me. The word is, if Sydney quit, I'd break ties with the Centre completely." Miss Parker heard derision in his voice.

"Are you saying you wouldn't?" It was a theory she'd always treated as fact. Jarod didn't answer, so Miss Parker pushed on. "Better question, would it work?" she asked.

"Would what work?"

"Threatening Sydney's life to make you run simulations."

Jarod's profile was a study in anguish. He opened his mouth to reply and shut it again. Miss Parker's eyebrows shot up.

"Wow," she said. Miserable, Jarod pressed his lips together and continued to avoid Miss Parker's eye. "I'll tell you what, I won't let Sydney know that wasn't a vehement 'yes'. But only because I wouldn't want to see his face when he heard. He means that little to you? Whatever his complicity in your horror show of a childhood, he raised you."

"I know that!" Jarod burst out, and his voice cracked under the strain of keeping tears in check. Miss Parker cast about for something to look at, other than her quarry's face. There was no privacy in this, in any aspect of either of their lives. "Sydney means — I can't even start to explain what he meant to me. Means to me. He was the only —" Jarod coughed. "It wouldn't do any good. You saw what happened to Kenny. Giving in didn't save him. I'd lose Sydney, and they'd move on to the next blackmail fodder."

Miss Parker felt a prickle at her temple and glanced up to find Jarod looking at her with… what? Wariness? Terror? Whatever it was, it gave her a feeling of encroaching dread. Her jaw slackened, fell open.

"What, me? I'm blackmail? To hell with that, I'm out of there the second you're under lock and key. I'm not hanging around to be your walking guilt-trip." She didn't voice the obvious question, which was: why would anyone at the Centre believe Jarod would put her, Miss Parker, above the hypothetical victims of the Centre's work? That question was a little too dangerous.

Jarod didn't answer. Miss Parker narrowed her eyes.

"Don't think I don't see what you're doing."

Jarod shifted in his reclined position against the layered pillows.

"I don't —"

"Damned if I do, damned if I don't, right? So I might as well throw in with you?"

"Miss Parker, I think —" One arm flung out in her direction, close enough that his fingertips scraped at her elbow. Miss Parker gave his outstretched hand a venomous look. What was this melodrama now?

"They wouldn't do that to me, not once I brought you back." Not once I'd fought with my teeth to prove myself useful. "They might do their damnedest to keep me from quitting, but they wouldn't threaten my life purely as a band-aid solution for keeping you in line. I'm not — I'm not disposable." Who was she trying to convince, she wondered.

"Miss — agh. Can you —" Jarod broke off into a wordless, wobbly bellow of pain, clutching at his leg. Miss Parker scrambled to her feet, forgetting her diatribe in an instant.

"Jarod?"

His yell petered off into a low moan, punctuated by shaky, strident breaths, in and out. Veins stood out in his hands as he dug his fingers into the flesh around the gun shot wound in his thigh.

"Help," he croaked.

Miss Parker didn't think twice. She skidded out the door and down the hall. In some variation upon Murphy's Law, the second she actually wanted to reach a medical professional, there were none in sight. She stuck her head through every door she came across until, finally, she came across the front desk for the trauma unit. A skinny nurse with curly hair and square-lensed glasses was seated behind the desk. He frowned at her high-speed approach.

"Ma'am, we ask that people do not run in the halls."

Miss Parker waved away the rebuke. "Jar — Jake, my husband, he needs help. There's something wrong with his leg."

"Jake Parker? Gun shot wound to the thigh?"

"Yes. And lung." After a moment, Miss Parker's brain caught up with the nurse's question. She scowled. "Yes, obviously there's been something wrong with his leg since he was admitted. I'm not an idiot. It's suddenly causing him more pain, like something has gone wrong. Like a bleed, or a nerve…" She waved her hand eloquently. "Something, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I need a doctor. Now."

The man barely blinked at the order. Miss Parker had never before encountered in the wild someone more impervious to her unique charm.

"That sounds distressing for you and your husband, I'm sorry to hear it," he said, without a drop of demonstrative empathy. "I'll contact the doctor on call. Please remain calm."

He crammed a phone under his chin and jabbed a four-digit code. As he dialed, he took a second look at Miss Parker.

"Ms. Jamison, correct? You still haven't supplied your husband's health insurance details. It would be helpful to deliver that information to us at the front desk within twenty-four hours, or as soon as possible."

"I'll be sure to get right on that when there isn't a —"

The nurse held up a finger for silence, and miraculously, he got it.

Once the doctor was summoned, Miss Parker jogged back to Jarod's room, ignoring the nurse's further requests that she 'use her walking feet in the hallway'.

"Hang in there, Jarod, I —"

The room was empty. Jarod's blankets were pushed off the bed and his shoes were missing from the closet. One final benefit of the doubt: she yanked open the door to the bathroom. Still, no Jarod.

"Jarod!" she roared.

The bastard. Of course he'd take advantage of a fleeting moment of sympathy to con her into leaving him alone for just enough time to flee. She was almost (almost) more angry at herself for falling for it. This was his whole shtick, the hammer and chisel in his toolbox for staying out of her reach for so many years. She's actually failed to anticipate quite possibly the oldest trick in the book. She could kick herself. More than that, she could kick him.

"Can I help you?"

Sydney and Broots stood at the reception desk in the hospital's main lobby. They looked at each other. It was hard to know who to ask after, since based on their partial information, either Miss Parker or Jarod could have been involved in the altercation with Lorefice. Or both. Or neither.

"We're looking for a woman, brunette —"

"I'm trying to find my friend, he's —"

They spoke in unison, and stuttered to a halt in unison. The young woman behind the desk smiled primly.

"I'd be happy to give you directions if you have a room number."

