Miss Parker opened the doors to her office, her eyes immediately drawn to the package on her desk. Jarod had been free for three days now; she supposed that was plenty of time to start sending her more mysteries again. She suspected, rightfully so, that it would be a little different this time.

The handwriting on the package was Sydney's, but when she opened the large manilla envelope, the first thing she read was a note that said "From Jarod." She'd spent enough years reading Sydney's reports to know his distinct handwriting, which he knew. Clearly, Jarod had requested this transfer. Besides, with the last words Sydney had uttered to her, it was a bit shocking to have any association with him that didn't qualify as a lecture.

Deeper in the envelope she found three disks. One was black, one blue, and one red. Miss Parker eyed them curiously, wishing they were labeled in any way.

Predictably, Miss Parker's cell phone started ringing.

"What are these, Jarod?" she answered, knowing the only man who had her work schedule memorized and had any reason to call was the elusive pretender.

"Be careful of what you say in return to me, Parker, they're watching and listening to you very closely I'm sure. Those disks, well I've been working on them for years, and the only one I trust now to use them is you." Jarod's voice was slow and she could tell he was still exhausted.

"Use them for what?"

"To save us, of course." He never failed to be cryptic, even when they were on the same side.

"Where are you?" she said softly, a welcomed change from the harsh, frustrated way she'd always inquired with before.

She could hear his smile, probably at the concern evident in her voice, "It would only further endanger you for me to tell you that. I wish I could though."

Miss Parker sighed. Answers were so hard to come by these days, all days really, "So what the hell am I supposed to do with your precious gifts now?"

"Patience, Parker. I'll call you when the time's right."

She ignored the humor in his voice, "And until then?"

"Catch me if you can."

She brought the phone down from her ear quickly, eyeing the disks once again. Whatever Jarod had up his sleeve, she knew it was one hell of a zinger. She slipped them into the inner pocket of the white jacket she wore.

*****

Jarod hung up the hotel phone and smiled slightly. The changes in her were subtle, undetectable to most, but they were there and it was reassuring.

He had spent the day yesterday manipulating his way into regaining the items he needed. First stop had been the local shoe store, where nobody had questioned the man walking out of the store empty-handed with new black loafers on his feet. Next, he had visited the town's bank, astonishing the teller with his account number and passcode memorization skills. Luckily, Jarod had had the foresight to set up an account where limited identification methods were needed, something all the bank tellers had advised against, but which Jarod knew would be essential to predicaments like the one he was in currently. With the cash he needed, he was able to purchase a high end laptop, printer, cell phone, suitable non-Centre issued clothing, food, and various other neccessities. All in all, the trip exhausted the weak, still injured man, and the strain on his clearly broken leg had sent him back to the hotel, where he had spent the next day recovering.

Now he was sitting at the table, typing away as he accessed the late Mr Parker's account. Jarod found it amusing how little attention they paid to details such as the deceased's access grants and accounts. Sometimes the simplest ways to solve problems, were the best and most successful.

*****

"When can we go home?" Debbie whined, the effects of the latest in a long line of traumatic events were setting in.

"I don't know if we can ever go back there, hon." Broots picked up their bags and headed to the van in front of the cabin. It had only been used once since their race away from The Centre at discovering Jarod, Miss Parker, and Emily's captures. They had transferred to the second safehouse Jarod had designated before they'd even arrived at the first cabin. He was always with a back-up plan and Broots assumed this was why he had managed to elude them for so many years.

"But Dad, I have friends there, school. Everything. My life is in Blue Cove."

"Deb, I know those things are important. Really I do. But it's just not safe and who knows what could happen to us if we went back. Nothing good. You've seen a lot these past few weeks, and this entire mess is why we are not going back there."

"Miss Parker went back. Are you just going to forget about her?" she challenged.

Broots faltered, "I, Miss Parker had business she felt she had to take care of. She's a lot safer than us. It's different."

"Whatever, you're just too scared." She crossed her arms in defiance.

Broots knew not to take everything she said to heart, that teenage gir said a lot they didn't completely mean, but it struck a note somewhere as it was partly true. He was scared, but he had good reason to be.

He continued to pack the van with everyone's slim belongings.

"So where are we going now?" Debbie muttered.

"East. To the coast of Virginia. I figured you'd be happier if we went somewhere a little less gloomy, you know on the shore. There's a cottage there. Should be fun."

"On the beach?"

"Yep."

