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Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.



CURE-ALL
Part 4

by StarsingerSaathi





"Hello?" Brigitte called into the cabin. She'd found the front door unlocked and open, and knew the chances of finding Jarod here were slim to none. However, that was not why she had come.

She had come alone, knowing that using Miss Parker as a lab rat would be extremely unappealing to the girl's father. Mr. Parker was still in Blue Cove, busy with his job, while assuming that he could trust his young wife to bring back his daughter. Brigitte intended to bring Miss Parker back to Delaware, but not back to her father - to a lab Mr. Raines had set up expressly for Brigitte's use. Mr. Parker would simply receive an easily accepted story about another one of Jarod's wild goose chases.

Brigitte smiled, hearing her daughter-in-law's muffled voice from one of the rear rooms. This was going to be perfect.


* * * * *

"Lyle, did you find Miss Parker?" Sydney asked the younger man. Lyle shook his head.

"No. Brigitte's probably been and gone. You know, Sydney, if your lackey Broots had found that trace request a few hours sooner, we'd probably have my dear sister back." They were standing in a short hallway of the cabin they'd just searched extensively. It was completely empty. Most of the furniture was gone, and the air had a disinfected smell about it. Whoever was here last, they had certainly cleaned up the place admirably.

"I'm not so sure that an extra hour or so would have made that much of a difference. Remember, that call arrived at one in the morning. Brigitte may have left as soon as she could."

"Fine. I still don't like chasing around Miss Parker, though."

"It's not necessary for you to enjoy your assignment, Lyle, just to complete it." Lyle shot an indecipherable look at Sydney, and walked away, out the cabin door.

"Uh, Sydney?" Broots called, from the kitchen.

"Yes.?" He answered, hurrying to the other room. He found Broots, peering into the tiny fridge. "What is it, Broots?"

In response, the other man lifted out a small, heavily multiply-sealed vial, labeled "Zymogene, Inc. Biohazard."

"What do you think is in it?" Broots asked, his forehead furrowed in concern. Sydney rummaged in a drawer, hoping to find a plastic bag. Instead, he found a computer disk, neatly labeled 'Sydney' in Jarod's handwriting.

"I'm not sure, but I have a feeling this will provide some answers."

* * * * *

"Hello, Miss Parker," Brigitte said pleasantly, watching the other woman awaken painfully. "Comfy?" Miss Parker simply appraised her new surroundings: she was lying in a small concrete cell, with a large, bulletproof glass window set into the front wall. The door had no handle on the inside, and there were several cameras overtly positioned on the room. Miss Parker suspected several hidden ones, as well.

"Of course not." She watched Brigitte closely through the window.

"Good." Brigitte's voice came tinnily through a small speaker set in the wall by the door. "I wouldn't want you to get rid of the virus in your system too soon."

"Is that why I'm here?" Miss Parker laughed bitterly. So, Jarod had been right about her being used as a lab rat. "You know I'm not infected with Hoffman."

"Yes. It's a new strain, I hear. Maybe I'll name it Parker." Miss Parker shook her head.

"No, no, you dumb bitch. It's the parent virus. The one that's not fatal." The blonde's expression turned from triumph to disbelief.

"Let's just wait until the lab tests come back before we decide that, shall we?" Brigitte replied, regaining her composure.

Miss Parker watched Brigitte walk away, out a lighted doorway, and got up slowly, making her way towards the cot in the corner of her new cell. She could wait until Brigitte returned.

* * * * *

"Hi, I'm Jarod. I work for Zymogene, Incorporated. I was sent here to help with your R & D division." The secretary, a thin, hatchet-faced woman in her fifties, pointed down the hall, giving him directions and an unexpectedly pleasant smile.

"Thank you, ma'am," he replied, and set off in the direction indicated. To the end, take a right, down the stairs, through the door, and then it's fifth office on the left, he recited mentally.

"Hello?" He called, opening the door to his newest temporary office. It was empty, and so he set to work at the system console, typing madly. He was looking for something that connected this corporation to the Centre, and with any luck, he'd find it before the end of the day. Small, relatively unknown facilities like this weren't too secretive about connections to a far more powerful organization like the Centre and any of its affiliates.

And they don't take too many security precautions, either, he noticed, easily hacking into the President's files.

* * * * *

"Good morning, Miss Parker," Brigitte's voice is not the greatest sound to wake up to, Miss Parker decided, getting up stiffly from her cot. "I have good news and bad news for you." A doctor walked in behind Brigitte, carrying what looked suspiciously like a small vial and a syringe.

"For you or for me?" Miss Parker said, fully awake once she watched Brigitte gesture to the two guards. One unlocked the cell door and both walked in, walking with menacing intent towards their captive. Miss Parker, feigning weakness, allowed them to restrain her by holding her upper arms tightly. Brigitte walked in after them, taking the now filled syringe from the doctor.

"The bad news is that you're not infected with the Hoffman virus, or a more deadly strain of it." She smiled, advancing on Miss Parker. "The good news is that we can fix that quite easily." She positioned the needle above the skin of Miss Parker's forearm.

