A/N: This story diverges from The Pretender canon after the end of season 3, when Raines tries to kill Mr. Parker, Miss Parker gets shot instead, and Jarod is captured by the Centre. This story picks up around the same time that season 4 began, some months later.
"So," said Miss Parker.
She wasn't looking at the doctor. She was looking at his decor. The faded poster opposite her urged her strongly to get a pap smear.
"Hm?"
He wasn't looking at her either. He was looking at her charts, wrestling his mouth into something that more closely resembled concern than it did delight. His was an unfamiliar face at Centre headquarters. Parker wondered how much else had changed.
"I have it on pretty good authority that you're a gynecologist," she said.
He looked up. "Obstetrician-gynecologist, yes."
"And we're meeting about the gunshot wound, correct? I didn't get my appointments mixed up?"
The doctor smiled, all charity.
"No, you got it right."
Parker let the pause stretch, allowing the man all the time in the world to fill in some glaring holes. He didn't.
She ran out of patience. "Doctor Cox, I'm almost positive I didn't get shot in the snatch."
Cox chortled, a real-life chortle in its native environment.
"Mr. Cox, please," he corrected, prompting even more questions. These would go unasked and unanswered, however, because he continued. "I understand the confusion. Obstetrics is my primary scope of practice at Centre headquarters, but I have a wide variety of professional interests beyond my official specialty. Rest assured, I am well qualified to comment on your medical complaint."
Miss Parker did not rest assured.
"I didn't think I had a medical complaint," she said, which was a lie.
Yes, her back and shoulder were feeling much better, and all-in-all she was glad to be out of the hospital. There had been strange whispers of a plan to stuff her in a private room on a mental ward to get her out of the way, but Daddy had swooped in and sorted things out. Eventually, she'd had enough of hospital food and had checked herself out a week ago against her supervising physician's recommendations. It had been the right call. The Centre higher-ups would have been content to let her rot there, she knew.
But.
"Bullshit," said Cox cheerfully. The comment might have earned an eyebrow raise, had Miss Parker less composure. Cox didn't look like the sort of person who had ever heard anything so ribald as "bullshit" pronounced in his presence. "That leg is giving you all kinds of trouble by now, you know that as well as I do."
Right, the leg.
Back in business school, one of her professors had once noted on an evaluation that her best feature was her legs. She hadn't minded much at the time. She'd heard much worse, including every variation of the tired old "do those legs go all the way up?" cat-call. The comment came back to her when, a few days after marching out of the trauma wing without a glance back, her left leg had begun to fail her.
"It started with numbness, right?" said Cox when she didn't respond. "And by now, the pain and muscle weakness must be… distracting."
"Distracting," Parker repeated with a huff of a laugh. "Yeah, that's the word for it."
She hadn't slept more than sixteen hours in total over the past four nights. In that same time span, she'd fallen twice.
Cox was the sort of doctor who finds joy in jargon-slinging to confuse his patients. From his convoluted explanation, Parker gleaned the following: she had messed up. When she'd left the hospital against medical recommendations and quit all that mandated bed rest, she had opened the door for significant nerve damage to her left leg. Possibly permanent, Cox said. Apparently, she had a ricocheted bullet to thank for it, where Willie had missed the direct shot but hit her on the rebound. She hadn't even felt it.
Almost worse than the prognosis was the news that it was her own damn fault. She could weather almost any ill as long as she could outsource the blame, but here it was, in her own lap. The humiliation of it burned.
There was good news, Cox assured her. They'd caught the damage early and intervened quickly, so it wouldn't get any worse, and the pain could be managed. As for the motor nerve damage, though —
"Centre insurance will more than cover the cost of a wheelchair. I would recommend having one or two on hand for harder days — better to have and not need, right? For easier days, I'd be delighted to show you a selection of canes that I think you'll find are very—"
"Forget it," said Parker. Her voice came out sharp and hoarse. A wheelchair? There was no way in hell. She'd tripped over her feet a couple of times, that was all. "You said the pain is treatable, let's treat it. I don't need one wheelchair, let alone two."
