Table of Contents [Report This]
Author's Chapter Notes:
Note: The story is set 2 years after Jarod left the Centre. Also, I needed a villain in the story and I choose a rather brutal version of the Soviet Union. No harm or prejudice is intended. This story is purely fiction. One other note. The portrayal of the Sidney character is a bit different than I might normally write. I adjusted it based on the picture challenge. Hopefully, I won't upset anyone.
As always, here's the 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. No infringement is intended and the story is for personal entertainment only with nothing for profit. The words, however, are mine. Please don't take them without asking. Thanks.
As always, here's the 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. No infringement is intended and the story is for personal entertainment only with nothing for profit. The words, however, are mine. Please don't take them without asking. Thanks.
Haunted Reflections
by Terri H.
Jarod sat on the lumpy hotel mattress at the Sierra Inn with his eyes glued to the glowing screen of the DSA reader. It was dusk with an icy winter wind whipping through bare oaks and bent ponderosa pines outside his small hotel room off the interstate. He shifted, hearing the springs of the worn mattress whine. His face wore a troubled expression.
(earlier)
Jarod had elected to take a bus from San Francisco to Bakersfield chasing a possible lead on the whereabouts of the man who appeared to be his father. The ride was pleasant enough, following Pacific Coast Highway along the rocky cliffs of the Monterey coast for the first few hours. Then, turning inland with the terrain gradually flattening to rolling hills and sparse plains.
Jarod didn't mind riding on buses. He found many fascinating people accompanied him. Going south this time he met a young soldier from Louisiana who was returning from a recent training mission in Washington state. His shaved head and southern drawl immediately intrigued Jarod. Between Monterrey and Fresno, they'd discussed the proper preparation of crawdads in fine detail. Jarod made a point to try some when he had the opportunity.
In Fresno, Jarod changed busses, traveling roughly southeasterly through the California Desert. About twenty miles outside of Bakersfield, he'd spotted the Sierra Inn and decided he'd traveled enough today. He got off the bus in the next town, a roadside village that had never seen much traffic but was certainly out of date in a world full of super-centers and auto-malls. The bus depot sat next to an ancient Alpha Beta supermarket, and was only a mile from the Sierra Inn.
Jarod had no appetite so he bypassed the only diner between the depot and the inn, and made good time. The wind turned harsh as he walked. A storm was moving in. While there was no forecast of snow, there was bitterness to the chill that left his ears numb except for occasional sharp pinpricks as a grain of sand careened into his face. He hunched over, bending into the wind and pulling up the collar on his black leather jacket. A definitely chill settled along the front of his thighs as the wind bit through his cotton pants.
As he walked, Jarod found his thoughts drifting away from the father he was seeking, and back to the "father" he'd been raised by, Sidney. He had been Jarod's only companion for nearly thirty years. It was November and the world seemed to be making plans to converge with family and friends for Thanksgiving. Once again, Jarod had nowhere to go, but Sidney had been on his mind for days.
By the time Jarod arrived at the Sierra Inn, he was relieved to simply be out of the gusty weather. The motel was a dilapidated building several miles off the new interstate. "No one will look for me here." He thought as he pushed through the battered wooden door marked "Office". He wasn't sure tonight if he was glad of that. He felt desperately alone at the moment. "It's probably just the cold." He thought to himself. The gray of the winter sunset and the frigid fingers of the cold had increased his sense of isolation, of abandonment. He tried to focus on the moment, distancing himself from those emotions.
Jarod quickly paid for a single for one night and ventured back out along the row of rooms facing the road. The wind tore at his clothes again, but he felt warmer, knowing he'd be inside soon. He stopped at number 10 and slid the key in the lock. It turned easily and he pushed, feeling the flimsy door stick slightly before popping open.
The paint was peeling in the corner and the room smelled of mildew and dust, but neither was of consequence to the pretender. He'd never particularly cared where he slept, as long as it wasn't the Centre. He'd also found that teams sent from the Centre to locate him, rarely bothered to do routine monitoring of anywhere less than four star hotels. Staying at the Sierra Inn was a pragmatic decision as much as a convenience. Jarod had been on the run for over two years. He was more than accustomed to doing those things that enabled him to maintain his freedom, including staying in run down motels like this one.
Jarod paused once inside the room, turning and locking the deadbolt. He then flicked the room key on top of the small portable TV bolted to a dresser top opposite the door. He walked to the bed; slipping his duffel bag off his shoulder and letting it drop at his feet. It contained the majority of his worldly possession. With is other hand, he placed a silver briefcase on the bed gingerly. It, by contrast, contained the majority of his life. The DSA reader and disks it contained held the images of the boy he'd once been, and proof of the life he'd lived. It was that life that beckoned him as twilight fell in the California desert.
Something had been tickling his brain all day, and it was time to see if he could find the answer. He hoped, unlike most questions involving his past, that he'd be able to find what he was looking for sooner rather than later. He opened the DSA case and flipped through the small silver disks labeled with security codes indicating the information each one contained.
Jarod frowned. The disk he was looking for wasn't there. He reached for the bag he'd discarded at his feet. Bringing it to his lap, he unzipped the center compartment and reached for the interior zippered pocket on the far size. He slipped his hand inside and emerged with a black Lucite case. He opened it and scanned for the disk he wanted.
His eyes traced along until he located the right disk. It was labeled Glacia 146. He picked up the silver disk between his thumb and forefinger, turning it in the dim light of the room. It often seemed surreal that many of he most traumatic and difficult moments of his life were contained so neatly on silver disks, each one carefully labeled and stored away. Bitterness crept into his soul. There had been some events he'd endured at the Centre that he could never understand, never accept. The disk in his hand contained one of them.
Jarod set case of disks aside, and turned to face the DSA reader. He slipped the disk he'd selected in part way, but hesitated before he inserted it enough to begin replaying the images it contained. Though he knew the simulation by heart, he wasn't sure he wanted to see it again. Sidney, his protector, his guardian, had stood by that day while Jarod pleaded for him to come to his aid. Jarod didn't know why, but he'd decided it was time to find out.
Jarod shivered, aware the room was cool. He stood and crossed the room, finding a heating unit below the window. He cranked the knob to the left and flicked on the fan. A chirping sound merged with a soft hum, and the heater came to life. The smell of burning dust filled the air along with gentle warmth blowing from the top of the unit. Satisfied, Jarod returned to the bed. Pushing the DSA reader away from him, he sat, thinking.
In all the years since he'd completed the Glacia simulation, he'd never spoken to Sidney about it. Glacia Islander had been the name of a fishing boat that had been caught in the ice of the Barring Straight. The Russians had accused the sailors of being CIA spies as they'd been driven near Soviet waters by the ice flow. The US sate department had considered it an inopportune moment to strain already difficult Soviet/US relations, and elected to ignore the pleas of the fishermen's families to intervene on their behalf. In the end, the eight men on board had been taken to a military compound in the heart of Siberia and ~interviewed~ by their Soviet captors. Jarod had been brought in after the fact to determine both what the men might have said under torture and interrogation, and to determine if indeed there had been a spy among them.
Jarod shivered again. Aware his hands were cold. He glanced in the direction of the heater and noted it continued to hum and pump warm air into the room. Realizing the air temperature wasn't the source of the chill; he swung his feet up onto the bed, settling onto a pillow. He stared unseeing at the ceiling as his mind wandered. The hairs on his arm began to raise, the sensations of insects walking on skin passed through him. Jarod's inner demons were moving in. Jarod crossed his arms over his chest. His leather jacket making a creaking noise as he moved. He squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the sensation of drowning that crept into his consciousness.
Images advanced behind Jarod's closed eyes. Chaotic. Terrifying. Bits of memory, fragmented and incomplete, stabbed at his mind. Jarod felt his stomach begin to knot around the icy stone at its center; the muscles of his neck so tense, he could feel them pulling at his skull and spine. A torrent of emotion enveloped him. The moment of his childhood helplessness, captured and suffocating, invaded his soul.
Jarod suddenly sat, swinging his feet back over the side of the bed, running his fingers through his hair. Finally, he covered his face with his hands, trying to block out the images he was seeing in his mind's eye. His breath was ragged, his face beginning to perspire despite the mild temperature in the room. After a moment, he pulled his hands away, looking at them, watching them tremble.
Jarod remembered Galacia 146 well, all too well.
The Centre - Sidney's Office
Sidney sat behind his desk, reviewing the report of the findings at Jarod's most recent lair, a converted warehouse Jarod had lived at for nearly a month. The sweeper team had photographed and tagged each item they'd found and forwarded the contents of the room back to the Centre. The forensic tech's had completed a survey of the recovered items and detailed their findings in the report Sidney now looked at.
Most of the findings were routine. What bothered Sidney wasn't what he found, but what he hadn't yet found. Sidney leafed through the glossy eight by ten photographs taken at the scene. He scanned each page, trying to find the message Jarod most certainly had left for him.
As Sidney reviewed the pictures of the lair, he noted that Jarod had placed sketches around the room. Each sketch revealed vivid images of fathers and sons drawn in bright colors. Some showed tender moments of embrace, others implied lazy days at the seashore or Saturday baseball games. A final, larger sketch had been placed over the bed where Jarod had slept. Unlike the others, it had been drawn in black and white. It had also been placed with apparent care to distance it from the other images, exaggerating the sense of separateness it already possessed. It was this final sketch that disturbed the elder man.
This larger sketch was composed of swirls of black charcoal surrounding and encroaching on the sole figure, a young boy, near the center of the image. The boy sat crouched in darkness with his young face turned up in an agonizing cry. A sense of desperation and despair infused the composition. Sidney hoped it was a reflection of Jarod's past, not his present. He suspected his charge was again having trouble sleeping.
Sidney had been aware of Jarod's lifelong difficulty with nightmares. He'd watched his charge battle the demons of his sleep since his youth. As Jarod got older, their intensity seemed only to increase. Sidney knew they were an unfortunate by-product of the sort of emotional trauma often caused by the people and circumstances Jarod became each time he "pretended". This latest sketch seemed to confirm Jarod's troubled sleep had continued despite his emancipation from the Center.
Sidney set down the file. His brow was lined; his thoughts turned to his own complicity in the traumas of Jarod's youth. At the time, he'd believed that science could justify all of it. He was no longer so certain. Age had brought him the uncertain wisdom that he could no longer hide behind science as justification for all he'd been party to at the Centre. A pang of guilt passed through the elder man.
