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Disclaimer: All characters and are the property of NBC and TNT. I don’t own them, I just borrowed them.
Not in Kansas Anymore
part 5
by Charlatan
Somewhere in Delaware
Jarod glanced in the rearview mirror for the second time in twenty seconds. They were still there, and had been for the last fifty miles. He didn’t get it. If they knew it was he, why hadn’t they tried to run him off the road yet? Tried to recapture him? There were several possible explanations: either they weren’t sure if it was him, and didn’t want to endure the wrath of a Parker, or they really believed they were following Parker—the clothes and wig Angelo had given him would clearly buttress the second theory. The wig was beginning to drive him crazy, and despite the steroids Angelo had injected, his leg was still killing him. Either way, they were going to find out the truth soon, as he had been watching the gas gauge slowly drop for the last half-hour.
‘Jeez Parker,’ he thought, ‘Couldn’t you have taken the time to fill up your tank?’ He grimaced as he imagined her smart response.
***
The Centre
Her four inch stilettos made pounding noises as they clicked along the same walkway that they had a few shorts weeks before, but this time they were singing a different tune. This time, the dark haired women who wore them marched along with a new purpose and a lighter mood. Although her countenance would never reveal it, her shoes seemed to give her away, as they moved in a “ha”, “ha”, all the way up the sterile hallway. The mockery didn’t end when the woman reached her destination--it only shifted form.
Miss Parker pushed open the doors to her twin’s office, and marched in with a regal grace. Lyle quickly removed his heads from his hands, but not in time to prevent her from seeing him in this vulnerable and defeated position. He had been wrong; his day could get worse. “Come to gloat?” he asked without any trace of his usual false humor.
She smiled innocently. “I don’t know what your talking about, but I do know that I came here to tell you that just because I’m in corporate, doesn’t mean we should drift apart. I mean, I’d hate to think you’d forget me, and everything that’s happened in, oh, say as short a time as three days? There seems to be a lot of that lately.” She leaned forward, “But don’t worry. You can bet that I haven’t forgotten, and I model myself after the…triumvirate.”
For a second a dangerous light played in his eyes, but a slight glance told him the same edge was mirrored in the ice blue eyes of the woman before him. He released the air from his lungs--slowly, and stood up. A quirky smile played across his lips.
“Even if he is gone I’ve still won. In the short time he worked for us, Jarod generated a plethora of revenue, and provided enough work to last quite a few years. In fact, I was considering giving him some time off.”
She grinned, highly aware that in a moment even a psychopath like her brother wouldn’t be able to smile, much less sneer. “How generous of you, I’m sure you’ll feel just as generous when you find out the research is flawed.” He looked at her suspiciously. With gusto, she slapped the folder down on his desk that she had brought with her. His eyes never left his face.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my report, on this entire fiasco. I hate to ruin the ending—oh wait you already know it—so let me just give you a plot summary: Jarod played you. From the moment you put the handcuffs on him, you were his property, his puppet.” She stepped forward, so his face was inches from hers: “I’ve seen this song and dance number before, but you--you get the prize. Your performance truly was memorable.” She stood back up, smiling, savoring the moment.
He glanced at her, and then at the report on his desk. “You knew. You knew all along. I’ll put you before a T-board for this.”
Her grin widened, “But it’s not my fault. I was officially taken off the pursuit of Jarod two weeks ago. I didn’t need to investigate anything. My report was just a courtesy—a family favor. Oh, and I should mention that identical copies of that report have been sent to the tower.”
He glared at her, “the next time you decide to do me a favor, include a life insurance policy in the packet.”
The brunette turned to leave. She took a few paces and then pivoted around to look at him, “Who says I didn’t? No more hints. I guess you’ll just have to read it and find out.”
As she moved out the door he called out to her, “See you soon. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her mood darkened slightly, “I know Lyle, not even Oz has enough magic to make that wish come true.”
* * *
As the doors shut behind his vengeful sister, Lyle opened her report to the last page. He took a minimal satisfaction out of knowing he would be spoiling the ending after all. It only took him a few moments to read about the morning’s adventures in Boston. Realization dawned on him. His sister had not left the Centre that morning—at least, not by way of car. He picked up his phone. “Patch me through to Centre’s car 66’s extension. NOW!”
