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PART ELEVEN
He leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes and listening to Peter's continuous typing, and thought about how complicated a person she was. She was perpetually angry--at the world, at him, at herself, at anything and everything that didn't present itself as submissive to her will. She was rigid, cold, and intimidating to just about everyone. And yet, deep down, she was still the scared little girl who had left for Europe when she was thirteen and had returned as something he could barely recognize. On the outside she was her father; inside, her mother.
Jarod knew everything was changing--to him, life was always changing and he had grown accustom to it--but things were different. Five years and their relationship was, for the most part, constant in its pace. He ran, and she chased; he helped the innocent and she contributed to the organization that exploited them; he taunted her and she fell for the bait. He wasn't sure when their roles as cat and mouse changed, when he began chasing his past and she started running from it. But then that wasn't accurate: he had been searching for his family since day one, so his role had never changed in that aspect. The change, he decided, came when she became a part of the past he sought after with such fervor.
The dilemma he struggled with, then, was either one of them ready for this?
For months now he had been searching for a different truth than the truth about his past, trying to pinpoint the exact moment in time he stopped being property in her eyes and became human just like her. He was trying to determine when, in her decision-making process, he began to be considered as something simply more than an element of the hunt, as someone who could be adversely affected by her decision.
He remembered the look in her eyes--that struggle between utter trust and complete disbelief--as their subway car careened closer and closer toward explosion. That was the beginning. It was always in her eyes. Standing in secret behind Alex, before she threw herself between him and her father, his eyes met hers and she spoke to him without opening a word. You came, hers shouted, somehow I knew you would come. Not once did he see that familiar spark, the look that screamed of the cat that had eaten the canary. When Alex dashed out the door, he tried to listen for her footsteps behind him as he followed, and tried not to imagine being pinned between the two of them. They never came; no, he wasn't her prey then.
He stood in the cemetery and watched as they lowered an empty coffin into undeservingly hallowed ground. She wore a large hat and dark sunglasses--to hide the emotion and the physical signs of their journey, others assumed--but Jarod knew it was to hide the fact that she felt nothing. Mr. Parker's careful striping away of what he considered to be human weakness had left a daughter unable to mourn the passing of her father. Standing there, she was the product of her father's life, and when Jarod bowed his head as the priest read a prayer, he prayed not for the dead but for her. When everyone had gone, he remained behind his tree, unable to pull his eyes from her as she peered into the hole where her father's body was not. Adrenaline rushed through him when she caught him in her own gaze, relief following when she kept on walking. He wasn't her prey then, either.
And now, in the last four days, she was not his pursuer. Yet she was also not his ally--she pointed a gun at him in that hotel room the first night, and her words earlier this morning had been like strong acid on the kind mood he had woken up in. Now Jarod was at a loss when it came to classifying their relationship. Early in his escape, people feel into two categories: good and evil. Then, it had been easy to tell the difference; he helped good people whom the evil ones took advantage of. Sydney had been the first individual to blur the lines for Jarod; Miss Parker was the second.
He spent his freedom making decisions, learning and growing, exploring the part of himself the Centre had hidden from him all his life. Sitting in his room, Jarod found himself at yet another precipice. Was she right--was something resembling a long-term relationship what he really wanted, even under the most adverse conditions? He thought he knew when he ventured into the crisp morning air, but when he heard her footsteps behind him, all that he knew as fact seemed to slip away into the haze.
One thing hadn't left, he reminded himself. If nothing else, he was sure what had happened between them was not a mistake. Some things just happened so fast and they were falling before they felt the floor crumbling...
"What's she like?" Jarod's eyes flew open and he found Peter leaning across the back of his seat and staring intently at him. An idea of how much he had grown since they had last seen each other struck Jarod immediately: his face had lost part of its baby fat, and Peter seemed to have aged years in a few short months.
Jarod ran a hand through his hair. "Who?" he asked, hoping the Centre hadn't added the quirk of telepathy to Peter. Jarod had seen the spark between the boy and Miss Parker when she walked into the room yesterday afternoon, though Peter had never been very forthcoming about his contact (if any) with her. The revelation that they may have never met sent another chill down Jarod's spine that he didn't care to explore at the time.
Peter said nothing to answer Jarod, only looked at the framed picture of Margaret next to the computer.