Sidney's telephone rang, interrupting his thoughts. "Sidney." He announced neutrally into the handset.
"Sidney, I think there's something you should see." Broots was excited but realistic. Jarod had left breadcrumbs before. He was down in a storeroom where the boxes from Jarod's last lair were being kept. He'd told Sidney that he'd call if there was anything of interest in the boxes. There was.
"I'll be right there." Sidney replied quickly, flipping closed the file folder in the center of his desk. He returned the phone to its cradle and turned to stand.
"Going somewhere, Sid?" Miss Parker accused as she entered Sidney's office, smiling. She stopped, placing a perfectly manicured hand on her hip.
Sidney looked up, "Good morning, Miss Parker." He smiled politely, though his face didn't well conceal he'd have preferred his colleague had chosen a different moment to insert herself into his affairs.
Standing, Sidney added, "Broots just called. He may have found something." Sidney paused, waiting her Parker to respond.
Miss Parker stood straighter, leaning in toward Sidney, snapping her fingers. "Well, let's get going, Sid." She said in a tone more threatening than necessary. Sidney sighed and walked past her through the door. Miss Parker spun on a stiletto heel marching past Sidney to the elevator.
Storage Bay 2 - Sublevel 6, The Centre
Broots stood in a storage bay physically sorting through the boxes the sweepers had collected. He was cataloging the items to compile a database of the types of objects Jarod collected. He hoped to find a pattern that could help him search retail nets for purchases that might lead to Jarod's current location.
At the bottom of the second box was a plain manila envelope with Jarod's distinctive penmanship. It was addressed simply "Sidney". Broots knew he didn't have to ask permission to open it, but whatever Jarod had left for Sidney was likely personal. It seemed like sneaking a peak at some private chapter of Jarod's life to open it. Instead, Broots had called Sidney. He sat the envelope aside on top of a stack of boxes he was using as a makeshift table and waited. A few minutes later, Broots heard footsteps approaching.
Parker tossed the door open, stepping inside the storage bay with confidence born of being both the chairman's daughter and of not caring who's toes she stepped on if it meant getting the job done. "What'd you find, Broots?" She asked without hesitation. Broots looked up, making eye contact with Sidney was a few feet behind her. She locked eyes with Broots looking annoyed and commanding him to speak to her.
"Oh, Miss Parker. I didn't know you were coming..."Broots stammered. He'd not been expecting her and felt a bit off balanced by her sudden appearance. Sidney stepped past her, nodding at the technician with a supportive expression.
"Miss Parker decided to accompany me." Sidney explained, raising one eyebrow and glancing in Parker's direction disapprovingly.
Miss Parker looked annoyed again. "Yes, well, now that we're all up to date, let's get to it." Miss Parker sniped. Spotting the envelope Broots had called about, she stepped past Broots to the stack of boxes where it lay. "Well, well. What has genius boy left for you this time, Sid?" She picked up the envelope, handing it to Sidney with an expectant glance.
Sidney accepted the envelope reluctantly. He'd have preferred to open it in private. His hesitation was apparent. Miss Parker placed a hand on her hip, raising an eyebrow. She was impatient. Accepting her unspoken orders, Sidney turned the envelope over, carefully tearing the seal. He slipped his hand inside, feeling a single item. He pulled it free, replacing the now empty envelope on top of the stack of boxes in front f him. Sidney turned his attention to the carefully folded paper in his hands. Turning it over, Sidney realized he was holding an origami boat. On the bow were the initials "G.I.".
Sidney was certain the meaning of "G.I." would be clear once he had a chance to review his files. Jarod preferred to give Sidney the puzzle to solve rather than speaking to him directly. Perhaps it was Jarod's way of getting back at him for all the puzzles he'd forced Jarod to unravel during his time at the Centre.
"It's a boat, Sidney!" Broots announced, moving in closer to examine it.
"There you go, Sidney. We're in the presence of true genius." Miss Parker said sarcastically, raising her hands in the air and rolling her eyes.
"Give me that." She said crisply, reaching for the paper boat in Sidney's hand.
Sidney held his tongue, relinquishing the paper to Parker and stepping back. Having to tolerate Miss Parker's intrusion was irritating, but certainly not worth a battle. He tried to connect "G.I." with something familiar. He touched his chin, studying his memory for a clue to the meaning Jarod intended.
"And look here, gentlemen. Our ship has a crew." Miss Parker announced sounding pleased with herself as she slipped eight carefully cut paper figures from a pocket created in the center of the origami boat.
Broots laughed. Jarod's puzzles were tremendous fun to solve. Miss Parker shot him a disapproving glance and Broots stopped. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands in his pocket; any humor in the moment was now erased.
Parker handed the paper boat and crew back to Sidney. "What's Jarod up to, Sidney?" She asked, expectantly waiting for an answer. Sidney simply shrugged in response.
Miss Parker rolled her eyes, turning away. "Great." She threw her hands in the air. "That's just great." She turned back to face Sidney and Broots. Her frustration was apparent.
"How about you boys call me when you find something ~useful~." Parker spun and took a couple of steps, distancing herself from the conversation. Then she began pacing as she thought through her next action. She felt her blood pressure rising, and the acid churning in her stomach. Jarod seemed to specialize in aggravating her ulcer.
Parker was frustrated. She'd been a rapidly rising corporate star until her career had been sidetracked by Jarod's escape. She stopped walking and leaned against another stack of boxes, slipping a cigarette from the silver case in her jacket pocket. She lit it, taking a deep drag. She let her head fall back, relaxing as the nicotine soothed her ragged nerves.
"Look here, Sidney." Broots slipped the paper figures from the boat out of Sidney's hands. "Look!" He said again, arranging the figures out in a line on top of the stack of boxes nearest him. "They're not all the same. See, seven of the figures have a cross drawn on them." Broots pointed, illustrating his observation. "But, the last one has a tear drop instead." Adding at the last minute he said, "...and his legs are shorter." Broots was excited. He loved finding Jarod's clues.
"I don't know what it means ... but it's something, right!?" Broots looked from Sidney to Parker, seeking validation. Parker and Sidney exchanged a glance. Both stepped in to take a closer look. Miss Parker was further away and scrambled to look over Sidney's shoulder at the figures arranged on top of the box. "Well, I think it's something." Broots added after a moment's silence, feeling somewhat deflated. Sidney smiled at him, nodding.
Sidney picked up the eighth figure, studying it. He turned the figure over, noticing for the first time a word on the back. He slipped his reading glasses out of his breast pocket, squinting to see the tiny word hand lettered on the rear of the paper figure.
"What does it say, Sidney" Broots questioned. He leaned in, blocking Sidney's light. "Oh, sorry, Sidney." Broots said as he stepped back, fidgeting. He knew they'd found something important. He was full of energy and anxious to get to work putting the pieces together.
"It says 'Remember'." Sidney commented in an amused voice. He replaced the figure on the top of the box, and shoved his hands in his pocket.
"Well, Sidney." Miss Parker said, interjecting herself into the conversation again, "Do you?"
"No." Sidney chucked. He returned the figure to the box top; placing it next to it's fellows.
"Well, what is our boy wonder up to?" Miss Parker mused to herself. Her face was tense. Her neck was beginning to flush red. She hated being outwitted by anyone, even Jarod.
"I have no idea." Sidney chucked again, smiling. He shrugged his shoulders for emphasis.
Parker sighed. "Why doesn't that surprise me." She nearly growled at Sidney. Looking away, she inhaled deeply on the cigarette again. Turning back, she blew smoke in his face. Then, she added. "Figure it out, Sidney." She punctuated her sentiment with a cold stare.
Having nothing else to say, Parker pivoted on one heel and stormed out of the storage room. Her response was more a reflection of her own sense of impotence when it came to Jarod than about any displeasure with Sidney or Broots.
This time it was Broots and Sidney who exchanged glances. "S-she needs to switch to decaff." Broots announced. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Sidney nodded, grinning. Jarod certainly did have a way of keeping everyone on their toes.
After a moment, a shadow crossed Sidney's face. "Broots," He hesitated. "Can you check something for me?" He asked.
"Sure, Sid. What is it?" Broots was eager to help as always. He and Sidney worked well together. Each respected the other's approach. Sidney especially appreciated Broots's resourcefulness and attention to detail.
"I need you to cross reference 'G.I.' in the case files with records boating accidents." Sidney's eyes seemed dark and distant. Something in the back of his mind was beginning to jog. Something he couldn't place just yet.
"Sure thing." Broots said quickly, glancing up a bit startled by the rapid change in Sidney's demeanor. "You remember something?" he asked.
"No." Sidney's replied, the answer a bit too curt to be considered completely honest. He knew the answer was in the clues Jarod had given him. He just couldn't remember...not yet.
Sierra Inn, Outside Bakersfield, CA
Room 10
Jarod had spent the last half-hour pacing the length of his room at the Sierra Inn, surprised at how reluctant he'd been to view the DSA he'd been thinking about all day. He stopped at the window, looking out at the early evening stars as they emerged from their daylight slumber.
Turning away from the window, Jarod began pacing. The carpet of the room was thin and rough, worn in the path Jarod walked by a hundred prior visitors. Under the circumstances, the small room held the same sense of confinement that Jarod's room at the Centre had. Jarod knew that was an outgrowth of the fear he felt at the idea of facing the ghosts of the Galacia Islander, but that fact didn't diminish his sense of anxiety.
Jarod's curiosity eventually outpaced his fear and he returned to the bed. He sat on the edge, collecting his thoughts. It had been nearly twenty years since he'd last viewed the crew case files from the Galacia 146. "Twenty years if you don't count nightmares." He quipped with himself. A dark sense of irony seeped into his words, resulting in a subtle grin behind his dark eyes.
The truth was very important to Jarod, perhaps more important to him than to others because he'd lost so much of his life to lies. He knew it would be painful to view the Centre's records of his Galacia simulation. But, he felt he needed to see it again; this time without the emotional filters his mind had no doubt added to his private recollections.
Jarod shifted, reaching for the DSA reader. He heard the springs creak as he moved. He slid the chrome case toward him. Hesitating for a moment, he closed his eyes taking a deep breath. It was time. Jarod lifted the lid, pushed the small silver disk into the DSA reader, and pressed play.