Cox smiled. She wanted to hit him.
"I understand that incorporating wheelchair use into your life might seem extreme, but I promise, you'll be glad for the option when—"
"I said forget it," she snapped. Cox's smile never wavered for a moment. Parker glanced around, straining for an escape from his unnerving attention. "You're really telling me a gynecologist is the most qualified person in this entire scientist-riddled organization to give me medical advice about my leg?"
"O-oh, I wouldn't say that," Cox laughed. "No, I'm certainly not the most qualified. I can think of at least two on-staff MDs who are more qualified."
Miss Parker's fingers itched. In her mind's eye, they wrapped themselves around the man's throat and squeezed.
"Then why the hell am I talking to you?"
"Fair question. They're all tied up in the OR. I'll be frank, I wish I were there, too." His tone turned wistful. "It's my baby, after all, my brainchild. But alas." He splayed his gloved hands for her to see. "The good Lord didn't see fit to bless me with surgeon's hands. I can't even crack an egg without breaking the yolk, I'd be worse than useless."
Parker pushed herself to her feet, swaying precariously once she dared to put weight on her left leg.
"I'll take the pain med prescription now, I can wait a few hours if that's what it takes to get a second opinion." She snapped her fingers twice in the direction of the man's prescription pad. "How long will they be? I want this taken care of before the end of the workday."
"They've been at it since clock-in this morning, so I can't imagine they'll go past five. No accounting for a surgeon's timetable, though, particularly with an operation this complex," said Cox as he dashed off a few lines on his script pad. "If all goes smoothly, Jarod will be back in his cell long before clock-out. You can ask then, if you like."
Parker fumbled the script hand-off, letting the slip of paper flutter to the floor. She shifted her weight awkwardly to pick it up, her mind buzzing all the while. Jarod? She'd heard he was back at the Centre, of course. At least one of her sleepless, pain-addled nights had been spent tossing around what this development could mean for her future at the Centre. Her father had ordered her to catch Jarod. For this, she'd been promised freedom. Instead, Brigitte and Lyle had slid in and stolen her thunder. Once the news reached her, she'd pretended disinterest regarding all things Jarod, no matter how much her various visitors wished to gossip. That was, until Sydney visited. She had refused to let Sydney leave until he brought her up to speed.
She'd heard it all. The assassination attempt on Mr. Parker, Jarod missing the plane out with his dad, a short-lived chase involving a motorcycle and a helicopter, culminating in Jarod's inglorious return to headquarters. Sydney had even tried to insist that Jarod stayed to help her when she'd been shot, but that didn't make any sense.
Somehow, Sydney failed to mention anything about a cell.
She tried to connect what she'd learned to this comment about the Centre OR, but the two pieces wouldn't fit. What, did they have him performing miracle surgeries in the operating theatre already? What kind of leverage could they possibly have used to trust him with something so delicate? Sorry about hunting you all over the continent, Jarod, mind how you wield that scalpel, hey?
"You, what, you want me to ask Jarod for a second opinion?"
The thought of it was ludicrous. She didn't plan on asking Jarod for a damned thing as long as she lived, if she could help it. He didn't owe her anything, neither did she owe him. Yes, they had a history, but she had a history with her first high school boyfriend too. History alone didn't mean they were bound to each other for life. The assignment hadn't ended how she wanted, but it had ended, and there was no use wallowing in the epilogue. Might as well write off the whole Jarod mess as an unexplainable gap on her resume and move on.
Cox's mouth shrugged. "Not what I meant, but I suppose you could. Not today, though. He'll still be recovering."
The puzzle piece snicked into place. Jarod was in the OR, but he wasn't the surgeon. He was the patient.
A wave of unease skittered across her shoulders and she winced. That didn't sound good; Jarod had been hurt — or worse, he hadn't, and the Centre was up to some ghoulish extracurriculars with his extra-special Pretender anatomy.
