"What was that?" A beat. Nobody rushed to answer. Jarod's voice thickened in horror. "What the hell was that? Why did I — oh, God."

He pushed himself up into a sitting position. Cox hastily pawed at his torso, urging calm.

"Don't sit up too fast, the first dose needs a bit more time."

"The first dose of what?" Jarod looked around at the door to the elevator. "Is Chris okay? I could have — I could have—"

"Chris?" repeated Parker, before the context caught up with her. Presumably Officer Crew Cut had a name.

"The guard I was… the guard I attacked. Is he okay? Please. Please. Six more seconds, I would have been cutting into his trachea. Uh. Move, please." He shouldered past Miss Parker and dropped to his knees in front of the toilet. By the sounds of it, very little came up when he retched into the bowl.

Parker looked on, too rattled to offer any insight.

"He'll survive, no doubt about that," said Cox cheerily. "Just some abrasions, minor lacerations. He'll get away with nothing more serious than a sore throat, and he'll sport some nasty bruises for a while. It might have been a lot worse, I'm very pleased."

"Pleased?" echoed Jarod, staring up from the toilet bowl. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "What?"

Parker's attention returned to the empty syringe in Cox's hand. He'd injected… something, and Jarod had woken up with clear eyes and no further throat-tearing instincts. Odds were good that they had the syringe's contents to thank for Jarod's return to sanity. Cox had arrived armed with the syringe, had presumably known it would be needed, the same way he knew to be on hand without being summoned. Had he been lurking on SL-25 since the observation rotation began, or had he known to show up today, specifically? At this hour, specifically? Cox knew much more than he was saying, that much was clear. He might even be responsible for setting Jarod off. She thought back to her appointment at his on-site clinic — when talking about Jarod's surgery, he'd referred to something being his "baby", his "brainchild". So what had Cox birthed… the ultimate berserk button?

The big question was why. Why would the Centre want an out-of-control Jarod? Wasn't the whole point to control him? Parker was almost there, had almost completed the picture. Just one piece shy.

"I have a hell of a lot of questions too, Cox," she said. "For one, why was I sent down here when you clearly knew whatever you did to Jarod was about to go off?"

Jarod rubbed at the dingy mirror on the far wall. When his ministrations revealed enough to examine himself, he tugged down his lower eyelid and peered at his reflected eye.

"You've got questions, we've got answers." Cox's smile was almost apologetic. Almost. "You won't like all of them, but you'll get used to them in time. To go over the matter, however, we need to head up to the ground floor. The rest of the QS-9300 project administration team is waiting for us in conference room C."

"This had better be good," said Parker. She pushed past Cox and stalked towards the exit. Or, as close as she could get to stalking with the cane in the mix. She should have spent more of her time off on the study of walking-while-enraged.

Jarod didn't move.

"Jarod, you too," said Cox. He knocked shave-and-a-haircut against the bars of the cage. "You need to hear this so you understand what happened."

Jarod's lips parted in surprise.

"Upstairs?" He glanced at the exits, then at the cell bars, at the spot where he'd tried to behead the guard. "Do you have…?" He held out his wrists.

Cox chuckled. "That's the beauty of this whole thing, Jarod. No handcuffs! No cell bars! I really think you'll grow to appreciate this, I really do."

Judging by his expression, Jarod didn't appreciate anything about what he was hearing. He let his wrists drop. With a wary glance at the two Centre employees, he moved to follow them.

As they breached the blast doors' threshold with Jarod in tow, both guards scrambled for their guns.

"Miss Parker!" yelped Chris, the guard formerly known as Crew Cut. "You're transferring Ja — the prisoner elsewhere? Do you need an armed escort?"

He didn't sound eager for the job. Jarod stared wide-eyed at the man, or more specifically at his throat, where a ragged, oozing cut was visible above his collar. Chris held a tissue to the wound with one hand, but it wasn't really doing the job.

"Thank you for offering. We will not need a guard, you can go get cleaned up," said Cox with a magnanimous nod.

"Sorry," Jarod rasped. Chris-the-Guard startled, as if a statue before him had come to life and spoken. Jarod cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have hurt you if there wasn't something — I don't know what happened. I wouldn't do that. I'm so sorry."

"Okay," said Chris, perhaps too intimidated by the encounter to refuse the apology outright.

"Keep moving," his partner ordered, nudging Jarod with the butt of his gun.

