deconstruction

deconstruction

step one: condemnation

The air stirred with a gust of breeze, faintly redolent of the ocean not far away. In the mottled light from the moon, a figure scrambled through the trees, his head jerking back and forth, his eyes wide and wild. For the moment he was one of the forest animals, crouching low to the ground, using every sense to try to find what he was searching for.

And always looking back at the great marble block to see if anyone had followed.

He heard the voice, a hoarse whisper off to his right. "Angelo," it spoke, and then was silent. Turning his head, he let his gaze search through the trees, through the shadows, until he saw the form that beckoned to him.

Walking more uprightly now, he moved toward the figure, letting his eyes take in the details as they appeared to him in the moonlight. From behind, he could see the man wore black pants, shirt, rugged boots, his dark hair tousled by the branches, but when the figure turned around he could not help but to gasp.

He reached his hand out to the other's arm, holding it tightly. The emotions that lay behind the blank eyes rushed at him, threatening to take him along into the chasm of despair.

"Jarod….hurt."

With a sad smile, Jarod pulled Angelo's hand away from him, knowing how susceptible his friend was to the strong sensations, then he forced back the feelings that had momentarily surfaced. This was not the time, he told himself, there were things to do, things to put into motion. His eyes returned to their glazed darkness, his face back to its harsh, gaunt outlines. "Did you get it?"

Angelo nervously reached into his short pocket and brought out the silver disk, glinting in the fragmented moonlight.

Jarod's smirk was feral, his voice cold. "Perfect." He took the disk and looked at it, as if he could read its contents with his eyes. "Thank you, Angelo. You have been a good friend. You'd better get back now, but remember, one month, then you have to be out."

Angelo looked at him silently. His friend, sometimes his only friend, was hurting, but he would not admit it. He noticed the jagged tear in the shoulder of Jarod's shirt, the dark red of clotted blood underneath, then gazed at his gaunt face, unshaven for days. How long had he been out here, watching and waiting, his eyes never leaving the Centre, with all the power of his intellect focused on one thing - its destruction.

"Danger," he warned Jarod, his brow furrowed.

"I know, Angelo."

"No!" The other man was emphatic. "Danger - here!" He pushed his finger gently into Jarod's chest.

It wasn't hard to understand the empath's concern – the feelings, emotions and passions of others pervaded Angelo’s world. But again, Jarod would not allow himself to see that side. "They took most of my life," he explained, "then, when I had found a way to get that back, they took away my soul. They have to be stopped, Angelo, this can’t go on. I have to stop it."

Angelo looked at him, a variety of expressions flashing across his features while he struggled to understand. "Daughter…" he whispered.

"I've given her the choice, now she has to make it." Jarod's voice was cold. "Her fate is her own."

There had been weeks of wandering, both physically and mentally, the vagaries of reality flashing in and out of Jarod's mind as he had slowly made his way east to this place. Occasionally, he had sunk into a deep melancholy, day upon day of darkness. Hitting bottom, he would force himself to claw his way back with the fearsome anger he could stoke like a fire until it was an almost uncontrollable conflagration, consuming his being. At these times, bereft of his compassion, single minded of purpose, the revenge seemed his only goal, a way to continue to cope without thinking about why.

But then there was the madness.

It did not help that he could see it coming, that he had spent time on both sides of the psychologist’s couch. Perhaps it was even worse, knowing what would come, realizing that his grip on reality was becoming more and more tenuous until…

He had spent a day (or was it more?) in a park, disheveled, ranting, weeping, trying to explain to everyone how "they" were really in control, how "they" were trying to get him back, to use him again, until a kind woman had seen past his outbursts and led him by the hand to shelter. There she had fed him, listened to his story and offered him a shower and a bed. The next morning, she had referred him to a psychiatrist in a nearby hospital, but by that time, the worst of the psychosis had subsided. He left the shelter, embarrassed and depressed, but in control, and a more than a little frightened by the excesses of his mind.

The next day, after retrieving his aluminum case, left at a bus stop in a last moment of clarity, he had written himself a prescription for Paxil, then devised a kind of test for himself to determine exactly when he would need it. Every morning, he faithfully filled in the answers and he took the medication. If the results showed himself to be once more on that downward spiral, he hoped that he would still have the presence of mind to change his medication to something even stronger.

And so he had lived for the last four weeks, fending off the demons and feeding off the revenge. Always the revenge. He made his plan, checking it again and again to ensure that the delusional would not contaminate the concrete.