And so what if they are? Nothing to do with me, she scolded herself. She had far too much on her plate already with this whole leg business.
She grunted her farewells to Cox and hobbled out into the hallway, holding her prescription like a talisman.
"Miss Parker! About time," said a chipper voice at her shoulder. Parker jerked in surprise, groaning as the unexpected movement jolted her bum leg.
"Christ on a — Brigitte, what the hell do you want?"
Out of the frying pan…
"Your ear, dear, I want your ear. I've been trying to catch you all morning. Your father asked me to loop you in on our latest project. You might have heard whispers about it — the QS-9300?"
Parker stared at her stepmother — God, even now, the term as it applied to Brigitte gave her the willies — with undisguised distaste. The woman reminded her of the classic choice to play Peter Pan in a stage production, a grown woman vamping as an overgrown limey brat. She looked about two seconds from trying to persuade Miss Parker to sew her shadow back on.
"My ears are needed elsewhere."
"The pharmacy?" Brigitte guessed.
Parker blinked. "Were you listening at the—"
"I'll come with, we'll walk and talk. This briefing can't wait. Need an arm?"
She held out her crooked elbow like she fully intended to bear Parker's weight all the way to the pharmacist's office. Parker stared at the proffered arm like it was gangrenous.
"Not unless you want to lose one."
Brigitte laughed. "Suit yourself." Refusing to take the hint, she trailed along in Parker's wake, leading them both to the Centre pharmacist down the hall from the main entrance. "Too bad about your contract."
She let the comment hang. With an internal groan, Parker bit the bait. She wasn't even sure why she did it, since it would only lead to more conversation with Brigitte.
"What about my contract?" she said.
"Well, you can't exactly fulfill it now, can you? You were beaten to the finish line. Maybe you would have gotten to Jarod first if you hadn't been shot, maybe not. The end is the same: forgive my directness, but you have failed to live up to your word."
The same had occurred to Parker. She wasn't sure what it would mean. She didn't dare hope the Centre would allow her to retire gracefully. Her best guess was that she'd be shuffled to another project or department. At the very least, she couldn't imagine a project quite as chronically irritating as chasing after Jarod, so there was an upside to all this.
When Parker didn't answer, Brigitte surged ahead.
"Your father understands it couldn't be helped, which is why he suggested some wiggle room in your contract, subbing out the hunt for Jarod with a role in the QS-9300 project."
Ah, thought Parker. And there it is.
"And that role is…?"
She wordlessly handed over her script and employee ID through the window at the pharmacist's office.
"Minimal involvement for the moment, actually," said Brigitte. "I've scheduled two observation periods at Jarod's cell, one this afternoon and the other one week from—"
"Jarod?" Jesus H. Christ, couldn't she make it ten minutes without another mention of the erstwhile thorn in her side? "What does this have to do with Jarod?"
If QS-9300 had anything to do with Jarod, Parker was less and less interested with each passing second. The pursuit after Jarod had almost killed her — depending on one's definition, more than once. She needed no further reminders of her recent failure, especially if it involved any face-to-face time with a man who lived to torment her.
Brigitte's smile was half-grin, half-grimace. "More than you'd prefer, I expect. Your father insisted. As I said, one observation period after lunch, and the other in a week. You don't even have to talk to him, just be there." She spotted the contempt wrinkling Miss Parker's nose. "Buck up, it's not like you're being singled out, we're all on observation rotation. I'm scheduled two days from now."
Heaven forbid I should be singled out, thought Parker. The news hadn't cheered or bucked her up in the least. Heaven forbid any nepotism should fall on my head.
"Do I want to know what this is all about? This QS-nine-whatever?"
"Ninety-three hundred," said Brigitte, and pursed her lips. "Hm. I'll say this: what do you do if your dog keeps escaping the backyard but he'll tear up the upholstery if he's left cooped up in the house?"
Parker scowled. She had no patience for analogies.
