"Black beech wood with a silver handle," Mr. Parker bragged. He'd attended the shop with his daughter, at his insistence. "Very classy."

Miss Parker sniffed. "Classy or ostentatious."

The shop's specialty was canes. A few designer wheelchairs were on display in the shop front, but canes were the real focus. The place had an old money feel, and the shopkeeper only relaxed when he saw that Miss Parker had brought along her father.

Her father and the shopkeeper gave each other knowing looks, and just like that, she'd lost the argument. The shopkeeper rang it up: a black beech wood cane with a silver handle. It looked like an accessory to a Halloween costume, if a well-funded one. She spent the next three days adjusting herself to the third limb, the synchronization of the cane with the left foot. Foot, cane, foot, cane. Try not to lean — damn.

Adjusting to the cane was a fair excuse to avoid headquarters altogether, since her only assigned duties for the next week were these two observation periods down at Jarod's cell. Not that she was looking for an excuse. Normally she'd relish the opportunity to take a vacation, but she'd already been sitting on her ass for weeks on end, first in the hospital and then at home. She was struck by a minor case of wanderlust and the embarrassing craving for work — ironically, a lead on Jarod (a free Jarod, not the one lurking in the basement) would have fit the bill perfectly.

Centre employees thrived on gossip, and they had their fill five days after Miss Parker's first visit to SL-25, when she finally showed up at work once more. For one, the boss's daughter was now hobbling around with a cane (black beech wood, silver handle). For another, the guard on Jarod (you know, the Pretender, Jarod) had been doubled thanks to a failed escape attempt. Parker got the news straight from a white-faced Sydney, who bustled up to her in the main hall bare seconds after she breached the threshold.

"He tried to escape," he said, without a word of greeting. "Jarod. Something about… a drain in the floor? He failed. You have your brother to thank for that."

"A drain in the floor?" Parker repeated, distracted by the eyes of passers-by lingering on her new mobility aid. It sounded a little ridiculous to her — how could a man with shoulders that broad slip out of his cell through a drain in the floor? But then, Jarod had always spent the bulk of his time on the wrong side of ridiculousness, and in her experience, it was never wise to underestimate him. She coughed out a laugh. "Moron. Well, that's good. Maybe he'll face facts."

"It is not good." Sydney's words came out in vehement jerks. He unearthed a DSA from who-knew-where and pressed it into her hands. "Not as long as your brother is in charge of his captivity. Watch that, you'll understand. Were you aware Mr. Lyle has been demoted to…" Here, his face screwed up in distaste. "Company torturer, in effect?"

"Demoted?"

"That's your takeaway?"

"I knew about the… that," she said with a dismissive wave of the hand. To say torture aloud struck her as melodramatic. "I saw the equipment last week, down on sub-level twenty-five. Since when was Lyle demoted?"

With fraying patience, Sydney explained how Lyle had fallen under suspicion of involvement in the attempt on his father's life. He was not handling this fall from grace… gracefully, to say the least.

"He's taking it out on Jarod, and now with this escape attempt…" Sydney chewed on his anxiety, his accent thickening as agitation mounted. Parker suspected they'd have weeks ahead of enduring Sydney stewing anxiously in the background, loudly not saying anything about his mounting worries. "I just need to know how he's doing. Whether his condition has changed since he tried to escape — I can't imagine they were very understanding about it, particularly not your brother. I wish someone would tell me when we will be scheduling new simulations. It's my job, why should I not be privy to our plans?"

Somehow, Parker doubted that plans for new simulations would feature on any upcoming schedules. A man who was ready to slither his way down a drainpipe was not ready to be trusted with the run of the sim lab.

Parker had no intention of watching the DSA of Lyle's persuasion attempts, and for almost a full twenty-four hours, that intention held fast. On the Tuesday before she was scheduled to visit Jarod again, she cued it up on her DSA player, motivated purely by morbid curiosity. She made it three minutes in before turning it off.

She skipped lunch afterwards.