The black and white screen jumped to life. Jarod was not shocked to see Sidney's face as it had looked when he was growing up. Since he left the Centre, he'd begun reclaiming his life by looking at it as others had, on glowing screens far removed from the very personal and painful truth of what it was like to become the tortured souls he had "pretended" to be during his life there. In some ways, it had actually been a comfort to see Sidney change over the years as he viewed various DSA's. It gave him a sense of connection to that distant life.
Jarod shivered slightly as the room he knew so well from his incarceration at the Centre appeared in front of him on the DSA screen. The walls of the simulation lab were bare concrete with a cold industrial feel. The lab was packed with audio-visual equipment designed to enhance the pretender's sensory experience of the simulation. When these failed to produce the desired results, props or "lab assistants" substituted the "stimulus" deemed necessary to assist the pretender with accurately experiencing what the target had (or might have) experienced.
A white screen ten feet tall by twenty feet long occupied most of the far wall. Projected onto it were photographs of the disabled Galacia Islander along with the faces of the "targets" of the pretend, both prior to their departure that fateful day and the remains recovered during a period of "political openness" with the Soviets. Alternating with these photographs were other images declared "useful" by those who prepared the simulation. Some focused on the crew's injuries, others were navigational charts, and others yet were surveillance photos of the base where the unlucky crew had been held.
Jarod felt the muscles of his neck tense, becoming roped knots. He reached up, massaging the back of his neck with his left hand. He leaned his head from side to side in a vein attempt to relax. Even with the DSA showing only black and white images, the sim lab felt nearer than the pretender now was, or would ever be, truly comfortable with. He'd spent over two years running from that room, yet each time he saw it on a DSA, at some level, he felt back inside of it, trapped.
Jarod had completed hundreds of simulations during his time at the Centre. A few affected him more significantly than the rest. Even after completing those simulations, the thoughts and experiences of the "targets" invaded Jarod's mind and dreams. Jarod had come to believe that some experiences are so heinous and unjust that they refuse to die a peaceful death, either with the poor souls who first encounter them, or in the labs where geniuses like him attempted to extract them from the darkness. Galacia 146 had been one such simulation.
Jarod forced himself to concentrate on the desk to the left of the primary simulation staging area. It was Sidney's desk. Today, Jarod was watching this DSA to understand something more important to him than the fate of eight fishermen he'd never met. Today, his "target" was much more personal.
Jarod's eyes took on a dark intensity as he gazed at the DSA screen absorbing Sidney's words and expressions, carefully noting each gesture and subtle changes in posture. It was Sidney's actions, not the actions of crew or Soviet interrogators that captured the pretender's focus. Jarod had long since answered the questions about what each prisoner and interrogator had done and why. Nestled beyond the trauma of living the last harrowing hours of each man's life was a much more personal wound; a much more intimate one. Jarod wanted to know why Sidney had done what he had those days almost twenty years before.
"Why didn't you protect me?" he whispered under his breath between clenched teeth. "Why did you let them do that to me?" he asked, knowing only Sidney had the answer. Jarod's eyes were wet. He unconsciously crossed his arms across his chest, in a gesture of both self-comfort and self-protection. Jarod watched the actions of that unfold as the DSA simulation record played on.
Jarod flinched as a child-sized version of himself lay in spasm on the floor, writhing in agony and screaming on the screen in front of him. Jarod felt his hands begin to shake and pressed the "pause" button on the DSA player. A twenty-year-old image of his face lay frozen on the screen, eyes wide in fear and pain, mouth contorted in a silent scream.
Jarod became aware his chest was tight, and noticed he was breathing in short rapid gasps. He stood, taking a deep breath, and focusing on the muscles of his legs in an attempt to avoid being dragged into a haze of memories. He paced again, this time aware of the pounding of his heart inside his chest. He ran his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes, trying to block out the lingering images from the DSA.
"Why, Sidney, Why?" was the mantra silently pounding in his brain. It had been the question occupying his mind for much of the last few weeks. "Why would anyone do that to a child? Or, more importantly, why would anyone standby and let it happen." He wondered silently.
Jarod stopped pacing, and stared back as the DSA player. His mind was clearing. He'd noticed something important. Sidney had been in the room at the beginning of the simulation, "...but where was he at the end?" Jarod wondered. A shadow of pain lingered in his eyes.
"Where were you when I needed you?" Jarod accused the ghost of Sidney that hung in his mind's eye.
Exhausted and shaky, the pretender closed the lid of the DSA player, turning it off. He dropped heavily onto the lumpy hotel mattress, sorting through the information he'd seen on the DSA, consciously avoiding the images of himself and of the simulation itself.
Tonight, Jarod sought to reconstruct the actions and movements of the technicians and project coordinators in the room during the original simulations. When he'd done the series simulations known as Galacia 146 twenty years before, the pretend had been so intense it had engulfed each of his five senses. He'd not been aware of anyone or anything around him. All he saw and felt was translated through the filter of the pretend. He'd long ago answered the questions of the fate of the fishermen. This time he hoped to understand what Sidney's actions and motivations had been.
Thinking through the observations he'd made, Jarod concluded he'd have to review the DSA one more time, this time concentrating solely Sidney's movements to avoid being distracted by the other images. He needed to know where Sidney had been during each phase of the simulation. He needed to know how much of each simulation Sidney had approved of.
"Yes." Jarod thought. "I'll look at it one more time....but not now." With that, he walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He needed a hot shower. He needed to relax and feel clean.
Jarod undressed quickly, discarding his clothes on the floor, and turned the water on. He stepped into the white fiberglass tub flicking the switch to send the hot water to the showerhead. He turned, facing away from the flow of water. The hot stream pounding at his back was soothing. He breathed in the warm moist air, pleased to have a reprieve from his memories of the simulation lab. He felt the cold of the sim lab melting away. He stood, letting the water wash over him simply feeling warm.
Blue Cove, DE
Tech Room -- Broots's Office
Broots had come in early and
was just returning from the break room with a fresh cup of coffee. Debbie, his daughter, had the lead in the fifth grade drama project. He chuckled. "They used to just call them school plays." He said quietly, and smiled. He planned to leave early today to catch the afternoon performance at George Washington Elementary.
Broots looked happy as he walked back to his desk, sipping the hot coffee. He liked coming in before the rest of his coworkers. For once, the Centre was quiet. He'd also come in early because he was anxious to see the results of several search algorithms he'd started after meeting the night before with Miss Parker and Sidney.
Nearing his desk, Broots could see his computer screen flashing a message. "Data search complete: 23 matches found" flashed in a red box in the center of his screen. He slipped into his chair, setting his coffee aside. He leaned forward and he began typing, his attention focused on the file transfer protocols and data path he sought. "Touchdown!" he thought, grinning. "Or not..." He raised his eyes brows, shrugging, not wanting to get too hopeful too soon. He knew it could be a false lead, but it was the first hit in almost a week. He couldn't help but be a little bit excited.
Broots typed for several minutes, pulling up the file information and digitized records his search had located. Attached to the primary files were several wire service reports and diplomatic service memorandums. The Centre had been contracted by an unnamed government agency in the mid 70's to investigate the "Galacia Islander Incident". The government had apparently opened their records because several classified documents were embedded in the Centre's file database.
Broots scanned through the documents, picking out the salient points from the attached summaries. "Man... oh man" he sighed. "No wonder Jarod wanted Sidney to remember this.... I mean, gees, who could forget it." He said under his breath. Broots glanced over his shoulder suddenly aware he was still inside the Centre, and that the Centre had eyes and ears everywhere.
Broots reached for the phone, quickly dialing Sidney's office. "Pickup...come on." He tapped his foot. Sidney's voice mail kicked on. Broots sighed, and waited through the message. He'd forgotten Sidney wouldn't be in yet. An electronic, slightly feminine voice instructed him to leave a message at the tone. "Sid, I've found what Jarod was.... I mean, I found it, Sidney. 'G.I.', I know what it means. Call me."
Broots hung up and drummed his fingers on the desk. He debated about calling Sidney at home, but decided against it. As excited as he was, he knew that waiting another hour for Sidney to arrive wouldn't hurt their chances of finding Jarod. "Besides", he reasoned with himself. "Everyone here has so little private life. It wouldn't be right to interrupt the little time Sidney has away from here."
Broots sat, sipping more coffee. He was beginning to feel caffeine jitters. He decided to review the files in more detail. Maybe he could figure out exactly why Jarod wanted to remind Sidney of the Galacia Islander. He cross-referenced the Center logs to see who the project coordinator was and who had worked on the Centre's part of the project. He quickly ran into standard Centre security firewalls and began carefully working his way past them. Thought Broots could never be completely certain, he believed it was likely that he'd been recruited primarily for his skill at doing exactly what he was now, defeating the best database security on the market.
Broots glanced at his watch. Sidney should be there in about 45 minutes.
Sierra Inn - Room 10
Jarod lay sleeping on his side facing the door, unconsciously preparing for a sweeper team to crash through it, taking him back to the Centre. His eyes shot from right to left beneath closed lids. Perspiration glistened on his forehead. His body jumped minutely against the paralysis of sleep as he winced and fought the demons in his mind. His breathing was fast, jagged. He'd drawn his shoulders in, bracing himself against an unseen foe in his dreams...nightmares.
It was another night like many others for the pretender. Since being taken to the Center as a child, the nightmares had never stopped. Tonight, Jarod's dreams were chaotic blends of the various Galacia simulations. The dreams had been worse for the last few weeks. Each night, he'd revisit the tortuous last hours of the Galacia's crew as they died in a Siberian prison. Each dream ended with him taking the place of the eighth crewman. He'd be chained to a wall with rats moving in. He could see their sharp yellowed teeth as they approached, but he couldn't escape them. He'd cry out, pleading for Sidney to come...but he never did.
Jarod's breath came faster, with his voice beginning to hold an edge of fear audible in the words mumbled in his sleep. Grunts and cries of pain began replacing his frantic breath. His closed eyes bolted around from right to left, as he frantically sought help. His heart was pounding now. Earlier winces became small tensed, jerking struggles. Jarod's closed eyes, looked squinted as he grimaced in pain.
