TW: Mentions of implied character death & torture. This one was a beast to write.

"What happened to him?"

Laura grimaced at the question; her tea mug paused halfway to her lips. Fingers traced an unconscious pattern against the yellow ceramic surface as she set it down on the table in front of her. Swiveling in her seat, she followed the direction of Sydney's gaze to the still open bedroom door and listened. No sounds issued from the darkness on the other side. No indication if the sleeping, or not sleeping, pretender could even hear them.

"It's a long story," she breathed when she finally turned back to face him.

"We have the time."

She nodded. A promise was a promise after all; and, despite the exhaustion continuing its slow, inevitable creep along every joint of her body, she knew the man before her deserved answers. Forcing her shoulders back with calm resolution, she motioned to the still steaming cup opposite her own. "Have a drink."

Distaste flickered in the set of Sydney's jaw as he dropped his vigil to peer at the red vessel's contents. There was little Laura could offer to recommend the beverage. The brand label on the box the teabags had come in was long since faded with age by the time she'd found it in one of cabin's small cupboards. But the need to do something with her hands in the wake of that disastrous reunion left her only with the role of hostess and a sudden desire to prepare the sole sustenance available to her.

"…You and I both know Sydney's gone."

She hadn't been able to meet the old man's eyes when he swung towards her, but she could feel his confused stare at the back of her neck as she left him abandoned to his post, not stopping until she was next to Jarod. Crouching down, her hand moved on instinct, fingers running gently through his dark, shaggy locks. The affectionate gesture seemed to be the only thing capable of drawing him back from whatever place inside himself he currently liked better than the real world. After a moment, his eyes focused on her again.

"Hey," she said, voice barely above a whisper. The floor behind her creaked as she sensed Sydney leaning forward, trying to listen to what was said between them. "I promised I'd never lie to you, remember? So, when I tell you that's Sydney. Believe me, it is."

Nothing. Though he was still with her as far as she could tell. Brown orbs remained focused on green amid his otherwise expressionless face. If she didn't know better, she might have assumed he was simply being petulant, purposefully ignoring the man standing with barely contained restraint behind her. She could give Sydney credit for that, at least. She wasn't entirely confident what Jarod would do if his surrogate father – no, too kind, former captor – suddenly tried to touch him. She certainly couldn't dredge up the desire to find out.

"Maybe there's something I can do to prove it to you?" A change of tactic. Probably as ineffective as those she'd attempted before.

It surprised her to see something like hurt or doubt, perhaps (she still hadn't developed a full read on his moods, yet), momentarily crinkle in the corners of his eyes. As fast as it appeared, the emotion slipped away as his countenance fell back into a placid stupor. "Reality doesn't bend to our wishes, Miss Abbott."

She blinked.

"It's Laura," she protested, but he was gone, again. Staring blankly into a fire that did not exist. With a sharp exhale, she pinched the bridge of her nose and rocked back on her heels, her other hand dropping its ministrations. Inhaling, she wondered aloud, "What are we gonna do with you?"

Her charge provided no answer. Nor did Sydney as she stood, casting an apologetic glance his way, and gently began to prod the pretender to his feet. The wood floor was no place for him to rest and they needed to be mobile by morning. Motioning for Sydney to take a seat at the table, she gently guided the unresisting Jarod to the bedroom, making sure he at least appeared comfortable on the spring-filled mattress before turning off the light. She never closed the door. Never dared risk a bet against that feeling of dread which pooled in her stomach every time she considered the potential pitfalls to such an action. Then, she made the tea; and quickly rinsed the cups; and now, here they were, and it was time to lay her cards out on the table.

"I'll assume you want the long version of the story then?"

Sydney's head inclined in the affirmative. Watching the pair interact, it had quickly become evident to him the young woman's protectiveness towards Jarod was genuine. He also recognized the clear guilt underpinning the depth of that concern. It was the same guilt he saw in the mirror every morning. Reasoning he at least owed her the chance to explain, he'd buried the diagnostic urge to follow and examine the pretender immediately, accepting the inherit bias which would come with this confession.