"Take him to a dog park? Don't waste my time, Brigitte."
Brigitte swallowed a smile.
"Get yourself a good leash," she said.
Like that was enough said. It wasn't. It laid bare one tremendously inconvenient truth, however: once again, everything revolved around Jarod. Despite herself, Parker turned the hint over in her brain. A good leash? What could that mean? Something to slow him down if he escaped again? Brainwashing? Perhaps they'd caught his family, and were holding their lives over his head?
Aloud, she said, "What kind of a leash needs surgery — did you chop off his feet, or what?"
"Or what," said a voice.
Miss Parker looked around, startled. There stood her father, eyeing her like she was a framed picture he suspected was slightly askew.
"Daddy, how—" She brought herself up short. It was her first time running into her father since the assassination attempt at Jarod's hostage exchange, and she had so many questions. He seemed to notice and minutely shook his head.
"It's good to see you on your feet, Angel," he told her, pausing to plant a chaste kiss on his wife's cheekbone. "Though I wouldn't mind getting off my own feet for a bit, truth be told. This business with Raines is running me ragged, the little rodent."
"Oh, speaking of which," said Brigitte. "Sweepers are reporting that he's retreated north, to Maine. He's still keeping lines open with the Triumvirate, though, and they're refusing to repudiate him, so we're in a holding pattern. The bad with the good."
This was all news to Parker.
"Raines has been booted from Centre headquarters?" She couldn't help the incredulity in her voice, and she did nothing to conceal it. "Will wonders never cease? Thought he had tenure."
Mr. Parker bristled. "He tried to kill me, of course I booted him. I take treason very seriously."
"Do you?" said Miss Parker, layering polite skepticism on thick. She thought she could make several sound arguments to the contrary, one in present company.
Mr. Parker side-stepped the insinuation. "Sweetheart, shouldn't you be making your way to the sub-levels? You have a scheduled observation period at Jarod's cell. They need some time at the doors to run you through a security screener on arrival."
Indignation surged again.
"Daddy, I've had a lifetime's supply of that man. Can't you get someone else to watch your lab rat for an afternoon? There must be another project you can shuffle me to."
She hated talking to her father in front of Brigitte. It always cast into a harsh light the weak negotiating position she inevitably held in family discussions. No matter how hard she was in every other aspect of her life, in front of her father, she was hummus. She was little Marcie Parker all over again, asking for an increase in her allowance.
Mr. Parker reached over and gave his daughter a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. She winced as his fingers dug in far too close to the spot Willie's rifle bullet had hit. He didn't seem to notice.
"This is important, Angel. I wouldn't ask if it weren't. Brigitte has lead on this one, she's reporting to me. If she says she needs you on observation duty, then I need you on observation duty." He let go with a tight smile. She returned her own, ratcheted up two degrees of tension. "I'll see you for dinner on the weekend?"
"Of course," she muttered.
Answering to Brigitte… Miss Parker couldn't imagine much worse. Maybe Lyle — no, in fact, Lyle held a bias in her favour these days, in his warped way; perhaps he thought she was his best route back to the heart of Centre headquarters. Brigitte, meanwhile, had nothing to lose by making Miss Parker's life a particularly wretched brand of hell on Earth.
"Sub-level twenty-five," said Brigitte with unflagging pep. "They're expecting you."
Miss Parker fired off a mocking, two-fingered salute.
"Boss," she said, and hobbled off for the elevator.
Like many of the lower sub-levels, sub-level twenty-five was an unfinished, poorly lit, depressing place, the decor all themed around rusted iron. She brushed shoulders with Lyle at the threshold to the elevator, him boarding, her disembarking. He appeared worn out, but happy.
"Oh, it's your turn, is it?" he said. "Good luck. You've got the easy job, though, right? All you have to do is watch him. No persuasion necessary. Still… good luck." The doors closed before he could expand on what "persuasion" had been required of him.