Finally, bolting awake, the pretender sat upright in bed, drenched in sweat. "Sidney!" he screamed. Jarod gulped spasmodically for air. The dark room seemed closed in and small. Jarod blinked quickly, surprised to find himself awake and no longer in the frightening realm of his nightmare. The sweat on Jarod's arms was quickly turning cold and icy. His mouth felt full of cotton, his throat acid from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Jarod sat for a moment, startled to find himself in a hotel instead of a prison in Siberia.
Grief quickly began replacing the terror that had filled his consciousness a moment earlier. Jarod's body began relaxing, but his hands still trembled. He sat further up, and shifted so he was leaning against the headboard. He wrapped his arms around his chest in a self-protective hug. He tried to use the calming technique Sidney had taught him as a child, simple calming breaths and counting.
Jarod felt emotions welling up. The darkness was moving in again. He pulled his knees to his chest. He hugged them and burring his face as his body shook as tears took hold. He looked like the child who'd spent so many nights huddled in the dark of his room at the Centre, afraid to cry out, afraid to sleep. He was that boy, just grown larger and physically stronger by the years since past. He rocked, letting tears silently roll down his cheeks, hoping they could take with them some of the pain, some of the memories. "Sidney, where were you?" he whispered to the darkness. "I needed you...." He trailed off.
Jarod began rocking himself back and forth, letting numbness replace the pain inside of him. He tried to let the images of the past and his dream fade away into the darkness. He started humming a piece of an old lullaby. His voice was horse, but the thought of the simple tune calmed him. He didn't remember the words, but he knew the melody. Catherine Parker once held him and hummed it to him after a nightmare like this one.
Jarod had not known why Catherine Parker came to his room that night, but he'd rejoiced at the time. He remembered her coming to him and scooping him up off the cold floor where he lay huddled, crying in the dark. She put him on her lap, encircled in her safe arms. She'd rocked him for hours, humming the simple song over and over. He'd not felt that safe, that loved, for a very long time since then. She was shot and killed a few weeks later.
The intensity of the dream was subsiding now. His heart was calmer and he'd finally quit shaking. Jarod looked up at the ceiling. His mind was clear and sharp again. His body and mind were both beginning to calm. He stood, flexing and stretching. His arms and legs felt cramped. His stomach felt uneasy, knotted, but he attributed that to his emotional state and not to his lack of dinner. The worn carpet underfoot was comforting. It reminded him he wasn't at the Centre.
Jarod walked to the bathroom, fumbling for the light switch. He clicked on the overhead light and turned, facing the mirror. He reached with one hand, turning on the water and letting it flow. Jarod leaned in, one hand braced on each side of the sink. He looked deeply into his own face. "I'm never going back there. I'm never going back. I can't." He thought, imagining each word as a bold statement. The words, even unspoken, help steady his mind. Jarod was familiar with grounding himself after a nightmare. He'd done it so often that it was no longer difficult.
Jarod paused, looking more closely at the face looking back in the mirror. He was still learning to accept what he looked like. He wasn't shocked to see his brown eyes and angled jaw, but he still struggled to think of ~that face~ as his own. With bitterness, Jarod remembered that he had rarely been allowed to see a mirror while he'd been at the Center. It had been decided that he would be more successful at 'pretending' if he wasn't "burdened" by a sense of identity.
Jarod leaned over the sink and splashed his face with water, drying it with a rough white towel that hung from the bar on the wall. "I'm okay. I'm a Pretender. I can be anything I want to be." He said just under his breath. He paused, hearing his inner voice's sarcastic reply, "Oh yeah! Right now you want to be sleeping. Some Pretender you are." Jarod shook his head smiling at the irony of the moment and flicked the light switch off. It was only 1:00am. Morning was a long way off.
The Centre, Blue Clove
Corridor 2 South, Near Employee Entrance 5
Miss Parker sauntered down the hall, wishing she'd had a second cup of coffee before leaving home. The clicking of her heels was buried among the sounds of the other corporate and technical staff rushing through the corridor on the way to their respective offices. She stopped, waiting for an elevator. She pivoted, looking around her. The scurrying in the halls reminded Parker of rats in a maze, only this time the rats were wearing suits and skirts. The corner of her mouth turned up in a dark smile.
"Good Morning, Angel." Mr. Parker raised his voice to be heard over the din.
Miss Parker tensed slightly as she heard the familiar voice behind her. Much as she wished it wasn't the case, her father rarely bothered to track her down for purely social reasons. She turned, facing her father. "Daddy." She said in reply to his greeting. She blinked quickly. She was feeling slightly off balance.
Miss Parker leaned in as her father kissed her cheek in his typical manor. She couldn't resist the emotional pull she felt toward the man. She wanted his acceptance, she always had. But, unfortunately, moments like this tended to make her feel more like the fish on the end of a line than a beloved daughter.
"What brings you down here today?" Miss Parker managed, disliking how nervous she felt around her father. She always felt like a child when he spoke to her.
"Oh, just checking on the pursuit, Angel." Mr. Parker said in a casual voice. He seemed to intentionally make eye contact with his daughter, scanning her face for something. Miss Parker doubted his inquiry at this moment was purely coincidence. She'd check with Broots to see what stones he'd over turned since last night. It appeared he'd found something of interest to the Tower if her father was here now.
"We're making progress." Miss Parker hedged. Glancing out the corner of her eye, she noted the lights indicating the elevator's position were climbing closer.
"Good, Good. Jarod's very important to the Centre, you know. Very important." Mr. Parker said. His face became stern as he looked at his daughter.
"Yes, of course." Miss Parker replied. She nodded slightly, her voice having lost the edge and strength more typical of her.
Miss Parker felt relieved as a tone chimed in front of her, announcing the arrival of the elevator. "I've got to go, Daddy." She announced as she stepped forward past the door. Once inside, she turned to face her father as the doors began to close.
Mr. Parker smiled at his daughter. She noted only his lips smiled, not his eyes. "Good talking to you, Angel. You'll be sure to keep me informed." He said, raising his voice to be heard as he watched her go. Miss Parker nodded in reply as the door closed.
Miss Parker felt her shoulders relax as the elevator jerked to life. Every conversation with her father seemed complicated. She glanced over her shoulder self conscious of the feeling she'd momentarily lost control. She took a deep breath, looking at the ceiling. She now wished it was a gin and tonic waiting for her at her office, not coffee. "Damn you, Jarod." She said under her breath. Since he'd run away, everything at the Centre had become more complicated.
The Centre, Tech Room - Broots's Terminal
"Don't you think we should wait for Miss Parker?" Broots questioned Sidney. His shoulders were tense. He didn't like doing things behind her back. She had a habit of taking it personally. Broots cleared his throat nervously. Before Sidney could answer, Miss Parker strolled into the room.
"Yes. I think that would be a lovely idea." She said, placing one hand on her hip and raising an eyebrow as she looked disapprovingly toward Sidney. Turning her attention to Broots she added. "What have you got, Broots?"
"Oh, Miss Parker." Broots stammered. "I'm glad you're here." He had a guilty expression and felt his cheeks flush. He knew he'd not been doing anything wrong, but it always felt that way when Miss Parker was around. He turned to face his terminal. He typed several quick commands bringing up the files from this morning. He selected an item, and clicked his mouse. His printer sprung to life and a list of coded files emerged.
"I did a little research...and it looks like I hit the mother load." Broots grinned and slipped the page off his printer. He handed it to Miss Parker and turned back toward his computer, typing another command. Sidney leaned over Miss Parker's shoulder taking in the information on the page he'd printed.
"What is this, Broots?" Miss Parker asked, looking annoyed. Then she added, "This could be Bill Clinton's black book for all I can tell." She tossed the paper back at Broots, touching her forehead and grimacing. A headache was starting and it was only eight in the morning. Before the paper had a chance to fall, Sidney reached out and grabbed it midair. He examined it closely, running his finger down the list of coded numbers and dates.
Sounding slightly annoyed with Miss Parker's lack of attention, Sidney explained, "It's an archive list of simulations done on a project called Galacia 146." He placed the paper on the corner of Broots's desk.
Broots swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to summarize all the data he'd read. He glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of his colleagues. "It's about the Galacia Islander - that's our 'G.I.', Sidney." Broots glanced Sidney's direction, and then looked at Parker.
"Galacia Islander was a ship that got stuck in the ice...sort of. It was off the coast of Alaska and the Russians picked up the crew. It's not clear from these files exactly why, but the crew was taken for debriefing to some super-secret military base in Siberia." Broots nodded for emphasis.
Broots typed a DSA file code into his computer. "Jarod worked on the project. He has the complete DSA files still, but here's a piece of it that was encoded with the report." Broots hit a few more keys and a box appeared on his screen. "It's only a few seconds long." He said. Broots looked at Miss Parker, making sure he had her permission before he clicked an arrow at the bottom of the box. She nodded.
Thirty seconds of streaming video played on with Parker, Broots, and Sidney all focused on the small screen. The image was of Jarod being given instructions from Sidney to become the first crewmember from the Galacia Islander. Young Jarod turned, facing a large projection screen with the man's face. Jarod's expression shifted and he began talking about how afraid he was, and how he feared he'd been abandoned by his government. He was afraid someone, an interrogator, would hurt him...torture him. Then the video ended.
Broots and Parker turned to face Sidney. Parker spoke first. "Remember now, Sidney?" She asked in a sarcastic voice. Sidney nodded and looked away. His brow was furrowed. Sidney looked at the computer screen rather than making eye contact with the others. He was self conscious of the image they'd just seen. His work had been very important to him, but he doubted either of his colleagues could understand why he'd done what he had. What disturbed him more was the feeling that he still didn't understand why Jarod was revisiting this particular simulation and what message Jarod was trying to give him in the process.
Broots seemed out of breath, but he continued, swiveling his chair to facing the computer again. "Here's where it gets interesting." He said.
Broots pulled up several files as he explained. "Well, it looks like there were eight crew members...from the news accounts, anyway." Broots selected a file and a black and white image of a newspaper clipping appeared on the screen. Heavy dark print announced '8 Lost at Sea'.
Miss Parker tilted her head and interrupted, speaking under her breath. "That explains our paper dolls." Broots looked over his shoulder at her. She touched his shoulder; looking annoyed he'd stopped. "Go ahead." She instructed.
"But, it's strange..." Broots paused slightly before proceeding. "See, in the files you made, Sidney, you only reference seven crewmembers. Seven, not eight." Broots finished, pointing at a list of simulations and a summary he'd brought up on the screen.