Car 66
Duncan was bored and hungry. He’d missed lunch to day. Not to mention that this entire cloak and dagger spy-stuff really wasn’t his forte’. He preferred out and out assaults, with carnage and death. It was just his bad luck that he was standing at the wrong place at the wrong time. He had met Willie over his lunch break in an attempt to use the well-known sweeper to gain a foothold to the Centre Bigwigs’ sweeper teams. He was beginning to believe that the higher teams were not all they cracked up to be.
The phone rang. Duncan glanced over at the sweeper next to him. The stalwart man’s alert posture had not slacked in the least during the course of their journey.
The seasoned man picked up the phone. “Willie here.” The sweeper paused. “Yes, Mr. Lyle, we’re still following her. I see. I’m your man. Jarod will not escape.”
‘Jarod?!’ Duncan’s ears perked up.
Willie turned to him. “We have good reason to believe that the person in that car is not Miss Parker, but an escaped Centre test subject. We’re to retrieve him at all costs.”
Duncan nodded solemnly to Willie, but smiled to himself. Jarod wasn’t just any Centre test subject; he was the only Centre subject that truly mattered. That meant this could be his ticket to the big time. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad trip at all.
***
Miss Parker’s Car
Jarod glanced in the rearview mirror. Something had changed. The dark sedan was no longer keeping its distance. He glanced at the car’s cell phone, hesitated, and than picked it up.
***
The Centre
“What?!”
“Miss Parker, how’s your sight?” came a familiar voice.
“Jarod, I didn’t expect to hear from you quite this soon. Where are you?”
He smiled. “You’d never believe it.”
“Try me. I’ve been seeing some pretty strange things lately. Like companies that come in threes, blind boats with excellent vision, and a little white rabbit now and then.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been seeing—especially that last thing, but I do know exactly where I am: In your car, somewhere on the Delaware border.”
“Really. Another game Jarod? And if not, couldn’t you have taken Lyle’s?”
“Angelo provided the keys, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy.” He paused.
“You wouldn’t happen to keep an extra gun in your car?”
“You’re really in my car aren’t you? Ruining my wardrobe isn’t enough for you anymore, Jarod?”
“Miss Parker, I really am curious as to how corporate is treating you. An office with a view? That must be nice. What’s that like? Being in a part of the Centre with windows? I wouldn’t know.”
“Well why don’t you use that big brain of yours and figure it out?”
The pretender sighed. He hadn’t really called to tweak her conscience, just offer her an alternative to her current predicament at the Centre.
“The only thing my brain is telling me right now, is that if Lyle catches me, which he is currently very close to doing, then you get to spend your life working in that new beautiful wing I built for you. So, if that’s what you want, than just hang up the phone.”
She sighed heavily. Lab-rat had a point. “It’s in the ceiling, behind the sunglasses’ holder—which by the way, if you break my glasses or damage my car I swear the next time we meet I will shoot you in the knee.”
He popped open the compartment and barely restrained a sigh of relief as the needed weapon fell into his hand. He turned back to the conversation, “Well now Miss Parker, I thought it was my foot.”
He ended the call.
Jarod checked the rearview mirror. The black car was rapidly closing the gap. He opened the barrel and checked for bullets. He was only going to have one shot at this. Literally.
He focused on the approaching exit. As he neared the ramp he increased his speed, as though he suddenly realized he was being followed. The speed of the town car behind him increased. The sweepers’ car drew up behind him, and then flipped over into the other lane, apparently intent on ramming him off the rode.
As the two cars pulled even, Jarod caught only a glimpse of an unfamiliar sweeper’s face as he leaned out the window and fired a carefully aimed shot at the Centre car’s tire. As an added bonus, the irritating wig flew off his head, and into the open window of the sweepers’ car, preventing any return fire.
“Damn it!” he shouted realizing he’d missed the tire. Continuing with his plan anyway, Jarod spun the car onto the exit ramp at the last possible second. The Centre’s car shot past him. He peeled through the red light at the top of the exit, and sped off down the deserted highway.
* * *
The only witness to his high-speed antics was a dog sitting next to the sleeping gas attendants feet, and he couldn’t give directions as to which way the pretender went to the fuming sweepers whose stormy arrival awoke his master.
Willie threw the attendant down in disgust. Besides the fact that Jarod had a head start, who knew which way he had gone? They could drive forever in the wrong direction and never know it.
