Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story 
Chapter or StoryAuthor's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM, TNT and NBC Productions and used
without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
The Rules Have Changed
part 6
Tahlia
Raines reclined in the Chairman's desk chair, enjoying for a moment the sweet taste of power. For years he had worked for this position, fought tooth and nail to eliminate whatever obstacles might come his way. Mr. Parker's temptation by the Scrolls had been a blessing in disguise: though it had soured relations with the Triumvirate on the eve of his power transfer, it had given Raines a means to retrieve the power that came with a position he deserved above all else. He was the one who had given his all making sure the Centre stayed afloat in the 1970s, and it was he who had spearheaded the project that be the Centre's rebirth. Mr. Parker's involvement had be chance, and minute in importance.
The black-and-white photograph lay unassuming on the Chairman's -- no, HIS - desk. How sweet a possession to be marred by such an item. The best eyes had been over this photo, and the best eyes had assured him that if it were a fake, it was a damn good one. No way in hell the time stamp in the corner was inaccurate. Raines shared with himself a private chuckle at the resilience of the Parker name: both Catherine and her husband faked their own deaths, and their daughter had barely escaped with hers. Even he, himself, had cheated death in more ways than one. Only baby brother Lyle in the Renewal Wing stood to shatter the family's vibrant health.
In actuality, his existence was severely compromising to Raines' top priority: the boy. While he lived Mr. Parker had been extremely hesitant to admit his son into the program, and his reappearance on the eve of the boy's transfer only heightened Raines' nerves. The last thing he needed was Mr. Parker trotting in parental precedent and yanking the boy out once and for all. The fact that he remained the only soul alive who had read the scrolls made Raines' compliance with the old man's wishes mandatory.
Raines sighed. Mr. Parker had stumbled upon the secret installation God knows how, but the fact remained that somehow he had managed to use his daughter to his advantage, blackmailing Raines and Cox into letting him participate. He had made a show of it, going so far as to set up the charade of a marriage and impending fatherhood to impress his daughter. In hindsight, of course, Raines realized it had been Mr. Parker's last attempt to brand something with the Parker name, even if he was merely the surrogate father. Despite his best efforts, Raines knew the charade had only raised his daughter's suspicions even further, and the recent appearances of Broots and Sydney at the bodily fluid storage area on SL-15 confirmed that.
He made a decision. His finger hovered over the call button, about to make connection to the Triumvirate station in Africa to monitor their progress, when the small light below his finger lit up. It was quickly accompanied by a crude buzz. Within seconds, he answered it, and the chipper voice on the other end only served to further his annoyance.
"Sir, there's a call from Africa for you."
He sighed. "Put him through."
After a moment, another light lit up, indicating the call had been successfully forwarded.
"My good friend," Raines wheezed, "I was just about to call."
"Indeed you were," the voice on the other replied. "We have a situation over here."
"The boy?" Raines guessed, worried. His next choice would have been Mr. Parker. He had, after all, noticed the beads of sweating forming on his brow in the photograph.
"Not quite," the voice said. "We have reason to believe the perimeter of the Colorado Installation has been compromised."
The statement startled him. He sat upright in the chair, its hinges creaking with the sound movement. "You assured me three years ago we would never have this conversation."
Raines swore he heard the man smile. After a moment, he said, "Word is you've got a," his lips paused to wrap around the word mockingly, "situation over there. Perhaps the two incidences are related?"
"Perhaps," Raines hissed.
"I trust you will handle this situation properly, Mr. Raines," the voice commanded.
"Of course," he replied. "And I can assure you this will not affect the transfer."
"I'll hold you personally responsible if it does."
The voice ended the telephone call. Before dispatching a team to Colorado, Raines slammed his fists on the desk in anger.
*
She should have known the abandoned airplane hanger was anything but. After taking a moment to rearrange the duffel slung over his shoulder, Jarod grabbed the rusted handle on the door and pulled it open. It squeaked terribly, and small bits of dust flew out from between the door and its frame. The sound was all around them, and Parker crinkled her nose in disgust.
"Jarod, what the..." She didn't finish. "Oh, my God," she gasped.
Inside she had hardly expected to find airplane, but she hadn't expected what she saw. There were birthing tables everywhere, some of them attached to rusted shackles to prevent screaming mothers from escaping as their children were forcibly brought into the world. In a corner were abandoned plastic tubes which, at this distance and given the other surroundings, could have been incubators. Parker glanced at the ground, finding it covered in dust. Goose bumps formed on her skin, her body's reaction to the still-cool morning air. Hardly a sterile environment for childbirth, she thought.
Jarod purposely strode toward a door in the far left-hand corner, but Parker lingered behind, turning as she walked, needing to take in every detail of her surroundings. Clouds of dust hung in the rays on sunlight cascading in the window high above the ground. Save for their footsteps on the concrete, the hanger was deathly silent.