"Oh," Jarod sighed. He hesitated before answering truthfully, "I'm sure she's a wonderful, caring woman." When he looked at the picture again, Jarod stole a glance at Peter; in his mind, he began to guess where the conversation was going.
"You don't remember much about her," Peter stated with a peculiar look on his face. He seemed to be disappointed and angry.
"No, I don't." It may have been the truth and he may have thought about it more times than he could count, but it still hurt inside.
"But you love her regardless," his statement was incomplete, and Jarod nodded to agree and to urge Peter to continue, "even though you have no way of knowing whether she loves you, too, or even remembers you."
Jarod stared at Peter before he answered. He supposed he could get angry at what he had said, but such a response wouldn't do much good. Peter seemed to have slipped into a mood frequented by Miss Parker, and he knew from experience that anger meeting anger only provokes something worse. "A mother's love," he began, but hesitated, for reasons he wasn't completely sure of, "is unconditional. You can never forget something like that." His vision was so trained on Peter he didn't notice the figure that was standing in the doorway; for that matter, neither did Peter.
"But you forgot," he countered.
Jarod supposed he could have edged his chair closer and explained how an impressionable five year-old can be made to believe practically anything. He could have laid out the subtle but effective techniques the Centre had used to convince him his parents were gone. He could have told him the lies he had been fed. If anger provoked him properly, he could have slammed the DSA player in front of Peter and forced him to watch them tell his younger self that his parents had perished in a plane crash. He could have done any one of these things; but he didn't.
"Peter," he said softly, knowing the answer before the question had left his mouth, "what's bothering you?"
His eyes were pleading with Jarod; he could see Peter wanted to tell him. Yet he suspected the twelve years of Centre training were telling him he was weak. "Nothing," he said a little too quickly. He was shaking his head to emphasize the point, but it only made his lie bigger.
"You're anxious about her coming here." It was a statement, not a question. Peter looked up from the spot he had been examining on the floor with eyes that told Jarod he had hit the nail directly on its head. Slowly, the boy began to nod, unable to deny the truth any longer. Softly, Jarod requested, "Tell me about it."
He bit his lip and looked down at the floor. He was mumbling something Jarod couldn't understand, and when he asked him to repeat it, his voice was quiet and extremely vulnerable. "What if she won't love me, too?"
"You know," and now Jarod really did move his chair closer to Peter, "I wonder the same thing every day, too."
Peter's eyes were wide and disbelieving. "You said it yourself. All mothers love their sons."
"And the rational side of me believes that." It was true, Jarod admitted to himself. "But there's this nagging irrational voice in my head that keeps telling me that she'll hate me for all the horrific things I've created in this world, all the lives I've destroyed, all the families I've broken apart..." Jarod had to stop himself before he forgot this was not about himself, but about Peter.
"Jarod," Peter chided. He reached over the back of the chair and managed to pat him once or twice on the knee. "I doubt she thinks any of that is your fault. She knows you were misled, that you didn't have a choice in any of it."
Jarod found himself admiring a familiar glimmer in Peter's eye. He'd never noticed until now, and wondered if he, too, had this sympathetic glow in his eye when he was fifteen.
"You're probably right," Jarod admitted, as if the revelation had never occurred to him. This was an exercise, he reminded himself. "Just like I'm sure she'll love you, too."
For a moment, Jarod was sure his point had been made. Then, suddenly, Peter's eyes were downtrodden and focused on the ground again. Dammit. "But how can you be absolutely sure?"
Just then, the presence behind him registered; she moved within the field of his peripheral vision when she leaned against the doorframe. He had no idea how long she had been there, but managed to sneak a glance he wondered if she noticed, since she made no response. Another glance at Peter, and he was oblivious still.
"Sometimes," he said to Peter, but as the words left his mouth, he realized they were meant for a larger audience, "all you have is your gut feeling and the only thing you can do is trust it."
In the corner of his eye, he swore he saw Parker duck her head in embarrassment.
*
He moved as quietly as he could around the boy, placing each of the instruments back into his bag with extreme care. The last thing Cox needed was a cranky two year-old in a small airplane. When he realized the dim light of the stars pouring in from the window wasn't helping much, he moved toward the light on the nightstand. With trepidation, he switched it on--afraid somehow, the boy would sense it--but it only revealed his tranquil, sleeping face. Cox released the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding.