After the requisite security screener, Parker let herself through the blast doors separating the main hallway from Jarod's current living quarters. As she did so, two maintenance workers looked up at her from crouched positions on the cold floor and froze in place like they'd been caught in flagrante delicto. They were hard at work reinforcing the doors, while a third maintenance worker measured a series of thick steel bars, half-concealed around the corner to Jarod's cell.
"Ah, Miss Parker, you're here," said one of the workers by the door. He jerked his head at his companion, who began stowing his tools in a handy knapsack. "We'll get out of your hair. If you can, we wouldn't mind a holler when you leave, so we know we can get back to work."
"Hang on," said Parker. If there were already employees down here doing other tasks, why did she have to be there to observe? "If you gents are already working down here, you can keep an eye on Jarod, I don't have to be here for this. I'll radio up. Will you be working until closing? I don't know what the observation schedule looks like past clock-out."
The workers looked at each other mutely, exchanging mouthed W sounds like a small school of fish. The one tasked with measuring steel bars spoke up.
"We were told you were going to be observing," he said.
Parker made a noise of impatience. "Yes, I was told the same, but if you're down here anyway, you might as well—"
Jarod's deep baritone carried around the corner. "You've misunderstood the assignment, Miss Parker."
Parker caught the eye of one worker, who gave her a blank look and ducked past her, making for the exit. Reluctantly, she followed the voice. Around the corner, she was greeted by the sight of Jarod, sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the cement floor of his cell. The cell was a miserable spectacle, sparse to the point of black comedy, a forbidding block of cement and steel. A rickety-looking cot stood against one wall, a toilet against the other. Jarod was a bright spot in his shabby surroundings, staring back at her with a thoroughly Jarod look, a knowing gaze teasing at condescension. He wore dark draw-string pants and a loose, plain-woven shirt. Not his own clothes, she guessed. The fingers of one hand drummed against his knee as he watched Miss Parker approach.
Jarod. Caught like a rat in a trap. After years of pursuit. It should have felt more monumental than this. There should have been trumpets; the echoing drip of water heralded the moment, instead.
Parker spotted a metal folding chair leaning against the wall and dragged it to the middle of the room.
"Welcome home," she said. She pasted on a triumphant smile, though it didn't reach her eyes. "I'd call for a celebration, a housewarming party, but I'm not in the mood. We'll leave that up to Brigitte. I suppose you're going to tell me what my real assignment is?"
Jarod shrugged with one shoulder. As he did so, Parker spotted a white bandage taped to the nape of his neck. Could that be where…?
"I know little more than you do," he said. His voice echoed off the walls. "But if you think there's an observation schedule, you've been lied to. I suspect this is not so much about me being watched as you, specifically you, being here to watch."
Parker struggled with the folding chair, feeling Jarod's eyes on her as she tried to open it out into a proper chair shape without pulling at the stitches crisscrossing her shoulder blade. She considered his theory. Lies from the Centre were hardly an unknown phenomenon, but she shrank from the suggestion that her father had lied to her face.
Again.
"You being watched, me being here to watch, who cares?" she said. At last, the chair's mechanism locked in place and she sat, settling in for the long haul. She crossed her wobbly left leg over the other. "If you want to spend your time debating syntax, I guess that's your prerogative. Nice haircut, by the way. You've lost the…" Her fingers mimed the shape of his profile vaguely. "Elvis pompadour look."
Jarod's lip twitched, threatening a smile. He ran a hand through his hair, pausing at the edge of the bandage. His mouth puckered with worry as his fingertips traced the bandage's perimeter.
"Could be worse," he said, pretending indifference, but badly. He wasn't always a good actor, she noted. Unless, perhaps, he wasn't really trying.
Parker decided not to ask about the bandage. It wasn't that she lacked curiosity — if anything, the only silver lining to prison guard duty was the inside scoop it could grant. Perhaps Jarod or his guards would let slip some insider info on the Centre's latest project, this QS-9300. No, what held her back was her pride. If she asked, Jarod would know she was just as out of the loop as he was.
