"Miss Parker," said Mr. Cox, ever gracious, ever unnerving, "would you like to do the honours?"
The Project QS-9300 field team had been ushered into Centre headquarters through a side entrance with an unconscious Jarod in tow. All the way from the tarmac, Parker fielded staff questions with a stony, imperious silence which sent them all ricocheting off at odd angles. Their destination, as it turned out, was the Renewal Wing. Cox had room six set up for Jarod: padded walls, reinforced doors, cuffs installed into a modified operating table for counteragent administration. A bulletproof one-way mirror spanned the length of one wall for interested parties to spectate the proceedings. Everything was a glaring white. Everything but the sliver of red under Jarod's eyelids.
Cox held out the counteragent syringe case to Miss Parker. Two syringes lay nestled in the box — were there always two? There had been two the first time, three weeks back. One for administering, and perhaps they kept a backup on hand, in case of breakages.
Would she like to do the honours? Not particularly. She'd had enough of needles on the trip back to Delaware, growing ever more familiar with the veins in Jarod's arms, first in the backseat of the car and then on the plane out of Spokane. That Cox would offer the "honours" at all reeked of some insidious effort to indoctrinate her to the new normal of her ghoulish position. Nevertheless, she took the syringe wordlessly and set about tying the tourniquet. No need to prolong the ordeal.
Cox stepped close, close enough that when he next spoke, his words were audible only to her.
"I'm a doctor, Miss Parker," he murmured. "I can tell when a closed incision has been tampered with."
The needle stilled, the tip just shy of puncturing Jarod's skin. There had always been a chance of Cox noticing. Parker had done what she could on the flight back with a first aid kit and a box of wet wipes, but she'd known it would come out eventually. When she was done, the incision didn't look freshly cut, but it didn't look three weeks old, either.
"Congratulations," said Parker, pretending nonchalance. The needle slid in. "Tampered with, huh? Yeah, I suppose they would have taken a look at the incisions. Makes sense."
"They?"
Here came the gambit. In low voices barely louder than the ambient rumble of the plane's engines, Sydney and Parker had thrown together the feeble beginnings of a cover story. They'd known to expect an inquisition — everyone from Brigitte to the Triumvirate to the custodians who emptied her office waste bin would want to know why her team had been in the field for three to four days longer than projected, with no contact. The answer could not be that Jarod had escaped and tried to yank his new leash out of his cranium. It couldn't. The Triumvirate would bleed me from the nose for this, she told herself, though she knew that wasn't the real reason she didn't want them finding out.
"The staff at the hospital." Parker fought back a smile at Cox's bugged-out expression. This wouldn't go over well, but it was better than the Centre finding out that Jarod had been rooting around in his brain. "After Angus's fundraiser, he woke up with a high fever, so we took him to see a local doctor. The doc thought it might be a post-surgical infection. Must have been pretty bad, Jarod had to stay laid up there for a couple of days. We returned as soon as he was well enough to travel."
Still unconscious, Jarod let out a soft sigh. If anyone had bothered to look, they would have seen the sliver of red under his eyelids slowly transition to a milky white.
Cox nodded slowly, watching Parker's profile as she loosened the tourniquet. While his attention was on her face, Parker quickly palmed the second syringe in the case. Closing the case and latching it one-handed without looking down at her hands or making a sound was tricky, but not impossible. She couldn't afford a repeat of this first assignment. It wasn't that she didn't understand why Brigitte would keep them on slim rations — she would have done the same in her stepmother's place. As Jarod's handler, however, she needed emergency stock. A sedative had done the job this time, but it wouldn't work if they needed Jarod conscious to tend to some urgent detail of an ongoing assignment. She couldn't be caught short-handed again.
"That explains a great deal," said Cox. A little of the tension in Parker's shoulders dropped away. "But not everything. For one, his tracker is missing. I don't think a local doctor would have removed it without understanding its function."
She cursed inwardly. The damn tracker. She hadn't thought about it once since they'd left the motel. Pity the poor, bewildered housekeeper who must have stumbled upon the task of cleaning it up, on top of all the mysterious tarps and assorted viscera left behind.