"That's the problem," said Broots. "We don't know where he — or she — is. Um. We're not even sure which of our friends has been injured. Or if they have been injured. We don't know a lot, in short." A weak laugh bubbled up reluctantly from Broots's chest.

"We're trying to find two missing persons," said Sydney. "We hope very much they are safe somewhere, but to cover all bases we are checking the hospitals. It would help us tremendously if you could put our minds at ease, one way or the other." Once again, Broots found himself wishing he could come across as Official, in whatever capacity, by default. It seemed to come naturally to Sydney. Maybe there was a good reason he'd been the one to raise Jarod post-kidnapping.

"Oh, are you with law enforcement?" asked the receptionist, eyeing the both of them up and down.

"I'm afraid not, we're with a think tank based in —"

"Think tank? Like a government think tank?" The receptionist frowned. "I would have to check protocol on that, I've never encountered personnel from a think tank before."

Sydney hesitated. Broots, meanwhile, was carefully examining his shoes. You never knew, there could be important information down there.

"A private think tank, I'm afraid," said Sydney apologetically.

The receptionist beamed, pleased to be back in more certain territory.

"Oh, sir, I can't give out patient-specific information to private citizens! You should pursue appropriate channels with the police. Have you reported your friends as missing?"

That was precisely what they were trying to avoid. Sydney and Broots had stayed the night at a hotel, and last night Broots had taken advantage of a moment of calm to hack into the Philadelphia Police Department's email server. The police were moving too fast for comfort; they were already pursuing efforts to obtain the DNA material of two people, a 'Margot Jamison' and a 'Jake Parker'. Parker was a bit obvious, but Sydney had chuckled at the former.

"Jamison was her mother's maiden name," he'd told Broots. "So wherever they are, they're together. Or at the very least, they've been seen together at one point."

Back in the present, the receptionist smiled at the pair expectantly.

"Yes, we've been through all that," said Sydney. "Hrm. Thanks for your time."

"We'll just have to search manually," said Broots as they left the reception desk in their wake. "If I could just get at a computer… if they're in the system, I'd be able to find them, no problem."

"We don't want to attract any undue attention, especially since we have no real exit strategy once we find them, and negative attention would only exacerbate our total lack of a plan. We can't risk you being caught sneaking onto a staff computer. You're right, we need to search manually."

They passed a café selling overpriced muffins. Broots waved a hand to encompass the crowds of people.

"Search through all this, face by face? Unless we really luck out, the cops will already be here long before we stumble into the right room."

Sydney pointed to the directory next to the tower elevators. "We can search smart, rather than exhaustively. Look, most of these floors are going to have nothing to do with the trouble Jarod and/or Miss Parker have found themselves in. We can skip the oncology department, the gastroenterology floor…"

"True, I don't think either would have come to see an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, heh. And we can skip — what's an ABI?"

"An acquired brain injury. Stroke and traumatic brain injury, mostly."

"… Can we skip that?"

Sydney shrugged. "Not necessarily." He punch the elevator button for the second floor. "Even with shortcuts, this is going to take a while."

Back in the hallway outside Jarod's room, a hospital volunteer with acne scars glanced at Miss Parker with alarm and confusion before pushing a book cart off in the opposite direction at double-time speed. Vaguely, Miss Parker realized she'd used the wrong name again. Jake Parker, not Jarod. But there was no time to worry about that. Her eyes flicked between the elevator and the door to the stairwell. After a mental coin toss, she flung the stairwell door open and pulled her gun from her holster in one smooth, coordinated movement. A moment's pause on the threshold told her her instincts had been right: below her, she could hear the sound of uneven footfalls on concrete. Jarod was limping down to the ground floor.

"Jarod!" she shouted again. From below, she heard a muffled groan.

It wasn't a fair race: he, limping and winded with barely two minutes' head start. She, exhausted but uninjured, armed and furious. Miss Parker caught up with Jarod just as he pressed a plastic card to the card scanner on the door to the ground floor. She caught his wrist, wrenched it towards her, closed in quickly and jabbed his injured thigh with butt of her gun, hard. He went down like a dropped anchor, and the echoes of his broken cry rebounded off the concrete. Her gun came back up and followed Jarod's movement as he pushed himself up into a sitting position against the wall. As Miss Parker watched, he ground the heels of his hands into his closed eyes and let loose a strangled yell of pent-up frustration. He punctuated the yell by slamming one hand open-palmed into the wall. It made an impotent, dull thump on the concrete.

It was the yell that made Miss Parker drop her gun arm to her side. It was too close to the echo of every setback, every letdown she'd ever run aground on since that first early morning in her father's office, when Daddy had told her that Jarod, her old childhood friend, had gone and escaped the Centre. She knew that frustration.

It's not fair. It was a childish thought to entertain, but it was honest. We should never have been pitted against each other, Jarod. It wasn't fair to do that to us.

Jarod peered up at her through his fingers and a film of angry tears, and Miss Parker's guard went back up. She couldn't say anything, though. There was nothing to say. Don't do that again, but no, she couldn't blame him if he did. I'm sorry, but no, the word was empty without follow-up action. You didn't give me another option, but no, the options were all hers to give. Couldn't even offer her hand to help him back to his hospital room; either he'd push it away, or ignore it, or take it and be further degraded by his own compliance. In the end, she just stood there, listening to his breathing gradually slow, until two nurses stumbled upon the pair of them and bustled them both into the elevator.

Neither spoke on the ascent to floor 4, trauma unit.

Neither spoke as they entered Margot Jamison and Jake Parker's private room.

Neither spoke as Jarod eased down onto the bed, lay back and promptly turned to face the opposite wall, effectively shutting Miss Parker out. On Miss Parker's part, she could only be relieved by the silent treatment. She was angry about the ruse, yes, she was near boiling with rage… but now she had nowhere to put it.