Parker stopped near a crouched Jarod, who was searching in the duffel bag for something. Her eyes scanned the doorway, finding it locked by some sort of access portal. No doubt he was searching for his tool to override the system, she thought. Provided the system had been deactivated after this installation became useless. There was a panel to the left of the doorway, dust clinging to its surface, obscuring the words she could make out underneath it. She raised her hand, feeling its cool temperature, and brushed away the grime in a cloud of dust.
PROMETHEUS INSTALLATION
INFORMATION STORAGE CORRIDOR
Level 5 Clearance
Authorized Personnel Only
"Prometheus," she muttered to herself, "stole fire from Mt. Olympus."
Jarod stood up and looked at her, and for that moment, their eyes met and they were silent. Jarod opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but something stopped him inside. Parker felt it, too. This was a key, she could feel it in every bone in her body, this was a key to everything they both sought to answer. After a pause he looked back at the contraption in his hands, and began to move to the door.
Her eyes caught on the access portal, recognizing it for a moment. "Centre security stopped commissioning facilities using that," she said, motioning towards the panel Jarod was now affixing the device to, "almost four years ago. They were too easy to crack." She sighed, thinking that this disadvantage would suddenly be useful to them.
He glanced at the device, which had attacked itself to access panel. A singular green lit on its back lit up, no doubt indicating the search for the proper access code. "I guess the doctors here had more important things on their minds," Jarod replied.
"What could be more important than up-to-date security?"
Jarod didn't answer, only glared deep into her eyes. His unspoken answer was, of course, 'you know exactly why.' In her embarrassment, she glanced at the ground, uncomfortable by his prying stare. Maybe she did know...
His voice was gentle. It was unfit to the seriousness of their situation. "Go ahead, Parker. Ask away."
"What?"
"You're dying to know why we're here," Jarod replied.
Parker shook her head, pursing her lips. Her patience was running thin. "I don't 'get it,' remember?"
There was silence between them, as Jarod fought hard to let the remark lay where it might. After a moment, he replied, "I've found evidence to suggest that Prometheus is the third of a triad of projects commissioned by the Triumvirate in the early 1970s. Their singular task was to learn all they could about newly acquired research regarding the human genome."
"What were the other two?" Parker asked, secretly dreading the answer as well.
Jarod took a deep breath, stepping closer to her. "I think you know."
She opened her mouth to reply, but a small beep from the device on the control panel interrupted her. Jarod sighed, squeezing his eyes shut, and Parker almost swore he was almost sad to hear the interruption. Something else was going on, she knew it. There was something he wasn't telling her, one key piece of information he had failed to disclose, and not from lack of appropriate time. He was holding back, and Parker was determined to get to the bottom of it.
But then she stopped. No doubt whatever lay behind the steel door were secrets someone had taken great pains to hide. For once in her life, she hesitated in her desire to step through and see the truth. Jarod had revealed that her mother had visited Prometheus in 1970, and by all accounts, had "died" several weeks later. Parker knew her mother had involved herself in something sinister -- Project Mirage -- and for the first time since her arrival, she wondered if the two things could be related.
Mirage...Parker couldn't get the project -- or the DSA of her mother's murder -- out of her head. At its inception, the in-vitro fertilization technology used in the insemination of Catherine's egg was cutting edge genetic research. The first mainstream "test tube baby" wasn't conceived until almost ten years later, making Ethan's birth both a miracle (by conventional medical standards) and an everyday occurrence (by Centre standards). It was like cloning a human being in the twenty-first century, just as the world was beginning to grasp the impact of stem cell research...
'Their singular task was to learn all they could about newly acquired research regarding the human genome.'
"Oh, my God," Parker muttered yet again.
Jarod spun around. "What?"
"The other two projects," she managed. "Mirage. And...Gemini." He said nothing to answer her, only nodded his head in solemn agreement.
Her next question should have been expected. "What's Prometheus?" When he didn't answer, she rephrased the question, her voice more forceful than before. "Who is Prometheus, Jarod?" In the back of her mind was a small voice, urging her to think about her question, to search within her. It told her she knew the answer. Still, Jarod's silence peeved her -- she needed to be force-fed the answer. "Answer me, dammit!" she yelled. Her voice bellowed and echoed in the empty hanger.
Inside her, she knew the answer, and it killed her. Everything within her began to teeter, eating away her emotion control like acid through metal. Parker felt herself slipping, felt her tear ducts in her eyes beginning to fill. Desperate to save face she bowed her head, staring at the ground, hoping and praying the gap in her armor wasn't as blatantly obvious as it felt. She felt his shadow entering her personal space, and she sniffed her nose to keep herself under wraps. She pretended he wasn't there, and pretended she was stronger than she felt.
Parker felt his arms on her shoulders. They were heavy, and yet they weren't. In her head, she knew -- hell, she *felt* it in every bone of her body -- that he knew she knew. "I," he began than stopped. The stutter reminded her of the patented hesitancy she inspired in Broots. Finally, he said, "I'm sorry."
"I can't do it," she whispered.
"Do what?"
Parker looked up at him, her eyes wide. "I can't walk through that door." Adding, "I won't."