The skipped lunch was why Brigitte's messenger lackey found Parker in her office during the lunch hour, instead of patronizing her usual lunch spot. He passed along the news: Project QS-9300 was one day ahead of schedule.

This rankled. What had Brigitte said during that first impromptu debriefing in the hallway? Two visits, one week apart. Yet here they were, six days later, some faceless messenger summoning Parker to sub-level twenty-five.

"She said a week," said Parker. Had she anywhere to be? Not at all, but whatever she could do to puncture Brigitte's inflated sense of authority, she'd jump at the chance. "Wednesday and then Wednesday again. I have a lunch meeting today, she'll have to get someone else."

The beleaguered messenger scurried away and scurried back, accompanied by Brigitte on the return trip.

"I need you down on SL-25 today. Not tomorrow, today," Brigitte insisted.

In the end, Parker obeyed only because Sydney looked as if he might break down and cry if he didn't get word about Jarod's well-being. He still wasn't permitted on SL-25. Mr. Parker gave no word of explanation on the subject.

When Parker stepped off the elevator on SL-25, new cane in hand, she did so with a crumpled piece of notepaper tucked in the pocket of her suit jacket. Sydney had cramped his hand twice scribbling out every question he could think of. She hadn't decided yet whether she'd ask any of them.

The maintenance workers from last week were nowhere in sight. In their place lurked two guards, one a twenty-something guppy with a crew cut, the other a redhead with grey streaks in his tidy ponytail.

"You're guarding outside the doors?" said Parker, not bothering to conceal her skepticism.

The rookie straightened up, recognizing in Miss Parker the makings of a drill sergeant, should she ever want to switch careers.

"Ma'am? Yes, ma'am. This is our post."

"Even though Jarod's escape attempt didn't use the doors at all?" She let the implication of incompetence stretch, watching the guards squirm before putting them out of their misery. "Not that it was your choice. Still. The Centre has lost a lot of money underestimating Jarod's mind and methods."

The rookie nodded vigorously, his head doing its best imitation of a paddle ball toy. His senior officer simply looked bored and nodded to Miss Parker as she negotiated her three-legged way through the blast doors into the damp cavern beyond.

It was damper than she'd left it, in fact. It looked as though the whole place had been hosed down, water pooling in the dips in the uneven concrete floor. A bar of soap sat on the cart with the sponges and jumper cables. Parker's imagination shied away from entertaining the possible protocols for keeping Jarod clean and hygienic.

The change in Jarod from six days previous was jarring. Last week she'd found him sitting serenely on the floor, shining a beacon of blazing attention on her from her first step into the room. This week, he paced the length of the cell, making sharp, unintelligible comments to himself under his breath. If he noticed Parker's arrival, he made no sign. Where last week he'd quietly owned the space, radiating a comfortable resentment and advertising in all but words that he was only biding his time, this week he was like a crow with his neck caught between slats in a fence, frantic to the point of self-harm. Red marks like rug burns stood out on the soles of his feet, and he had abused his hair into a bizarre shadow-puppet shape.

All this in a week? He'd been down here on SL-25 for months. Why all this change in six days of captivity?

"Hello, Jarod," she said, wariness lending her voice volume, like she was warning off an unseen bear.

Jarod jumped, actually jumped, and looked around wildly at her. There was something unnatural about seeing Jarod startled.

"Miss Parker," he said. His voice was rough enough that it struck her with the visceral urge to clear her throat. Were they giving him any water to drink? "Back again? Didn't get a good enough look the first time?"

"Heard you needed a babysitter again," she said slowly. Her mouth trailed minutes behind her brain. What had happened here?

"I don't need—" He broke off and flinched, hard, his head and neck jerking backwards so sharply it seemed as if a physical force had pushed him, like an invisible giant bending him against the natural angles of his joints. One hand flew to cradle his temple while the other grabbed a cell bar to steady his footing.

