"Out of my way!" Jarod glared at the black
man standing firmly in the doorway.
He was two or three inches taller than the other
man, but the fact that he leaned heavily on a cane negated any advantage that
might have given him in this standoff.
"Jarod, I can't let you go haring out of here
on a whim." Curtis said firmly, wincing as an expression of rage covered
Jarod's face.
"Whim?!" He hissed, white lines bracketing
his lips as he fought with his emotions. "You saw her. You saw her back.
You saw was he was doing----what he would still be doing if I hadn't made that
call----and you call it a whim?"
"Yes, I saw all of that. And you bought her
another few hours. But what good will it do anything if you are in that
psychopath's hands too?"
"It will give Annie some space, while Lyle
turns his attention to me." Jarod answered with brutal honesty. "And
maybe, just maybe, I'll have a chance to get my hands around his neck."
"You know that won't happen, Jarod." Curt
said flatly. "And then what? What happens after Lyle has broken you, or
killed you? And what happens when he decides to use her against you again, this
time in front of your own eyes, and not a camera monitor?"
Jarod's free hand never ceased it's restless
clenching and unclenching.
"I don't know." Jarod answered grimly.
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I'm not staying here while he
tortures her, Curt. Now, get out of my way!"
Curt move back reluctantly as Jarod advanced, even
though Jarod would have been hard pressed to actually force him aside.
"Think, Jarod! You're throwing everything we've
worked for away! We're so close! So close to closing down the Centre for
good!" He pleaded. "And there's something else you should know…"
Jarod ignored him, limping painfully down the
hallway towards the elevator at the far end. He stopped, though, when the
elevator doors opened and out stepped Sally, with one of his sons in her arms,
and the other held by an unknown member of the agency.
His face paled as his eyes drank in the sight of his
two boys for the first time and conflicting needs warred within him. They were
healthy and happy, two bottom teeth peeking out from identical grins. Their
dark brown hair was already thick and unruly, and their eyes were the same
shade of brown as his own. But he fancied he saw a hint of their mother in
their tiny chins, and definitely in those toothless smiles.
"Jarod, dear! You're a sight for sore eyes!"
Sally called as she hurried down the corridor to meet him. "I thought
those nasty Centre people had us for a while there."
"Sally…" His voice was husky and choked.
"Boys, say hello to your daddy." Sally
beamed at them and they waved their fisted hands wildly. "Jarod, this is
Brennan and that other fine lad is your son Brone."
Jarod just reached out a gentle finger to stroke
Brennan's soft, chubby cheek. In a flash Brennan had captured his father's
finger in a surprisingly tight grip and was trying to guide it into his mouth
for a taste.
"I wouldn't." Sally cautioned laughingly.
"He bites now---hard!"
"Sally, I have to leave right now." Jarod
looked at her earnestly, a hint of tears in his eyes. "Will you----will
you take care of them for me?"
"Of course I will." Sally's expression
turned grave in an instant. "Going to get their mother?" She guessed
shrewdly.
"Yes, but---"
"But he's walking into a bloody trap!"
Curt burst out with exasperation.
Jarod's face shuttered and stubbornness took over.
"I'm going, Curt." He stated again,
flatly.
"Just listen for a second, okay?" Curt
begged earnestly. "You've got another half an hour before you have to
leave---an hour if I promise you the use of one of our helicopters. Take that
time to help our cryptographer break the last set of files, and we'll be right
behind you."
"What are you saying?" Jarod swung to look
at Curt, his face still grim, but a sliver of hope dawning in his eyes.
"With what's hidden in those files, I'm sure I
can get the final approval to go in and clean out the Centre entirely."
Curt assured Jarod. "Even the Federal Defense Bureau will have to back us
up."
The FDB was the reason that the attack on the Centre
had turned out so disjointed and sloppy. They were fighting to keep the government
out of this battle, and Curt had gone out on a limb simply by authorizing the
action they’d already taken.
"I think you'll find that the FDB was one of
the Centre's biggest clients." Jarod said wryly.