His fingers brushed against the syringe on the nightstand, where Cox had placed it after its use earlier that morning; as it happened, the boy shifted his position and let out a small moan. Cox's first thought was that he, too, had sensed the syringe, but Cox dismissed the thought as ludicrous. He reminded himself that though the boy was smart and empathic and quite possibly the savoir of the Centre, he was also two years old. It would have taken years to develop the kind of ability Cox was already attributing to him.
He was staring at him, he realized, and Cox glanced nervously to the doorway; none of the sweeper team were observing.
He took a small baggie from his doctor's bag, intent on sterilizing the syringe ahead of time, should its use be required again. A sedative strong enough to knock the boy out for an extended plane ride was also in danger of effecting his ability to perform for the Triumvirate; the plan, then, was to provide the boy with enough rest and a trusting environment so that he willingly boarded the airplane in the morning. Of course, there was always the contingency plan.
The safe house was made with wooden floorboards, and though the place was sturdy and eerily silent, crossing over to his chair Cox managed to find the single squeaky board in the building. His first reaction was to glance into the darkened living room--no movement, because no one cared whether he made a sound or not--and then he glanced at the boy. He was turning over in his sleep, groaning again like he had a minute ago, but he was making a sound that froze Cox in place.
The boy was uttering a name he had no right to know.
Cox managed to find the strength to kneel beside his bed and watch the boy's eyes open wide. He wasn't speculating on how such a tiny creak could have woken this prodigy; instead, he had to resist the urge to shake why he had said what he said out of the boy. The boy's eyes were wide and alert despite his grogginess, and for the first time Cox noticed the hint of blue. He had no idea where in the boy's family history that trait had come from.
"You bad man, too," he said calmly. He didn't shrink back from Cox in fear.
The next few minutes were a blur of actions; namely, him scooping the child up from his bed in one arm and carrying his doctor's bag in the other. As he rushed from one room to another, the boy's arms clasped around Cox's neck in a very parental gesture; perhaps he was still asleep and had no idea what he had just called him. When he entered the living room, the sweepers regarded him with confusion.
"Sir?" one of them asked. He didn't take the time to figure out whom it was.
"We're leaving," his insecurity spoke for him.
No one moved. "Sir, you said-"
"I know what I said!" Cox shouted. The boy in his arms buried his face in Cox's neck in protest. "And we're leaving right now."
Finally someone moved. Cox vaguely registered them scurrying behind him as he raced toward the airplane.
*
Her fingers were resting on his upper arm, but she might as well have been burning holes in his skin, because he felt the same way. She was giving herself leverage, grasping him to steady her as she stood on her tiptoes and read over his shoulder. She had done it once before--in Carthis, reading the letter found stuffed in a bible--and even then the close contact (of which she initiated) had baffled him. Now it was contradictory--had they not been verbally sparring four hours ago?
"I don't understand," she murmured, and Jarod couldn't ignore the way her breath was warm against his neck. Suddenly they were ten years old again, leaning across a table with their palms six inches apart; the spark was there, then, and now he felt it creeping up on him again. He shut his eyes and he could feel it, reach out with his mind and grab it. Can you feel it, too?
He turned his head to the side, in a vain attempt to address her, breaking his own reminiscing. "Genetic profiles," he said, and he moved them closer to her to illustrate what he was talking about.
Her fingers slipped off his arm; he wasn't sure whether he should be glad or disappointed. He turned and, not surprisingly, found Parker with her arms crossed and her eyes glaring in his direction. "I know what they are," she spit.
Peter and Major Charles sat at a table adjacent to where they stood; though they had been watching the two for some time with a guarded smile and a thousand motives behind their behavior swirling in their minds, they managed to share a smile with Jarod at Parker's familiar side. And maybe she noticed, because instantly her voice dropped to a more conversational tone. She finished by saying, "I just don't know what they say."
"They say," Jarod crossed to the table, and lay the profiles down, side-by-side, "that the two samples the Centre used are remarkably similar." As he laid each down, he announced its date.
Parker remained behind him for a moment before she closed the distance, coming to stand just to his right and, incidentally, in front of the profile for the sample that had ultimately created her... "Similar, how?" She swallowed whatever emotion was creeping up inside of her. "Are we talking brothers here?"
Jarod stared at the massive sequences of genetic code before answering. "Potentially."