The folding chair was where Parker had left it. She dragged it back a foot or two and sat, scanning the prisoner with her eyes. Something had changed, something she'd missed. She remembered the reports from yesterday: he'd tried to escape and failed. Was that all this was? He was all confidence last week, perhaps only because he thought he had a way out — and now that the Centre had outsmarted him, he was finally grieving his freedom? It didn't seem like enough to explain such a radical shift, but then, she'd never been kidnapped by a think tank before, and she had no Pretender skills to imagine how it would feel. It might push anyone over the edge.

"What the hell happened to you?" she asked.

"You happened," Jarod snarled. He gripped the bars with both hands, his knuckles turning white under the tension. "Your whole damn family happened. Why couldn't you leave me alone?"

Never before had she seen him so uncontrolled in his anger. Righteous anger, vengeful anger, those were more his brand. This was resentful, hateful, feral anger. She told herself she couldn't rise to meet it.

"Sure, sure. I meant today, specifically. What's with all… this?" She gestured carelessly at him in a rough outline of his form. The harsh overhead light caught his face at an illuminating angle, and her hand froze mid-movement. "Jarod… what's going on with your eyes? Have you slept at all?"

It was one of the questions on Sydney's list, or close enough. How have you been sleeping? An excellent question, now that she was face-to-face with Jarod. His eyes were bloodshot, threaded with thick, vivid streaks of red, so thick someone might have inked them in with a felt-tip pen. Parker had seen bloodshot eyes before, had seen the faces of students after all-nighters of both the academic and narcotic varieties. In the case of those eyes from her schooldays, the whites had turned pink with the combined effects of many tiny capillaries lending their bloody tint to the recipe, like raspberry syrup drizzled into milk. Jarod's eyes, on the other hand, looked more like the result of an injury. An injury to both eyes. Could he have been hit, maybe as punishment for trying to escape? Heavy dark pouches sagged under both of his eyes, but a sock to the eye would leave more bruising.

"You try sleeping in a damp dungeon for months, we'll see how long you last." He grinned; no, it was more accurate to say that he bared his teeth. Parker almost shuddered. "We could start now, switch places. You'd deserve it more than I do."

Parker didn't answer immediately, refusing to take the bait. The tension in Jarod's face eased, and he blinked. For a beat, he looked confused.

"I'll take that as a no, you haven't slept much."

Jarod let out a long, shuddering breath.

"I — no, I haven't slept well. Especially last night. I woke up and—" He gestured to the grimy mirror over by the toilet. "It was worse last night. I'm so tired. And these headaches… what did they do?"

She didn't know and didn't answer. As she watched, another pain struck Jarod in the skull, as if summoned by the mention. It brought him down into a crouch with a shout of pain. He leaned his forehead against the bars.

"What did they do?" he said again, insistent. The question hadn't been rhetorical, she realized.

"I don't know," she said quietly. Something about a leash, she considered saying, but held it back. Either it was too vague to help, or more than he should know. Or both.

Jarod buried his face in his hands. His breathing slowed, with the apparent intent of forcing himself to calm down. Parker followed his lead, making an effort to let her shoulders relax.

"Lyle hasn't been here in a week." His hands muffled his voice. "They won't tell me what they want, they just… watch. They're waiting for something, that's obvious. But what for?"

"I don't know."

Jarod made a noise of exasperation. "Like talking to a parrot. You don't know much, do you?"

"More than you do." She couldn't resist. How true that was, she wasn't sure. He had no knowledge of QS-9300, though all she knew was the project name, and that it was a "good leash". It wasn't saying much.

"Says the mole to the earthwo — to the earthworm," said Jarod, reeling mid-sentence from another searing pain rolling through his head. "We're all blind down here."

So saying, he looked up at her. Parker's breath caught. The whites of his eyes — they were now not so much bloodshot as flooded. Like he was wearing some kind of ghoulish, Halloween-themed contact lens in each eye. Parker grabbed blindly for her cane and staggered up to the bars.

"Did someone hit you?"

Jarod frowned. "What?"

