Sunshine—continued
Your tired eyes
look so weary
Oh girl, why do you hide?
To hold you close, I need you near
Oh girl, stay by my side.
"Jarod, I'm afraid." She told him soberly,
her blue eyes dark and solemn, her auburn hair curling gently around his face.
"They could trace you to us, and I----" She broke off, tears filling
her eyes, making them glitter like jewels.
"Don't worry so, Annie." He heard himself
whisper, and watched his hand caress her hair. He loved her; the part of him
that watched this scene realized with amazement.
"I can't go back there." She told him,
fear shining from her face, flooding through her voice. "I wouldn't
survive it again."
"I'll never let them find you, dear." He
heard himself promise. "You're safe now."
"Oh, Jarod!" She whispered at that, her
eyes so filled with sadness that he felt his heart breaking. He knew that he
had broken that promise. Wherever it was she feared to go, she had been taken
there. He had to make it right! He had to save her!
"Annie!" The sound of his own voice woke
him up.
"Back again, I see." The same man sat by
his bed, his eyes bloodshot and slightly sunken with fatigue. "Who's
Annie?"
"I don't know!" His voice was tortured.
"But she needs me. I've got to find her. Got to save her!"
"From what?"
"I don't know!" His chest heaved with
frustration and pain----emotional, not physical. The heart monitor picked up
its pace accordingly.
"Better calm down or the nurse will sedate you
again." His companion advised blandly.
He utilized relaxation techniques he hadn't even
known he knew, and in moments the heart rate had settled to a slow, steady
pace.
"Impressive."
"Who am I?" He demanded abruptly.
"Who are you? And why am I here?"
The man smiled suddenly, his white teeth contrasting
with his dark chocolate skin.
"As I said before, we were hoping you could
tell us."
"Jarod. She said my name was Jarod." He
remembered slowly.
"She?"
"Annie. My Annie." He answered slowly,
savoring the rightness of those words. "She needs me. I have to get out of
here."
"You won't be going anywhere for some
time." The black man gestured to Jarod's left leg. He hadn't noticed it
before, but it hung suspended above the bed, encased in a plaster cast, and
with odd bits of metal coming out here and there.
"What happened?" This time Jarod looked at
the man, velvet brown eyes to midnight black, demanding an answer.
"You were in a car accident. Before that, we
don't know." The man answered him steadily. "Your IDs were many and
varied, although they all had the first name of Jarod. Tell me, Jarod, what do
you know about the Centre?"
The Centre. The name echoed in his mind ominously.
What did he know about the Centre?
"I don't know." He heard himself answer
again. "But I think I need to----for her."
Her eyes had looked weary, and sad, and frightened.
And she'd been hiding her heart when he met her, he remembered that now too. It
had been bad, whatever had brought them together---he sensed that. Remembered
feeling trapped, helpless, and her soft touch, easing the fear, giving him
companionship. She'd never quite been able to believe he cared, he knew that
too, and he'd never known how to make it clear to her, even though he was a
genius.
A genius? I'm a genius?
He thought about it, and then realized it was true.
He knew the objects in his hospital room so well that he could have used any of
them, from the crash cart the nurse was wheeling out of his room to the suture
kit in the upper right drawer of the cabinet in front of him. And the man
beside him reeked of FBI or CIA or some other government policing agency. He
knew without thinking about it all of the training manuals and procedures for
each of those agencies. He knew how to fly a small plane, a helicopter, the
space shuttle. He knew how to survive in the wilderness, tie every knot in the
nautical manual and then some. He knew more than most people even hoped to
think about.
But he didn't know, still, who he really was. More
important to him now, he didn't know who she really was, or how he could
convince her to trust him, to love him as he loved her. How could he take away
her pain, relieve her of the burden he sensed she bore? How could he find her
again?
"I have to remember." He said quietly into
the stillness of the room. "I have to save her."
"From what?" His still nameless companion
asked again.