She took a paperback from her purse and thumbed to the page where she'd left off reading. The book was something she'd picked off her office bookshelf, something obnoxiously long and littered with footnotes. She flicked her gaze up to check on Jarod before she dug in; a hint of disappointment scurried across his features, making him look like a glum child passed over in a game of duck-duck-goose. She dismissed it. No paycheque in the world could tempt her to manage Jarod's hurt feelings, not when she could do something else with her time. Brigitte had ordered her to spend the afternoon observing, but she'd said nothing to forbid a little reading. Parker had to while away the wait somehow.
More than once, she caught herself finishing a paragraph with no real clue what it had said. The choice of book was part of the problem. Convoluted, confusing, a little up itself. It had that in common with her audience of one, who was himself responsible for the lion's share of her distraction.
It wasn't as if Jarod was deliberately drawing her attention, at least not in any obvious way. He was just looking at her. Whenever she chanced a look up, she saw the same unchanging expression in his eyes. The expression was a wistful one, and brought to mind one she'd seen before on the face of someone reading a book on the train. The man on the train in her memory had read the book before, he'd told her, but he was hoping against all logic that things would turn out differently this time. His book was one where all the protagonists were bound for sticky, bitter ends. She didn't let herself speculate about the meaning of the look, then or now.
Every couple of pages, she was forcibly reminded of the unreal circumstances she found herself in, unable to escape how jarringly odd it was to be sitting opposite Jarod. No running, no chasing. No puzzling out clues. Simply sitting together in a damp basement, tolerating each other's company in silence.
He used to be a goal, a job description. Now, no longer the former and only barely the latter. With all that stripped away, he was only a person in a box. People didn't belong in boxes, particularly not people like Jarod. Parker twisted her mouth in distaste, cutting off the thought in its tracks. Down that road lay madness.
Jarod was the one to break the silence.
"What do you think they're waiting for?" He sounded tentative. Tentative and worried. Ignorance fit him poorly, and he squirmed in its confines.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said, curt and low, without looking up from her book.
No answer from Jarod. The pause stretched between them, and the ink swam in front of Parker's eyes, illegible. She sighed, slotted a bookmark into place, and closed the book on her lap. She considered making out that she knew what was going on, that keeping mum was a strategic choice, but she knew he'd see straight through it if she tried to lie.
"I don't know," she admitted. She got up from her chair. Her leg wobbled under the weight, and she paused to steady herself. "I thought they only wanted to make sure you didn't escape until they finished…" She trailed off deliberately, watching Jarod's expression for signs of recognition. Until this QS-9300 project was ready, until this so-called leash came into play. Had they let anything slip to him? Had his infinite capacity for omniscience finally failed him? Jarod's expression didn't change. Unless he had a much better poker face than she'd give him credit for, he knew nothing. Somehow, the revelation was discouraging, and a dam burst. "You're right, we're waiting on something. Maybe something they're finishing up top. If it were about supervision, they wouldn't have assigned me. This is something else, I don't know what. They didn't tell me."
It was more than she'd meant to say. The words had spilled out of her after sloshing around her skull all those silent minutes.
"Thank you for your honesty, Miss Parker," said Jarod with a grateful smile. "That's the most truth I've heard today." He didn't mention Parker's clear omission, "until…", though it could hardly have escaped his notice. He frowned suddenly. "Have you seen a doctor about the nerve damage to your leg, by the way? Looks uncomfortable."
She'd been waiting for the question, anticipating it all the way down from the main level to SL-25 with the new bottle of pain meds rattling away in her pocket. With the benefit of time, she had begun to hope he wouldn't say anything. She took the bottle out and shook it.
"I'm all set, thanks," she said, but Jarod was undeterred. Before her eyes, he shifted into physician mode.
"A cane would stabilize your walk and help with the pain," he said. Parker sighed. More goddamn cane talk.
"I'm not getting a cane," she muttered. "I don't need one."
