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Title: A Second Angel Part 2: A Critical Break

Author:  Eva Parker



Please refer to A Second Angel, Part 1: Empty Hands for author’s notes, disclaimers, and related information.  And stay cool, Jarod fans; we'll be catching up with him pretty soon in Part 4: Boston.


Digital Security Recording  9/31/74                  FOR CENTRE USE ONLY
                                              Centre Satellite 04/London

   The psychiatrist is a middle-aged Brit, with long, flowing blonde hair, silver-rimmed reading glasses, and a motherly demeanor.  She signs a paper with a flourish while her companion, a young American man, fidgets in his seat and clutches a file.
   There is a black-and-white photograph on her desk, framed in aluminum and discreetly turned face-down, so the young man cannot see the girl in the photograph.  Her eyes alight on the photograph for an instant, and then, for a longer moment, at the man sitting in the chair across her desk.
   Only after she has pulled another paper from the stack in her IN box does she drop her gaze and continue her work. A sidelong glance at the American reveals him adjusting his trim black suit, rustling the papers in his thick file folder, and noisily clearing his throat.
   “Ma’am?” The man murmurs tentatively. His accent grates coarsely in her ears.
    Ma’am, poppycock, she thinks, with an indulgent and well-hidden smile, but she does not respond.
   “Doctor.” He speaks louder this time, more confident, or simply annoyed.
   She drops her Centre pen, removes her reading glasses, and finally focuses her attention. “What is it, Peter?”
   Now, the man cannot look at her. He drops his gaze submissively.  “Events. . .are moving along at an alarming rate.”
   “Would you care to elucidate?”
   “Now, May, you know I’m not permitted to explain this business any further. Actually, I’m not to speak of it at all—-”
   She dismisses the statement with a wave of her pale and bony hand. Gathering information around this place, even where it concerned Anabelle, was like trying to fish in a swimming pool. “Get to the point. I’ve got to finish these reports and make rounds.” So many more important things to do, she thought sarcastically.
   “We need to get rid of the girl,” Peter says shortly.
   There are many implications to this statement, so many that May does not bother with a fearful reaction. Ana is too valuable to destroy; it is far more likely that she is being taken away. May even had a number of likely destinations in her head.
   And only one suggestion for a psychiatrist equal to May herself in dealing with young Ana’s... proclivities.
   “She cannot be here,” Peter continues. “She infers too much, May. And, of course, it could be dangerous for her here” He cocked his head a bit, turning over the little piece of information she guessed he was about to share.  “A. . .a Doctor Raines is here to supervise the proceedings. She makes him uncomfortable.”
   “Where?” May mutters.
   “There is a place for her in the States,” he said. “Actually, they run their own Pretender Project there, with a full facility and, ah, support staff.” Another pause, another turn of his head. “Better than ours.”
   He slid the file across her desk.  She flipped it open. The first photograph was of the Centre headquarters, a beautiful facility near the sea. She’d visited there, once; the corporate offices were lush but a bit intimidating, the laboratories light and airy but sterile, quiet and frozen-in-time like some hospital ward.
   “They’re sending her to Blue Cove,” Peter explained. “Actually, I will be taking her myself.”
   The second photograph was an Annual Identification Photograph, an image of a handsome young boy, with a gentle smile and a solemn sharpness in his eyes. He was identified as Jarod, aged fourteen.
   Ah.  The other Pretender Project. There would certainly be... interesting results from all this. The impact on the boy would also have to be studied, though it didn’t take an Oxford degree to make a guess at the outcome of this move.
   “Will I have the chance to say goodbye?” she breathed. Ana’s mischievous grin and flint-and-steel green eyes flashed in her memory.  She had just seen the girl three hours ago.
   Peter dropped his eyes again. “She’s already in the helicopter. They’re waiting on me.  I’m sorry, May.” Then he got up and walked through the inlaid glass doors.

 

London, England
November 7, 4:25 a.m.