Miss Parker sprung, then, knocking one guard into the wall and the other into Brigitte. The blonde cried out as she fell, the glass vial in her hands cracking and the few drops left of the virulent fluid began mingling with the blood streaming from the gashes the broken glass had made. The doctor fled as Brigitte fell against the door, knocking herself out quite handily.

Miss Parker faced the second guard, who'd recovered and had drawn his gun. "Don't move a muscle." He said.

"I don't have to," Miss Parker said. "In just a few moments, that airborne virus will infect you. I'm immune, thanks to a serum I picked up while in Mexico, but you, my friend, are going to get very sick." She was bluffing, of course: the virus wasn't airborne, nor did a momentary exposure to it infect someone quite so quickly as she'd implied. His expression turned to extreme dismay, anyway, and she smiled maliciously at him. He fled. Miss Parker took the motionless guard's gun. On her way out, she nudged Brigitte with her foot.

"Pleasant dreams, bitch."

****

"Sydney, can we talk for a moment?" Mr. Parker's voice said from the door to Sydney's office. Jarod's mentor looked up, surprise flickering across his face. Mr. Parker was the last person from whom he expected to hear that query.

"Yes, sir." He motioned the standing man in, who closed the door behind
him.

"I'll get right to the point: I'm worried about my little girl." He leaned on the edge of Sydney's desk, looking at him with an open expression.

"I'm working on that, sir." Sydney really didn't know what to say.

"Do you know anything, anything at all?"

"I haven't heard anything that you don't already know about," Sydney replied, not exactly lying. The vial Jarod had left behind had been empty except for a picture of Brigitte (that had amused Sydney no end, but he decided that that was not the best information to give the woman's husband)), so Broots was off working on digging up info on Zymogene, Inc. The disk was sitting in Sydney's coat pocket; he hadn't had time to access any of its contents yet.

Mr. Parker must have suspected Sydney's near-deceit, but said nothing about it. "Inform me as soon as you can. I want my little girl back."

"No offense, sir, but your 'little girl' can take care of herself." And then some, Sydney added mentally.

The other man merely nodded, and left.

****

Miss Parker slipped out of a side door, squinting at the sudden darkness. Dusk had fallen since her initial break from that awful cell. In the meantime, she'd snuck past several of the guards, shot another, and had hidden herself in the ventilation ducts for four hours while the rest of security responded to the alarm that inevitably came. She grinned, recalling the time she'd spent watching them running around, frantically searching for her.

Then again, even Jarod's escapes hadn't taught the Centre anything about the weakness in security that air vents provided. She almost laughed aloud as she skirted the building's wall, making her way to its rear fence. But she remained quiet, meaning to rub Brigitte's failure in her face later, when it was safe again. The chill of the night air began eating its way through the parka she'd stolen from a storage locker on her way out. She shivered, noticing a gate up ahead in the fence. She trudged towards it, her feet beginning to get bogged down in the snowdrifts.

Miss Parker shouldered her way through the frozen gate; realizing that they'd never meant her to get this far. It was a thrilling feeling, to be a step ahead of those who'd kept her a prisoner. She stopped, leaning against a tree's trunk. So this is what Jarod feels like, she thought with a sudden flash of insight. She shook off the empathy. He was still going back to the Centre, and so was she. As soon as it was safe for her to, of course.

She plodded through the woods, noting that the fauna looked familiar, as if she was still in New England. Goddammit, she thought, where the hell am I? Her legs began to grow heavy, weak from her illness and recent exertions.

She found a road (two wide ruts in the snow, really) after what seemed an eternity. A sudden brightness ahead blinded her, and she stopped, collapsing by the roadside into the soft snow. Oh, God, please, she tried to say, help me.

****

Jarod drove through the Maine woods, hoping to see some sort of sign of the closed-down compound he'd found on a PolyPharmecuticals district map. Earlier, he thought he'd glimpsed some sort of light through the trees, but he'd lost sight of the glimmer as soon as he turned off the main road, an hour ago. It was hard enough to stay on the barely discernible road ahead of him in the snow without having to pay close attention to much else. A flash of movement caught his attention just ahead. He glanced quickly at the side of the road; probably another deer, he thought. He saw it again, and slowed to a near stop.

It had been a person. There it was again. This time, whoever it was, they didn't move anymore. He got out, grabbing the blanket from the seat behind him. Anyone out after dark in February in Maine was in trouble.

Jarod rushed to the person's side, noting dark hair, a female form almost obscured by the bulkiness of the oversized parka she wore. He wrapped the blanket around her, turning her so that he could pick her up more easily. As he turned back towards his truck, the headlights illuminated her face.

He almost dropped Miss Parker in his surprise. She woke at that small jolt, and looked up at him without recognition. "Help." she said in a dry, cracking whisper. "Get me away from here."

He nodded. Of course he would help her.

****

"I'm starting to think," Raines began in a dangerously low tone of voice, "that there's something in the water your family drinks." He was speaking to Brigitte again. She looked away, irritated. "You all seem to have trouble keeping your prisoners secure."

"She was no use to us," Brigitte said, defensively. "There was no new strain."

"It doesn't matter. She knows about our lab in Maine, about our operations that her father strictly forbade. She's a weakness." He stopped, fixing the blonde with an angry glare. "Find her."


TBC









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