Jarod thought a moment before asking quietly, "Why not?"
"Because!" she spat, pushing away from his attempt at a tender embrace. His approach of trying to tenderly illicit information from her reminded her of something Sydney might try, and it pissed it off. "Frankly, I don't think I can handle one more piece of the Centre's freak show they call scientific research!"
The remark stung Jarod. She knew he was considered part of that 'freak show,' and his pain only fed her anger. He said nothing.
"What are the chances that anything I find in that storage facility is going to make my life that much more bearable?" She waved her arms to illustrate her point, stumbling slightly as she did. She felt the crack in her well-being slowly growing larger and larger. "Zip!"
She felt drunk with the anger and waves of sadness that were flowing over her. "Let's take a running total of the members of my family the Centre has personally made living hells of their lives, shall we?" She took a step closer to Jarod, pointing her finger at him and wagging it in emphasis with each name. "My mother," pause, "my father," pause, "Ethan," tears welling up, "my baby brother..."
She stopped, bowing her head again. Her rant, it seemed, had reached its end as her emotional upheaval began to get the better of him. "My baby brother..." she repeated, her voice a whisper and riddled with sadness, "he doesn't even have a name, Jarod."
That did it. The emotion she had pent up for three days -- her brother's attempt on her life, the gunshot wound to her arm, being on the run with Jarod -- came crashing through the Berlin Wall in her brain. Tears came pouring out the size of softballs it seemed, one endless stream after another. It racked her body and she shuddered with each sob. Somehow Jarod managed to gather her in his arms, encasing her in a ring of temporary safety. Her head was pressed against his chest and shoulders, and she felt his chin resting on the top of his chin. Several times she made out Jarod's reassuring voices over her sobs.
She wasn't sure how long they stood there like that -- for her it seemed like forever. Together they embraced, long after Parker's tears had run out. And then suddenly, as strange as it had begun, their embrace was awkward. In one motion she pulled away, stealing a glance at Jarod before finding the ground suddenly a very interesting thing to study. Her dominant personality was starting to assert itself again, pushing her weaker emotional side back into the small hole it belonged in. She hated crying, hated showing how weak she could be, and Jarod was last person she ever wanted to sob in front of.
She raised her head to speak, and watched him do the same thing.
"I..." she began.
"Miss Parker..." he said at the same time.
Their error made her smile for a moment, and she was quickly shaking her head. She was living a cliche, she thought. Parker waited for Jarod to complete whatever he had meant to say earlier, but as she watched his eyes dart towards the access portal, she realized he had no intention of elaborating.
"We should head inside," he suggested.
Parker took a deep breath, knowing she wouldn't know what to expect beyond the doors, and nodded in approval.
*
The underground installation was one long tunnel with several branches off leading to treatment facilities and data storage areas. Pressed against one wall, he assumed the role of his son's proverbial light at the end of tunnel. Tucked into his waistband was a weapon he hoped never to use; in his hand, a flashlight. For now, of course, he didn't need it.
He looked through the glass in the door and saw faint beams of light coming from the far end of the tunnel. Jarod, he breathed as he strained to guess how far they might be. It was too hard to tell.
For now, all he could do was wait.
*
Raines sat quietly, contemplating. It was the fugitive pair who had breached the thinning security at the Colorado installation -- of this he was most certainly sure -- that weighed heavily on his mind. The implications of even their presence at the facility could not only contaminate the specimens stored there, but jeopardize the very operation itself. There was no doubt in his mind that this situation was to be handled any other way besides "properly." While he would have preferred that no one ever learn of the facility, the last thing he wanted was yet another Parker stumbling upon its many secrets.
He pressed the speed-dial on the Chairman's telephone. After a minute, the familiar answered, "Cox."
"I need you to freeze the transfer for twenty-four hours, Doctor," Raines breathed.
There was a pause, a silence of indignation, before Cox answered. "I'm not sure if I can do that, sir. We've already prepped the boy-"
"There's been a breach," Raines cut him off, "at the Colorado installation."
Another silence, this one different from the first. Raines thought he heard the doctor swear under his breath. "When?" he asked.
"About 30 minutes ago," Raines answered. "I've sent a sweeper team to handle the situation." Adding, "Don't worry, Doctor -- I only want to hold him overnight, until everything has been cleared up. I'd hate for those two to stall this deal."
Cox caught Raines' message. "Are we sure it was them?"
"Positive."
"And our benefactors in Africa, are they," he chose his word carefully, "aware of the present situation?"
"Of course," Raines replied. What he failed to tell Cox -- that it had been Africa that had detected the breach -- wouldn't and shouldn't hamper his response to the situation.
It didn't take much longer for Cox to agree to the planning, adding in a sharp tone, "but only for twenty-four hours."
"Of course," he repeated.
*
The tunnel was dug into the earth and laid on ground that no one had bothered to cover; the clouds of dust and dirt churned up from their footsteps hung in the shafts of light from Parker's flashlight. On the packed earth her boots made a dull thud with resounded in the large, empty chamber. Their footsteps were the only sound, their flashlights the only light. The smell was pungent, musty, and Parker suspected they were the only non-rodent creatures there in some time.