The only defence Parker had was ignorance. "Tracker?" she repeated.
Cox hummed. "Yes. An extra safety measure. We won't bother to reinstall it, I think. He's got the picture now, if he's been tinkering around in his skull. He knows now that he can't simply snip the gland out, doesn't he? Or did he share his findings with you?"
Plausible deniability was the only way forward.
"He can't cut it out? Why not?"
Cox ushered her away from Jarod's sleeping form, out into the hallway. Based on the timing of the last sedative injection, Jarod would have another hour yet before he came to.
Cox took advantage of their newly gained privacy to raise his voice past a murmur.
"I designed the thing knowing it would be implanted in a man who, with a little exposure to theory and some brief practice, could become a master surgeon on a whim. For all I knew, he already was a master surgeon. And QS-9300 would have a pretty short shelf life if Jarod could just take the thing out when he'd had enough. No, if Jarod is as smart as advertised, he now understands that if the gland is removed, the process would kill him."
It wasn't news — Jarod had said as much himself. It was a horse of a different colour, however, to hear it straight from the architect.
"You could remove it, though, I assume."
"In point of fact, no!" Cox wiggled a pair of jazz hands at her. "Remember? I wasn't blessed with a surgeon's hands. He'd end up dead on the table."
Parker's eyes rolled skywards.
"Fine, not you, but some other Centre-employed surgeon. You can't have stuck the thing in without an exit plan."
Cox smiled. "I assure you, Miss Parker, that is exactly what we did. Go big or go home, right? We went big. We went very big, but it was necessary. He would never have stayed with us voluntarily, not now that he's successfully broken out. It was only a matter of time. So, yes, we 'stuck the thing in' with the knowledge that we have no idea how to remove it safely. One-way operation. If there were a way to remove it, Jarod would figure it out. The only way to give Jarod a puzzle he can't solve is to give him a puzzle with no solution."
As they proceeded down the hallway, a door on their right slammed shut. Moments later, another door on their left did likewise. Their options narrowed.
"Suppose Jarod shared what he found with me," said Parker, treading carefully. Cox had said nothing about escalating his discovery to the Triumvirate, but perhaps he thought it went without saying. Still, she held out hope. "Let's say he put the odds of fatality at ninety-five percent. What—"
"Ninety-five percent?" Cox chuckled. "Is that what he said? I'd say closer to ninety-six, but close enough. He did a thorough job, didn't he? Yes, there is a remote chance, but it's overwhelmingly reliant on luck."
"So it's possible."
Cox nodded. "Sure, of course. Anything's possible. I don't think he'd favour the one-in-twenty-five result either, though."
Parker stopped in her tracks. They'd come to the end of the hallway. Nearby, some disembodied voice wailed, an infantile sound out of a grown man's mouth.
"What's the one-in-twenty-five result?" she asked, not certain whether she wanted to hear the answer.
"In our limited simulations, whenever removal did not result in death on the table, it resulted in irreparable damage to the mirror neurons, which early studies have suggested are involved in empathy. He would, in effect, cease to be a Pretender, and his capacity to empathize with others would be permanently damaged. He might continue to be a very intelligent man if intracranial pressure could be mitigated. But he wouldn't be the same person."
Another door slammed shut. Their options dwindled.
"This is… insane," said Parker. "There's no way this project doesn't implode before the year is out."
Cox tutted. "So pessimistic. Yes, it's a rocky start, but it was bound to be. Things will go more smoothly once Jarod adjusts to his new situation, count on it. I believe we have many years of productive work ahead of us."
The thought was nauseating.
"And then what? Suppose you're right — even you have to admit, this can't last forever. The gland is a life sentence. A life sentence. What happens when Jarod stops being useful?"
"Oh, that's well above my pay grade," laughed Cox. "I wouldn't deign to guess. But, well… what do you think? Whatever first comes to mind is likely not too far off the mark."
Parker didn't shudder, but it was a near thing.