Parker, Jarod, and Cox rode the elevator up to the ground floor in silence, Parker silently stewing over the close call. Anger had ballooned to fill the space vacated by fear. She understood nothing and hated it on principle. Her attention strayed to Jarod, who was holding his wrists in front of him as if he'd been cuffed after all. Perhaps he wished he had been.

Up on the ground floor, Jarod looked around surreptitiously. His environs, meanwhile, looked surreptitiously right back at him. Most Centre employees could recognize his face well enough to pick him out of a line-up, and they rubbernecked with unabashed enthusiasm as the group passed through the front hall. The word "Jarod" was on everyone's lips; its namesake grimaced and shirked the curious eyes following him through the crowd.

Conference Room C looked like the sort of conference room one might find along an under-used hallway at a three-star hotel; the only distinguishing feature was the Zulu art adorning the walls. At one end, someone had set up an overhead projector and accompanying screen. Three employees had already arrived: Sydney, Brigitte, and Lyle. Sydney and Lyle looked up at the sound of the new arrivals, while Brigitte remained absorbed in tugging the projector screen down from the ceiling.

"Sydney?" said Parker sharply. "You knew about this?"

Sydney shook his head. "I know as much as you do, Miss Parker. Probably less. I gather that something has happened down on sub-level twenty-five? It's good to see you, Jarod."

Jarod was busy scanning the room and did not reply. His eyes met Lyle's, who smiled and wiggled his fingers in a mocking wave. Jarod glared stonily back.

Parker snorted. "Yeah, I'd say something happened. Jarod almost beheaded one of his guards, and made a fair stab at strangling me, too." Jarod winced, shame coming off him in waves. Parker didn't pay him any attention, too angry with the placid faces of those who would knowingly send her into a lion's den. "Whoever made that call had better sort out their affairs."

"That would be me, Angel," said Mr. Parker. She looked around. Her father had his head poked half-in, half-out of the doorway, in the universal body language of those who are not committed to staying but wish to have the last word.

"Daddy?" she stammered, all power going out of her voice.

"I'm not staying long, I only wanted to make sure you were getting the QS-9300 proceedings up and running. Everyone settling in? Try to keep an open mind, sweetheart, this is important." He nodded as he spoke, an implied just do as you're told, this is how it must and will be. "I'm off. Please direct all your questions to Brigitte, she's lead on this."

He said all this in an uninterrupted monologue which left no room for a word of argument, feedback, or conversation, and closed the door so quick it almost pinched a few of his moustache hairs.

Cox drew out a chair at the head of the table, opposite the projector screen, and nodded at it.

"Seat of honour, Jarod?"

Jarod hadn't said a word since stepping into the elevator, not even to acknowledge Sydney's greeting. He looked the chair over and lowered himself into it with extreme skepticism. Sydney hurriedly scooted over to sit at his immediate right, losing no time in hissing whispered questions into his ear. Parker took the last remaining seat on Jarod's other side. In her peripheral vision, Jarod glanced at her as she sat down. She stared straight ahead.

Brigitte mashed a button on the side of the overhead projector, prompting a warm rectangle of light to appear on the screen. She brandished a stack of projector transparencies and placed the first one on the projector, casting the image of a title page on the wall: Project Quicksilver.

Lyle straightened in his seat. "I thought this was project QS-9300."

"It is," said Brigitte. "The letters stand for 'quicksilver'."

"Obfuscation upon obfuscation upon—"

"If you're done, we're going to get started," said Brigitte brightly. "I'm sure Jarod is impatient to know what this is all about."

All eyes swivelled to Jarod, who opened his mouth, then closed it.

"Just… tell me what you did to me," he said. His voice was still raspy. A pitcher of water sat in the middle of the long conference table. Parker didn't reach for it, though she was briefly tempted.

"I won't insult your intelligence and pretend your behaviour down on SL-25 had nothing to do with us," said Brigitte. "As I'm sure you've put together, it's not a coincidence, this afternoon's events happening less than a week after your surgery. But we'll get to that." She replaced the first transparency with a black-and-white picture of… what was it? Parker had never gone further than the tenth grade in high school biology, and the small nodule of discoloured flesh on the screen did not ring a bell. Brigitte continued. "This is the quicksilver gland, engineered by our colleague Mr. Cox in conjunction with a specialist working out of our outpost in San Jose." Mr. Cox raised his hand in a modest wave, like an Academy Award nominee whose name has been rattled off. "What does it do, you may ask? It secretes quicksilver."