She sounded like a stubborn teenager to her own ears, but there weren't any other words for it. She could take this in stride, she didn't need a stick to lean on. It was only a bit of pain.
"I didn't say you needed one," countered Jarod. "But why should you have to put up with not having one? You have enough people punishing you without piling on more."
Parker canted her jaw to the side. She knew what he was up to. He was phrasing the issue in just the right way to appeal to the persecution complex she'd been nursing all day. She knew it, but the words wormed their way into her brain anyhow, flattering her sense of injustice. Why should you have to put up with it?
Hell if she knew why it should be so important to him.
"You've got enough on your plate without worrying about my business," she said. She gestured to the mysterious bandage stuck to the base of his skull. "Mind yours."
It was flimsy, but effective. His hand strayed once more to the nape of his neck, and he went quiet. Jarod was usually much harder to read than this, she thought. For his disquiet to be so loud on his features, it must be deafening inside his head.
"Can I see?" she asked. He looked up at her, sharp and suspicious. "The surgical site."
He paused and his brow softened, seeming to think it over.
"Sure, if you'll tell me what you see," he said finally. He gestured to a grime-caked mirror over by the toilet. "It's difficult to see anything helpful in that thing."
He twisted himself around so that his back was against the bars, reached back and pulled at one corner of the bandage. Parker drew her chair closer for a good look, curious despite herself. The adhesive tugged at his skin as it came away. The Centre surgeons' work was neat and professional. Tidy sutures, tidy little knots. Jarod finger-combed his hair up and away from the site to give her a better look.
"Any redness?"
"No," she replied. There wasn't. If she was any judge (and she wasn't), it looked to be healing nicely. There was, however, one unexpected factor. "There are two incisions."
"What?" said Jarod. "Two?"
Blindly, he felt around his scalp with his fingers. He found the one at the base of his skull, but the other eluded him. She slid off her chair onto her knees, the better to reach through the bars. From there, she trapped his hand in hers and guided it carefully to the furtive cut hiding behind the curve of one ear, ignoring the sudden tension in his fingers at the unexpected contact. He traced its edges, muttering under his breath too quiet to hear.
What had the surgeons done with their overreaching fingers? Disconnected some bits, attached others? Taken something out? Put something in? Stirred it all up into a hearty brain stew? If she were a betting woman… well, if she were a betting woman, she wouldn't have bet on them messing with his brain at all, not with how little they understood how it ticked. They hadn't chased after him for years only to turn him into a vegetable accidentally.
"Um," said a voice behind her. She looked around. So did Jarod.
It was Broots. His shirt was too thin for the chill of the uninsulated sub-level, and he wrung his shivering hands as he glanced back and forth between Jarod and Miss Parker.
"Hello, Mr. Broots," said Jarod. His tone brought to mind a retired teacher greeting a former student.
"I can come back later," said Broots. "If you need to, ah. Bathe."
An extraordinarily loud silence descended. It was Jarod who broke it, choking on a laugh. Parker got to her feet, incredulity making her vibrate.
"Broots, what the hell? Bathe?"
Broots seemed to realize he'd made a mistake. A blooming cloud of red spread across his neck.
"Or, y'know, whatever you were doing."
"What on Earth made you think there was bathing going on here?"
"Well, I just." He gestured helplessly at a cart on wheels lurking in the shadows along the far wall. "The sponges, I thought. And then it looked like you were doing something to Jarod's hair?"
Parker opened her mouth to tear him to shreds… and stopped. There were sponges on the cart. Sponges and coiled jumper cables. She thought back to the passing comment her brother had made at the elevators on the way in. Something about persuasion. She looked over at Jarod, but he wouldn't meet her eye.
"Been talking to Lyle?" she said. To her surprise, she heard anger in her words.
Jarod nodded, betraying nothing.
"Yep." After a long moment, he caught her gaze in his and held it. Parker's imagination flared to life long enough to project an image of Jarod's face distorted in a scream of pain. She blinked hard and the image faded.