"Why are you telling me all this? It wasn't in the briefing."
Cox's mouth shrugged. "I believe that clear communication enables people to do their jobs to the best of their respective abilities. It's a trait that makes me stick out like a sore thumb amidst the cloak-and-dagger Triumvirate crowd. One thing I agree with them on: sometimes a simple lie does the same job just as well. For instance, if they ask me why your team was late checking in, and I tell them Jarod fled his handler and tried to remove his quicksilver gland, they will respond by withholding counteragent, as threatened. That will delay your team's next mission by a week. Your team's next mission, while not urgent, is definitely time-sensitive. If I instead tell the Triumvirate that Jarod experienced, as you reported, a post-surgical infection, well…" He smiled sweetly. "You'll get down to business on schedule. And you'll owe me one. That suits me fine."
Parker gave the man an assessing glance, eyes narrowed. So Cox didn't plan to tattle to Brigitte. That was a win in her column, but the way Cox dressed it up, it sounded more like blackmail. Not current blackmail, but… prospective blackmail. Blackmail-to-be. Schrödinger's blackmail. For the moment, it was all speculative.
"Suits me, too," she said finally.
Cox tugged open the door to the rest of the complex. The threshold made an odd sucking sound and the sudden buzz of voices flooded in — the Renewal Wing was sound-proofed.
"By the way, the cane is lovely," said Cox, a comment cast back over his shoulder. "It suits you in more ways than one. Much steadier on your feet, I bet, too."
Parker scowled down at the thing. She'd forgotten she was holding it, if truth be told. Like it had become a third limb. She let the door close behind Cox and the conversational hubbub of Centre employees gradually muted, leaving her in a bright white silence.
Well, not complete silence. The Renewal Wing was not deserted. From her left came the sound of a wail, again, the same infant's wail but with the timbre and pitch of a full-grown man.
Parker turned to go — she was expected back at Jarod's room — then stopped.
She knew that voice.
She stood as still as possible, listening for the sound again. One minute became two, which stretched to three, four… she had almost given up when she heard it again. It was wordless and, if she had to go by sound alone, frustrated. Not quite angry, only the noise of a child who wanted something but had been given a firm "no". The sound came from the second door on the left.
Parker looked both ways and, finding her surroundings empty of spying eyes, let herself into the wailing cell.
The room was a near-perfect duplicate of the room down the hall where Jarod was sleeping off his last sedative shot. Same padding, same viewing area, same cuff-adorned operating table. And, just as in Jarod's room, the table was occupied.
"Angelo," Parker breathed.
Angelo lay on the table, his eyes closed, his brow folded in a perpetual frown. As Parker looked on through the one-way mirror, he tried to turn over in his sleep, but the cuffs closed around his wrists brought him up short. Again, the wail of frustration.
Parker disengaged the lock on the internal door and stepped in. The smell of ammonia hit her like a solid wall — he had pissed himself, possibly more than once. She tugged up the corner of her collar to cover her nose and drew closer. From the viewing area, he had looked more-or-less the same as ever: dull green polo shirt and lumpy sweatpants, flyaway hair, prematurely care-worn mug. Close to, novel details presented themselves. Angelo's fingertips were rubbed raw. The table was decorated with two kinds of scratches: first, a small collection of fingernail scratches, and later, the finer scratches of inexpertly wielded sandpaper. Each of Angelo's fingernails had been filed down as far as possible without rubbing skin away. The stubble on his cheeks was both too long and too short to be intentional.
She unfastened the cuffs without thinking. They came undone easily under her hands. Angelo stirred and opened his eyes, and one final change in Angelo's appearance emerged: his eyes were red. That same blood-flooded red.
Angelo snarled, though that hardly seemed the right word for it. The noise, though animalistic, was weak and low, like the dying croak of a wounded cat. His blunted fingers pawed at the skin of her arms, but without nails, his fingers left no marks behind, not even the pale lines of deadened skin formed when one scratches a mosquito bite. He reached for Parker's throat, a feeble echo of how Jarod had lunged for her, that first day down on SL-25. She didn't try to dodge Angelo's grasp, watching his lacklustre progress with an ache of pity. He reached her hands, her forearms, her elbows… no further. He slumped back.