   She pressed her back against the rough, cool brick of the building and held her breath.  The sweeper was so close that she could reach out and touch his coat, could see the flickering intelligence in his blue eyes as he flipped off his flashlight and cocked his head to listen.
Her clenched fists trembled so badly that she scraped her knuckles on the brick, but she didn’t cry out.  The sting kept her awake, she told herself, kept her alert.
   Is this my destiny?  Will they hunt me down like an animal wherever I go?
   They would be able to spot her if her eyes reflected the streetlights, so she closed them.  She had to concentrate.  Fear was good, but only to a degree, and she was in danger of passing from alarm to panic.  I’m smarter than they are, she whispered in her head, as if the sweeper could hear the fire in her thoughts.  I can do things they cannot.  There will be people here soon, and I will find away out of this place and to Blue Cove, where I will find Jarod.
  Brown eyes in a serious young face.  He reaches out to hold her hand.  She smiles and shivers at the contact, as they both watch the meteors paint white trails on the sky.
   Involuntarily, she smiled at the memory.  Jarod would be able to extricate himself from this one.  He wouldn’t feel her panic.  He would disappear into the early morning as if he had never existed.  And that assessment, to her surprise, actually made her feel better.
   No, she corrected herself suddenly.  Thinking like that was dangerous.  It could lead her into a trap she’d refused to ever walk into.  The Jarod she had known, fifteen years old, innocent and brilliant and good, would have been able to extricate himself from this situation with tact and skill.   The adult Jarod she had come to know through security tapes, pirated records, sparse American newspaper articles, and that terrible, choking DSA of Sydney’s murder, the desperate and violent man on the run might have been able to get out of this one, too, but not without spilling blood on the streets.
   That’s what should make her more determined to survive.  To escape.  She had to find him, to ask him why, to close all the old wounds his escape had opened up.  She had resolved in her heart the death of poor nurturing Sydney, so caring that he hadn’t seen the change in Jarod’s psyche—never mind the fact that she hadn’t been able to accept Jarod’s insanity or Sydney’s blindness at first—but she would never be able to understand this new Jarod unless she found him herself.
   And maybe, she hardly dared to hope, she could help him.  Get him some help.
   I’m just as smart as you, Jarod.  The Centre is stupid, because they try everything big and look for none of the details, but I don’t have that problem.  I’ll get you, Jarod, and it’ll be sooner rather than later.  I know you too well; I know how you think.
   It was this mantra, she decided, which would carry her through this.
   She heard the crackle of the sweeper’s radio as all the teams were recalled.  They didn’t want to get involved with the morning commute; it was too likely that a nosy constable would get in the way.  The sweeper breathed a curse, and she felt and heard it as he moved away from her.
   Ana’s breath hissed through her teeth, and she blinked against the first morning rays of sunlight.  The black-coated, blue-eyed sweeper would never know how close he’d come to capturing her.  She waited another minute, than moved expertly out onto the sidewalk, perfecting her nonchalance.  She was just a passerby. . .if she could get to a place with a lot of people, she would be safe, and not just because the sweepers could no longer operate without care or secrecy.  With her finely-honed Pretender skills, she could take up aspects of the crowd like a chameleon, she was sure, until it would be nearly impossible to notice her, much less keep up with her for any length of time.