He pulled out his handkerchief, and carefully wiped the blood off his hand. He straitened his tie and buttoned his jacket. Then he picked up his phone. “Mr. Lyle,” he said in a professional tone, ever the stalwart soldier. “The pretender has escaped. I’m bringing you the body of the man responsible.” He paused to listen. “Yes, sir. I know sir, the tower will get their scapegoat.” He shut the phone. Duncan looked at him.
“Do you want to do him,” he said as he gestured to the prone figure in the dirt, “or should I?”
“Actually,” Willie said as he cocked his gun, “I’ll take care of this.” The sweeper pointed and fired. The last thought Duncan had was that he never should have been in that parking lot, and that because of this mission he’d missed the cafeteria’s special tuna surprise lunch; then the darkness swallowed him.
***
The Centre
It was finally over, at least for the moment.
Triple Jeopardy was a moot point--at least in this office. She would let her brother wrap up the rest of that fairy tale.
Miss Parker couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. Despite everything, all the frustrating games and elusive clues, in the end she felt she owed him.
She owed him for getting her out of corporate, and not just this time, but the first time as well. Her adventures in the pursuit of Jarod had forced her to see the real world, and now she wanted desperately to be out there. If he hadn’t ever escaped the Centre, she might have spent her entire life going through the motions of loving a job she loathed. Not to mention that this time her removal from corporate had also saved countless numbers of would-be-murdered Centre employees. Score one for the little guy again.
Damn him! Why did life seem to always go his way? She smiled at the irony of that thought. The truth was that she wasn’t mad at him, but at herself, for daring to admit he might have helped her for once. Luckily this secret hadn’t moved beyond her. She would have to distance herself from this feeling.
She thought of her stripped down car. That did the trick. Although it had probably been done by drifters, Jarod still hadn’t kept up his end of the deal, and next time they met she owed him one bullet to the knee…or was it the foot? Maybe both.
Miss Parker grinned, and leaned back in her leather chair, which was situated in her newly restored sublevel office. She closed her eyes, grateful for the darkness, and steady hum of the air refreshers. ‘Who needs a window, Jarod?’
Earlier Broots had stuck his head in, and in his bumbling way managed to welcome her back. Miss Parker smiled: she was back, and the errant pretender had better keep looking over his shoulder.
She felt so comfortable and exhausted. When had she last slept? Fatigue overcame the brunette, but before she succumbed, her last thought was that someday she might like a window—but not with a view of the deceptively beautiful bay lining the Centre.
For now, she’d settle for what she had: concrete and steel abstractions with hints of color and light. If you stared long enough into their memorizing false depths you could almost see the world outside. Almost.
Parker drifted off to sleep.
She dreamed of white rabbits and yellow brick roads.
***
Epilogue
Sydney’s office
She always knew how to make an impression—coming and going. Sydney shook his head as Miss Parker disappeared like a fury into the night. She had just finished telling him, in no uncertain terms that she was willing to write off his strange involvement with recent events as a temporary loss of sanity. Whether he had been working with the pretender and betraying the Centre or vice versa, she really didn’t want to know. The brunette only wanted to remind him that she wasn’t Lyle, and Jarod’s tricks wouldn’t, hadn’t fooled her. The psychiatrist did find it interesting that in her tirade she had repeatedly focused on the fact that this incident had left her car in shambles—but the car had been repaired for several days now. It was fine, and her reference seemed to act more as a touchstone than any real indication of anger. Also, she hadn’t complained once about being pulled out of corporate to traipse after the pretender again. Very interesting, indeed.
The phone interrupted his analysis of the young woman.
“This is Sydney.”
“What happens when you spend an enormous amount of money on credit, and good stature, and then your cash flow not only dries up, but reverses itself?”
“Jarod, it’s good to here from you! I was worried when they found Parker’s car abandoned in the middle of nowhere.”
“How did she take it?”
“Surprisingly well, under the circumstances. Although I believe that mainly stemmed from the fact that it was less than two miles from the exit ramp where the sweepers lost you, and had an empty gas tank. If the sweepers had searched a short way up the street they might have caught up with you. Aside from that glaring failure, Lyle’s treading in dangerous waters between losing you, being fooled by you, and the unexpected disappearance of very large sums of money from Centre bank accounts. He’s blaming it on a grade 2 sweeper, but nobody really sees how that is possible. “
“Well,” said Jarod, “The seeing see little, and think little, but usually they also strangely enough live happily ever after. I guess they don’t get to in this fairy tale.”