"In the eye. Did someone hit you?"

"No."

She drew closer, the better to see. As far as she could tell, blood flooded the entire surface of the eye, eclipsing iris and pupil both. He didn't seem surprised by her words. Maybe he'd noticed something wrong earlier.

"Your eyes are red. Whatever you're imagining, it's worse. Can I—"

"You're too close. Get away from me." Sudden urgency, quick and rough out of nowhere.

"What?"

"Get away from the bars."

"Why? They're not electrified. I have a mirror in my pocket, you can—"

A sliver of a second later, Jarod's hand shot out between the bars, straight for her throat. She stumbled back. Her left leg gave out with a shriek of nerves, sending her sprawling across the damp concrete. Jarod's fingers clawed at the air, his chest pressed against the bars to close the difference as much as possible between his fingers and the skin of her throat. His teeth were bared again, each laboured breath sending spittle flying from his lips. His whole body was bent on one singular purpose, which at that moment was…

To kill me, she thought. He wants to kill me.

One urge took over, the urge to get away. Her limbs couldn't respond fast enough for the rapid-fire commands from her brain to run, flee, vanish. All she could see were those bloodshot eyes, so alien set within such a familiar face. The damp concrete slipped under her fingers and she stabbed the end of her cane at the ground, desperate to leverage herself to her feet. The most primitive part of her brain did not understand that Jarod was locked behind reinforced bars, that he'd have to suddenly manifest superpowers to pose her any immediate threat. All it knew was the eyes, the snarling rage, the reaching fingers, and the dogged ringing of steel against steel as Jarod bruised himself to yellow and violet for the opportunity to tear her windpipe out.

Why? This wasn't Jarod, couldn't be. Jarod wouldn't do this.

Finally, she got her cane under her, stumbled to the door, and wrestled it open. Jarod spat a hoarse mantra all the while, at first indistinct, then congealing into human words:

"You did this, you hunted me. Let me out! I'll kill you for this. We were friends! You did this, I'll kill you!"

The eeriest part was, it sounded like Jarod. She wanted to believe that something outside himself had taken him over, that the boy she'd explored the Centre sub-levels with as a child would never try to kill her, but if Jarod were ever to collapse his inhibitions and unleash every frustration against her, wouldn't this be exactly what he would say? Blame and betrayal and rage for a life stolen.

The door swung closed behind her, quickly muffling the chanting and snarling and persistent assault on the bars of Jarod's cage.

"Miss Parker!" said one of the guards, the younger one with the crew cut. "Can we help you?"

Apparently, they had heard no hint of the chaos beyond the door. Her only response was a ragged gasp. She flapped her hand at the door behind her as if that would explain anything.

"We weren't expecting you out for a couple of hours," said the older, redheaded guard. "You know the ladies' room is on the other—"

"I don't need to piss, I need a…" Now what did she need? A sweeper, to get some muscle on her side? But no, sweepers were glorified cops, they would shoot Jarod and ask questions never. Did she want that? "I need a doctor."

"Here, Miss Parker, don't worry."

It was Cox. The guards hadn't radioed, nor had she called up to have him summoned to SL-25. He was simply there, like a bishop travelling across a chess board in a single move, like he'd teleported in at the invocation of his profession. Like he knew to be here. At his right hand stood another cart, identical to the cart in Jarod's observation area, but instead of sponges and jumper cables, it was adorned with an assortment of medical equipment, vials of liquids and tweezers and syringes with long, cruel needles.

"How — you know what, I don't care. Get in there," she said, still gulping on air. Cox swept a handful of instruments into a box about the size and shape of a first aid kit, latched it closed, and disappeared with it through the doorway to Jarod's cell.

Parker leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, blocking out all but the reassuring solidity of the concrete wall at her back and her slowing heartbeat.

"Jarod, stop!" bellowed the voice of Cox from the other room.

This was Cox's plan? Jarod, stop? If talking him down was an option, she would have tried it herself. After a moment's hesitation, she followed the voices through the door and around the corner.