Broots paused again, glancing Sidney's direction. Sidney seemed distracted. He was no longer looking in Broots's direction. His eyes were distant with a crease growing in his forehead. Sidney was concentrating, remembering.
"Where's our lucky eighth crewman?" Miss Parker asked to no one as she leaned in over Broots's shoulder, scanning the files listed on his screen. They seemed to be coded based on the date and which of the crewmen Sidney had assigned Jarod to simulate.
As Parker and Broots spoke, Sidney's eyes were drawn to the pile of oversize paper rolled up on the far corner of Broots's desk. Sidney realized Broots had brought the sketches from Jarod's last lair to his office so they could be digitized into the database. At the moment, they sat next to a scanner.
Sidney had taught Jarod to trust his instincts, and it was now that same sort of instinct that drew Sidney to the sketches. The elder man took a step forward. He unrolled the sketches and sorted through them, selecting the dark, nightmarish image Jarod had focused on in the largest drawing. Sidney held it up, examining it again. He intuitively knew it was important and related to the subject at hand.
Miss Parker noticed Sidney sort through the sketches, but didn't interrupt. She turned her attention back to the computer screen; her eyes slowly crawling down the page. There was one file that stood out. She pointed at the monitor screen. "What's this one?" She asked Broots. "It's coded differently than the rest." She said.
"Oh, that's been logged by someone other than Sidney." Broots explained, as he continued typing. He was running a system search to see if he'd missed any files.
Parker put her hands on Broots's shoulders and felt him tense slightly. She ignored his discomfort and flexed her hands slightly. She considered the information on the screen in front of her for a moment and then spoke. "Broots, the answer to Jarod's puzzle is in that file. Open it." She instructed.
Broots typed something, and a small red glowing box appeared on the screen. It requested a security code to access the file he'd selected. Broots tried typing something, but a chime toned and the words "Access denied" appeared in the box.
"I can't open it, Miss Parker. It's locked." He paused, expecting her to be angry.
"Well get it unlocked." Miss Parker said in a voice less threatening than Broots had expected. "I want to get in there." She announced.
Miss Parker straightened again letting her hands fall back to her sides. She had a distracted expression. She was thinking about the conversation she'd just had with her father. She was more curious than ever now. "What secrets are you hiding?" she said under her breath. Broots raised an eyebrow, but then realized her statement wasn't directed at him.
Miss Parker turned, facing Sidney. "When you finish your trip down memory lane, maybe you could help us figure this one out, Sid." Miss Parker tapped her foot, watching Sidney. He ignored her.
"What did you remember? Cough it up." Miss Parker demanded. She felt impatient. It felt like they were wasting time following another of Jarod's riddles instead of getting on a jet on the way to capture him. Sidney looked up, but Parker couldn't read his expression.
Sidney's spoke slowly, as if some dark memory weighed him down. "The simulations of the first seven crewmen were routine." Sidney explained in a neutral voice. "The men I'd asked Jarod to simulate had been interrogated..." he hesitated for a moment before continuing, "some of them had been tortured, but Jarod had simulated dozens of similar scenarios before and he had no difficulty with any of them."
Parker shook her head, incredulous. An ironic smile was pasted on her face. "You tell Jarod to simulate torture and you call it routine." She paused, "You're some piece of work, Sidney." Parker seemed genuinely amused by Sidney's comment. He met her eyes with an angry glance.
Sidney continued, speaking more easily now that the more charged element of the disclosure had been made. "After the simulation, Jarod seemed depressed and refused to eat on several occasions. At the time I assumed he was over-worked, so I gave him more recreation time. In a few weeks, he was back to his usual self." Sidney finished
"And how does that fit?" Parker asked, pointing at the sketch in Sidney's hands.
"After the simulation, Jarod had trouble with nightmares." Sidney explained, and turned the sketch so Parker could see it. "I was concerned, but his symptoms improved over the next few weeks." Sidney seemed to struggle to explain something he understood, but didn't want to admit. "It looks like his nightmares are back." He finally said, turning his gaze to the image on the page he held.
Parker shook her head and turned away. It seemed like an accusation to Sidney. His face flushed, and anger burst forth. "It was science." He announced. Sidney took in a deep breath and regained control of himself. He turned to face her and added. "I would never have hurt Jarod. I was his protector."
Miss Parker ignored Sidney's comment and directed her words to Broots. "We need to know about the eighth sailor." She said simply. "We need to know what's in that file." Her eyes looked sly. She was scheming. She knew when they'd found a good lead, and this was one.
"Okay, Jarod, let's walk down memory lane." She said to herself. She also knew when she was being lead somewhere Jarod wanted to take her, but usually, it helped get her a step closer to finding him. She could live with the trade off. She leaned in over Broots's shoulder again as his fingers flew across his keyboard. He tried various security codes on the locked file without success. She glanced over at Sidney. His gaze had returned the sketch he'd been holding earlier. It was now resting face up on the far edge of Broots's desk. Sidney's eyes seemed to study it though his hands were shoved in his pockets.
Sidney had a feeling he knew what was in the mystery file. He recognized the code when Miss Parker had first pointed it out. It looked like one that Dr. Raines had used back then. What bothered him was that Raines shouldn't have been associated with the Galacia project.
Miss Parker sauntered closer to Sidney, interrupting his thoughts. She crossed her arms and spoke, using an almost seductive voice. "Sidney...what do you know about the eighth crewman? And, what does he have to do with your new found interest in art?" She asked.
Sidney considered his words for a few seconds, and then answered her gaze. "I know enough." He said simply. Sidney paused, and then added, "I wouldn't permit Jarod to simulate that experience." Sidney's words were clipped and shortened. He pressed his lips together. Broots and Parker exchanged a glance. Sidney ignored them, captured for a moment by his own memory. He let his eyes fall back to Jarod's sketch.
Parker raised her hands, exasperated. "What?!" Parker was loosing patience. "What aren't you telling me?"
Sidney picked up the index list Broots had printed. He glanced at it briefly. Ignoring Parker, he turned to Broots. "Broots, did you find the medical record of the crewmen from the simulation?" Sidney asked.
Broots shruged. "Yeah, I think so." He brought up a list, and scrolled the cursor down, highlighting a coded file.
Parker looked at Sidney. "Why? What's in it?" She said, her eyes narrowing.
"Your answers." Sidney said, turning his face to meet her eyes.
Broots selected a print option for the file Sidney'd asked about and a dozen paged proceeded out of his printer. Parker looked at Sidney. He picked up the pages, and then handed them to her. She accepted them, with a slightly confused look on her face.
Then, Sidney turned and walked to the door. There, he reached out and grabbed the doorframe for a moment, steadying himself. After a moment's pause, he slipped quietly out of the room and down the hallway. Parker watched him leave the room, a bit surprised at the elder man's reaction. She'd rarely seen Sidney in such a dark mood.
Parker glanced back at the pages in her hands. She quickly scanned the report. The first two pages summarized autopsy findings on the first seven crewmen. They'd all had numerous broken bones. Most had obviously been beaten. It appeared they'd all died within days of their capture. Autopsies indicated all seven died of single gun shot wounds to the temple. They'd been executed.
As Parker turned to the third page, the report changed from post mortem reports, to a report detailing a medical and psychological examination of another patient, presumably crewman eight. His name had been Roger Schitowsky. He'd been only 23 years old. Most importantly, he'd been returned to the United States alive -- if you could call his condition living, anyway. She was startled by the description she read.
Miss Parker's face went pale. She glanced up, her eyes needing a break from what she was seeing. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, then looked at the ceiling as she took a deep breath. Broots had never seen her react this way before. She looked really rattled. He looked away. It seemed rude to stare.
Parker returned to reading, self-conscious about permitting Broots to see any weakness. Parker turned the page again and reviewed the findings of the US Army medical panel who'd examined crewman eight. It appeared that the Russians had packaged him in a body bag, thinking he was dead. Routine inspection at a US base in Japan revealed he still had a pulse and resuscitation efforts had been initiated. During brief periods of lucidity in the days that followed he'd reported an experience nearly too horrible to imagine.
The man's initial injuries were similar to his fellow crewmen including broken ribs, cheekbones, fingers and toes. What distinguished him from the others was his emaciated appearance which was explained by the next finding. From the pressure sores on his ankles, wrists, back and buttocks, a medical panel had determined that he'd been chained to a wall and simply left.
Miss Parker shivered. She didn't know how long it took for skin to break down into the large gaping ulcers described in the report, but she imagined it was a long and agonizing process. She thought about what it must have been like to sit there, waiting to die, as your skin dissolved. Parker felt a knot growing in her stomach. Disturbed, She forced herself to read on.
During an interview, the crewman had described his position in a cell below a leaking pipe. He'd managed to catch the falling water in his mouth to stay alive, but the water that had kept him alive came at a price. He sat constantly in a puddle of cold water with a steady drip drop pounding him relentlessly for weeks. Finally, too weak to move, the rats had begun moving in. He'd lost parts of his feet to the rats while he was still awake. As he'd lost consciousness, the rats had moved in toward his torso, eating other soft tissue including portions of his abdomen and thigh.
Miss Parker's thoughts turned to the paper dolls she'd seen the day before. Clearly, Jarod had been telling them about this crewman with the doll whose legs had been shorter than the rest. She shivered.
The report continued, but Miss Parker couldn't. She looked up again, facing Broots. "It seems Sidney has scruples after all." She said as she dropped the report on Broots's desk. She now understood why Sidney had refused to let Jarod simulate that experience. She turned, and walked in a circle around Broots's desk. She put her hand to her head, rubbing her temple, trying to force away the headache that had grown from a dull ache into a full blown pain.
Broots picked up the file, pulled in by a dark sense of voyeurism. He flipped the page to a report titled "Post Extraction Interview." Here, the crewman discussed his descent into hell; pleading for help initially, he later begged to be killed as the torture and hunger became too extreme to bear. "Gessus...." Broots said under his breath, the blood draining from his face.
Broots read on. As crewman eight sat, immobile day after day, he'd been able to smell the kitchen, but food was never brought. He'd been able to see the sun out a small window as he lay shacked to a cold stone wall, but he'd sat shivering in the cold unable to feel it's warmth. Broots felt the hair on his arms stand up as his body had a sympathetic response to the images he saw in his mind's eye.