"Oh, Angelo," she whispered. "What have they done to you?"
Angelo let loose a wordless yelp of frustration. He was in the throes of quicksilver madness and needed counteragent, that much was clear. Why he hadn't been given any earlier to keep him from going red-eyed, she could only guess. She could—
No, she had the perfect solution, didn't she? A vial of counteragent, neatly tucked away in her jacket pocket. Parker had earmarked it for Jarod's next mission, but hey, she could always swipe more. Her first pick-pocketing had been easy enough. For the nth time that day, she filled a fresh syringe and hunted down a vein to poke. A viable vein was more difficult than Parker had been expecting; judging by his chapped, flaking lips, he was long past dehydrated, his veins thin and shrivelled.
"No, no," muttered Angelo. "Waste."
Whatever he meant by "waste", it was too late. The tip of the needle had found a vein. Seconds later, his eyes transitioned to a pale pink… and stopped there. Parker leaned in, inspecting the colour, waiting for the pink tinge to shift. Nothing happened.
"Rise and shine, Angelo," she said under her breath. "What's going on with your eyes? They're still pink."
Angelo smacked his gummy lips together and cleared his throat with a harsh rattle.
"Sleep… sleep is fine," he said. His words were stilted and telegrammatic, but then, they always were. "Don't. Don't give… more. Please."
"I wasn't going to," said Parker. She frowned. "The shot? You don't like it? It flushes the quicksilver, Angelo. You need it."
"No—" He coughed. "Doesn't work."
"Doesn't work?" she repeated. "What… the counteragent doesn't work?"
Angelo nodded. That couldn't be right, though. Here he was, talking calmly with her. No further strangulation attempts. And his eyes had changed, if imperfectly.
"No more shots," he said. He heaved a heavy sigh. "No more shots for Angelo. That's… good. No more pain. Only anger and sleep."
"Sleep?" Her mind caught up. She hadn't been the first to think of sedating a quicksilver-addled subject. This level of lethargy was beyond the limits of a bad night's rest. "They keep you sedated. Is that right?"
Another nod. Parker passed a comforting hand over his heavy, mournful head.
"Why?" she asked. "They couldn't figure out how to make the counteragent work for you? Or—?"
Miss Parker was out of her depth. She couldn't fathom why the drug would work as advertised for Jarod, but not for Angelo. Had they not bothered to adjust the… the concentration? The dosage? Did a smaller man somehow need a smaller dosage? She wasn't a pharmacist.
Angelo shrugged. "Too much money." He grinned that weird, wobbly smile he always used whenever he landed on a useful clue for tracking Jarod down. "The drug… expensive. Give to Angelo, bad idea. Won't make money." He tilted his head in the direction of his Pretender neighbour. "Jarod makes money."
To cap off his analysis of Centre economics, Angelo ducked his head against his chest and cupped the back of his skull in his open palms with a pained groan.
"No more shots," he said again, through clenched teeth. When he looked up once more, his eyes had returned to an insistent red.
Parker looked at the empty syringe in her hand. It hadn't done a thing for Angelo, had only hurt him and teased him with a few seconds of relative lucidity. No wonder he hadn't wanted an injection, if it was so ineffective against his version of quicksilver madness, and would give him a fierce headache in the bargain. So much for no pain.
"I won't," she said softly. She folded her arms around him. Parker had never been big on hugs, but it was easier when she was the instigator. It was also easier when it was Angelo. He'd never been her brother, but there had been that one beautiful day when she would've given almost anything to be his sister, and that hypothetical reality inhabited her memory like real, lived history.
There was a moment, seconds later, when a categorical shift ran through Angelo's frame and twisted his intent, from feebly pushing her away to feebly wrapping his hands around her neck. She made no attempt to fight him off. He was too weak to be dangerous, and besides, he had nobody else.