She shone her flashlight on either side of her as she walked, trying to estimate the dimensions of the tunnel. It seemed to go on forever lengthwise, though if she squinted her eyes Parker thought she could make out a small spec of light thousands of feet in front of her. She was, however, sure if it was really there, or if it was simply her eyes playing tricks on her as they adjusted to darkness. However, the walls on either side of them were about the length of a moderately sized room. On second inspection, she noticed their resemblance to filing cabinets.
She chose a spot on the wall to her right, and stopped to examine it closer. There was a small identification tag on the wall, and what appeared to be two panels. The first was large and rectangular, and its handle resembled that of a door. The second resembled a pullout door. Parker pressed her gloved hand against the wall, then quickly drawing it away.
"It's cold," she said with surprise.
Jarod stopped. "Of course it is."
"No," Parker replied, shaking her head. Again she applied her hand to the wall. "It feels different, almost as if..." Her voice trailed off as she pressed her ear to the wall. The sound shocked her. "Jarod, the wall is humming."
"What?" He moved next to her, imitating her actions. He looked at her with unadulterated interest. "It is humming."
Parker bit back the sarcastic comment. "There must be a secondary power system done here," she said instead, adding, "I wonder what else they're hiding down here besides files."
Jarod regarded her for a moment before answer for rhetorical question. "Let's find out."
*
The jet was close enough to spot the small abandoned plane on the Colorado runway (with the help of binoculars, of course). The pilot quickly relayed their position to the Centre Air Traffic Tower, and announced to the sweeper team seated in the cabin to prepare for landing.
*
All of the units were identical to the one Parker had first spot. At random, she and Jarod chose the unit labeled #P-061274-B. First, she pulled the handle that resembled a drawer, and shone her flashlight on its contents. Inside was one simply file folder, with a matching identity sticker on the front. She pulled it out, and balancing it in her arms, opened it up, reading the contents.
Parker gasped inaudibly, her mouth hanging open. The realization was sickeningly familiar. "My God," she whispered.
"What?" Jarod demanded softly.
She wasn't sure how to begin. "It's a record of a genetic experiment performed on June 12, 1974," she said. Jarod's eyes went to the identification number again, finding it a perfect match to the date Parker mentioned. "There isn't much here, though. If it wasn't for the date, I'd venture to guess this was one of the Centre's early attempts at in-vitro fertilization."
Jarod paused before continuing. "Three guesses as to what's behind door number two," he said flippantly.
Parker's eyebrow arched. "The result?" In her mind came memories of the storage facility at Donoterase.
There was a small gasp of cold air as Jarod pulled open the door, a hissing of pent air escaping. Indeed there was a secondary power system, and it powered a light that shone into the dark corridor. As the wisps of cold air settled, a small jar filled with formaldehyde was evident. In its eerie green aura, a horribly grotesque form appeared.
"It barely looks human," Parker breathed.
They left the unit and chose another. Each subsequent unit had an identification number that corresponded with the result's "conception" date. They were apparently organized in ascending chronological order, each one later than the next. And with each specimen, Parker began to recognize the human features -- hands, feet, necks -- obvious signs of the installation's increasing success with whatever reproductive feat they were trying to accomplish.
*
The jet touched down on the runaway alongside the abandoned plane. A tall man in a dark business suit stepped off the plane behind the last sweeper, pointing his hand to the opened airplane hanger. As the team moved towards the building, he held back two.
"Search the cargo hold."
He didn't need to say more, the sweepers knew what he was looking for. After a complete search, they stepped up the man most obviously in charge.
"Nothing?" he asked. The sweeper shook his head, and quickly ran to join the others, who were halfway to the hanger.
The man looked into the distance, searching. There was no way he would go into that hanger with the Haliburton strapped to his side, which led him to only one possible conclusion.
Jarod and Parker had help.
*
Parker was halfway down the corridor, Jarod several steps ahead of her, when she stopped. She reread the contents of the folder, dated August 15, 1987.
Her head whipped up, turned to where Jarod's flashlight bobbed up and down. "Open up a drawer, any drawer," she commanded. She expected Jarod to protest, but was greeted only by the familiar sound of a drawer creaking open. "See the blurb on donor information? Read it to me."
"'Maternal sample #45-010360-4, paternal sample #45-122759-4.' Do you want the additional donors, too?"
She didn't responded, however, the realization thudded in her brain. "That's exactly what it says here." She paused. "That's exactly what it says on every single one of these reports."
The second wave hit her like a ton of bricks. If she used the same technique on these identification numbers that she did on the specimens, then the six digit code would indict the subjects were born on January 3, 1960, and December 27, 1959. The maternal subject was born on...
Her eyes stung with tears.
"I'm..."
The sound of a door clanging open in direction they had come from startled both Parker and Jarod, and for the moment, her realized fears were forgotten. She knew who they were before it had fully registered in her brain.