"From the darkness. Maybe, if I can bring her
into the sunshine she'll finally understand how much I need her; how much I
love her."
I could see his face, as clearly as if he was
sitting in front of me. A smile, creasing those cheeks, sparkling in those
velvet brown eyes.
"You're my sunshine, my Annie." He teased,
curling a strand of my reddish-brown hair around one finger. "My sunrise,
maybe."
I believed him. He has that unique ability to
instill trust in the wariest heart, you know, but as soon as he left the doubts
would start again. Was he coming for me? Did I dare hope that he would want to
rescue me, much less be able to? I could almost swear I heard him crying out
for me, begging me to forgive him for my capture. Or maybe it was just not
being captured with me.
Foolishness! My alter ego insisted. He's done nothing that
needs forgiving.
`I know.'
Red pain, with yellow white sparks pulled me back to
the present.
"Don't ignore me, Eve. Don't EVER ignore
me!" Lyle hissed malevolently.
I was gasping, trying to recover from the shock of a
blow directly over the bullet hole in the back of my thigh. I thought for a
minute that I’d throw up, pain does that to me sometimes, but I focused on a
song instead. One of the old songs that I’d forced myself to remember during my
initial stay at the Centre as a way to keep my mind sharp. It worked, and the
pain began to recede.
`Rock----I am a Rock----there---is---no---pain.' I
told myself, breathing deeply, telling the pain to wash through.
It had some effect, I didn't pass out or throw up.
I'd already tried to retreat to my safe place, the
sunny orchard that had hidden me as a child from my father's rage and later
from Lyle. It was gone----I couldn't reach it anymore. But I had to do
something, I was sure that I would never survive without distance, without
walls, without armor. And I had to survive, I admitted.
I couldn't leave Deirdre alone…
Deirdre started to cry again when they transferred
us to the jet. Lyle tried to make me walk from the van to the plane, laughing
as my leg gave out. The Sweepers seemed revolted, which made me want to laugh.
Didn’t they know by now what Lyle was? One of them showed remarkable initiative
and courage by sweeping me into his arms and striding towards the waiting
plane. Lyle must have sensed their disgust because he didn’t stop them.
`Hell. I'm in hell…' I admitted, taking my
daughter wearily into my arms. `God, how can I survive this? How can I save
my daughter from this lunatic?’
I looked into her clear blue eyes and I promised
her, with all that was in my heart, that I would protect her. No matter what it
might take, I would protect her.
"Don't give up, Annie. " I heard that familiar
hot fudge voice whisper in my ear. "I need you too. I need your
kindness to strangers, your beautiful smile, your sparkling blue eyes. Hold on,
hold on----"
It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was both worse,
and better.
The removal of the bullet from my thigh was
undoubtedly the most painful experience of my life—surpassing even Lyle’s
inventive tortures later, but it was nothing compared to the implementation of
Lyle’s master plan for me.
He’s always hated Jarod, you know. It doesn’t matter
that Jarod’s life in the Centre was no walk in the park, he felt that Jarod had
been honored; given the privileged position in life. He was convinced that he
was as much a Pretender as Jarod, and all he lacked was the proper training to
bring out his genius. He was determined to have a child that would prove his
point.
A child with the best genes available to ensure its
inheritance as a Pretender. A child he could raise within the Centre, that
would have the training to surpass Jarod and wipe even his memory from the
annals of Centre history. One guess as to who the lucky mother was to be.
He didn’t even wait for my leg to heal, or for my
body to finish recovering from the birth of triplets. A part of me had known
that it was coming. He’d made his intentions clear enough during my initial
stay, and I knew he couldn’t resist the temptation to destroy something that
Jarod cared about.
Terror isn’t an adequate word what I felt when he
entered the barren cell where they’d thrown me, I literally felt my mind
splintering into pieces. And that’s when she showed up.