   As she walked, she tried to keep herself awake.  Despite her best efforts, the only thoughts that came to her were the memories of her time at Blue Cove, her only years at the Centre which had ever meant anything to her, and the years which now gave meaning to her quest.  She felt herself weakening; anything to keep her feet moving now, she thought, and submitted herself to the memory.
   The early years of her life had been right here, or rather, back there, at her old alma mater, Centre Satellite #4—London.  Then, shortly before her fifteenth birthday, they hastily loaded her into a Centre helicopter and they made the long, lonely trip across the Atlantic to another satellite in Blue Cove, Delaware.
   They landed once, on the runway of ship massive enough to be a Centre satellite all its own, but she hadn’t been allowed to get off while they tuned-up and re-fueled the chopper.  She doubted they would have, even if they told her to; it was her first day beyond Centre walls, and she was confronted with an ocean so expansive that she had a terror that it would never end, that she would fly forever with the blank-faced, silent Centre security head who was her escort.  She was without May’s smile and rational, logical voice to banish her fear; she slept fitfully without the reassuring enclosure of her room and the sound of tumblers clicking.
    When they landed, she was almost in tears.  The Centre she knew was that way, so very far that way that she knew she would never see it again.  She failed to see the beauty of Blue Cove because she ached for London.
   And then Sydney appeared from a doorway on the roof, ducking his head against the slowing blades of the helicopter.  Part of her could see immediately that Sydney was no May.  With May, there was always a degree of oily distance, try though both of them might to erase it.  Sydney may not have been the better psychiatrist, but he was a far more skilled nurturer.  He smiled warmly, and clasped her hands as if he’d been awaiting her arrival for a very long time.  He introduced himself, and informed her gently that he would be taking over her care for an indeterminate amount of time—two years, almost to the day, it turned out—and suddenly, the journey didn’t seem as lonely.
   She had met Jarod after three days.  It was Free Hour on Corridor Fifteen, a different one from hers, and she wandered the halls, looking for a library to lose herself in, and then someone else was walking beside her, a boy.  He walked near her for a few minutes without speaking.
   He had short, dark hair and arresting brown eyes.  At fifteen, Ana was all knees and ankles, but, though he couldn’t have been much older, he had already grown into someone less angular.  He looked at her as if she were the most interesting thing he’d seen in years.
   She didn’t think she liked him.
   He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “What’s wrong with this place?” he asked her, unexpectedly.
   She wiped her hands on her jeans.  “What do you mean?”
   “Sydney said you’re not very happy here, and I saw you crying in your room one day on my way to the SimLab.  I was just wondering why you don’t like it here.”
   She sucked in a breath through her teeth.  The revelation that Sydney discussed her with one of his test subjects was disturbing, especially considering the kind of people she’d met here so far.  Either the projects were very different, or project security was much looser here in Blue Cove.  But if this boy was one of Sydney’s special projects, care, tact, and a quick answer would probably get rid of him.  “I don’t belong here,” she said honestly.