As the thought occurred to him, he said suddenly, "Jarod called you Miss Abbott just now."

Laura huffed a laugh. "Caught that, did you? I suppose that means you can take a wild guess as to who my family is."

And just like that, a piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Abbot Industrials, another American-based think-tank guised as a multi-corporate entity, was one of the few direct competitors to Centre interests. Sydney remembered seeing the name on several memos over the years, having always been kept vaguely aware of additional parameters clients may have been promised by outside contractors. The better to ensure the sims Jarod completed exceeded expectations once the deals were signed. It was just the sort of place with resources available to keep a pretender in captivity.

"You're related to the CEO, Janet Abbot, I take it?"

"Niece. And one of her many heirs apparent. Or I was, anyway." She flashed him a rueful smile. "Let's just say your Miss Parker and I could probably swap war stories."

Sydney tapped a finger against his mouth, thoughtfully. "You're very well informed."

"I should be. I was the former head of security operations." She paused to let that detail sink in. "I don't need to tell you: corporations spy. A leak at the Centre was what finally clued my company in about Jarod. His role in your research. His freedom. We–" A quick clenching and unclenching of her jaw. "They knew about your team's efforts to catch him and decided to try their luck."

"But not you?"

She allowed his skepticism bounce off her magnanimously. "I'm getting to that."

"I didn't think Abbot Industrials would be interested in employing– "

"Human experimentation?" Carefully chosen words, delivered with more bite than was probably wise for this stage of the conversation.

"Experiential-based modeling." He countered wryly. "From my understanding Abbot's focus has been primarily on developing artificial intelligence."

Laura shrugged.

"Back when I was a teen, maybe. My–" She shook her head. Decades of ingrained loyalty to the family business warred against this new and frightening desire to unburden herself. A memory, long forgotten, of her elder cousin beating his little brother for tattling to her aunt, flashed in her mind. "The information about Jarod only supported the potential of work some of my family members were in the initial stages of developing."

Sydney read between the lines. "And they hoped to speed that process up by capturing Jarod instead?"

Laura's hand, already balled into a loose fist lying on the table, clenched angrily. Her sight drifted to the middle distance. "I'm honestly not sure what they were originally planning. I can take a guess, but…" She focused on him again. "I was never granted full access to the data files obtained from the Centre. Hell, I don't even know how they caught him in the first place much less that he even existed until four months into the project."

"Four months? Jarod's been missing for six!"

The words landed like a blow. Laura's shoulders crumpled, a look of guilt passing from her to Sydney. Her eyes dropped to the table's surface.

"It took me about a month and half to get him out," she admitted quietly. "We've been running ever since."

Sydney drew in a breath, his worst fear confirmed. Jarod had been in Abbot's hands his entire disappearance. Beyond whatever treatment, likely torture, he'd suffered through that confinement, the extended loss of freedom would also have inflicted the worst psychological damage. Especially if Jarod, as a pretender, hadn't been able to escape on his own. Running a hand down his face, Sydney motioned for Laura to go on. Realizing she still wasn't looking at him, he added, "Continue."

"Like I said, I–" A curt emphasis on the singular. "–was only informed about what they were doing four months into the project. Only after they brought me in to–"

The words caught in her throat. The smell of gunpowder and the sound of a man's screaming echoed through her mind. She swallowed, her throat burning in the haggard aftermath of her own useless shouts. Phantom nails brushed beneath her chin as her aunt's voice calmly chided: You've always had the softest heart.

"Miss Abbott?"

"Laura!" She flinched at the volume of her own voice. "Sorry, I prefer going by my first name if you don't mind. Laura."

Sydney nodded. His frown remained firm, but a knowing glint had settled in his eyes which seemed to soften the rest of his features around it. It made her want to vomit. But he needed to hear this. Needed to know what was done to Jarod so he could fix it. Because her attempts to this point had been all but useless.

She coughed to clear her throat and continued. "Like I was saying, I found out about Jarod four months after his capture. My…my aunt was invited to a demonstration, and I was invited to accompany her."