"Oh Daddy that will be so much better." Debbie was smiling now as she hugged her dad from behind. Broots smiled. It was amazing how quickly her moods could shift.

*****

Miss Parker had decided after Jarod's call to go visit Baby Parker. They were calling him Cade. Any time The Centre named a human being, she was skeptical. How was this child related to her, or was he? She didn't know, but she still felt like she was the only one who actually came to visit and play with him. Whether they shared blood or not, the nurse believed they did and that's all that mattered.

She read books with him, far above his 2-year-old reading level naturally. Sometimes, she just held him because she had a feeling that's mostly what he needed. Today, that's what they were doing. How he had grown up so fast, she didn't know. It didn't feel like two years ago that she delivered this poor infant into his pitiful little world. If Mr Parker couldn't father her, how could he have fathered this little one? The answers were somewhere deep in The Centre. She hoped she could figure it out for him one day. His beautiful brown eyes melted her heart. He deserved freedom just as much as she did, as Jarod did, as they all did.

*****

"Are you absolutely certain of this, Mr Lyle?" Raines' voice was dripping with disdain, urgency, and most of all wrath.

"Of course I am. Why the hell would I lie about that?" Lyle had been regaining his health for weeks now in the recovery ward. After that near-fatal shot from Miss Parker, he had been relieved when Centre back-up vehicles arrived to dispose of the remains of the battle scene at the first Virginia cabin, not at all expecting the live and seriously wounded Mr Lyle.

"Your motives are always to be questioned."

"Yeah well mine aren't the only motives that deserve questioning. Look, what benefit do I get in telling you all this?" He was sitting up in his bed to be almost eye level with the ex doctor.

"It's all about power. Everything is," Raines turned to one of his trained burly monkeys behind him, "Go find Briggite. Have her investigate the situation."

"I'm well enough I can take care of it myself," Lyle protested.

"For some reason I feel you would be biased in the situation. Briggite will help us reach the true conclusion," Raines argued, "Rest up, Mr Lyle."

He walked out of the room slowly. It was amazing how someone could even walk in a monotone. Lyle clenched his bedsheets in frustration before leaning back and expelling all the air in his lungs.

*****

Jarod had told her to catch him if he could. And she had decided after her visit with Cade to do just that. Unfortunately without Broots, she was forced to use her own skills in tracking down the pretender. So she went to the main control room, recalling the mini war that had ensued here just two weeks ago. She sat in a chair that she remembered Jarod falling out of, but tried to push the memories out of her head. She had work to do. Luckily, Jarod hadn't tried to cover his tracks at all and she quickly figured out he was in New Jersey, holed up in some ratty hotel as usual. Some things never changed.

Her phone rang then and she answered it quickly, "What?"

"Are you in the main control room?" Jarod asked her.

"How the hell--"

"I told you to find me, and I needed you with a reason to be in there."

"You just think of everything huh, wonderboy?" She fingered the disks in her pocket, wondering if this was the moment he'd foreshadowed.

"Take the blue disk out and insert it into the computer," his voice was all business so Miss Parker didn't protest in the slightest as he continued on, "Enter these numbers into the according boxes. I'll go four digits at a time. Tell me if you get behind."

Jarod then proceeded to rattle off about fifty digits worth of passcodes, account information, and other various answers to the fill-in-the-blank quiz she seemed to be filling out. Occasionally she could hear his typing on the other end of the phone.

"It says 'data transfer in progress.' What is this, Jarod?" she said as she pushed the final "enter."

"It's everything. I've been designing and fine-tuning this program since a year after I escaped. It took a while for me to finesse my way into fooling the entire Centre Mainframe, but with that disk you have, you have the highest clearance access to every bit of data in the Centre system you could imagine. It's what I was doing when we were caught, only this time there are no more copies of the disk. So don't get caught."

Miss Parker looked around the room with wide blue eyes, noting only a few dense sweepers who wouldn't know what she was doing if the screen were flashing it in big red letters, "I won't. Exactly what information is it finding, Jarod?"

"Well, I didn't know exactly which files I wanted since I've never seen them before or else obviously I wouldn't need them anymore. So I picked many keywords and any file with any of those keywords in it will be obtained, which is what it's doing right now. Don't worry, Miss Parker. It will find your answers just as well as mine."

"What if they're not in here though?" she whispered.

"Have faith. If they're not in there, then there's no reason to keep our ties to The Centre because nobody knows."