 

He smiled.  She didn’t believe she’d said anything humorous.  “Nobody belongs here,” he chuckled, “but you get used to it.  Even the cameras. . .”  He trailed off, gesturing widely toward a video camera on the wall.
   “I’m from London,” she clarified.
   This wasn’t working; that comment only increased his curiosity. “Really?” Interest colored his voice.  “What is it like over there?”
   She took in the entire Centre with a smooth motion of her hand.  “It’s got walls, windows, cameras, locks, a SimLab—”
   “Optimized nutritional supplement?” he interrupted jokingly.
   “It’s like here.  Only, it’s in London.”
   “Why do you like London better than Blue Cove?” he persisted.  “There’s got to be a difference.”
   “More Brits,” she said shortly.  “And fewer loonies.”
   He leaned close to her, as if to offer her a secret.  “My name’s Jarod,” he murmured.  “Do you know Morse code?”
   He had showed her to the small library reserved for the Pretender Project.  Most of the books were the same references, picture books, and carefully screened novels she’d memorized in London.  There was a real treat, a Rand McNally’s World Atlas, but any pages pertaining to any of the locales where there was a Centre satellite were marked out or removed.  The closest she could get to seeing a road map of London or Blue Cove were large, political maps of Great Britain and Delaware.
   Later, he showed her how to re-wire the intercom system in her room so they could use Morse code to talk.  He showed her all his tricks, from how to make it onto the roof during Free Hour, to how to get around the security alarms in the ventilation ducts, to the topical anesthetic he’d developed by playing tricks with floor mold and fermenting nutritional supplement.  It smelled terrible, but she had to agree that it numbed effectively.  It even had potential as a sedative, with a tweaking of the formula.
   They set up and learned to interpret a shorthand Morse which threw the Centre from some of their private conversations.  They shared ideas at a phenomenal rate; for the first time, someone could keep pace with her.  It was exhilarating.  Before she had met someone almost like her, she hadn’t known how alone she was.  Even her simulations improved, as Jarod’s practical intellect and incisive observations systemically eliminated errors from her work.
   He had wanted to know every small detail of her life in London.  It wasn’t very different; divergent schedules, a slightly different ONS formula, a different security system.  Ana had been quite surprised to learn how much Jarod had contributed to the Centre headquarters security system himself.  Not that he was interested in making an escape attempt, but it fascinated her how he offhandedly described the keypad system he had designed which would even defeat Jarod.
   And the parts of it which would never defeat him.
   She ran into somebody else, hard, and was jolted out of her reverie.  A man scrambled to catch his glasses, and did, expertly, before they fell to the ground.  He settled them back on his face and took a couple of steps away.
   Her ribs and shins stung.  They’d probably bruise.  “I’m. . .” she started, “I’m sorry.”
   “Oh, it’s all right,” the man chirruped, and he smiled.  “Two people, out in the wee hours. . who would have thought?  Though I must say, you do look a fright, miss.”
   He was about her age, she guessed, though he had a clean-cut look and unhindered smiled that made her wonder if he was younger.  His hair was chopped short, and honey blonde, and his wire-rimmed glasses and worn, brown leather coat made him look like a scientist or a scholar.  For a moment, she wondered if he worked for the Centre. . .but he wasn’t physically strong enough to be a sweeper, and the Centre kept its techies close to home.
   So.  Her first outside-world person.  She put on a good act of looking down at her ragged clothing—it was damp with the night’s rain, and covered in the smudges and dirt from the streets of London—smiling, and blushing.  “I suppose I do,” she said cheerily.
   “My name is Christopher Patterson,” he said, extending a hand into the air in front of him.
   She stared at it.  What was this?  Something. . .she searched through her head for some little piece of data that would help her here.  The handshake, first established when two countries made a treaty, to ensure that neither leader held a weapon; now used as a standard greeting.  She reached up and clasped his open palm, awkwardly.
   “Listen,” he murmured, grinning.  “I feel really bad about this.  Maybe I could get you something to eat?  There’s a bakery around the corner.  Its, ah, it’s warm.”
   Food, and a promise to get out of the cool morning breeze.  She had to remind herself to be cautious.  She was out of her depth here; she’d never seen a city before and didn’t quite know what to do with it.  An ally, even for a short time, could be important.  He could also betray her.  It was silliness, or paranoia—logically, everyone in the world could not be associated with the Centre, and she had run into this man by chance in a huge city.  But there were times when paranoia could save her little Pretender tail.
   “That would be nice,” she agreed, finally, but she decided to leave this man as soon as possible.
   “All right.  This way.”
   It was a short walk, and while they trotted toward the bakery on the corner, she got used to her new self.  She was Ana Brown, on the run, not from the Centre, but from an abusive boyfriend.  She had solved a crime like that once, in a simulation, so she already knew the feelings, the trials.  It was good to give voice to her fear of capture, and she relaxed into the role, painting a picture using the medium she was most familiar with:  emotions.
   Christopher—he insisted on her calling him by his first name—was sympathetic, even horrified by her carefully made-up stories of the crazy boyfriend.  She was only a few hours away from the Centre, and she had been lucky enough to find a caring friend; it made her feel more confident in her escape.
   The bakery was small and cozy, and Christopher knew the baker by name.  He asked her what kind of doughnut she wanted.
   Doughnut?  She stared at the thick, circular bread.  It had a hole in the middle.  It was, indeed, made of dough, but it was certainly not a nut.  Except, perhaps, for that honey-walnut one on the end.  Interesting.  She grinned.  The outside world would certainly be a new experience.  “You pick for me, Christopher.”
   He nodded.  “Um, I’ll have the honey glaze.  And the lady will have chocolate.”
   “Coming right up.”
   “And two hot teas.”
   She wondered, what did they do with the dough they took from the middle?  Getting rid of it would be a waste.  They probably made it into more doughnuts.