Sweepers.
part 6
Tahlia
Raines reclined in the Chairman's desk chair, enjoying for a moment the sweet taste of power. For years he had worked for this position, fought tooth and nail to eliminate whatever obstacles might come his way. Mr. Parker's temptation by the Scrolls had been a blessing in disguise: though it had soured relations with the Triumvirate on the eve of his power transfer, it had given Raines a means to retrieve the power that came with a position he deserved above all else. He was the one who had given his all making sure the Centre stayed afloat in the 1970s, and it was he who had spearheaded the project that be the Centre's rebirth. Mr. Parker's involvement had be chance, and minute in importance.
The black-and-white photograph lay unassuming on the Chairman's -- no, HIS - desk. How sweet a possession to be marred by such an item. The best eyes had been over this photo, and the best eyes had assured him that if it were a fake, it was a damn good one. No way in hell the time stamp in the corner was inaccurate. Raines shared with himself a private chuckle at the resilience of the Parker name: both Catherine and her husband faked their own deaths, and their daughter had barely escaped with hers. Even he, himself, had cheated death in more ways than one. Only baby brother Lyle in the Renewal Wing stood to shatter the family's vibrant health.
In actuality, his existence was severely compromising to Raines' top priority: the boy. While he lived Mr. Parker had been extremely hesitant to admit his son into the program, and his reappearance on the eve of the boy's transfer only heightened Raines' nerves. The last thing he needed was Mr. Parker trotting in parental precedent and yanking the boy out once and for all. The fact that he remained the only soul alive who had read the scrolls made Raines' compliance with the old man's wishes mandatory.
Raines sighed. Mr. Parker had stumbled upon the secret installation God knows how, but the fact remained that somehow he had managed to use his daughter to his advantage, blackmailing Raines and Cox into letting him participate. He had made a show of it, going so far as to set up the charade of a marriage and impending fatherhood to impress his daughter. In hindsight, of course, Raines realized it had been Mr. Parker's last attempt to brand something with the Parker name, even if he was merely the surrogate father. Despite his best efforts, Raines knew the charade had only raised his daughter's suspicions even further, and the recent appearances of Broots and Sydney at the bodily fluid storage area on SL-15 confirmed that.
He made a decision. His finger hovered over the call button, about to make connection to the Triumvirate station in Africa to monitor their progress, when the small light below his finger lit up. It was quickly accompanied by a crude buzz. Within seconds, he answered it, and the chipper voice on the other end only served to further his annoyance.
"Sir, there's a call from Africa for you."
He sighed. "Put him through."
After a moment, another light lit up, indicating the call had been successfully forwarded.
"My good friend," Raines wheezed, "I was just about to call."
"Indeed you were," the voice on the other replied. "We have a situation over here."
"The boy?" Raines guessed, worried. His next choice would have been Mr. Parker. He had, after all, noticed the beads of sweating forming on his brow in the photograph.
"Not quite," the voice said. "We have reason to believe the perimeter of the Colorado Installation has been compromised."
The statement startled him. He sat upright in the chair, its hinges creaking with the sound movement. "You assured me three years ago we would never have this conversation."
Raines swore he heard the man smile. After a moment, he said, "Word is you've got a," his lips paused to wrap around the word mockingly, "situation over there. Perhaps the two incidences are related?"
"Perhaps," Raines hissed.
"I trust you will handle this situation properly, Mr. Raines," the voice commanded.
"Of course," he replied. "And I can assure you this will not affect the transfer."
"I'll hold you personally responsible if it does."
The voice ended the telephone call. Before dispatching a team to Colorado, Raines slammed his fists on the desk in anger.
*
She should have known the abandoned airplane hanger was anything but. After taking a moment to rearrange the duffel slung over his shoulder, Jarod grabbed the rusted handle on the door and pulled it open. It squeaked terribly, and small bits of dust flew out from between the door and its frame. The sound was all around them, and Parker crinkled her nose in disgust.
"Jarod, what the..." She didn't finish. "Oh, my God," she gasped.
Inside she had hardly expected to find airplane, but she hadn't expected what she saw. There were birthing tables everywhere, some of them attached to rusted shackles to prevent screaming mothers from escaping as their children were forcibly brought into the world. In a corner were abandoned plastic tubes which, at this distance and given the other surroundings, could have been incubators. Parker glanced at the ground, finding it covered in dust. Goose bumps formed on her skin, her body's reaction to the still-cool morning air. Hardly a sterile environment for childbirth, she thought.
Jarod purposely strode toward a door in the far left-hand corner, but Parker lingered behind, turning as she walked, needing to take in every detail of her surroundings. Clouds of dust hung in the rays on sunlight cascading in the window high above the ground. Save for their footsteps on the concrete, the hanger was deathly silent.