“You’re referring to the end of Triple Jeopardy. You had to use it for a situation where it proved helpful, but it was not exactly what it was designed for.” The aging psychiatrist could imagine the grim smile that crossed his protégé’s face in the silence that followed.
“What gave me away?” the pretender finally asked.
“Your repeated referring to Miss Parker’s being in corporate, and your questioning whether or not she liked it. She mentioned your “mockery” to me. She thought you were saying it to torture her—to show how she could never be free. But that’s not how I see it. I think you designed this project so that you could be caught by her, didn’t you? So that she could collect on the deal with her father—your life for her freedom--and walk away from this madhouse.”
“They never would have let her go,” Jarod answered quietly.
“But at least than she would have known that, and as the Helen Keller reference referred to, she might have finally seen her father for who he is. Meanwhile you would have dutifully performed sims without a nagging conscience, and bided your time, waiting for the right moment to escape. You both could have been free.”
Jarod smiled grimly. “I guess we’ll never know if that is true. Maybe I just designed Triple Jeopardy to perform exactly the way it did—maybe it was just a precaution against my possible recapture.”
“and in that regard it worked, Jarod, but I doubt that next time your immediate cooperation will go over so well.”
“Well Sydney,” Jarod said with a jovial bitterness, “I guess I’ll have to make sure there won’t be a next time. I have logged enough hours in the Centre for a lifetime. Literally.”
He paused, and then in a boyish tone continued, “and besides, a good magician never does the same trick twice.”
The End
Author’s Note
I would just like to thank everyone for the great feedback and their patience in waiting for this to be completed. “Not in Kansas Anymore” was not just my first pretender fanfic, but my first fanfic ever. I actually had a dream about the story line, and then just filled in the details. I tried to make the story and characters believable. If anyone has any comments or questions, I’d love to hear form you. Once again, I hope you enjoyed it, and perhaps you’ll be seeing another story form me soon. After all, who knows where or when white rabbits will appear? Anything is possible at the Centre.
part 5
by Charlatan
Somewhere in Delaware
Jarod glanced in the rearview mirror for the second time in twenty seconds. They were still there, and had been for the last fifty miles. He didn’t get it. If they knew it was he, why hadn’t they tried to run him off the road yet? Tried to recapture him? There were several possible explanations: either they weren’t sure if it was him, and didn’t want to endure the wrath of a Parker, or they really believed they were following Parker—the clothes and wig Angelo had given him would clearly buttress the second theory. The wig was beginning to drive him crazy, and despite the steroids Angelo had injected, his leg was still killing him. Either way, they were going to find out the truth soon, as he had been watching the gas gauge slowly drop for the last half-hour.
‘Jeez Parker,’ he thought, ‘Couldn’t you have taken the time to fill up your tank?’ He grimaced as he imagined her smart response.
***
The Centre
Her four inch stilettos made pounding noises as they clicked along the same walkway that they had a few shorts weeks before, but this time they were singing a different tune. This time, the dark haired women who wore them marched along with a new purpose and a lighter mood. Although her countenance would never reveal it, her shoes seemed to give her away, as they moved in a “ha”, “ha”, all the way up the sterile hallway. The mockery didn’t end when the woman reached her destination--it only shifted form.
Miss Parker pushed open the doors to her twin’s office, and marched in with a regal grace. Lyle quickly removed his heads from his hands, but not in time to prevent her from seeing him in this vulnerable and defeated position. He had been wrong; his day could get worse. “Come to gloat?” he asked without any trace of his usual false humor.
She smiled innocently. “I don’t know what your talking about, but I do know that I came here to tell you that just because I’m in corporate, doesn’t mean we should drift apart. I mean, I’d hate to think you’d forget me, and everything that’s happened in, oh, say as short a time as three days? There seems to be a lot of that lately.” She leaned forward, “But don’t worry. You can bet that I haven’t forgotten, and I model myself after the…triumvirate.”
For a second a dangerous light played in his eyes, but a slight glance told him the same edge was mirrored in the ice blue eyes of the woman before him. He released the air from his lungs--slowly, and stood up. A quirky smile played across his lips.