The next time Miss Parker visited the sim lab, it had travelled back in time. Down to the angle at which each chair faced its neighbour, the lab had been recreated in the exact image of how it had stood as of the date of Jarod's escape back in '96. The only object of any novelty was a 7-foot-tall box sitting in the middle of the room. Parker descended the stairs to the main staging area and sat down next to Sydney.
"Tell me you didn't have anything to do with Angelo," she said, forgoing greetings.
Sydney looked over in mild bewilderment.
"Angelo?" he repeated. "That's very broad, Miss Parker. I have had to do with many projects involving Angelo. Did you have something specific in mind?"
"So you haven't noticed that he's been missing?" The indignation in her voice was entirely undeserved, and privately, she knew it. She hadn't noticed Angelo's absence, either. When she tried to remember the last time she'd seen him clear-eyed, she couldn't. That was the thing about Angelo: he popped up when he was needed, and otherwise he was assumed to be in storage, twiddling his thumbs until the next time there was a square hole for his square peg.
Sydney blinked.
"I suppose he has, yes," he said. He did not react to her tone — he was used to her by now. "Why — do you know where he's gone?"
She told him. Sydney took the news in stride, though by the end of Parker's account, his eyes were closed in weary defeat.
"He said 'no more pain', and the way he said it… like he preferred to go without a counteragent shot because, without it, there was no pain," said Parker, to tie off the tale, "but right before I left, a bad headache hit him. Back of the head, just like Jarod's."
Sydney opened his eyes and stared dully at nothing in particular.
"Perhaps re-entering the state of madness is the exception," he said. It wasn't clear whether he was talking to himself or Miss Parker. "Hitting the saturation point, or rather some side-effect thereof, is physically painful in some way. And then the rest of the time, he is in a low-energy, somnolent presentation of quicksilver madness. No pain… that's a small comfort, but it's something. At least he's not in agony while we figure all this out. I wish I knew why the counteragent reacts differently to him." A pause, then his arm flew out and slapped at the pile of books and papers sitting beside him, causing the contents to spill across the desk in an arc of rejected literature. He'd hit the pile at the wrong angle and only two books teetered and fell to the floor. As expressions of rage went, they didn't come much more impotent. "I wish I understood anything about this! Useless, it's useless. The Centre is tainting the greatest minds at our disposal, and for what? Interfering in state elections, and… this."
He waved the offending arm at the seven-foot-tall box. Parker got to her feet and paced around the box. It was black and opaque and made no perceptible sound.
"What is this?"
Sydney deflated.
"Jarod's first lab-based sim since his return to the Centre. We were hired by a Canadian mining corporation. They're being sued by the family of a spelunker who died in a caving expedition near one of their mines. The family thinks that mining equipment operations caused a collapse. The mining corp thinks the dead girl was inexperienced. We've been tasked with proving the latter."
"And a big, black box helps… how?"
"Jarod is inside." As if on cue, a faint scratching noise permeated the box's outer layer. "The inside has been sculpted out in the approximate dimensions of the space where they found the girl's body, adjusted for differences in body mass. Eleven inches by twenty-eight. Not tight enough to constrict breathing, but not comfortable either. We'll soon be wrapping up for the day."
Another series of scraping sounds, and a muffled cough. Parker swore under her breath.
"Where do they come up with this shit?"
Sydney's equally frustrated silence was her only answer. They listened to the disembodied sounds of Jarod working all alone in the darkness. It was not a spectator sport, and Parker almost nodded off twice with nothing but a featureless box to stare at. Twenty minutes later, Sydney called it for the day.
"We'll pick this up next time, Jarod," he called through the dense casing. "I'm opening the back entrance. Can you exit feet first?"
Jarod's muffled voice answered that he could, and some minutes later, he did, red-faced and tousle-haired. His eyes landed on Miss Parker, and he nodded in greeting.
"Miss Parker."
"Jarod. Feeling less edgy, I hope?"
Jarod gave her a wry smile. "Much. I have to admit, I wasn't sure when you hit me with that sedative where I'd wake up next. Thank you for getting me back safe."