Parker stopped near a crouched Jarod, who was searching in the duffel bag for something. Her eyes scanned the doorway, finding it locked by some sort of access portal. No doubt he was searching for his tool to override the system, she thought. Provided the system had been deactivated after this installation became useless. There was a panel to the left of the doorway, dust clinging to its surface, obscuring the words she could make out underneath it. She raised her hand, feeling its cool temperature, and brushed away the grime in a cloud of dust.
PROMETHEUS INSTALLATION
INFORMATION STORAGE CORRIDOR
Level 5 Clearance
Authorized Personnel Only
"Prometheus," she muttered to herself, "stole fire from Mt. Olympus."
Jarod stood up and looked at her, and for that moment, their eyes met and they were silent. Jarod opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but something stopped him inside. Parker felt it, too. This was a key, she could feel it in every bone in her body, this was a key to everything they both sought to answer. After a pause he looked back at the contraption in his hands, and began to move to the door.
Her eyes caught on the access portal, recognizing it for a moment. "Centre security stopped commissioning facilities using that," she said, motioning towards the panel Jarod was now affixing the device to, "almost four years ago. They were too easy to crack." She sighed, thinking that this disadvantage would suddenly be useful to them.
He glanced at the device, which had attacked itself to access panel. A singular green lit on its back lit up, no doubt indicating the search for the proper access code. "I guess the doctors here had more important things on their minds," Jarod replied.
"What could be more important than up-to-date security?"
Jarod didn't answer, only glared deep into her eyes. His unspoken answer was, of course, 'you know exactly why.' In her embarrassment, she glanced at the ground, uncomfortable by his prying stare. Maybe she did know...
His voice was gentle. It was unfit to the seriousness of their situation. "Go ahead, Parker. Ask away."
"What?"
"You're dying to know why we're here," Jarod replied.
Parker shook her head, pursing her lips. Her patience was running thin. "I don't 'get it,' remember?"
There was silence between them, as Jarod fought hard to let the remark lay where it might. After a moment, he replied, "I've found evidence to suggest that Prometheus is the third of a triad of projects commissioned by the Triumvirate in the early 1970s. Their singular task was to learn all they could about newly acquired research regarding the human genome."
"What were the other two?" Parker asked, secretly dreading the answer as well.
Jarod took a deep breath, stepping closer to her. "I think you know."
She opened her mouth to reply, but a small beep from the device on the control panel interrupted her. Jarod sighed, squeezing his eyes shut, and Parker almost swore he was almost sad to hear the interruption. Something else was going on, she knew it. There was something he wasn't telling her, one key piece of information he had failed to disclose, and not from lack of appropriate time. He was holding back, and Parker was determined to get to the bottom of it.
But then she stopped. No doubt whatever lay behind the steel door were secrets someone had taken great pains to hide. For once in her life, she hesitated in her desire to step through and see the truth. Jarod had revealed that her mother had visited Prometheus in 1970, and by all accounts, had "died" several weeks later. Parker knew her mother had involved herself in something sinister -- Project Mirage -- and for the first time since her arrival, she wondered if the two things could be related.
Mirage...Parker couldn't get the project -- or the DSA of her mother's murder -- out of her head. At its inception, the in-vitro fertilization technology used in the insemination of Catherine's egg was cutting edge genetic research. The first mainstream "test tube baby" wasn't conceived until almost ten years later, making Ethan's birth both a miracle (by conventional medical standards) and an everyday occurrence (by Centre standards). It was like cloning a human being in the twenty-first century, just as the world was beginning to grasp the impact of stem cell research...
'Their singular task was to learn all they could about newly acquired research regarding the human genome.'
"Oh, my God," Parker muttered yet again.
Jarod spun around. "What?"
"The other two projects," she managed. "Mirage. And...Gemini." He said nothing to answer her, only nodded his head in solemn agreement.
Her next question should have been expected. "What's Prometheus?" When he didn't answer, she rephrased the question, her voice more forceful than before. "Who is Prometheus, Jarod?" In the back of her mind was a small voice, urging her to think about her question, to search within her. It told her she knew the answer. Still, Jarod's silence peeved her -- she needed to be force-fed the answer. "Answer me, dammit!" she yelled. Her voice bellowed and echoed in the empty hanger.
Inside her, she knew the answer, and it killed her. Everything within her began to teeter, eating away her emotion control like acid through metal. Parker felt herself slipping, felt her tear ducts in her eyes beginning to fill. Desperate to save face she bowed her head, staring at the ground, hoping and praying the gap in her armor wasn't as blatantly obvious as it felt. She felt his shadow entering her personal space, and she sniffed her nose to keep herself under wraps. She pretended he wasn't there, and pretended she was stronger than she felt.
Parker felt his arms on her shoulders. They were heavy, and yet they weren't. In her head, she knew -- hell, she *felt* it in every bone of her body -- that he knew she knew. "I," he began than stopped. The stutter reminded her of the patented hesitancy she inspired in Broots. Finally, he said, "I'm sorry."
"I can't do it," she whispered.
"Do what?"
Parker looked up at him, her eyes wide. "I can't walk through that door." Adding, "I won't."
Jarod thought a moment before asking quietly, "Why not?"
