London, England November 7, 4:25 a.m.    She pressed her back against the rough, cool brick of the building and held her breath.  The sweeper was so close that she could reach out and touch his coat, could see the flickering intelligence in his blue eyes as he flipped off his flashlight and cocked his head to listen. Her clenched fists trembled so badly that she scraped her knuckles on the brick, but she didn’t cry out.  The sting kept her awake, she told herself, kept her alert.    Is this my destiny?  Will they hunt me down like an animal wherever I go?    They would be able to spot her if her eyes reflected the streetlights, so she closed them.  She had to concentrate.  Fear was good, but only to a degree, and she was in danger of passing from alarm to panic.  I’m smarter than they are, she whispered in her head, as if the sweeper could hear the fire in her thoughts.  I can do things they cannot.  There will be people here soon, and I will find away out of this place and to Blue Cove, where I will find Jarod.   Brown eyes in a serious young face.  He reaches out to hold her hand.  She smiles and shivers at the contact, as they both watch the meteors paint white trails on the sky.    Involuntarily, she smiled at the memory.  Jarod would be able to extricate himself from this one.  He wouldn’t feel her panic.  He would disappear into the early morning as if he had never existed.  And that assessment, to her surprise, actually made her feel better.    No, she corrected herself suddenly.  Thinking like that was dangerous.  It could lead her into a trap she’d refused to ever walk into.  The Jarod she had known, fifteen years old, innocent and brilliant and good, would have been able to extricate himself from this situation with tact and skill.   The adult Jarod she had come to know through security tapes, pirated records, sparse American newspaper articles, and that terrible, choking DSA of Sydney’s murder, the desperate and violent man on the run might have been able to get out of this one, too, but not without spilling blood on the streets.    That’s what should make her more determined to survive.  To escape.  She had to find him, to ask him why, to close all the old wounds his escape had opened up.  She had resolved in her heart the death of poor nurturing Sydney, so caring that he hadn’t seen the change in Jarod’s psyche—never mind the fact that she hadn’t been able to accept Jarod’s insanity or Sydney’s blindness at first—but she would never be able to understand this new Jarod unless she found him herself.    And maybe, she hardly dared to hope, she could help him.  Get him some help.    I’m just as smart as you, Jarod.  The Centre is stupid, because they try everything big and look for none of the details, but I don’t have that problem.  I’ll get you, Jarod, and it’ll be sooner rather than later.  I know you too well; I know how you think.    It was this mantra, she decided, which would carry her through this.    She heard the crackle of the sweeper’s radio as all the teams were recalled.  They didn’t want to get involved with the morning commute; it was too likely that a nosy constable would get in the way.  The sweeper breathed a curse, and she felt and heard it as he moved away from her.    Ana’s breath hissed through her teeth, and she blinked against the first morning rays of sunlight.  The black-coated, blue-eyed sweeper would never know how close he’d come to capturing her.  She waited another minute, than moved expertly out onto the sidewalk, perfecting her nonchalance.  She was just a passerby. . .if she could get to a place with a lot of people, she would be safe, and not just because the sweepers could no longer operate without care or secrecy.  With her finely-honed Pretender skills, she could take up aspects of the crowd like a chameleon, she was sure, until it would be nearly impossible to notice her, much less keep up with her for any length of time.    As she walked, she tried to keep herself awake.  Despite her best efforts, the only thoughts that came to her were the memories of her time at Blue Cove, her only years at the Centre which had ever meant anything to her, and the years which now gave meaning to her quest.  She felt herself weakening; anything to keep her feet moving now, she thought, and submitted herself to the memory.    The early years of her life had been right here, or rather, back there, at her old alma mater, Centre Satellite #4—London.  Then, shortly before her fifteenth birthday, they hastily loaded her into a Centre helicopter and they made the long, lonely trip across the Atlantic to another satellite in Blue Cove, Delaware.    They landed once, on the runway of ship massive enough to be a Centre satellite all its own, but she hadn’t been allowed to get off while they tuned-up and re-fueled the chopper.  She doubted they would have, even if they told her to; it was her first day beyond Centre walls, and she was confronted with an ocean so expansive that she had a terror that it would never end, that she would fly forever with the blank-faced, silent Centre security head who was her escort.  She was without May’s smile and rational, logical voice to banish her fear; she slept fitfully without the reassuring enclosure of her room and the sound of tumblers clicking.     When they landed, she was almost in tears.  The Centre she knew was that way, so very far that way that she knew she would never see it again.  She failed to see the beauty of Blue Cove because she ached for London.    And then Sydney appeared from a doorway on the roof, ducking his head against the slowing blades of the helicopter.  Part of her could see immediately that Sydney was no May.  With May, there was always a degree of oily distance, try though both of them might to erase it.  Sydney may not have been the better psychiatrist, but he was a far more skilled nurturer.  He smiled warmly, and clasped her hands as if he’d been awaiting her arrival for a very long time.  He introduced himself, and informed her gently that he would be taking over her care for an indeterminate amount of time—two years, almost to the day, it turned out—and suddenly, the journey didn’t seem as lonely.    She had met Jarod after three days.  It was Free Hour on Corridor Fifteen, a different one from hers, and she wandered the halls, looking for a library to lose herself in, and then someone else was walking beside her, a boy.  He walked near her for a few minutes without speaking.    He had short, dark hair and arresting brown eyes.  At fifteen, Ana was all knees and ankles, but, though he couldn’t have been much older, he had already grown into someone less angular.  He looked at her as if she were the most interesting thing he’d seen in years.    She didn’t think she liked him.    He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “What’s wrong with this place?” he asked her, unexpectedly.    She wiped her hands on her jeans.  “What do you mean?”    “Sydney said you’re not very happy here, and I saw you crying in your room one day on my way to the SimLab.  I was just wondering why you don’t like it here.”    She sucked in a breath through her teeth.  The revelation that Sydney discussed her with one of his test subjects was disturbing, especially considering the kind of people she’d met here so far.  Either the projects were very different, or project security was much looser here in Blue Cove.  But if this boy was one of Sydney’s special projects, care, tact, and a quick answer would probably get rid of him.  “I don’t belong here,” she said honestly.