Lyle advanced on me, his intentions written clearly
on his face, and I began to retreat within my mind. I seriously doubt I would
have returned if she hadn’t emerged from the shadows of my mind; a part of me
that I hadn't known existed.
Okay, I had known about her, but had forgotten. I remembered
her the instant I felt her, and worse, I remembered why she existed. I had
pushed her from my mind before because I couldn't allow myself to remember the
horrors I'd been subjected to as a child to remain in my conscious memory.
Horrors that made my father's beatings appear
positively easy to bear.
She'd saved me at that time, taking all of the pain
and degradation upon herself. Then she saved me again, when my grandfather died
and I no longer needed her, by vanishing and taking the memories with her. She
was saving me now, her return triggered by the similarity between my situation
now and then.
She was my other self. The one that could survive
anything because survival was her only function. She couldn’t really be
classified as human, she existed on a purely instinctive level and understood
only two realities; bad and not bad. I embraced her arrival with unqualified
joy and scampered off into the darkest recesses of my mind, allowing her to do
what she’d been created to do.
I could still feel the torture, like distant echoes
of pain falling down a deep cavern. I could bear that, if I didn’t allow myself
to dwell on what it meant. Instead I turned to the memories that had been
released with her.
They were terrible too, but I could look at them with
a semblance of calm because they’d happened so long ago. I had been a child
then, an entirely different person. Now I knew why the threat of rape had
terrified me so.
The only difference between Lyle and my grandfather
was that Lyle wasn’t related to me. Both men were sadists. Neither could have
normal sexual relations with a woman; they literally couldn’t function with a
female who wasn’t terrified and hurting. Now, with the cushion of time
separating me from their deeds, I can almost feel sorry for them.
I’ll never know if I would have returned voluntarily
after Lyle had left. I’d like to believe I would have; that I was strong enough
then to face grim reality, but I don’t know. I know I hadn’t made any effort to
come forth, even though Lyle had been gone for almost an hour. She hadn’t done
anything more than cover our battered body with the ragged excuse for a blanket
that we’d been given.
It was the sum total of our bedding, and, after
Lyle’s visit, our only covering. She didn’t stir when the door crept open,
didn’t even look up. I agreed with her. I didn’t want to know if Lyle had
returned. But then I heard the unmistakable cry of my daughter, and suddenly I
was back in full possession of our body, sitting up as rapidly as the pain
would let me.
The Sweeper who held my daughter looked at me with
open pity. He was the one who’d carried me into the plane. If I’d had my voice
I would have told him that a conscience was a ticket to certain death in this
place, but I didn’t, and I had other things to think about.
I reached for my baby, suddenly feeling the pain of
my engorged breasts. It had been masked by my more immediate injuries, but
Deirdre’s hiccuping sigh and tearstained face brought my condition to the fore.
I didn’t so much take her from the man as claim her,
taking the time just to hold her closely and give her the love I hoped would
see her through the coming days. She seemed to need me as much as I needed
her---she didn’t even try to wiggle loose or demand her feeding, although I
knew she had to be starving by now.
"We don’t have much time." The Sweeper
finally prompted uneasily. "I have to have her back inside the hour."
I hoped he could see the gratitude in my face when I
nodded my understanding. When he departed with her, Deirdre was sated and
sleeping peacefully. Nothing in my life has ever been as hard as giving her
back to him was.
"She wouldn’t eat; wouldn’t stop crying."
The Sweeper explained gruffly, pausing by the door. "I can’t do this
often, but Tina, she’s the baby’s night nurse, is my girlfriend. She thought it
would be better for the baby to be with you for at least a little while, so
she’s covering for us now. I’ll try to come again tomorrow. I just hope the
little one doesn’t make herself sick with her crying."
I nodded again, my lips trembling with tears that I
struggled to contain until he left. Then I curled into a tight ball of pain;
mental, emotional, and physical and cried myself to sleep.
’Where are you, Jarod?’ I asked again. ’You promised
that you’d protect me from them! Where are you?’