He looked up into Parker's face, and though her eyes were trained on the profile in front of her, he could see the gears in her mind: he could see her searching her brain, trying to find brothers to rectify the problem in front of them. When he heard her sigh, he knew she had failed. To avoid her catching him staring, he began to examine the profile again--the first paternal sample. Maybe if he could decipher some of the strings of DNA, he could determine whom the sample had come from...
"That's odd," he muttered to himself.
"What?" Parker demanded.
He pointed to a line in the code in the first paternal sample, a series of letters, though he sincerely doubted they meant anything to Parker. "A serious congenital birth defect," he explained.
Her eyebrows shot up. "This man is disabled?"
"No," Jarod said with a quick shake of his head, "a birth defect this serious...a child won't make it through the second trimester, let alone full-term."
Jarod was so intent on Parker's reaction to the revelation that the Centre had harvested tissue from a child not yet to term that his eyes didn't see Charles sitting at the table, white as a sheet.
"Do you know what caused the birth defect?" Parker asked cautiously. She, too, was unaware of Charles.
"No one's completely sure what causes some congenital birth defects. It could have just been bad genes." His hand grasped the second profile, and he slid it closer to him on the table. "Maybe if I can locate the same gene sequences in this second profile, it'll give me a little insight..." His voice trailed off before he realized he was reacting.
Jarod was staring at the profile, unable to get what he thought he saw out of his brain. He felt Parker's fingers gently on his arm again, and though the gesture had been small, it startled him. When he looked up, he imagined the revelation made him resemble a deer in the headlights. "What is it?" she asked softly, and he was too preoccupied to notice how strange her voice sounded when it was soft.
"I found," his mouth hung open and no more words came. He didn't know how to verbalize the suspicion that he hadn't liked to admit had been living in the back of his brain for days now. He heard Parker asking what he had found, but all he could do was look at Peter. He wondered if he stared at the boy long enough, he, too, would understand. Jarod wondered if he looked as blindsided as he felt.
Now Parker was shaking at him, raising her voice, as if she thought that would do any good. He looked at her pathetically, but he couldn't tell her. Inside, he knew he should, but he couldn't.
Jarod looked plaintively at Charles, and for the first time noticed the color draining from his father's face and how his eyes searched the floor while his mind was somewhere else entirely. Perhaps the older man sensed his son's gaze fixed on him, and he looked up to see Jarod's silent revelation plastered all over his face. Maybe he guessed it, too, because he pushed his chair away from the table and jumped to his feet.
All Jarod could think to do was follow his father as he retreated, despite Parker's insistence behind him. Deep down, he wondered if she knew, too.
*
Cox spied the sleeping child as his phone rang. So things hadn't gone precisely according to plans. He had been calm in Cox's arms until the sight of the small airplane came into the child's view, and sedatives had been necessary to stop him from kicking and screaming. While all the sweepers seemed baffled by the sudden turn in the boy's behavior, Cox had a sneaking feeling why he had protested, and it had everything to do with the very powers the Centre had given him; or, rather, cultivated in him.
He stared at his phone, knowing who was on the other end. Nothing moved without Raines knowing about it. He sighed, and answered it. "Yes?"
"You disobeyed me," the old man hissed. Others might have cowered at such a tone--Ari, the up-and-coming leader of the Centre's Priority sweeper team, whom Raines had taken a peculiar interest in--but Cox remained firm. In fact, he almost smiled.
"I did," as if it were a trivial matter, "but I assure you I have the Centre's best interests at heart when I say I'm moving up the schedule as a precaution."
"What precaution?" Something caught in Raines' voice on the word 'precaution,' but Cox couldn't explain it.
Cox repeated the name the boy had uttered in his sleep, adding, "He knows, and you've got to figure out a way to deal with it. This isn't my problem," even though Cox knew Raines would delegate the responsibility to him. He heard Raines' sharp intake of breath, and he knew the new Chairman was slowly losing control of this once-simplistic situation.
"I received something unsettling in my personal email account this afternoon," Raines announced. Cox wondered if this was the reason why he had hesitated earlier.
"Unsettling how?" In all honestly, Cox had to fight to hide the smile on his face and in his voice. There was no secret that Raines' grasp of power was tenuous, and he couldn't help but watch the wheezing old man squirm at every little threat.
He breathed into the receiver for a moment. "Just watch your people at the transfer sight."
With that, Raines hung up.
*
"Dad!"