Poor Broots was out at sea.
"So… should I come back?" he asked.
"No, it's fine," said Jarod, apparently unperturbed. He spread his arms. "Welcome to my new home. For the moment."
Broots took in the surroundings, his attention alighting on the cot, the toilet, the bars.
"It's…," he said, and stopped.
"Were you expecting something nicer?" said Jarod. Something nasty crept into his voice, a stain so subtle Parker doubted Broots could hear it. "A one-bedroom apartment overlooking the shore, maybe?"
"No, I guess not," said Broots faintly.
Miss Parker suspected she knew what was running through his head. Broots was a small-picture person. He cared about individual people that he knew personally. He saw the problem in front of him and did his level best every time. To be confronted like this with the consequences of an interminable series of tiny decisions, all lined up like ants marching into the surf, it could only be a shock.
"Broots—" she started.
"I didn't think they would—" he started at the same time. He ploughed on. "Jarod, if I knew—"
"You did know," said Jarod. He didn't sound angry, only firm. Nevertheless, Broots flinched. "You just didn't think about it. Anyway, it's too late for that now. You came to visit for a reason?"
Jarod had shifted registers, Parker realized. He wasn't talking to Miss Parker anymore, he was talking to the team assigned to recapture him. The two of them — Miss Parker and Broots — represented new meaning as a unit that neither did independently.
For a horrible moment, it looked as though Broots might crumble, but he flouted expectations and pulled himself together.
"Right, yeah, I did. Miss Parker, Sydney is looking for you. I told him I'd help look."
"You found me. Well done." Parker did her best to pump the brakes on the sarcasm for the sake of Broots's composure, but a little leaked through. "I'm on watch — we can't have Jarod here tunnelling out through the walls with a spoon. If Syd wants to talk, he'll have to come here."
"He can't."
"Can't?" said Jarod, at the same time Parker said, "Why not?"
"His access to SL-25 has been cut off, that's why I said I would help."
So Sydney wasn't being allowed to visit Jarod. Did the higher-ups think he would try to break Jarod out? Parker dismissed the idea. If they were that suspicious of Sydney's motives, they would have retired him from Miss Parker's pursuit team long ago. More likely that they were deliberately isolating Jarod.
She sent the message along with Broots that she would be in touch with Sydney after work. Broots nodded vehemently, glad beyond words for an excuse to leave.
"I'll see you later," he said to Miss Parker. He hesitated with one foot out the door. "And Jarod — I'm sorry."
Jarod's face stilled. Parker closed her eyes, wincing internally. Perhaps in Broots's world, there was no such thing as an unwelcome apology. Some insults were so prolonged and far-reaching that an off-hand "sorry" deepened the insult more than lessened it.
The visit, surveillance, vigil, whatever-it-was fizzled from there. Parker knew better than to try to get anything out of Jarod; for his part, Jarod offered nothing and asked for even less.
When one of the maintenance workers poked a head in later to let Miss Parker know she was relieved, she stuffed her book back in her purse and rose to leave. Jarod stirred for the first time in over an hour.
"You don't have the first clue why you were here, do you?"
She exhaled sharply through her nose.
"Nope."
A fraction of a second before she shut the door behind her, she heard his answer, barely louder than a whisper:
"Neither do I."
A/N: Happy new year! This is technically a fusion, specifically with the 2000 TV show 'The Invisible Man', in that I took a plot mechanic from that show to drive the divergence from TP canon. You do not have to have watched TIM to enjoy this, as all the characters, setting, back story and world-building are all from The Pretender. I just borrowed a certain side effect. (In fact, I suspect this story is a little more interesting if you haven't seen TIM. More surprises.) No, nobody in this story is going to turn invisible.
I'll be trying to upload a new chapter every Friday (PST/PDT). The first draft is written so this should be a pretty realistic upload schedule. I'm uploading a day early this week because I'll be travelling all tomorrow.
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