Two weeks ago, he had moved into the forest on the outskirts of the Centre property, with a sleeping bag and a cache of food, neither of which had seen as much use as they should have. The expression on Angelo’s face when they had first met in the woods had made him consider his present appearance. He knew that he had lost weight again by the way his clothes fit, but at the same time, he felt lean, like a hunter cat, powerful, his body poised to spring, almost trembling with kinetic energy. The food held little appeal to him as he watched the Centre monolith hour after hour; he only hoped that it was not some untreated vestige of his mental demons.

Slowly the plan had developed and the pieces had come together. He spun the silvery disk between his fingers. This was the key, the final element. He sighed inwardly. All his other disks, the coveted DSA's that held the record of his life, they were all he had had of those thirty years in the cage. This disk was different. It held no pictures, no record of simulations past. On it was the information that he had been unable to retrieve by himself, information locked deep within the Centre sublevels. It had taken Angelo weeks of duct crawling to find it, but find it he had. And then he had given it, reluctantly, to Jarod – a precious, powerful gift.

The truth.

Miss Parker glared at the phone that trilled on her desk, wondering if she should even bother to answer it. Since her return, after a few weeks of self-induced absence and unauthorized vacation after Jarod's late night visit, she had done little but sit in her office and think. Occasionally she had ventured out in search of the elusive chameleon, but if truth be told, she was afraid to find him. Instead, she sat at her desk, reading through reports, trying to find some thing, some way to do what must be done.

She couldn’t go on the way she was, that was certain. Sooner or later, someone, probably Lyle, would figure out that she was doing little but taking up space.

Or so it seemed.

The files that she read had little to do with Jarod, and a great deal to do with just about everything else. Lyle, Raines, her father, her mother, the Triumvirate. Where before all of her concentration had been focused in one direction, on her mother's death, now she was broadening the search and being rewarded with a gossamer web that tied together all the various components of the Centre, and her life. She had decided early that this was no longer a job for Broots. As skilled as he might be with the computer, he was even jumpier than before, if that were possible. But almost daily, it seemed, she asked Angelo to find her some new bit of information, a new puzzle piece. It was amazing how quickly and how secretly Angelo could find things in the labyrinthine computer records…sometimes it even seemed as if he had the information already, just waiting for her to ask for it.

Things had begun to make more sense as she looked through file after file. She understood a bit better just who, and how, the powers-that-be were. Now all she had to do was to figure out how she could use that information to her advantage, and to Jarod's.

She still felt sick when she thought of how callously Lyle had used that mother and her young daughter in a vain but lethal attempt to bring Jarod in. Was their little pet project more valuable than two, no, that was three lives? Jarod had certainly made money for the Centre, that much was obvious from the reports that she had read, but she could not place money above someone else's life.

Well, not anymore. She realized that, over the years that she had hunted the Pretender, he had done his work upon her, too. When she had started this insane chase, she had been as focused, as vindictive and yes, as ruthless as anyone at the Centre in the pursuit of her quarry. But now, the Ice Queen was no longer frozen. She could no longer put the end above the means.

Obviously, Lyle did. And her father? His tacit acceptance of the "situation" had been more frightening than anything else. She could hardly believe that the man she had cherished as "Daddy" all these years could condone the death of a child. What if it had been her and her child, would it have been different then, or was the goal always more important than the means? A chill ran through her; she knew the answer all too well when it came to the Triumvirate.

Sydney walked between the two sets of twins once again, gauging their reactions as they watched the videos before them. Male and female sets reared apart, different parents but the same genetic make-up. It was the old story of Nature versus Nurture, but with a twist. One of each of the siblings had turned out bad – retrieved from prison by the Centre for these experiments. Their twins, however, had been living normal lives, or so it seemed to those around them. A little digging, and studying the reactions of both sets to these rather graphic images, was giving the psychologist some new insights. His thoughts wandered – if it were this way for identical twins, how different would it be for fraternal ones, for Miss Parker and…

As if reading his mind, the tall brunette walked through the door to the lab, as usual, giving a look of distaste to the experiment subjects before turning her attention toward him. “Syd,” she began, then her eyes drifted toward the video on the screen, a scene of animal violence. She stopped talking, watched only for a moment, then shuddered.

“I know,” the psychologist sighed, speaking quietly so as not to be overheard. “It is as distasteful to me as it is to you. But if I am to have a better understanding of these things…” His hand gestured toward the four subjects of the experiment, and he left the sentence unfinished.

The woman rolled her eyes. “As if there is anything to understand in this place.” She waved a rather worn file folder in front of his face. “Like this, for example. Angelo found this for me, it’s a file on my mother’s friend Ben, or it was supposed to be, but it’s empty! Since when does the Centre keep empty file folders around?”

“The fact that is it empty is quite telling in itself, don’t you agree?”

“Of course, but it still doesn’t tell me what was in here, or who took it out.”