"Because!" she spat, pushing away from his attempt at a tender embrace. His approach of trying to tenderly illicit information from her reminded her of something Sydney might try, and it pissed it off. "Frankly, I don't think I can handle one more piece of the Centre's freak show they call scientific research!"
The remark stung Jarod. She knew he was considered part of that 'freak show,' and his pain only fed her anger. He said nothing.
"What are the chances that anything I find in that storage facility is going to make my life that much more bearable?" She waved her arms to illustrate her point, stumbling slightly as she did. She felt the crack in her well-being slowly growing larger and larger. "Zip!"
She felt drunk with the anger and waves of sadness that were flowing over her. "Let's take a running total of the members of my family the Centre has personally made living hells of their lives, shall we?" She took a step closer to Jarod, pointing her finger at him and wagging it in emphasis with each name. "My mother," pause, "my father," pause, "Ethan," tears welling up, "my baby brother..."
She stopped, bowing her head again. Her rant, it seemed, had reached its end as her emotional upheaval began to get the better of him. "My baby brother..." she repeated, her voice a whisper and riddled with sadness, "he doesn't even have a name, Jarod."
That did it. The emotion she had pent up for three days -- her brother's attempt on her life, the gunshot wound to her arm, being on the run with Jarod -- came crashing through the Berlin Wall in her brain. Tears came pouring out the size of softballs it seemed, one endless stream after another. It racked her body and she shuddered with each sob. Somehow Jarod managed to gather her in his arms, encasing her in a ring of temporary safety. Her head was pressed against his chest and shoulders, and she felt his chin resting on the top of his chin. Several times she made out Jarod's reassuring voices over her sobs.
She wasn't sure how long they stood there like that -- for her it seemed like forever. Together they embraced, long after Parker's tears had run out. And then suddenly, as strange as it had begun, their embrace was awkward. In one motion she pulled away, stealing a glance at Jarod before finding the ground suddenly a very interesting thing to study. Her dominant personality was starting to assert itself again, pushing her weaker emotional side back into the small hole it belonged in. She hated crying, hated showing how weak she could be, and Jarod was last person she ever wanted to sob in front of.
She raised her head to speak, and watched him do the same thing.
"I..." she began.
"Miss Parker..." he said at the same time.
Their error made her smile for a moment, and she was quickly shaking her head. She was living a cliche, she thought. Parker waited for Jarod to complete whatever he had meant to say earlier, but as she watched his eyes dart towards the access portal, she realized he had no intention of elaborating.
"We should head inside," he suggested.
Parker took a deep breath, knowing she wouldn't know what to expect beyond the doors, and nodded in approval.
*
The underground installation was one long tunnel with several branches off leading to treatment facilities and data storage areas. Pressed against one wall, he assumed the role of his son's proverbial light at the end of tunnel. Tucked into his waistband was a weapon he hoped never to use; in his hand, a flashlight. For now, of course, he didn't need it.
He looked through the glass in the door and saw faint beams of light coming from the far end of the tunnel. Jarod, he breathed as he strained to guess how far they might be. It was too hard to tell.
For now, all he could do was wait.
*
Raines sat quietly, contemplating. It was the fugitive pair who had breached the thinning security at the Colorado installation -- of this he was most certainly sure -- that weighed heavily on his mind. The implications of even their presence at the facility could not only contaminate the specimens stored there, but jeopardize the very operation itself. There was no doubt in his mind that this situation was to be handled any other way besides "properly." While he would have preferred that no one ever learn of the facility, the last thing he wanted was yet another Parker stumbling upon its many secrets.
He pressed the speed-dial on the Chairman's telephone. After a minute, the familiar answered, "Cox."
"I need you to freeze the transfer for twenty-four hours, Doctor," Raines breathed.
There was a pause, a silence of indignation, before Cox answered. "I'm not sure if I can do that, sir. We've already prepped the boy-"
"There's been a breach," Raines cut him off, "at the Colorado installation."
Another silence, this one different from the first. Raines thought he heard the doctor swear under his breath. "When?" he asked.
"About 30 minutes ago," Raines answered. "I've sent a sweeper team to handle the situation." Adding, "Don't worry, Doctor -- I only want to hold him overnight, until everything has been cleared up. I'd hate for those two to stall this deal."
Cox caught Raines' message. "Are we sure it was them?"
"Positive."
"And our benefactors in Africa, are they," he chose his word carefully, "aware of the present situation?"
"Of course," Raines replied. What he failed to tell Cox -- that it had been Africa that had detected the breach -- wouldn't and shouldn't hamper his response to the situation.
It didn't take much longer for Cox to agree to the planning, adding in a sharp tone, "but only for twenty-four hours."
"Of course," he repeated.
*
The tunnel was dug into the earth and laid on ground that no one had bothered to cover; the clouds of dust and dirt churned up from their footsteps hung in the shafts of light from Parker's flashlight. On the packed earth her boots made a dull thud with resounded in the large, empty chamber. Their footsteps were the only sound, their flashlights the only light. The smell was pungent, musty, and Parker suspected they were the only non-rodent creatures there in some time.