“Even if he is gone I’ve still won. In the short time he worked for us, Jarod generated a plethora of revenue, and provided enough work to last quite a few years. In fact, I was considering giving him some time off.”
She grinned, highly aware that in a moment even a psychopath like her brother wouldn’t be able to smile, much less sneer. “How generous of you, I’m sure you’ll feel just as generous when you find out the research is flawed.” He looked at her suspiciously. With gusto, she slapped the folder down on his desk that she had brought with her. His eyes never left his face.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my report, on this entire fiasco. I hate to ruin the ending—oh wait you already know it—so let me just give you a plot summary: Jarod played you. From the moment you put the handcuffs on him, you were his property, his puppet.” She stepped forward, so his face was inches from hers: “I’ve seen this song and dance number before, but you--you get the prize. Your performance truly was memorable.” She stood back up, smiling, savoring the moment.
He glanced at her, and then at the report on his desk. “You knew. You knew all along. I’ll put you before a T-board for this.”
Her grin widened, “But it’s not my fault. I was officially taken off the pursuit of Jarod two weeks ago. I didn’t need to investigate anything. My report was just a courtesy—a family favor. Oh, and I should mention that identical copies of that report have been sent to the tower.”
He glared at her, “the next time you decide to do me a favor, include a life insurance policy in the packet.”
The brunette turned to leave. She took a few paces and then pivoted around to look at him, “Who says I didn’t? No more hints. I guess you’ll just have to read it and find out.”
As she moved out the door he called out to her, “See you soon. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her mood darkened slightly, “I know Lyle, not even Oz has enough magic to make that wish come true.”
* * *
As the doors shut behind his vengeful sister, Lyle opened her report to the last page. He took a minimal satisfaction out of knowing he would be spoiling the ending after all. It only took him a few moments to read about the morning’s adventures in Boston. Realization dawned on him. His sister had not left the Centre that morning—at least, not by way of car. He picked up his phone. “Patch me through to Centre’s car 66’s extension. NOW!”
Car 66
Duncan was bored and hungry. He’d missed lunch to day. Not to mention that this entire cloak and dagger spy-stuff really wasn’t his forte’. He preferred out and out assaults, with carnage and death. It was just his bad luck that he was standing at the wrong place at the wrong time. He had met Willie over his lunch break in an attempt to use the well-known sweeper to gain a foothold to the Centre Bigwigs’ sweeper teams. He was beginning to believe that the higher teams were not all they cracked up to be.
The phone rang. Duncan glanced over at the sweeper next to him. The stalwart man’s alert posture had not slacked in the least during the course of their journey.
The seasoned man picked up the phone. “Willie here.” The sweeper paused. “Yes, Mr. Lyle, we’re still following her. I see. I’m your man. Jarod will not escape.”
‘Jarod?!’ Duncan’s ears perked up.
Willie turned to him. “We have good reason to believe that the person in that car is not Miss Parker, but an escaped Centre test subject. We’re to retrieve him at all costs.”
Duncan nodded solemnly to Willie, but smiled to himself. Jarod wasn’t just any Centre test subject; he was the only Centre subject that truly mattered. That meant this could be his ticket to the big time. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad trip at all.
***
Miss Parker’s Car
Jarod glanced in the rearview mirror. Something had changed. The dark sedan was no longer keeping its distance. He glanced at the car’s cell phone, hesitated, and than picked it up.
***
The Centre
“What?!”
“Miss Parker, how’s your sight?” came a familiar voice.
“Jarod, I didn’t expect to hear from you quite this soon. Where are you?”
He smiled. “You’d never believe it.”
“Try me. I’ve been seeing some pretty strange things lately. Like companies that come in threes, blind boats with excellent vision, and a little white rabbit now and then.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been seeing—especially that last thing, but I do know exactly where I am: In your car, somewhere on the Delaware border.”
“Really. Another game Jarod? And if not, couldn’t you have taken Lyle’s?”
“Angelo provided the keys, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy.” He paused.
“You wouldn’t happen to keep an extra gun in your car?”
“You’re really in my car aren’t you? Ruining my wardrobe isn’t enough for you anymore, Jarod?”
“Miss Parker, I really am curious as to how corporate is treating you. An office with a view? That must be nice. What’s that like? Being in a part of the Centre with windows? I wouldn’t know.”