"Mercury?" said Parker, whose tenth-grade science knowledge was pulling its weight for a change. "You put mercury in Jarod? I'm not a scientist, but that seems like an efficient way to kill off the guy you've had me running all over the country to find."

"Not mercury," said Brigitte patiently. "Quicksilver."

"Quicksilver is mercury."

"Not this quicksilver."

"Then why did you call it—"

Cox cleared his throat noisily. "The name is a little misleading, I'll admit. But no, it's nothing to do with mercury, except for it being responsible for Jarod's, ah, mercurial mood shift down in the sub-levels. Ehm. I love a good double-meaning."

"Very witty," said Parker. Her usual tactic of glaring daggers at a person until they quailed did not seem to work on the man. She sniffed. "So you gave Jarod a new gland."

"In my brain," said Jarod, his voice shaking. "Without asking, without even telling me what you were doing. Quicksilver, it's… what, it's a cerebral disinhibitor? Combined with something that stokes aggression?"

Cox nodded with bald enthusiasm, the teacher's pet finally getting the chance to show off his science project. "You're almost there. There's also — can I see this? Thank you, Brigitte." He joined her at the projector and slapped a new transparency on the panel. "Promotion of anger and aggression, yes. Cerebral disinhibition, yes, so you can't simply decide not to act on aggression. But also — here is the part that's all mine — an inhibitory effect on mirror neurons, which are involved in empathy. You become, in effect, less of a Pretender when exposed to a threshold-or-greater level of quicksilver. In short, you become our very own human-shaped wrecking ball. Like that Tasmanian devil fellow on Looney Tunes."

Parker considered pointing out that Jarod had almost certainly never watched Looney Tunes. She kept mum, overtaken by incredulity. Why would the Centre want this? Wasn't the entire point of catching him to have an optimally skilled Pretender on hand?

"Less of a Pretender? Why would you—" Jarod jumped to his feet, jostling the table. His voice rose. "You people are monsters! It wasn't enough to take me from my family, now you're trying to change my brain? Can't you leave anything left of me? I—" He cut himself off mid-shout, looking around at the pale faces surrounding him. His indignant words still filled the room as bouncing echoes, just as ragged and wrathful as the thing in the basement, only without the out-and-out violence. Parker checked the hue of his eyes to make sure. Brown irises on white.

Jarod seemed to have made the same comparison. He looked down at his hands, where there was a dry, crusted trail of blood, a dry riverbed running between his fingers and down the back of his hand. He scrubbed at the mark with his thumb.

Sydney took up the reins.

"This is incredibly inappropriate. If nothing else, you should have consulted me. Where is the sense in changing Jarod for the worse?"

Jarod threw him a look of mingled discomfort and gratitude.

"I wouldn't say 'worse'," said Lyle. He ran a fingertip over his bottom teeth with undisguised glee. "Have a little faith, Syd. I've seen some of the initial pitches, this is something truly special. And if he does end up a little worse, well." He shrugged. "Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Or brains."

A muscle twitched in Jarod's jaw.

"This is unproductive," said Brigitte. "Your questions will be answered as part of the presentation; if you find at the end that there are any holes in your understanding, we can do a small question period to cap off the meeting, if we have time."

She changed the transparency sheet again.

"As Cox was saying, as long as this gland is in Jarod, it secretes quicksilver. When quicksilver reaches a saturation threshold, it leads to a categorical state of altered behaviour." Parker realized belatedly that Brigitte was reading verbatim from the text on the slides. "Following along? That is, the dangerous, aggressive behaviour Cox and Miss Parker witnessed just now."

"We've nicknamed this state 'Quicksilver Madness' in the lab," said Cox. "Or QSM, for short."

"Right! QSM. Miss Parker, you were also lucky enough to see Jarod's QSM stopped in its tracks for the first time, weren't you?" Brigitte picked up a vial of translucent liquid and held it up to the light. It was tinted a desaturated blue. "This substance, also engineered by Cox's team, brings Jarod's bloodstream saturation of quicksilver back to zero. Quicksilver levels are constantly building in his system once the gland has been grafted, reaching threshold levels six days after the most recent dose. We initially predicted seven days, that would be easier to keep track of — but no, judging by today's results, definitely six. At that point, this substance can be injected to flush QS saturation again. Cox, you love your nicknames, Cox is calling this substance simply 'counteragent'. Yes, sure, let's go ahead and pass the counteragent around to have a peek at, here you are. Jarod, I've measured how much is in there, don't think you can get away with squirrelling any into your pockets. Oh, you don't have pockets. Well, all the better."