Jarod chased his father from the dining room into a small corner by a window in the kitchen. Charles was leaning against the frame of the window, staring out at the mid-morning scene: the haze from the pond in the backyard had lifted, but the half-frozen water remained. The rest of the yard was cold and barren, indicative of the cold weather and the atmosphere, and Jarod had to swallow hard and ignore the signs it was giving him. Perhaps it was an omen, or an indicator, like the storm that raged in Scotland the night before Macbeth killed Duncan.
"Dad," Jarod repeated. He searched for a way to describe how Charles looked. "You look like..."
Charles turned to his son. "Like I've seen a ghost?" Jarod nodded, and watched his father look back out the window. "That's because I have."
"I'm not sure I understand-"
"I never told you about it," Charles interrupted. "I won't lie to you and tell you I had forgotten, because no one forgets these things, but I guess..." he paused, "I guess I had put it out my mind. I suppose your mother has tried, too." Charles looked at his son with pain. "I thought, maybe, once your mother was with us, we'd tell you, but I guess now..."
Jarod could see his father was struggling with the weight of a truth. "Tell me what?" He was surprised at how desperate he sounded.
"It took your mother two months to admit she wanted to try again after what happened. Catherine put us on the fast track in the clinic and soon enough, we were blessed with you, but neither of us could forget him." The name he had uttered should have shocked him; Jarod, however, was too interested in his father's revelation to notice its casual drop.
"We called him our Christmas Miracle," Charles said with a hint of nostalgia. "Your mother and I had been trying for years, but nothing seemed to work. We had pretty much given up the idea of ever raising a child of our own. Then a friend of your mother told us about the NuGenesis clinic in Atlanta. To us, they were miracle workers: we came to Atlanta in January, and by June..." He trailed off.
All Jarod could do was stand there and wait for his father to finish, because he wasn't sure what he might say if he opened his mouth and let his thoughts pour out.
"Of course, the doctors told us not to get our hopes up, that the pregnancy was high-risk and there was a chance it might not succeed, but who were they to hold back our joy?" He swallowed. "We were sitting on the porch one night in July when your mother started having sharp pains in her abdomen. We panicked, ran to the hospital...there was a doctor from NuGenesis waiting in the lobby when we arrived, and I guess that should have been our first indication..." He paused. "She had a miscarriage. The fetus suffered from such a severe birth defect that the pregnancy terminated itself." He shook his head. "Some Christmas miracle."
The pieces fell into place in Jarod's mind. "December 27, 1959."
"He should have been your older brother, Jarod." He sighed. "I had no idea the Centre was so depraved that they would...harvest...from a...the NuGenesis doctor told us he was going to collect samples so they could see what had gone wrong...I had no idea they would..." His voice cracked with emotion.
Yet despite his urge to comfort his father, Jarod couldn't move. With this new revelation, the voice in the back of his head grew louder and louder. He imagined he looked dumfounded. He opened his mouth, the question on the tip of his tongue, and he prayed he could find the voice within him to ask. "Dad, I need to know," he began, but Charles looked at him and knew already.
"The moment you started throwing those dates around yesterday, I..." Charles paused, "but I looked at you and realized neither of you had any idea what you had in your hands, so how could I just throw something like there out into the open without knowing for sure?"
"And now?" he whispered.
Charles was looking past Jarod; he turned, and saw Parker standing in the kitchen doorway. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest. He was sure she must have been standing there the entire time--in the back of his mind, he could remember her footsteps trailing his across the dining room. She wore an expression that, to some, was indecipherable; to Jarod, he knew the very same question was on her mind. He wondered if she, too, knew the answer.
"I saw it in your eye," Charles said to Jarod, "when you looked at the second profile, you knew. And you," he looked at Parker, "you've got it in your eyes now. You both know, for Christ's sake, why do you need me to say it?"
There was silence.
"Because," Parker said behind him, "if you say it, then I'll know it's really true." Jarod had to duck his head when he heard how vulnerable she sounded. It was too strange to listen to.
"Fine!" Charles said, his anger pushing him away from the window. "May 17, 1960?"
His gaze fell on Jarod, and its heaviness lifted Jarod's eyes to meet his father's. He noticed, for the first time, the tears pulling in the Major's eyes. All Jarod could think of was that second profile, staring at the line of genetic code that had, in one fetus, created a severe birth defect; in a second child, it had created a genius.
With a note of sadness, Charles replied, "Happy Birthday, son."
TBC