She shone her flashlight on either side of her as she walked, trying to estimate the dimensions of the tunnel. It seemed to go on forever lengthwise, though if she squinted her eyes Parker thought she could make out a small spec of light thousands of feet in front of her. She was, however, sure if it was really there, or if it was simply her eyes playing tricks on her as they adjusted to darkness. However, the walls on either side of them were about the length of a moderately sized room. On second inspection, she noticed their resemblance to filing cabinets.
She chose a spot on the wall to her right, and stopped to examine it closer. There was a small identification tag on the wall, and what appeared to be two panels. The first was large and rectangular, and its handle resembled that of a door. The second resembled a pullout door. Parker pressed her gloved hand against the wall, then quickly drawing it away.
"It's cold," she said with surprise.
Jarod stopped. "Of course it is."
"No," Parker replied, shaking her head. Again she applied her hand to the wall. "It feels different, almost as if..." Her voice trailed off as she pressed her ear to the wall. The sound shocked her. "Jarod, the wall is humming."
"What?" He moved next to her, imitating her actions. He looked at her with unadulterated interest. "It is humming."
Parker bit back the sarcastic comment. "There must be a secondary power system done here," she said instead, adding, "I wonder what else they're hiding down here besides files."
Jarod regarded her for a moment before answer for rhetorical question. "Let's find out."
*
The jet was close enough to spot the small abandoned plane on the Colorado runway (with the help of binoculars, of course). The pilot quickly relayed their position to the Centre Air Traffic Tower, and announced to the sweeper team seated in the cabin to prepare for landing.
*
All of the units were identical to the one Parker had first spot. At random, she and Jarod chose the unit labeled #P-061274-B. First, she pulled the handle that resembled a drawer, and shone her flashlight on its contents. Inside was one simply file folder, with a matching identity sticker on the front. She pulled it out, and balancing it in her arms, opened it up, reading the contents.
Parker gasped inaudibly, her mouth hanging open. The realization was sickeningly familiar. "My God," she whispered.
"What?" Jarod demanded softly.
She wasn't sure how to begin. "It's a record of a genetic experiment performed on June 12, 1974," she said. Jarod's eyes went to the identification number again, finding it a perfect match to the date Parker mentioned. "There isn't much here, though. If it wasn't for the date, I'd venture to guess this was one of the Centre's early attempts at in-vitro fertilization."
Jarod paused before continuing. "Three guesses as to what's behind door number two," he said flippantly.
Parker's eyebrow arched. "The result?" In her mind came memories of the storage facility at Donoterase.
There was a small gasp of cold air as Jarod pulled open the door, a hissing of pent air escaping. Indeed there was a secondary power system, and it powered a light that shone into the dark corridor. As the wisps of cold air settled, a small jar filled with formaldehyde was evident. In its eerie green aura, a horribly grotesque form appeared.
"It barely looks human," Parker breathed.
They left the unit and chose another. Each subsequent unit had an identification number that corresponded with the result's "conception" date. They were apparently organized in ascending chronological order, each one later than the next. And with each specimen, Parker began to recognize the human features -- hands, feet, necks -- obvious signs of the installation's increasing success with whatever reproductive feat they were trying to accomplish.
*
The jet touched down on the runaway alongside the abandoned plane. A tall man in a dark business suit stepped off the plane behind the last sweeper, pointing his hand to the opened airplane hanger. As the team moved towards the building, he held back two.
"Search the cargo hold."
He didn't need to say more, the sweepers knew what he was looking for. After a complete search, they stepped up the man most obviously in charge.
"Nothing?" he asked. The sweeper shook his head, and quickly ran to join the others, who were halfway to the hanger.
The man looked into the distance, searching. There was no way he would go into that hanger with the Haliburton strapped to his side, which led him to only one possible conclusion.
Jarod and Parker had help.
*
Parker was halfway down the corridor, Jarod several steps ahead of her, when she stopped. She reread the contents of the folder, dated August 15, 1987.
Her head whipped up, turned to where Jarod's flashlight bobbed up and down. "Open up a drawer, any drawer," she commanded. She expected Jarod to protest, but was greeted only by the familiar sound of a drawer creaking open. "See the blurb on donor information? Read it to me."
"'Maternal sample #45-010360-4, paternal sample #45-122759-4.' Do you want the additional donors, too?"
She didn't responded, however, the realization thudded in her brain. "That's exactly what it says here." She paused. "That's exactly what it says on every single one of these reports."
The second wave hit her like a ton of bricks. If she used the same technique on these identification numbers that she did on the specimens, then the six digit code would indict the subjects were born on January 3, 1960, and December 27, 1959. The maternal subject was born on...
Her eyes stung with tears.
"I'm..."
The sound of a door clanging open in direction they had come from startled both Parker and Jarod, and for the moment, her realized fears were forgotten. She knew who they were before it had fully registered in her brain.
Sweepers.