“Well why don’t you use that big brain of yours and figure it out?”
The pretender sighed. He hadn’t really called to tweak her conscience, just offer her an alternative to her current predicament at the Centre.
“The only thing my brain is telling me right now, is that if Lyle catches me, which he is currently very close to doing, then you get to spend your life working in that new beautiful wing I built for you. So, if that’s what you want, than just hang up the phone.”
She sighed heavily. Lab-rat had a point. “It’s in the ceiling, behind the sunglasses’ holder—which by the way, if you break my glasses or damage my car I swear the next time we meet I will shoot you in the knee.”
He popped open the compartment and barely restrained a sigh of relief as the needed weapon fell into his hand. He turned back to the conversation, “Well now Miss Parker, I thought it was my foot.”
He ended the call.
Jarod checked the rearview mirror. The black car was rapidly closing the gap. He opened the barrel and checked for bullets. He was only going to have one shot at this. Literally.
He focused on the approaching exit. As he neared the ramp he increased his speed, as though he suddenly realized he was being followed. The speed of the town car behind him increased. The sweepers’ car drew up behind him, and then flipped over into the other lane, apparently intent on ramming him off the rode.
As the two cars pulled even, Jarod caught only a glimpse of an unfamiliar sweeper’s face as he leaned out the window and fired a carefully aimed shot at the Centre car’s tire. As an added bonus, the irritating wig flew off his head, and into the open window of the sweepers’ car, preventing any return fire.
“Damn it!” he shouted realizing he’d missed the tire. Continuing with his plan anyway, Jarod spun the car onto the exit ramp at the last possible second. The Centre’s car shot past him. He peeled through the red light at the top of the exit, and sped off down the deserted highway.
* * *
The only witness to his high-speed antics was a dog sitting next to the sleeping gas attendants feet, and he couldn’t give directions as to which way the pretender went to the fuming sweepers whose stormy arrival awoke his master.
Willie threw the attendant down in disgust. Besides the fact that Jarod had a head start, who knew which way he had gone? They could drive forever in the wrong direction and never know it.
He pulled out his handkerchief, and carefully wiped the blood off his hand. He straitened his tie and buttoned his jacket. Then he picked up his phone. “Mr. Lyle,” he said in a professional tone, ever the stalwart soldier. “The pretender has escaped. I’m bringing you the body of the man responsible.” He paused to listen. “Yes, sir. I know sir, the tower will get their scapegoat.” He shut the phone. Duncan looked at him.
“Do you want to do him,” he said as he gestured to the prone figure in the dirt, “or should I?”
“Actually,” Willie said as he cocked his gun, “I’ll take care of this.” The sweeper pointed and fired. The last thought Duncan had was that he never should have been in that parking lot, and that because of this mission he’d missed the cafeteria’s special tuna surprise lunch; then the darkness swallowed him.
***
The Centre
It was finally over, at least for the moment.
Triple Jeopardy was a moot point--at least in this office. She would let her brother wrap up the rest of that fairy tale.
Miss Parker couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. Despite everything, all the frustrating games and elusive clues, in the end she felt she owed him.
She owed him for getting her out of corporate, and not just this time, but the first time as well. Her adventures in the pursuit of Jarod had forced her to see the real world, and now she wanted desperately to be out there. If he hadn’t ever escaped the Centre, she might have spent her entire life going through the motions of loving a job she loathed. Not to mention that this time her removal from corporate had also saved countless numbers of would-be-murdered Centre employees. Score one for the little guy again.
Damn him! Why did life seem to always go his way? She smiled at the irony of that thought. The truth was that she wasn’t mad at him, but at herself, for daring to admit he might have helped her for once. Luckily this secret hadn’t moved beyond her. She would have to distance herself from this feeling.
She thought of her stripped down car. That did the trick. Although it had probably been done by drifters, Jarod still hadn’t kept up his end of the deal, and next time they met she owed him one bullet to the knee…or was it the foot? Maybe both.
Miss Parker grinned, and leaned back in her leather chair, which was situated in her newly restored sublevel office. She closed her eyes, grateful for the darkness, and steady hum of the air refreshers. ‘Who needs a window, Jarod?’