The vial was passed around like a tactile exhibit at a children's museum. It was blue liquid, nothing Parker found visually earth-shattering. More interesting was Brigitte, whose customer service smile had slipped the moment the group's attention shifted from her to the show-and-tell vial.

Not for the first time, Parker wondered why she needed to be present for this meeting. Project Quicksilver was shaping up to be little more than another opportunity for the Centre to be pointlessly cruel to Jarod. As long as it had nothing to do with her future career path, she couldn't see why she needed to be involved. It was making her stomach twist, watching Brigitte and Cox cheerfully break Jarod up into puzzle pieces simply for the joy of putting all the pieces back the way they liked. As irritating as Jarod could be, he didn't deserve this.

Brigitte continued once the vial was halfway around the assembled group, her smile as resplendent as ever. "It hasn't escaped the Triumvirate's notice, Jarod, how you've thrived outside Centre walls. You don't want to be cooped up, we understand that. We want you to — hang on." Brigitte paused and peered closer at the projector screen. She'd lost her spot. After a harried moment of scanning, Brigitte gave an apologetic wave to a previously unnoticed camera propped at the far end of the room.

So, this was all coming down from someone else, rather than being a Brigitte original. Daddy? The Triumvirate? It was turtles all the way down, and project supervisors all the way up.

Brigitte found her spot. "We want you to reach your potential, and it's clear that you can do so much more in the real world than you can in a basement. Unfortunately, you've also shown that you cannot be trusted not to run off and dabble in your little pet projects, all your little newspaper stories. So! We have a deal for you."

At those words, Jarod let out a long, shaky breath and closed his eyes. He knew what the deal was. Parker was pretty sure she knew, too.

"Work for you in exchange for your… counteragent," said Jarod quietly. He had abandoned anger; or if indeed he was angry, he was hiding it well.

"Right in one," said Brigitte. "The bright side, I want to reiterate, is that you get to leave Centre grounds! You'll even have living quarters off-site, won't that be nice? Working with people out in the real world, like you seem to enjoy. Only instead of picking jobs based on sensational journalism, you'll be assigned jobs based on Centre contracts. It's really a minor change. Plus, now you'll have help. You won't be on your own anymore, so you'll be able to effect much greater change."

Brigitte was doing her damnedest to put a shine on this turd, presumably for Jarod's benefit. If so, it was in vain, as he had devoted himself to rubbing at the pink lines crisscrossing his hands — the same marks he'd made while winding the garrote around his fists. This last detail must have caught his ear, however, because he looked up.

"Help?" he said.

Brigitte's mouth squirmed bizarrely, fighting a smile. "Ye-es. Project Quicksilver will include some familiar faces. Sydney has made it clear that he would like to be involved in the project, so it was decided that he and Mr. Broots will provide distance support, primarily based out of Blue Cove. Mr. Lyle has been assigned as field support." Lyle waved again. "And rounding out the team is the lovely Miss Parker as your direct handler."

"No."

All eyes snapped to Miss Parker.

"I'm afraid it's not—"

"I'm not doing that. There's no way in hell you're going to get me involved in this mess," she snarled, pushing herself to her feet and gripping the conference table's edge with white knuckles. "Even if it wasn't Jarod, I wouldn't do it."

"This isn't an argument," said Brigitte, the first sign of real annoyance rippling across her face.

Parker barked out a laugh. "For once, you're right. It isn't."

She extricated herself from her chair and strode out of the room, letting the door slam satisfyingly on her way out. She was halfway across the front hall when she heard a clamour of chairs rattling against the conference table, and Sydney stumbled out of the room.

"Miss Parker!" he shouted after her. She didn't even slow down, maintaining an impressive clip considering the bark of pain from her left leg each time she put too much weight on it. He only caught up to her when she was forced to wait for the elevator. "Miss Parker, please, think about this for a moment."

She wheeled on him.

"What should I think about? The prospect of taking on another Jarod-centric Centre project, this one with even less of a finish line than the last? I want out, Sydney, not a permanent position. They're never going to retire Jarod until they run him into an early grave, I'm not hitching my wagon to all that."

"Your father asked for you to be moved to this assignment," said Sydney. He knew the weight the invocation of Mr. Parker would carry. Her lips thinned, fighting the urge to stomp her stiletto straight through his foot to the floor for playing on her allegiances like this.