"Would you ever have predicted you'd be thanking me for bringing you to Centre headquarters?"
The smile slid off his face. "No. No, I wouldn't have predicted that. Still. In context, I'm grateful."
Parker was spared the task of thinking up something adequate to say in the face of Jarod's uncomfortable earnestness because, at that moment, her father stepped into the sim lab.
"Team Quicksilver!" he boomed. All heads turned to him. "Champions all. I hope I'm not interrupting — oh, goodness. A comb, perhaps, Jarod? This is a place of business, after all."
Jarod scowled and pointedly did nothing to tame the post-spelunk bird's nest on his head.
"Daddy," said Miss Parker. "We weren't expecting a visit. Is everything alright?"
"Everything is wonderful! Thanks to you. And Jarod," said Mr. Parker. He took his daughter's face between his palms and kissed her on the cheek. "Congratulations are in order, and I insisted that I be the one to give them — though Brigitte wanted me to pass along her hearty thanks as well. You had us worried for a few days, but you pulled through."
Miss Parker had heard nothing about the Angus case since their return. Brigitte had quickly confiscated the records of Angus's abortion before the field team had even lugged Jarod's dozing body off the plane, with assurances that she'd take care of the rest.
"What about stage—" Miss Parker caught Jarod's eye and cut her sentence short, seeing the answer in his warning look. Stage three had been his invention, part of his ploy to get away from his minders. The Centre higher-ups were perfectly capable of blackmailing a gubernatorial candidate without Jarod's input.
"Hm?" said Mr. Parker. He looked from Jarod to Miss Parker and back; he seemed to have noticed the silent communication which had passed between them. "Stage…? I don't know anything about a stage. I am very pleased with how you did, though, and so was the client, as well as the Triumvirate. If you're curious — Ms. Angus has agreed to back out of the race. She'll be announcing it to the public on Monday."
He beamed around. His audience resolutely failed to react.
"That's great, Daddy," said Miss Parker, with no real enthusiasm.
"Well, don't all jump up and applaud at once. Still, it's a promising start. I hope to see you all carry this success forward into your next mission. Angel, we should do dinner soon. Call me?"
And he left without waiting for a reply, leaving a sober silence in his wake. Jarod ran his hands down his face, then turned and headed off in the same direction.
"Was Angelo's cell locked?" Sydney said suddenly.
Miss Parker started, taken aback by the non sequitur. Angelo's cell? Her mind shifted gears. "What? No."
It hadn't been, but this was typical. If you had access to the Renewal Wing, it was generally assumed that you had access to anything and everything within, so individual cells were only locked from the outside. Except for the wing access doors, all security measures were aimed at preventing escape, not intrusion.
A trace of animation crept its way into Sydney's expression. Miss Parker had the feeling that Sydney hadn't heard a word of Mr. Parker's impromptu debrief.
"So I could get back in, then!" he said with relish. "I may not be able to study Jarod unmonitored, but I could study Angelo. You said he wasn't dangerous?"
"Not unless a drugged, feral kitten is dangerous."
Sydney sat a little taller.
"Good, good," he muttered to himself. He turned to Miss Parker. "Thank you. I… I've felt so helpless. It will be good to have something to do."
He retreated behind his desk, making sporadic exclamations about chemical interactions and metabolism as he worked. As he did so, the image of Angelo in his quarters in room two on the Renewal Wing swam back into focus in Parker's mind. His fingernail scratches on the table, clumsily sanded away. How he'd begged her not to give her a worse-than-useless shot of counteragent. His pitiful attempts to strangle her when red flooded his eyes once more.
What happens when Jarod stops being useful? That was what she'd asked Cox. He'd answered with some nonsense about the answer being whatever she thought it was. At the time, her first, gruesome thought had been that the Centre would treat Jarod to a quick retirement by way of a bullet to the back of the head. That had been bad enough.
Now that she'd visited Angelo, abandoned to madness in a featureless white room, she thought she could easily imagine something worse.