Once the initial interrogation by the Russians was over, crewman eight had simply been left in his cell. He assumed they'd decided to let him die a slow death in punishment for a crime he'd never know or understand. According to the report, the sailor denied being a spy and told the American's who cared for him that he never known why he'd been treated so much more harshly than the rest. His best guess was that it was simply because he was the last one to be interrogated. They'd done this too him because they could. There was no more to it than that. The panel of experts writing the report had agreed.
Broots felt numb...and nauseas. He turned to the final page. It was a file summary stating that crewmen number eight, Roger Schitowsky, died four days after his return as a result of multisystem organ failure stemming from systemic infection and shock. He'd spent his last two days in and out of consciousness, screaming. He' been in agonizing pain that even narcotics seemed unable to control as the infection ravaged what was left of his body.
Having finished the reading, Broots placed the report in front of him on the desk. He sat trying to digest what he'd just seen. A shiver went up his arm. "That...that" He stammered and pointed at the pages in front of him. His stomach churned and he couldn't speak.
Parker nodded. She sat in a chair next to Broots's desk and extracted a cigarette from the silver case she carried. She deftly lit the slim white tube inhaling deeply. They sat in silence.
Parker finally spoke. Her eyes looked wet and her face was still pale. She seemed to speak automatically. "We still need to know what's in that locked file, Broots." Her voice was tired. "We need to know why Jarod lead us here." She said in a near whisper.
Broots nodded. "Okay."
Parker rose to her feet, her legs seeming les steady than they'd been a few minutes before. She walked to the door. Hesitating there, she called back to Broots. "Call me as soon as you know what's in that file." Broots nodded in response. Parker brought a hand up to her abdomen, and looked pale again. She slipped out into the hallway, her footsteps retreating toward her office.
Broots's fingers flew over his keyboard; his mind relieved to have a technical task to focus on. He called up several files, accessing various decryption algorithms he'd designed. He'd learned some time ago that you could rarely find the information you needed at the Centre without breaking a few of the rules. Broots kept his eyes on the screen as letters and numbers scrolled along. He tried not to think.
Sidney's Office -- The Centre
Sidney sat in a high backed leather chair. He stared out, his eyes seeing nothing. He was captured by his own thoughts. He revisited the Galacia simulation and the weeks following it in his mind's eye, trying to put the last of the pieces of Jarod's puzzle together.
Sidney reached for the telephone. He dialed Broots's extension and waited for an answer.
Broots answered quickly. "Tech Room, This is Broots." He said.
Sidney's voice was quiet, detached. He knew what the answer would be almost before he asked the question. "The locked file. It's a simulation record?"
Broots paused, looking at the file name and coding. "Yeah." He said. "I think I can get it open in a few more minutes." He added.
"Good." Sidney said, and hung up the phone. He thought again of Jarod's sketch of darkness and isolation. Sidney already had a good idea of what the file would tell them. Someone, likely Raines, had simulated the eighth crewman using Jarod. That's why Jarod had been so upset in the weeks that followed the original simulation.
What bothered Sidney most was that he hadn't known. "I should have." He thought. Guilt born from his protectiveness for Jarod burned inside him.
What Sidney desperately needed to know was what why Jarod had led him back to this simulation. "What's is it, Jarod?" He said under his breath. "What do you need to tell me?"
Sidney steepled his hands under his chin. Anger brewed in his belly. The tactical information had been extracted by pretending the other seven crewmen. There was no advantage to the Centre in completing the final simulation. Sidney suspected Raines had completed the simulation simply as an exercise to see how Jarod would respond.
Sidney's controlled exterior gave way. He made a fist and pounded it on his desk. "How could Raines have been permitted to do that!" He shouted. He was furious, though he wasn't certain if he was more angry with himself or the Centre. "I should have known...." he said more quietly as his anger turned to self-recrimination and grief.
Miss Parker's Office - The Centre
Miss Parker had recovered from the trauma of reliving Jarod's past earlier in the morning. She now sat at her desk reviewing a Center intelligence report on Jarod's most recent known location. She felt impatient. She wanted to move on. Miss Parker had always preferred being in action. She felt more in command that way.
Miss Parker put the report down and fingered the edge of the folder. She thought back to the conversation she'd had with her father that morning. "What secrets are you hiding, Daddy." She thought to herself. Her eyes narrowed. She didn't like being used.
Her telephone rung and she reached for it. "What." she said with a flat tone.
"Miss Parker, it's me." Broots announced.
"What is it, Broots?" She said finding herself torn between irritation at his interruption and pleasure that he might have found the missing link to the dual puzzle of Jarod's game and her father's visit.
"That locked file is a simulation record." He announced, sounding pleased. "It looks like ~Dr. Raines~ came in after Sidney was finished and had Jarod complete one last simulation." Broots voice had a conspiratorial tone.
"The eighth crewman." Miss Parker said, anticipating where Broots was headed.
"Yup." Broots said. "It's all here."
"Thanks, Broots. I'll be there in a minute." Miss Parker said. She thought for a moment and spoke in a more tentative voice. "Broots," she said, "who authorized that simulation?"
Broots glanced down the summary page he was looking at on screen. "It looks like it was your father, Miss Parker." He tried to deliver the information with neutrality. He hoped she wouldn't shoot the messenger.
"Bastard." Miss Parker said under her breath. She hated being played for a fool. "So that's what you were worried I'd find." She said, thinking of her father.
"Huh?" Broots asked, confused.
"Never mind, Broots." Parker said. "Put what you have together and bring it to my office. I want to see every piece of paper attached to this project." She instructed. "And bring me that sim." She added more forcefully.
"You've got it." Broots answered. He hung up the phone and reached for a file folder. It was going to take time to get it all together, but Parker was his boss and he wasn't about to defy her. He hoped Sidney wouldn't mind is telling her first.
Broots highlighted several items on his screen and selected print. In the background he had a feeling that Sidney already had the answers to Jarod's puzzle. Broots had suspected as much since that morning. He guessed that Miss Parker and he were playing catch up to something Sidney already knew.
"Oh well," he thought. "At least I get to be part of the chase." He said as he collected the pages from the printer. He figured by the time he and Parker were done sorting through the file, there'd be a new abandoned lair to discover. The Galacia project appeared to be another dead end.
Broots sighed. He had the distinct sense that this riddle had never truly been about finding Jarod. It had always been about unfinished business between Jarod and Sidney. He smiled briefly about that. Something seemed right about it.
Broots finished collecting the documents he'd printed and shuffled them into folders. It was time to meet with Parker. Maybe they'd find something useful after all, he considered. "Naw, probably not." He thought and smiled. Jarod was never that easy to figure out.
Sierra Inn, Room 10
Jarod had reviewed the simulation and his memory a dozen times. He knew Sidney had been in the room as each of the first seven simulations started. He'd talked Jarod through the beginning of each one, helping the young Jarod slip inside the mind of his targets. Sidney, always a mentor and protector, had walked Jarod through the initial stages, carefully guiding the boy past the emotional pitfalls of working on such intense pretends.
Jarod closed his eyes, mentally seeing it all again. The men he "pretended" to be were asked questions. With Sidney's help, he'd been able to find their answers. He knew what each man had thought. He knew who each man had been. He knew they were all innocent. He'd been able to tell Sidney this with certainty. Sidney had simply nodded as he answered each question.
Then, there was a moment where something was different. It occurred at the same point in each simulation. As a child, sensing this change had left Jarod frightened. He had always been fearful when he didn't understand what was happening. Finally, it had been clear. Sidney was gone, that's what was different. Jarod remembered Sidney being absent throughout the next phase of each of the first seven simulations. During the eighth one, Sidney had never appeared.
Sitting at the window in his room at the Sierra Inn, Jarod kept his eyes closed, remembering. A slow anger replaced the fear he'd felt as a child as he wondered where Sidney had gone during the most difficult parts of each simulation. A sense of betrayal seethed inside him.
Jarod opened his eyes, staring out the window, considering everything he'd seen and felt as a child. As the simulations had marched on, the men he "pretended" were beaten by their interrogators. He felt the blows in his mind. He heard the snapping of bone and the dull thud of punches. He sensed the pain inside each of them. Jarod had known the despair each man felt as he began to break. He knew their fears and the words they'd used to plead for mercy. He knew their horror as the end came. Jarod's stomach tightened as he remembered.
Jarod's eyes turned dark as he recalled his own emotions during that time. Sidney had left the sim lab after the initial interrogation sims were completed. As Jarod focused on the prisoner's last hours, Sidney was nowhere to be seen. Other technicians coached him for answers to the final questions about what each man had thought or felt. And, in that moment, the world of pretend and life collided as Jarod felt the same emotions these men did. He felt abandoned and alone. All of the men he'd "pretended" during the Galacia simulations had felt that way. They'd all been thrown to the wolves.
Jarod's face took on a childlike quality except his ancient eyes, eyes that had seen too much. Jarod remembered in the final moments of each simulation, pleading for help. And, as the simulation ended with the sound of a single gun shot that signaled the death of the "target", Jarod had screamed Sidney's name, pleading for him to come and save him. In that moment, it had felt like it was ~him~ about to be shot, not some fisherman five thousand miles away.
Jarod stood, stepping away from the window. He was aware his heart was pounding again. In his ears, he heard the hollow ringing sound of the gun being fired. The memory of it all was very present in the motel room as he stood, frozen in the center of the room.
One thing Sidney never truly seemed to understand was how real it felt to be inside someone else's mind. He never seemed to know how terrifying it was to momentarily live inside the mind of a man who was about to be murdered. He never seemed to see damaged it caused to live inside the mind of a man who had his feet eaten away by rats while he was still alive. He never seemed to understand how real each thought and emotion was to his young pretender.
Jarod felt his stomach knot. His eyes were angry. His hands, however, were shaking. He ran his fingers through his hair as he walked back to the window. Looking out, he watched dust be caught by the wind, and carried along for a few feet before dying again in a swirl. He felt his throat catch, tears tried to climb up from a long buried slumber. He pushed them away. This wasn't a time for grieving. It was a time for answers. Sidney was gone when Jarod had needed him. It was time to find out why.
Sidney's Office, The Centre
Sidney's telephone rung. He reached for it. "Sidney." He said into the receiver. An almost electric feeling passed through him even before the person on the other end spoke. He'd always had a unique connection to Jarod.