"If he asked, then there's wiggle room. It could be another project. You wouldn't be in front of me right now, trying to convince me, if I didn't have a choice."

Sydney cast an imploring look to the heavens.

"Maybe you do have a choice, but do you really think there's a better one?" he said. "It would still be with the Centre. And besides, I disagree that this would be permanent."

"How's that?"

His arm flew back, gesturing in the general direction of the conference room. "It's Jarod! He'll find a way out of this, he has to. I can think of a couple of ideas myself — none that I'd speak aloud with Centre ears around, of course — and I'm not him. More than likely, he'll find some way to escape."

"Sure, maybe. And then I'd be back on pursuit detail, on the Triumvirate's shit list because he slipped out from under their collective thumb and escaped. You're not making a great case, Syd."

The elevator had arrived, opened and closed again. Twice. They were drawing a passive audience, listeners-in of convenience.

"Say the position goes to someone else," Sydney argued. "If failure is so inevitable, you'd be back on pursuit detail anyway, sooner or later. Likely sooner, because the poor bastard they'd assign to the handler position wouldn't understand Jarod as well as you do, and would do a worse job of keeping tabs on him. Believe me when I say, Miss Parker: no one at this organization would make a better handler for Jarod than you. Not even me."

Parker snorted. "Flattering my ego, now? That's the weakest tactic yet. And besides, I'd be shit at this. Come on, Syd, picture it for two seconds. Can you really see me working with Jarod? There's too much history there, it's too personal. This project, demented as it is, needs someone impersonal if it's ever going to work." She ran her tongue through the inside of her lower lip, debating whether to voice her next thought. It didn't take long. "I wouldn't even want it to work."

Sydney surged forward with an emphatic index finger, like he was sniping the comment as it flew from her mouth. "There! Exactly! That is exactly why it has to be you. Anyone else would want Project Quicksilver to work because it would mean their job if it didn't. Nobody has the perspective you do, nobody cares in the same way you do." He looked around at their assembled audience and drew her by the elbow off to the side, out of earshot. A few of the listeners-in looked disappointed. "Can you imagine what would happen the first time Jarod accidentally falls into this, this madness state in the field? Another person in the handler role, they wouldn't know what to do. They'd gun him dow—" Sydney's words clogged his throat and his voice cracked. He pressed his trembling lips together, his jaw working to contain whatever emotion — terror, dread, frustration — was paralyzing his voice. Parker averted her eyes. After a loud pause, Sydney continued in a harsh whisper. "They'd gun him down. They would… they will kill Jarod. Please, Miss Parker, you are the only one I can trust with this. You are the only one who cares enough to keep him alive."

Parker kept her eyes down, glued to the end of her cane as she scuffed it against the tiles. A newly acquired tic. Sydney had already pressured her into unwanted work once this week. He'd used emotional tactics then, too. She wasn't about to let it happen again.

"You're dreaming if you think I care about keeping Jarod alive. I cared about catching him, that's all. It was my job."

Despite herself, the tears shining at the corners of Sydney's eyes rattled her. It wasn't unheard of for Sydney to get emotional about work, she'd seen it before. This level of clear terror, however, was new.

On every level but the superficial, she knew she didn't really have a choice. Few freedoms remained to her, and one of them was to play-act at refusing orders. Not refusing orders in actuality, mind you, only her one-woman show where she pretended at having free will. If her father wanted her on a project, she'd eventually fall in line. She knew that. But, oh, the brick wall she ran up against whenever she tried to picture herself giving in. Working alongside Jarod? Showing up for the nine-to-five with Jarod, punching a clock with Jarod, lunches in the break room with Jarod… overseeing regular injections so that Jarod wouldn't fly off the handle and disembowel her? The two of them would implode.

Granted, if they did that bad of a job, she would probably be relieved of her position, but —

If you have to dry the dishes,
(Such an awful, boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes,
('Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes,
And you drop one on the floor —
Maybe they won't let you
Dry the dishes anymore.

In this case, dropping a dish would have a body count.

Sydney shot her a despairing look before turning back to the conference room, his shoulders hunched. After a long minute, Parker followed him. Her cane was twice as heavy in her hand as it had been on the way out.

Back in Conference Room C, nobody reacted by movement or word as Parker squeezed back in. Nobody except Sydney. He greeted her with an expression of such shock and undisguised hope, she considered turning on her heel and marching (hobbling) right back out the way she came. She didn't, but it was a near thing.