"You know Lyle doesn't believe in computers. His files won't be on here," she remarked in frustration just thinking about the possibility of anything Lyle knew that she didn't.

"Lyle's a relatively new player in The Centre game. He's almost as lost as we are. Besides, he may not be filing away documents into the mainframe, but others are with regard to him and his dealings. I promise you, this will work. It took far too long to create and coordinate for it to not give us what we want. I only wish I were the one in there doing this. You're taking an incredible risk."

The worry in Jarod's voice made her almost smile, but she knew even the sweepers would understand something was out of the ordinary if she did that, "Trust me, it wouldn't be the first risk."

"I trust you," he said simply.

The computer beeped softly and Miss Parker told him the data transfer was complete.

"Okay take that disk out and enter the black one and download the new information onto the black one. It should take about half the time that one took."

Miss Parker did as directed and wondered silently what the red disk was for then. Her heart was racing. If Jarod was right and she was now downloading all the treasures she and Jarod had ever searched for, then she had no reason to stay and she could finally be rid of this God forsaken place.

"What's going to happen now?" she asked quietly.

"We'll be free," he said slowly, "we'll all be free. We can finally live our lives, and you can get out of there just like your mother wanted."

Miss Parker let his words sink in. It was almost a terrifying thought. She knew The Centre, the politics that went on, it was her life. To leave and be normal, she didn't know how she'd be able to manage that, "I hope I'm good at being free. I've never done that before."

"We'll figure it out," he assured her. She contemplated his use of 'we' in that sentence until the screen alerted her that the download was complete and the black disk popped out.

"Now what, Jarod?"

"Okay, are you sure it worked?"

"It says it worked, would you like me to threaten it into telling me the truth?" she replied sarcastically.

"I'm sorry it's just, it has to work. Check it. Check the contents."

She sighed exhasperatedly, opening the list of files. She couldn't believe how much it had gotten, "There's a ton of stuff, Jarod. What do you want me to check for?"

"See if there's any file labeled with your name," he said softly, "your first name."

Miss Parker faltered for a second, nearly forgetting that she had told him that so many years ago. Would The Centre even know that? She scanned through the files, which were arranged alphabetically. Her mouth dropped a little as she pressed two of her fingers to her lips in awe, "It's here, Jarod. It's here." Her voice was failing her. What were within the contents she could only imagine, "But nobody here knows my name."

"Maybe not, but I'm sure it was in your mother's files somewhere. Maybe the triumvirate knew. It doesn't matter where it came from though, only that it's there. Everything else should be there too. So take the red disk and put that in now."

Miss Parker didn't even say anything as she took out the black disk, pocketing it carefully with the blue one, and replacing it with the red one mechanically. She was like a robot as she carefully entered all of the numbers Jarod was giving her once again. She was still in shock at what she was doing. This couldn't be possible, yet here she was doing it. Maybe Jarod was right, and they'd really get what they always wanted. Jarod was usually right.

Eventually, she reached the final screen which asked her if she really wanted to commence with the program. Jarod told her to click yes, so she did.

"Now you have to get out of there. Leave the disk, it won't do anyone any good. Don't go get anything, just leave as quick as you can," Jarod's voice was more urgent than she'd ever heard it.

"What the hell did I just do?" she stood, taking great strides toward the door, and turning down the hallway.

"You released a virus into the mainframe, a deadly one."

"What does that mean though?" she strained her voice as she glided down the hall.

"It means everything connected to the mainframe is going to shut down as soon as anyone logs in to the system. When everything turns back on, the memories will be completely erased. There will be nothing. No accounts, no information, no DSA archives. It will all be ancient history. Even The Centre funds will be wired out and streamed into multiple accounts around the world." Jarod took a deep breath, as just the thought alone was overwhelming.

Miss Parker had stopped walking, unable to focus on anything other than what Jarod had just revealed, "but that's impossible. The Centre's data extends to so many other networks. Coorperations around the world share programs and funds with--"

"I told you it took me a long time to do this." She could hear the grin in his voice as he was probably marveling over his own genius for doing this.

"My God," she whispered, beginning to walk again. The harsh click of heel to tile reverberating in the hallways.

"You need to focus on getting out of there. I'll call you again soon."

Miss Parker nodded, knowing he couldn't see her and hit the "end" button on her phone. She couldn't believe what they had just done. So many thoughts were running through her head, she didn't know what to do.

She stopped, revelation hitting her. There was no way she could leave more innocents behind.