 

 

Christopher paid, and laughed at her for staring at the pastries.  She was surprised at how much his laughter stung, and she glared at him. “So I’ve never had a doughnut before,” she snapped, but she enjoyed the strange feel of the word in her mouth.  The Centre had never been dull, not intellectually, but in a way her secluded life had lacked texture.  She liked London.  It was so uncontrolled.
   This only caused the young bespectacled man to laugh more.  “You’ve never had a doughnut before?” he gasped incredulously.  “Where were you raised?  Mars?”  He was chuckling so much that he had to adjust his glasses to keep them from sliding off his face.
   She frowned, but she found that she couldn’t keep an angry look on her face.  “I lived a very sheltered childhood,” she sighed, and it was with those words that she became morose. 
What they had taken from her, she marveled.  They had given her a life, a good life away from parents who never wanted her:  healthy, and safe, a place where she could use her gifts to do something real in the world, a chance to meet Jarod and Sydney and see Blue Cove.  But she had lost cities, and birthday parties, and handshakes, and doughnuts with strangers, in the early morning, in warm bakeries while the fog lifted.
   In the end, maybe it wasn’t worth it.  It certainly wasn’t fair.
   Her new friend pressed the doughnut, wrapped in a paper napkin, into her hand.  It was still a bit warm.
  “You think too much,” he informed her cheerily, and led her to a seat.
   The doughnut was sweet, surprisingly good.  She savored each little bite.  And the tea was very hot, and he prepared it correctly, with milk and two spoonfuls of sugar for them both.  She was surprised at how hungry she was.  Running all those miles from the Centre, hiding for hours among the alleyways of London. . .she was fit enough. 
   But she’d never done anything like that before, of course.
   Across from her Christopher chattered about the weather, and the gossip from Scotland Yard—he was some kind of civilian, on retainer for the police force.  He re-constructed accident scenes, he told her.  She had examined her share of accidents through simulation, and they’d had a measured effect on her; she wondered how someone so young and innocent-seeming could endure such a horrific job for any length of time.
   At length, but before she finished the last few sips of her hot, sweet tea, he told her how terrible he felt about the abuses her imaginary lover.  She closed her eyes, savoring the taste in her mouth and the warmth in her stomach, but at last she felt the wince at the word lover, the memory and pain of bruises long healed, the shock of leaving what she’d known all her life—that one, at least, wasn’t difficult to muster.  A Pretender created a new personality by mixing up old experiences, and this was what she did to create the fantasy of Ana Brown.
   “It’s all right,” she breathed, and her voice trembled.  She let the ache of betrayal become the sting of loss.  I miss him, she realized with surprise, and she wasn’t thinking of the make-believe boyfriend.  Pretending came with risks like these.  “I just wish I could find some way out of here.”
   Christopher reached out and touched her hand.  She jumped, and that wasn’t a pretend feeling, either.  Well, like the old joke went, it wasn’t a pretend feeling, it was a Pretend feeling.  She almost smirked at that.  “I want to help you,” Christopher said, his eyes full of compassion.  “I’ll buy you an airplane ticket.  The airport’s only a short walk away from here.”
Airport.  That was exactly what she needed.  “Thank you, very much. . .” she said tearfully.  “But you don’t. . .you don’t have to. . .”
   “Miss Brown,” he said firmly, “I want to.  And don’t worry, I have enough money to pay for it.”
   Ana felt a sinking feeling in her chest, an unclenching.  It took her a moment to realize it was gratitude.  “P-Please,” she stuttered, surprised and humiliated at the dampness on her face, “call me Anabelle.  Or Ana.”
   Christopher smiled gently.  “Ana.  Pretty.”
   The walk to the airport was short indeed, and he held her hand most of the way, until she felt comfortable enough without him.  She must be tired, she thought.  She was supposed to be paranoid, and here she was opening her soul to someone she didn’t even know.
   They stopped at the desk and ordered one ticket for Dover, Delaware, on her insistence.  Dover was the nearest big city to Blue Cove, she thought, though where she pulled this information from, she’d never know.  Ana’s mind often seemed like a cobwebbed filing cabinet.
   He walked with her until they reached the security check.  The only baggage she was carrying was her jade necklace, a birthday gift from Sydney, and the DSA of his murder.  She put the disc and its plastic container in the little change cup the security man gave her, and no one gave it a second look.  Not even Christopher.
   The young man waved to her brightly from behind.  “Enjoy Blue Cove!” he called.
She thanked him for all his kindnesses.  Ana was so sleepy, and so touched by his simple caring, that it took a long moment for the fear to shock down her spinal cord, cue the adrenaline to leak from behind her ears, and shudder.
   She had not told him she was going to Blue Cove!
   She whirled to look at him.  But he was already gone; he hadn’t followed her through the security console.  Yet.  She waited, waited and watched until the final call for her gate went up.  Dover would be like London, probably.  She had lost herself in this big city, and she could abandon herself in the next.  Yes, she answered, to the question she’d almost forgotten.  This is what it will always be like.
   She shrugged it off.  She’d probably mentioned it at one point or another.  Yes—now she was almost sure of it.  Still, there would be something waiting for Christopher if he showed up on the next flight to Dover.
   And it would not be his own, personal sweeper team.
   She scampered off toward the gate.