"Miss me, Sidney?" Jarod asked in a tone more sarcastic than curious.
"Jarod! I'd hoped you'd call." Sidney said, genuinely pleased to be speaking to him. "I've been worried about you."
Jarod retorted quickly, "It seems to me your concern is a bit late." His anger was giving way to the hurt her felt. Despite reviewing the DSA again, all he'd really learned with certainty was that Sidney was gone during most of the later part of all the simulations and for the entire simulation of crewman eight's experience. What he craved knowing was why. Some deep inner pain begged for Sidney to tell him that he had not been abandoned. Sidney could hear that pain in Jarod's voice, but he truly wasn't sure what he should say.
Sidney spoke hesitantly. "You were wronged. We both know that." He said and stopped. Sidney wasn't sure what Jarod was looking for, wasn't sure what to say.
Jarod's voice trembled as he replied. "How could you leave me at a time like that?!" He said, the true emotion he felt seeping through a carefully prepared façade of righteous anger.
"The Galacia simulation." Sidney said in a flat voice. He didn't want to think about it.
"You left, Sidney. You left when I needed you." Jarod said. His voice still trembled, but this time it was anger that made its way to the surface. He made a fist. "Where were you, Sidney?!" He demanded. Tears welled up in the pretenders brown eyes. He blinked them back.
Sidney felt old and small. He knew one day these questions would come, but he was no better prepared for them than he'd been when Jarod was a boy. "I didn't leave you." He replied simply.
"What..." was all Jarod managed to say. His mind spun in a torrent of contradicting emotions. He'd seen the DSA. He knew it couldn't be true, though he desperately wanted it to be.
"Jarod, I didn't leave, I was still in the lab." Sidney said. He took a deep breath. It was time to revisit the past whether he liked it or not. Sidney continued, saying, "As you completed the first simulation, crewman one, I saw your face." Sidney paused for a moment, the image floating before him.
Jarod felt his heart pounding, but it felt as if everything around him had stopped, frozen in time as he remembered. The air felt electric, as if he and Sidney were now jointly traveling through time to the dark simulation lab of his past. A finger of ice crept up his spine as he listened.
Sidney continued, his voice sounded reticent and guilt ridden. "You looked so frightened." He said. Sidney's voice lost its strength. Across the continent, Jarod's legs felt weak. He lowered himself into the chair near the window. Silent tears began rolling down his cheeks as he nodded, listening to Sidney's confession.
"You looked so alone..." Sidney said as he struggled to find the next few words. He was unfamiliar with the intensity of this type of disclosure. He switched hands with the telephone hand set, moving it to his other ear.
"I was alone..." Jarod whispered back through the telephone, wishing Sidney was closer, wishing he could see his mentor's eyes. Jarod's face tightened and his shoulders pulled inward as a wave of emotion engulfed him.
Sidney shifted, uncomfortable in his chair. "I... my superiors wanted answers quickly and you'd already found the most important ones." Sidney's voice was detached again. He'd cut himself off from the feelings that had been growing in his belly.
"So you decided to leave me there...let me finish the simulation alone?!" Jarod's anger was back. Sidney felt as though he'd been struck in the chest. He sat, in silence.
"Sidney? Sidney, say something." Jarod demanded. "Where were you?" He asked, the hurt slipping past his indignation.
Sidney's eyes fell to his shoes as he sat at his desk holding the telephone. As a boy, Sidney'd seen terrible things in the war torn countryside of Europe. More times than he could count, he'd looked away as someone was beaten or raped. He wanted to survive and sometimes that meant looking away from the evil around you so as to avoid garnering its wrath. As he sat in his office now an old man, he thought back to those days.
Sidney sat looking at his polished leather oxfords, reminded of the many times he'd memorized the stitching on his small dusty leather shoes as he walked on the road that lead away from his village. He could hear the soldiers sometimes laughing and sometimes shouting as he walked. He'd not had the courage to stop the evil they'd committed there. He'd felt very much the same way the day he'd watched Jarod in the Galacia simulation so many years ago.
Jarod's unanswered question hung in the air between them. Finally, Sidney spoke, quietly answering Jarod's plea to know where he'd been. "I didn't leave you, Jarod." He sighed. "I was there." Sidney's face looked very old, his eyes sad. On the other end of the line, Jarod sat, torn between anger and relief.
Sidney continued, but his voice was zapped of energy. "I was still in the simulation lab. I went to the observation area to call the client and update them on our findings." He paused, remembering each moment of that day with crystal clarity. "When I'd finished, I turned and saw your face." Sidney's mind brought the image back.
Sidney's words cascaded with urgency, pleading for his protégé to understand. "Jarod, you were so young, so small." Sidney's voice failed as he fell into silence for a moment. He felt his chest begin to ache, his body substituting this sensation for the emotions he was unwilling to feel. "You were... so helpless." Sidney said, emotion finally breaking through as his voice caught.
Sidney sat up straighter in his chair, trying to regain his composure. He needed to admit what had happened. It had haunted him and he needed to confess and cleans his soul. He gripped the phone more tightly and spoke into it, pleading for Jarod to understand. "I couldn't stand to watch you be in pain, Jarod. I watched from the observation room, but I couldn't stand to be there with you." He said.
Sidney remembered standing there at the window of the observation room, frozen, paralyzed. A single tear escaping down his cheek as he'd felt the shiver go up his spine when Jarod cried out his name. Sidney had never forgiven himself for the moment of weakness that permitted him to stay standing, watching, instead of going to the boy who cried out for him.
"Why didn't you come back..." Jarod's voice trembled; the wound he felt was obvious in the tone. He sounded quiet and childlike.
Sidney shifted in his chair again, turning to face his desk; he leaned forward, supporting his weight with his arms. "I couldn't."
"Why..." Jarod said, speaking the question he'd thought a hundred times. "Why?"
Sidney replied more easily this time. His words felt more like explanation than confession. "I was supposed to protect you, Jarod, and I couldn't." Sidney's eyes fell back to his desk. "I had been assigned to extract information about the seven sailors from the ship, and I had no choice but to complete the simulation." He finished.
"Seven?" Jarod's thoughts spun. "What are you talking about Sidney?" He demanded.
Sidney spoke more slowly and precisely, wanting to be certain Jarod understood. "I did not approve the final simulation, Jarod. I never knew they did that to you." He gulped back a frog in his throat and continued. "I was responsible for letting you go through the simulation of the first seven crewmen, but I ~never~ would have let you 'pretend' the eighth man's interrogation." Sidney hoped Jarod would forgive him. He felt his palms sweating and switched the hand set back to the other side.
Jarod's face was contorted, his mind confused. "Then how..." was all he could manage. The realization of what the Centre had done to him ~without~ Sidney's approval came crashing down on him. He finally knew why Sidney had not come to him during the most harrowing moments of the eighth simulation. He hadn't known about it. Jarod's cries had truly gone unheard.
Sidney spoke again, knowing he had little comfort to offer. He'd let himself be lulled by false promises. He now wished had had more to offer Jarod than those same weak words. "They promised me you'd be alright. They promised me no one would be hurt." He finally said.
Sidney pleaded with Jarod to understand. "I let myself believe them and I left you in the care of a technician I trusted." Sidney felt breathless. His excuse seemed worthless even as he spoke it. "Raines must have taken over after I left."
Jarod felt rage erupting from a dark place deep inside of him. "You should have known, Sidney! You knew what they were capable of.... You knew you couldn't trust them." He said through clenched teeth. Tears followed and Jarod began to feel numb. Confusion and rage tangled around inside him. He was hearing the answers he'd sought, but they offered him no solace.
Sidney's shoulders fell slightly. There was little left to say. "Yes, Jarod. I should have known." He admitted. Sidney was face to face with the truth that had haunted him for much of the last twenty years. He'd not protected Jarod when he should have. He'd failed him.
Sidney's eyes fell back to his shoes again. He spoke, no longer for Jarod, but for himself. He now revealed the truth he'd never admitted even in private. "I watched through the glass as you cried and screamed. I let myself believe you weren't ~really~ feeling those things, that those feelings were simply those of the 'target'." Sidney remembered so clearly how he'd justified his standing by.
"After the first few simulations, I simply couldn't watch anymore. I
convinced myself you didn't need me." Both Sidney and Jarod knew that had
been a lie, but it was the lie Sidney had wanted to believe.
Sidney continued, saying, "You were moving quickly through the simulation material. I let myself believe my work was done." Sidney finished. Silence grew between them. For Sidney, there was nothing left to say. Jarod knew the truth now.
Jarod felt acid burning in his stomach and tension in his neck. The truth was what he'd come here to find, but he now discovered that it offered him no comfort. The wounded child within him wanted some grand reason for Sidney to have left him. As a boy, he'd imagined that Raines had taken Sidney away, or he'd been in a car crash and been hospitalized. Now, hearing the truth, his mind rebelled at the idea that Sidney had simply walked away and lacked the courage to come back. Jarod stood, touching the glass of the window in front of him. It was cold and hard. Jarod's eyes showed the pain he'd never be able to express in words.
"And, the nightmares, Sidney." Jarod said, hoping for one bit of comfort. He gulped hard. "You had to know then." He pleaded. As a boy, he'd needed Sidney to be there so desperately. "You must have sensed how much I needed you then." Jarod reasoned.
Sidney shook his head. Regret tore at his mind. "You were such an extraordinary child with an incredible gift." Sidney said. He smiled as he remembered how vibrant Jarod had been. Sidney tried to explain saying, "I knew you had been troubled by the simulation, but you seemed to regain your balance in a few weeks." Sidney frowned, knowing it was a pale excuse, but he had nothing more to offer.
Sidney shook his head, angry with himself but hoping Jarod would understand. "I let myself believe that you recovered from it all." He explained. More hesitantly he added, "I wanted to believe you'd forget the simulations in time. I hoped you had."
Jarod felt tears coming and pressure in his chest. He'd never been able to forget moments like those he'd experienced while simulating the Galacia crewmen. But, he had his answers.
Sidney could hear Jarod breathing, but he no longer spoke. "Jarod?" Sidney asked, hoping he was still listening. "I never intended to hurt you." Sidney promised.
Quietly, Jarod replied. "I know, Sidney." In his voice, bitterness and disappointment were both present.