The attention of the rest of the room's occupants was on the latest document being projected on the wall-mounted screen. The document listed the rules concerning Jarod's expected conduct.

"If you try to escape, counteragent will be temporarily withheld until we can verify the mistake will not recur." Brigitte addressed the wall rather than face her audience. Jarod was not looking at the screen. "If you persistently disobey the orders of your handler, myself, or any of my superiors, counteragent will be withheld. If you try to circumvent the terms of your employment, counteragent will be withheld. If you attempt willful violence against any other Centre employee, whether outside of QSM or arranged to occur while under QSM, counteragent will be withheld. Understood?" Brigitte turned back to look at Jarod and spotted the newly returned Miss Parker. "Miss Parker! Welcome back."

All eyes turned to look at her, including Jarod's. Parker nodded stiffly.

"Don't stop on my account," she said. "If you are naughty and don't keep your room clean, counteragent will be withheld."

Jarod exhaled a laugh through his nose. Brigitte ignored the comment.

"Can I assume by your return that you've reconsidered your compliance with the handler assignment?"

If only for the opportunity to sabotage your authority grab, thought Parker, hating the woman before her. She chewed her lip, pretending to think it over. She couldn't be seen to kiss the hem of Brigitte's pantsuit.

"I accept on a trial basis," she said. "Two weeks. If it's not working out, I'll need a reassignment."

"Two months," Brigitte countered.

"Three weeks."

"Six weeks."

"One month."

"Done," said Brigitte. And all the room saw it was she who caved. Undaunted, she clapped her hands together. "Wonderful! I think that brings us to the end of the explanation of terms. To put it plainly, Jarod—" She crossed to him and, reaching out, smoothed a few strands of hair behind his ear. He stared back at her, a stone statue but for his hands, which shook under the edge of the conference table, unseen by everyone but Parker. "You left the Centre in part because, as Sydney has told me, you feared you were hurting people through your work with us. Now, if you wish not to hurt people, you have to work with us. So, it's all worked out."

Technically this passed without comment, though Sydney made a wounded noise and Lyle snorted. Jarod didn't move. It wasn't that Brigitte was revealing a fresh, unknown hurt; anyone present could see the particular twist of cruelty in the terms of Jarod's employment. It was one thing to know it, however, and another to hear it in bald, unapologetic words.

Finally, Jarod spoke. "When do we start?"

The words were dull and wooden.

"Soon!" said Brigitte. "We — I want you to take a couple of days, get used to your new situation. I wouldn't want you distracted on your first assignment. Now, Miss Parker, on the other hand: your duties start immediately. Jarod needs to be shown to his new accommodations. I think you know the place. The key is in the mailbox." She scribbled an address on a scrap of notepaper and held it out for Miss Parker to take; Parker did so with telegraphed resentment.

She did, indeed, know the place. She and Jarod wouldn't be neighbours in the most literal sense of the word, but he would be in the same neighbourhood. Free to stop by and ask to borrow a cup of sugar whenever.

"We're done here?" she said, sharp and impatient. Around the table, everyone exchanged inquiring glances, searching for the inevitable stray question or soapbox-mounted plea. None came. "Wonderful. Jarod, I guess we're heading out. We're not getting any younger. Or much older, I'm betting."

The drive over to Jarod's new house was quiet and tense, both of their thought bubbles taking up too much room in the car for either to breathe. Parker was constantly aware of his shoulder next to hers. Every shift of his body — as he looked out the window, scratched his chin, shifted his leg, glanced at her — flagged her attention in her peripheral vision as if he'd shouted. She caught herself leaning away just for some distance.

Jarod made one attempt early on to interrupt the stubborn silence:

"You bought a cane."

The cane was lying across the backseat, within arm's reach. Parker had tried several more convenient positions for it, but it always seemed to get in the way of driving.

"Obviously."

Jarod craned back to look at it more closely.

"It's nice," he said after a beat.

Parker grunted. That was the end of the conversation.

Jarod's new house was a small, one-storey building, barely wide enough for two rooms across. The paint job, overdue for a touch-up, was denim blue with white trimming. The back door led to a modest backyard, tiny and fenced-off with well-trampled grass and lovingly gnawed fence posts, suggesting a dog had called this square of land home not too long ago. Stairs led up to the front door, a screen door standing guard before whitewashed poplar.