Earlier Broots had stuck his head in, and in his bumbling way managed to welcome her back. Miss Parker smiled: she was back, and the errant pretender had better keep looking over his shoulder.
She felt so comfortable and exhausted. When had she last slept? Fatigue overcame the brunette, but before she succumbed, her last thought was that someday she might like a window—but not with a view of the deceptively beautiful bay lining the Centre.
For now, she’d settle for what she had: concrete and steel abstractions with hints of color and light. If you stared long enough into their memorizing false depths you could almost see the world outside. Almost.
Parker drifted off to sleep.
She dreamed of white rabbits and yellow brick roads.
***
Epilogue
Sydney’s office
She always knew how to make an impression—coming and going. Sydney shook his head as Miss Parker disappeared like a fury into the night. She had just finished telling him, in no uncertain terms that she was willing to write off his strange involvement with recent events as a temporary loss of sanity. Whether he had been working with the pretender and betraying the Centre or vice versa, she really didn’t want to know. The brunette only wanted to remind him that she wasn’t Lyle, and Jarod’s tricks wouldn’t, hadn’t fooled her. The psychiatrist did find it interesting that in her tirade she had repeatedly focused on the fact that this incident had left her car in shambles—but the car had been repaired for several days now. It was fine, and her reference seemed to act more as a touchstone than any real indication of anger. Also, she hadn’t complained once about being pulled out of corporate to traipse after the pretender again. Very interesting, indeed.
The phone interrupted his analysis of the young woman.
“This is Sydney.”
“What happens when you spend an enormous amount of money on credit, and good stature, and then your cash flow not only dries up, but reverses itself?”
“Jarod, it’s good to here from you! I was worried when they found Parker’s car abandoned in the middle of nowhere.”
“How did she take it?”
“Surprisingly well, under the circumstances. Although I believe that mainly stemmed from the fact that it was less than two miles from the exit ramp where the sweepers lost you, and had an empty gas tank. If the sweepers had searched a short way up the street they might have caught up with you. Aside from that glaring failure, Lyle’s treading in dangerous waters between losing you, being fooled by you, and the unexpected disappearance of very large sums of money from Centre bank accounts. He’s blaming it on a grade 2 sweeper, but nobody really sees how that is possible. “
“Well,” said Jarod, “The seeing see little, and think little, but usually they also strangely enough live happily ever after. I guess they don’t get to in this fairy tale.”
“You’re referring to the end of Triple Jeopardy. You had to use it for a situation where it proved helpful, but it was not exactly what it was designed for.” The aging psychiatrist could imagine the grim smile that crossed his protégé’s face in the silence that followed.
“What gave me away?” the pretender finally asked.
“Your repeated referring to Miss Parker’s being in corporate, and your questioning whether or not she liked it. She mentioned your “mockery” to me. She thought you were saying it to torture her—to show how she could never be free. But that’s not how I see it. I think you designed this project so that you could be caught by her, didn’t you? So that she could collect on the deal with her father—your life for her freedom--and walk away from this madhouse.”
“They never would have let her go,” Jarod answered quietly.
“But at least than she would have known that, and as the Helen Keller reference referred to, she might have finally seen her father for who he is. Meanwhile you would have dutifully performed sims without a nagging conscience, and bided your time, waiting for the right moment to escape. You both could have been free.”
Jarod smiled grimly. “I guess we’ll never know if that is true. Maybe I just designed Triple Jeopardy to perform exactly the way it did—maybe it was just a precaution against my possible recapture.”
“and in that regard it worked, Jarod, but I doubt that next time your immediate cooperation will go over so well.”
“Well Sydney,” Jarod said with a jovial bitterness, “I guess I’ll have to make sure there won’t be a next time. I have logged enough hours in the Centre for a lifetime. Literally.”
He paused, and then in a boyish tone continued, “and besides, a good magician never does the same trick twice.”
The End
Author’s Note
I would just like to thank everyone for the great feedback and their patience in waiting for this to be completed. “Not in Kansas Anymore” was not just my first pretender fanfic, but my first fanfic ever. I actually had a dream about the story line, and then just filled in the details. I tried to make the story and characters believable. If anyone has any comments or questions, I’d love to hear form you. Once again, I hope you enjoyed it, and perhaps you’ll be seeing another story form me soon. After all, who knows where or when white rabbits will appear? Anything is possible at the Centre.