“Did Angelo tell you where he found the file?”

“No, and it frosts me, because I know that he’s not telling me for some reason that only he and Rat-Boy understand. There are days, Syd, when I think that I’m here just for Jarod’s fun, so that he can watch me chase my tail.”

Sydney could not suppress a smile. “Jarod does have a way of getting under your skin. But he has also brought you to an understanding of things that you might not have found out any other way.

“And I’m supposed to thank him?” She snorted. “Frankly, I think I was a whole helluva lot happier before he started digging into my life and taking me along with him. I know that I certainly drank less.”

“That, of course, is your choice, Parker. You know my feelings on the subject.”

“Don’t get sanctimonious on me, Dr. Frankenstein. We all do what we can to get by, even if it means turning a blind eye for thirty years.”

The barb stung, and she could see the older man’s face fall. “Yes, Miss Parker, for better or worse, we have all done what we had to, to get by.”

“I’m sorry Sydney, I didn’t mean it that way.” She ran her fingers through her hair in a gesture of exasperation. “It’s just the tension, it’s getting to me. We know he’s out there, he’s watching us, and the longer he’s out there, the worse it’s going to be, because he as good as promised that he’s going to get revenge for the deaths of those two people.”

“Three,” Sydney corrected her. “Do not forget the child that she was carrying.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. How can I? Three lives ended, just so my bastard of a brother could take the credit for bringing Jarod back in. Three people destroyed so that the Centre could have its precious labrat back.”

There was a silence between them, and both found themselves watching the sets of twins, four people calmly viewing the graphic carnage on the monitors before them. Once again, Miss Parker shivered involuntarily. “Tell me, Sydney, what have you learned from these sadistic animals. Are twins really doomed to be emotional carbon copies of each other?”

The psychologist paused before responding, thinking of the woman who stood before him. “Haven’t you already answered that question yourself?”

Sydney sat at his desk, the report of his most recent experiment open in front of him, along with a small stack of DSA disks. He preferred to read the report on a hard copy, a holdover from the pre-computer days of his past. It nearly drove Broots to distraction. If the programmer had had his way, all paper would have been eliminated years ago.

But the feeling of the report cover in his hand gave him a kind of comfort. The Centre couldn’t eliminate everything, he thought to himself. Old habits were even harder to get rid of than…

The thought left him cold. Why was it that no matter what he was doing, his mind always went back to Jarod, and worse, to the young family that had died, rather, been killed in Lyle’s twisted attempt to lure the Pretender back to his cage. Putting the file down, he searched in his wallet, pulling out a recent picture of Michele and his beloved son. Sometimes thinking about them help to ease the pain.

Would he be hearing soon, he thought to himself, that Nicholas was planning to marry, even have a child of his own? I must be getting old, he mused. The thought of his own progeny was beginning to mean more and more to him. His son was his only chance now, with Jarod who knew where…

Once again the thoughts forced their way to the forefront of his mind. Jarod, his surrogate son. Jarod, who had been on the threshold of fatherhood. The child, Jarod’s baby boy, would have been like a grandchild to him, his chance to set things right. He would have protected that child with every ounce of his being, ensuring that he grew up free and loved by his own parents. All the mistakes that he had made, the blind eyes that he had turned, the cowardice that had kept him on the leash of the Centre, a chance to make up for it all in that child.

Kyle, she had named him. Another Kyle, free from the Centre forever.

Not for the first time, he put his hands over his eyes and wept.

Mr. Parker stood at the window of the nursery, watching as the woman picked up the crying toddler from a playpen. The child was getting adequate care, that was for certain, and it looked as if the woman truly cared for him. Good, that was good; a child should have someone to care for him. The older man looked at the baby once again, trying to find the same emotions in his heart. He felt badly, but they simply weren’t there. The child, much as he hated to admit it, was more a necessity than a progeny. Someone had to take the place of the Pretender that they never seemed to be able to catch, and the clone that had gotten away. And once the child showed the potential, well, things would be a little different around the Centre then. If not? He hated to think of that, preferring to remain optimistic. With his genetic code there was a very good chance. Time would tell, yes, time would tell, but he preferred to think of the child as his latest Pretender.

The lone figure placed another box into the stark room, identical to the half dozen that were already there. Dust rose as feet shuffled along the hallway – no one had been in this place for a very long time. Which is what made it so perfect – no one, well, no one else, would be finding a reason to come here for a long time.

The light from the dangling bulb overhead cast a long shadow against the bare concrete wall, and for a moment, it seemed as if the figure stopped to contemplate the contrast of dark and light. The moment past, and another box was placed against the wall. The room was almost ready.

step two