"I've stayed here before," said Jarod.

"You have?" said Parker, surprised. She knew that Jarod returned occasionally to Blue Cove, usually to steal something from her, her father, or headquarters. Why that should ever require him to spend the night in town, however, she couldn't fathom.

"Yes. It's comfortable enough." He failed to elaborate on why he'd been there. Parker decided she didn't care.

Jarod let himself out by the passenger side door and retrieved the key from the mailbox.

Parker hesitated with her hands at ten and two. There was no obvious reason to follow him in. Nevertheless, she found that she wanted to. She put it down to curiosity.

She pushed open the front door. Inside, there was a warm glow coming from her left, illuminating a small, cozy kitchen. The Centre had furnished the house, if a little haphazardly. The furnishings were all at least twenty-five years out of date. Jarod's face emerged around the corner to the kitchen, where he'd been inspecting the cupboards. His eyes were guarded.

"… Come on in," he said. It seemed to cost him something to say.

Parker recalled an old DSA she'd seen of Sydney fetching Jarod from his quarters. There had been no decorations on the walls, no sign of personalization. Sydney had let himself in without knocking. Jarod's room had never been his. And now here she was, establishing from the get-go that his new house was not really his, either, not when she could barge right in for no apparent reason.

"'nks," she muttered, a terse acknowledgement that she hoped he would understand. She looked around. "It's not awful."

"No, it's not," said Jarod, without meeting her eyes. He brushed past her, past the front entrance area and into the living room, where he began scanning the walls for power outlets.

As Parker pretended interest in living room decor, Sydney's words came back to her. It's Jarod! He'll find a way out of this. She knew he was right, watching the gears churning in Jarod's oversized brain. Not even a minute through the door, and he was already mapping out his new living quarters, hatching inevitable schemes. He'd figure something out, and rid them both of these excruciatingly awkward circumstances. Odd though it may be to acknowledge, she had a kind of faith in him.

Jarod disappeared into another room. Only an illuminated sliver of the room was visible through the crack in the door, which revealed it to be a bedroom. A low, drawn-out rumble suggested that Jarod was going through the dresser drawers. Parker rubbed at her forehead and sighed. What was she doing here? From now on, she would have precious few minutes not spent in Jarod's presence, and here she was, letting sand grains fall through the hourglass, standing in Jarod's living room when she could be well on her way home.

From the other room came a hitched sigh and the squeak of bed springs. Parker took a step back, intending on heading back to her car. Then, she heard Jarod laugh softly to himself, a bitter, exasperated laugh. Without knowing why, she followed the sound.

Jarod was perched on the bed with his legs hanging off the side, his elbows on his knees. A t-shirt hung from his hands and he stared at it with mingled grief, disappointment, and fear.

"They bought you a wardrobe?" said Parker. Her mouth twisted in distaste. "Convenient yet creepy."

He looked so, so tired. He held the shirt up for her to see: black heather, unadorned save for a spot over the heart, where the Centre's logo had been stitched in white thread and, under it: JAROD.

"They must have been working on all this for a while," he said.

Parker nodded. "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to buy some different shirts. That one screams 'I'm the Centre's bitch' a little too loudly."

Jarod laughed, a bark of unexpected sound that took them both by surprise. The accompanying smile quickly shrank and vanished. He stared at the logo a moment longer, then wadded up the shirt and lobbed it across the room, where it landed in a waste bin. Taking her cue, Parker silently excused herself. She was halfway to the door when Jarod's voice brought her back again.

"Miss Parker," he called.

She ducked her head back in. "What is it now, Jarod," she said, laying impatience on thick.

He smiled, tired and sweet and uncomplicated.

"Thank you for accepting the job," he said.

She waited, but apparently, this was all he had to say.

"Sure," she said.

And left.

Notes: The quoted poem is "How Not To Have To Dry The Dishes" by Shel Silverstein. Now that this chapter's out of the bag, if you're curious, I can specify the extent of the fusion with 2000's The Invisible Man without spoiling the fic. The following is the extent of what has been borrowed from TIM: the gland, roughly how it works (minus invisibility), counteragent and the term 'counteragent', the terms 'quicksilver', 'quicksilver madness' and its abbreviations, the project name 'QS-9300', and a couple of oblique references in dialogue to someone in San Jose, who is not a character in this story. I was watching TIM for the nth time last year and thought, whoa, the Centre could really use this gland for coercive purposes. And here we are! Reviews are infinite love 3