Curt grinned with relief, knowing that he'd won.
"I'm sure you're right, as always." Curt
agreed willingly. "Now, shall we go?"
"Just a sec, Curt." Jarod told him,
turning back to Sally. "Sally, I have some news for you, but it isn't
necessarily good news." He started carefully. "And I don't know how
to soften it, so here it goes: Sam's alive. The Centre has him."
Curt leaped forward to catch Brennan as Sally paled
and wavered on her feet.
"Alive?" She repeated weakly, tears in her
eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure he's alive for at least the
moment, but he's in the hands of the same madman who hurt Annie so badly
before. I don't know what his real condition is. He seemed okay but…"
Jarod's voice trailed of doubtfully as a vision of Annie's battered back rose
before his eyes.
"Alive." A tear trickled down Sally's
cheek, but she straightened, breathing deeply. "Then you'd better get to
work, young man." She ordered Jarod firmly. "Go get my husband and
Annie."
"I'll do my best." Jarod vowed softly, his
eyes seeming to see someone else.
Without another word Jarod began making his painful
way back down the hallway, headed for the lab where they had slowly broken code
after code of the Centre's most secret documents. Curt stared after his
retreating back in amazement before Sally's quiet statement turned his
attention back to her.
"Give me Brennan and go help him." She
ordered the younger man just as firmly as she had Jarod. "He may be a
genius, but he's going to need all of the help he can get, I'm sure."
"Yes, Ma'am." Curt agreed respectfully.
"He will, and I'll see to it that he gets it." He surrendered Brennan
willingly, and hurried to catch up with his slower friend.
Sally turned to the young man who'd guided her this
far and asked if he knew where they could go to "freshen up".
"Yes, Ma'am." He answered, his respect not
automatic manners trained into him, like Curt's, but drawn from the admiration
of one little old, civilian lady ordering his boss around and getting away with
it. Sally smiled understandingly.
"My husband is retired Marine." She
volunteered. "He always said I spent too much time watching him when he
was a drill sergeant."
"Yes, Ma'am." He agreed, a cheerful grin
growing on his face. "If you'll follow me?" Sally's smile vanished as
soon as the boy pulled ahead to guide her and a thoughtful frown crease her
brow.
Sam and Annie and the Centre…. She didn't like the
sounds of things at all, but it could have been much worse.
We ignored the other people as we made our way
through the halls. Parker was saying something, but it didn’t really register
with me. As soon as we reached the room she stopped to say something to the two
guards. We continued into the room, shedding the ruined hospital gown without a
second thought.
Broots gasped in dismay and shock, but he meant nothing
to us. We continued straight into the inner room and then to the bathroom. Once
again, I needed to wash the encounter with Lyle off of our body.
We weren’t happy when we stepped out of the shower
and saw Parker.
"Sydney thought you’d feel better if a female
helped dress those cuts." She offered wryly.
Hurt flashed across her face when we stepped past
her into the bedroom, ignoring her completely. I felt bad about that, in some
far off place inside of us where compassion and kindness still existed, but the
rest of me ignored that too.
We walked to my closet and chose the black shirt and
overalls of my daytime attire, pulling them on with no concern about the fact
that it wouldn’t be good for the injuries on my back, or who might walk through
my door in the midst of our change. Only one person’s presence was worth
worrying about, and he wasn’t here. We could feel Parker studying me, trying to
understand our behavior, but none of it mattered.
Once our clothes were on we scooped up a comb and
retreated to our corner to squat and rock while we brushed the tangles out of
our hair. It fell well down our back by now, a light auburn where it had grown
out and a dark brunette where I had dyed it in my vain attempt to hide us. We
hummed voicelessly as we combed, as content as we could ever be.
"Syd, I don’t know." We heard Parker
saying from the doorway. "She won’t even look at me."
"I was afraid something like this might have
happened." Sydney answered gravely, his voice growing louder as he
approached. "Let me try."
He dropped into a crosslegged sit in front of us. We
felt a distant admiration that he could slip into that position at his age, but
ignored him as thoroughly as we had Parker.