 

Christopher rounded a corner before he dared remove the glasses.  He opened and airport locker with an orange plastic key, and he exchanged his coat for a crisp black business jacket and a tie.  As he stared at himself in the locker’s tiny magnetic mirror, the earthy, sickeningly sweet smile faded, and the brightness in his eyes dimmed to a practiced harshness.  He looked like he’d aged ten years in about four seconds.
   And the man called Christopher Patterson, who he had been for so many years, ceased to exist.  It wasn’t a perfect change, not the way the girl or the first Pretender, Jarod could manage, but it was close.  Close enough for the work he did.
   He reached into the locker, dumped the glasses on the shelf, and pulled out a cellular telephone.  He pulled up the antenna and dialed a telephone number he had meticulously memorized, and now would meticulously forget. 
   The voice on the other end of the line hissed in and out, as the man who owned it struggled to breathe.  “SL. . .” Breath. “Twenty-Seven”
  “Is this a secure line?” he asked, his British accent breaking slowly back into the original American.  He would not speak unless it was.
   There was a click, and a short fuzz.  “Report.”
   “This is Proteus.”  That was not, of course, his correct name, but it was the one that got paid, and he used it often enough.  “We may have a problem, Mr. Raines.”
   Breath.  “What?”
   “I followed the girl, as you instructed.  She just got on an airplane bound for Dover.”
   Breath.  And another.  “This is a. . . difficult situation.”  Breath.  “Why didn’t you act?”
   “I was not informed that I was to take further action upon her escape.”
   “Get. . .on the next flight.  Do not lose her.” Breath. “And do not, under any circumstances, allow her to come in contact with. . .” Breath. “. . .the original subject.  That is of the highest priority.”
   “One of them will die before he or she meets the other,” he promised.  But this was not entirely true.  Proteus believed in giving the other players a fighting chance.  It made the game interesting.  But the Centre would get them both in the end.  The game was entertaining, but it was the money—and his obedience—which kept Proteus alive.
   “Your check will be dropped in the regular box.”  Breath.  Breath.  “And there will be a bonus for discovering the girl’s escape.”
   Proteus cut the line first, as a matter of asserting his authority; Raines was only a bit player, and Proteus saw fit to remind him of that often, so there would be no difficulties in their arrangement.    The Centre, and the other organizations Proteus had the pleasure of working for, had quite the way of tying off the strings, when they thought they were in power.
He assumed a businesslike façade, and tossed the cellular telephone into the nearest trash can as he passed. 
   Then he went back to the American Airlines desk and booked a ticket for the next flight to Dover. 
   He would leave in an hour.

 

 










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