It took a second for her eyes to parse what was happening. Officer Crew Cut must have gone on ahead. At first glance, it looked like he had collapsed against Jarod's cage. But no — now, the tableau was thrown into brutal clarity. Jarod stood behind the guard, holding something taut against the man's windpipe and pulling. Not a threat, mind. Threats are negotiations made between thinking, feeling animals; they leave open the possibility for peace, however remote. No, Jarod wasn't trying to negotiate his way out. This wasn't threat but action. The makeshift garrote had already drawn blood, thin streams staining the guard's starched collar red. The muscles in Jarod's arms distended, a sheen of effort at his temples.

He was, in short, trying to behead the guard. Given any more time, he would succeed.

The other guard, the one not being pinned to the bars of the cell, had his gun drawn. His aim darted around, trying to pick a target that wouldn't risk hitting his coworker.

"Let him go! Let him go!" he roared. His voice cracked on the second iteration.

"Unlock the door!" Cox shouted, earning him a look of pure, incredulous fear from the guard behind the gun — but Cox was right. Wherever Jarod's mind was, it was beyond persuasion. They wouldn't be able to free his captive with words or threats alone. If they weren't willing to shoot Jarod — a fair if — then they'd need to get into the cell to stop him.

"Do it!" Parker hollered, adding her voice to the din.

The redheaded guard gave in and busied himself at the lock, his free hand glued to the gun at his hip. Miss Parker was not similarly armed. She hoisted the cane off the floor and hefted its weight. Better than nothing. Cox, for his part, seemed to be armed with a syringe. A sedative, she guessed.

As soon as the door opened, Cox and the redheaded guard rushed in. Parker followed close behind. Too many bodies, too little space, limbs and joints jerking and swinging and carelessly stabbing at their neighbours in an effort to get at the blood-eyed Pretender and put a stop to his rampage. The struggle was almost silent save for the grunts of effort on both sides. It was a task in itself simply to sort out the bits that were Jarod from the rest of the fray. Parker caught one of Jarod's arms on the downswing, sparing Cox a blow to the shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the younger guard on his hands and knees outside the cell, gasping and spitting. She tightened her grip around Jarod's wrist and slammed it once, twice, thrice against the bars until the garrote fell from his grip, for all the help it did. He jerked his arm back, and she felt a crushing impact to her side as she careened into the bars, thrown off by his silent struggle.

Then it was over. It took a few seconds for it to sink in that nobody was fighting back, that the danger had passed. Parker blinked around and spotted Jarod lying on the floor, his eyelids fluttering closed. Cox was crouched at his side, still holding the syringe, now stuck into the crook of Jarod's elbow. Like a pat of butter on a hot skillet, Jarod's body relaxed from his extremities inwards to his core, muscle group by muscle group.

Nobody said anything for a long minute.

Then, Miss Parker: "Is he…?"

"Wait," said Cox. He was smiling, damn the man. More than that, he was gazing down at Jarod like he was a clutch of eggs beginning to rock back and forth, chips appearing in the shell with tiny beaks peeking through. Like he was watching the birth of something beautiful. Parker zeroed in on the syringe in his hand, now empty.

"That was a sedative? He's sedated? He won't be happy when he comes out of it. You wait all you want, but I'm making myself scarce."

Cox shook his head, his smile broadening.

"Just wait," he said again.

(Neither guard took his advice. They both left the room at the first available opportunity, and could be heard through the door making high-pitched appeals for help on their hand-held radios.)

She didn't know why she should listen to Cox, but she did.

Two minutes later, Jarod stirred. His eyes stuttered open — brown iris on a white backdrop, just as they always were. He looked up at Cox and Miss Parker, both bent over him, and his gaze darted between the two of them. He mouthed a couple of times, no sound forthcoming. Then:

"What was that?" A beat. Nobody rushed to answer. Jarod's voice thickened in horror. "What the hell was that?"