"Anne, this is Dr. Sydney. Do you remember
me?"
Our hair was done and we laid the comb at our side,
taking a moment to finger comb the wet strands across our face as a veil before
we started rocking again, fingers twining and untwining now that they weren’t
occupied with the comb. The sting of the torn flesh on our back, the dull ache
of the bruises, the annoying voice of the man before us, were all minor
distractions, easily disregarded.
"I want to examine you, Anne; to make sure that
you haven’t been hurt inside. Do you understand me?"
He rummaged in the black bag beside him and came out
with a thin flashlight. We knocked away his hand when he tried to brush back
our hair to expose our eyes and gave him a reproachful glare before resuming
our rocking.
"Anne, I have to see how badly you’ve been
hurt." He repeated patiently and tried again to move the concealing hair.
We responded by curling into a tight ball on the
floor, face buried in my knees, arms wrapped in a death grip around my knees. I
wasn’t willing to strike at him again, he wasn’t a bad man, but he didn’t
understand that we wouldn’t allow anyone to touch us except him. If we
could have, we wouldn’t have let him touch us either, but we had no
choice in that matter.
"I see." He said thoughtfully. "I
guess you don’t want to be touched at the moment. Perhaps you’d be willing to
talk to me? We’ve been worried about you. Could you tell us how you feel?"
He tried gently.
We remained utterly still, barely breathing. Perhaps
they would go away and forget us if we didn’t move, we reasoned vaguely.
Sydney sighed sadly and levered himself to his feet.
We felt a tiny surge of elation; our ploy had worked!
"Well?" Parker demanded.
"I don’t know." Sydney told her gravely.
"I don’t know if this is temporary or permanent. She could simply have
regressed to this state as a survival mechanism or her mind could be completely
shattered. I’d need a lot of time and unlimited access to her to make a
determination. Right now, there’s no way she’ll cooperate with an
examination." "So that’s it? We give up?" Parker’s voice rose
slightly with frustration.
"There isn’t anything I can do right now."
Sydney informed her, a tinge of impatience coloring his own voice. "Short
of sedating her and performing an examination while she’s unconscious. Frankly,
I’m not convinced that her condition is bad enough yet to justify that."
"There’s one thing left for us to do."
Parker contradicted him grimly.
"And that is?" Sydney asked dryly, one
brow raised.
"That is removing my brother from a position of
power. In fact, I know just the cell to keep him in."
"Have you amassed an army I don’t know
about?" Sydney asked pointedly. "Because it would seem to me that
your brother has more Sweepers backing him up than you do."
"I’ve been at the Centre far longer than he
has, Syd. I have resources that none of you know about." She answered
confidently, the spring back in her step as she left our room.
We heard Sydney and Broots follow her out of our
quarters and relaxed slightly. It appeared that Deirdre wasn’t coming again and
we had nothing pressing to do. So we simply lay there, mind blank, waiting for
a stimulus that we would have to react to. Once again time became meaningless
and we simply drifted serenely, enjoying the unaccustomed peace.
The door finally opened, and our stomach dropped
sickeningly as we scrambled into the proper, subservient position. Lyle burst
into the inner room, the gloating smirk I'd anticipated and feared plastered
across his face.
"He's here."
He hadn't needed to tell us, we could see it in his
smugness.
"I couldn't have done it without you." He
plopped himself down on the edge of the bed.
"Come take my shoes off, dear." He told us
in a parody of marital coziness.
Memories plagued us, memories of Lyle, angry about
something his sister, or father, or Jarod had done. We always knew when
something had gone wrong during his days, the moment he walked through the
doors, and every time we'd suffered for his irritation. But his elation was
almost as bad.
Once, after he'd pulled some particularly nasty joke
on his sister, we'd ended up so damaged that we could barely breathe for a
week. Our ribs were still quite tender from that one. We suppressed a shudder
of dread with the ease of long practice, and moved to obey---this was going
to be bad---it was going to be very, very bad.