"What kind of demonstration? What was it for?" Tension cracked through Sydney like a whip. It did not surprise him that Janet Abbot was aware of what was going on in her company's halls. Abbot Industrials would never have survived without being run as soullessly as the Centre. What surprised him was Laura's admittance to it. Like Miss Parker, family loyalty seemed to have been trained into her from an early age.

"I don't even think we got to the demonstration bit. The basic idea was to establish they'd gained control of Jarod, but you can't really say you control someone when they're drugged out of their gourd half the time and the rest you have to–"

Another pause. The same wall, again. Whatever Laura had witnessed, what Jarod had experienced, to convince her to help him, it had left a different mark on each of them. Sydney decided to try a different approach. "What sort of drugs were they giving him?"

"Sedatives, mostly, by the time I got involved. I would bet stronger stuff at the beginning to help with what they did." Laura let out a shuddering breath.

Sydney reached over, sliding his hand over her closed fist. She pulled back at the contact, but he held firm. Tilting his head to look into her eyes, he pleaded, "There's something more you're not telling me, Miss Abbot. Laura. Why did Jarod seem to think I was not myself? Was he somehow made to believe I was dead?"

She flinched, all but confirming his suspicion. It wasn't a hard conclusion for Sydney to draw. He remembered the lengths the Centre had gone to control Jarod in his last months with them. The punishment Damian had inflicted which had been the final nail in the coffin. Anything less wouldn't have impeded Jarod's escape, drugs notwithstanding.

Laura swallowed. This was the part she'd been dreading. With her free hand, she lifted her cup to her face and gagged down the cooling dredges of her tea. Sydney waited for her to set it down again. Quietly, so quietly, she said:

"One of the first things they set out to do before establishing me as a handler –

my aunt's decision after the demo went so poorly – was to…sever what little contact Jarod had to the world. Based on the data collected, the project supervisor narrowed that down to four key individuals: You, Miss Parker, Mr. Broots, and Jarod's mother."

Sydney forced himself not to react.

"Apparently, clearance was given to hire look-alikes for all of you. It was a whole production, including audio recordings of you and your colleagues…I'm still not sure how they got those. They used Jarod's incapacitated state, the stronger drugs I mentioned, to their advantage and tried to convince him the stand-ins were really all of you. And, when the time was right…they killed them in front of him."

Cold ran along Sydney's spice. Icy rage at the full implication behind such an act, not only the loss of life but the purposeful intent to make the man he'd raised as a son believe he had lost his sole goal in life. It took a moment for him to realize shame still rippled over Laura.

"There's more, isn't there?"

"Those weren't the only one's killed. I don't know how many, but the woman I replaced got it into her head that using the threat of another's death was the most efficient means of breaking him in." Tears began to form in Laura's eyes. "I was witness to the last one…tried to stop it before…my aunt saw Jarod respond to my outrage and thought it might be time to tempt with the carrot instead of stick."

"And that's when you were assigned to him?"

Laura nodded. Pulling her hand out from under his, she wiped her nose and brushed the lingering wetness of her cheek. "He was pretty much checked out after that. I think at one point I had to order him an IV, so he didn't keel over on me. I started planning the escape that night and spent most of the month just trying to get him to trust me. Just enough to get him out. His former handler made it pretty easy."

Silence stretched out between them. Dread and hopeless almost palatable in the air. Steam had long since quit rising from the cup Laura had given him as Sydney stood and made his way to the kitchen sink. Tossing the liquid down the drain, he set the cup in the basin and turned to lean, arms crossed, against the counter.

"I will need to know what, precisely, he was given," he said, fear for the damage Abbot and her scientist may have caused rising to the surface. "And we will have to ensure the Centre does not become aware of his current state."

Laura, it appeared, had already considered this. "We have a few offshoot data centers across the country. One's not far from here. I think I know someone who can get us access." Sydney's mind immediately went to Broots. "As for the Centre, I set up a trail of breadcrumbs for your Miss Parker to follow. Hopefully it'll keep her occupied long enough."

Sydney looked over his shoulder towards the back bedroom. "I'm afraid you don't know Miss Parker."