Jarod spoke again, sounding defeated. "You never intended to, but you were a part of it, Sidney. You and Raines." Jarod was tired. Weariness seemed to wash through him.
Sidney winced as Jarod classed him in the same category as Raines. He liked to believe he was nothing like Dr. Raines. After all, he'd always cared for his subjects. But, at some level, he knew Jarod's characterization was accurate.
Sidney listened again, worried about how his disclosure was effecting Jarod. "Are you alright?" Sidney finally asked. His question was tentative. He wasn't sure he'd earned the right to ask Jarod that question.
Jarod forced himself to smile slightly. "I'm managing, Sidney." He said. His anger had fallen away. Sidney should have been many things, including stronger, but he wasn't. The pretender realized in that moment that they'd both been victims of the moment when fear defeats character. Sidney'd had the choice to remove himself to his shield of science and justify everything else. He'd been able to forget Jarod had been a young boy who desperately needed him because it was easier than facing the truth about what was happening to the boy. Jarod understood that, he just couldn't accept it.
"Is there anything you need?" Sidney asked, wishing he'd had better answers to give Jarod.
Jarod walked with the phone in hand, to the bedside and sat down. He felt spent. "Did you love me, Sidney?" he asked in a tentative voice. Jarod rarely admitted he needed to know that. Sidney had let him down, but he was still the nearest thing to family Jarod had ever known.
There was a silence as Sidney struggled to find words. "I've always cared for you." He finally managed. His voice was ambiguous. He knew Jarod needed more, but he knew it was more than he could give. Silently, Sidney wished he'd been more the man Jarod needed, and less the man he was.
Tears began rolling down Jarod's cheeks again. Sidney couldn't bring himself to say it. Jarod doubted he'd ever hear those three words from his mentor. The pain he felt for the loss of his childhood increased as he felt distance growing between himself and the man on the other end of the phone.
"You should have stopped them." Jarod managed to say. On the other end of the phone, Sidney sat, wishing he had.
"I know." Sidney finally replied. The Centre had been a place where you followed orders. He wanted to believe everything he'd done had been as simple as that. But, Sidney knew he'd once promised Jarod refuge. He wished now he'd had the strength to honor that promise.
Jarod hung up the phone, feeling dissatisfied but complete. Knowing Sidney had been just a few feet away behind a mirrored glass panel or that he felt guilt about finally walking away when Jarod had needed him did little to diminish the pain he now felt. Sidney had still never come to the boy's aid. But, Jarod had his answer. He knew where Sidney had been. He knew why he'd not come.
Sidney leaned forward and replaced the hand set in its cradle. He sat in his office at the Centre in silence, acknowledging the crime he'd been party to by walking away. Sidney had known Raines would move in if he stepped away, but he'd simply been too weak to stay in the room and watch Jarod in such pain. He'd not had the strength to watch and do nothing; he'd not had the strength to see it and intervene. His inherent sense of self-protection had permitted himself to call it science and forget the young boy he'd promised to protect. Even then, he'd had suspected Raines had moved in and completed the last simulation. He had let himself believe that wasn't the case, but he'd always known it was true.
Jarod stood at the window in his motel room and watched the dust scatter in the brisk winter wind. Finally he turned and walked to the bathroom. His legs felt heavy and he felt drained despite the early hour. He turned, facing the mirror and flicked on the lights. He placed his palms on the edge of the counter and leaned forward. He faced the mirror, and let himself slip inside the face he'd seen so many times as a child.
Jarod allowed himself to become Sidney, as he'd been when Jarod was a boy. He revisited the Galacia simulations once more, but this time inside his mentor's mind instead of his own. Finally, he knew enough to complete the simulation he'd been preparing. This time, he wanted to be Sidney. He wanted to know how Sidney had felt about him. He wanted to be inside the moment of Sidney's inaction and know with certainty that Sidney had cared for him. Jarod concentrated and the Sierra Inn slipped away.
Perhaps it was enough to know Sidney had loved him. Perhaps it wasn't.
by Terri H.
Jarod sat on the lumpy hotel mattress at the Sierra Inn with his eyes glued to the glowing screen of the DSA reader. It was dusk with an icy winter wind whipping through bare oaks and bent ponderosa pines outside his small hotel room off the interstate. He shifted, hearing the springs of the worn mattress whine. His face wore a troubled expression.
(earlier)
Jarod had elected to take a bus from San Francisco to Bakersfield chasing a possible lead on the whereabouts of the man who appeared to be his father. The ride was pleasant enough, following Pacific Coast Highway along the rocky cliffs of the Monterey coast for the first few hours. Then, turning inland with the terrain gradually flattening to rolling hills and sparse plains.
Jarod didn't mind riding on buses. He found many fascinating people accompanied him. Going south this time he met a young soldier from Louisiana who was returning from a recent training mission in Washington state. His shaved head and southern drawl immediately intrigued Jarod. Between Monterrey and Fresno, they'd discussed the proper preparation of crawdads in fine detail. Jarod made a point to try some when he had the opportunity.
In Fresno, Jarod changed busses, traveling roughly southeasterly through the California Desert. About twenty miles outside of Bakersfield, he'd spotted the Sierra Inn and decided he'd traveled enough today. He got off the bus in the next town, a roadside village that had never seen much traffic but was certainly out of date in a world full of super-centers and auto-malls. The bus depot sat next to an ancient Alpha Beta supermarket, and was only a mile from the Sierra Inn.
Jarod had no appetite so he bypassed the only diner between the depot and the inn, and made good time. The wind turned harsh as he walked. A storm was moving in. While there was no forecast of snow, there was bitterness to the chill that left his ears numb except for occasional sharp pinpricks as a grain of sand careened into his face. He hunched over, bending into the wind and pulling up the collar on his black leather jacket. A definitely chill settled along the front of his thighs as the wind bit through his cotton pants.
As he walked, Jarod found his thoughts drifting away from the father he was seeking, and back to the "father" he'd been raised by, Sidney. He had been Jarod's only companion for nearly thirty years. It was November and the world seemed to be making plans to converge with family and friends for Thanksgiving. Once again, Jarod had nowhere to go, but Sidney had been on his mind for days.
By the time Jarod arrived at the Sierra Inn, he was relieved to simply be out of the gusty weather. The motel was a dilapidated building several miles off the new interstate. "No one will look for me here." He thought as he pushed through the battered wooden door marked "Office". He wasn't sure tonight if he was glad of that. He felt desperately alone at the moment. "It's probably just the cold." He thought to himself. The gray of the winter sunset and the frigid fingers of the cold had increased his sense of isolation, of abandonment. He tried to focus on the moment, distancing himself from those emotions.
Jarod quickly paid for a single for one night and ventured back out along the row of rooms facing the road. The wind tore at his clothes again, but he felt warmer, knowing he'd be inside soon. He stopped at number 10 and slid the key in the lock. It turned easily and he pushed, feeling the flimsy door stick slightly before popping open.
The paint was peeling in the corner and the room smelled of mildew and dust, but neither was of consequence to the pretender. He'd never particularly cared where he slept, as long as it wasn't the Centre. He'd also found that teams sent from the Centre to locate him, rarely bothered to do routine monitoring of anywhere less than four star hotels. Staying at the Sierra Inn was a pragmatic decision as much as a convenience. Jarod had been on the run for over two years. He was more than accustomed to doing those things that enabled him to maintain his freedom, including staying in run down motels like this one.
Jarod paused once inside the room, turning and locking the deadbolt. He then flicked the room key on top of the small portable TV bolted to a dresser top opposite the door. He walked to the bed; slipping his duffel bag off his shoulder and letting it drop at his feet. It contained the majority of his worldly possession. With is other hand, he placed a silver briefcase on the bed gingerly. It, by contrast, contained the majority of his life. The DSA reader and disks it contained held the images of the boy he'd once been, and proof of the life he'd lived. It was that life that beckoned him as twilight fell in the California desert.
Something had been tickling his brain all day, and it was time to see if he could find the answer. He hoped, unlike most questions involving his past, that he'd be able to find what he was looking for sooner rather than later. He opened the DSA case and flipped through the small silver disks labeled with security codes indicating the information each one contained.
Jarod frowned. The disk he was looking for wasn't there. He reached for the bag he'd discarded at his feet. Bringing it to his lap, he unzipped the center compartment and reached for the interior zippered pocket on the far size. He slipped his hand inside and emerged with a black Lucite case. He opened it and scanned for the disk he wanted.
His eyes traced along until he located the right disk. It was labeled Glacia 146. He picked up the silver disk between his thumb and forefinger, turning it in the dim light of the room. It often seemed surreal that many of he most traumatic and difficult moments of his life were contained so neatly on silver disks, each one carefully labeled and stored away. Bitterness crept into his soul. There had been some events he'd endured at the Centre that he could never understand, never accept. The disk in his hand contained one of them.
Jarod set case of disks aside, and turned to face the DSA reader. He slipped the disk he'd selected in part way, but hesitated before he inserted it enough to begin replaying the images it contained. Though he knew the simulation by heart, he wasn't sure he wanted to see it again. Sidney, his protector, his guardian, had stood by that day while Jarod pleaded for him to come to his aid. Jarod didn't know why, but he'd decided it was time to find out.
Jarod shivered, aware the room was cool. He stood and crossed the room, finding a heating unit below the window. He cranked the knob to the left and flicked on the fan. A chirping sound merged with a soft hum, and the heater came to life. The smell of burning dust filled the air along with gentle warmth blowing from the top of the unit. Satisfied, Jarod returned to the bed. Pushing the DSA reader away from him, he sat, thinking.
In all the years since he'd completed the Glacia simulation, he'd never spoken to Sidney about it. Glacia Islander had been the name of a fishing boat that had been caught in the ice of the Barring Straight. The Russians had accused the sailors of being CIA spies as they'd been driven near Soviet waters by the ice flow. The US sate department had considered it an inopportune moment to strain already difficult Soviet/US relations, and elected to ignore the pleas of the fishermen's families to intervene on their behalf. In the end, the eight men on board had been taken to a military compound in the heart of Siberia and ~interviewed~ by their Soviet captors. Jarod had been brought in after the fact to determine both what the men might have said under torture and interrogation, and to determine if indeed there had been a spy among them.
Jarod shivered again. Aware his hands were cold. He glanced in the direction of the heater and noted it continued to hum and pump warm air into the room. Realizing the air temperature wasn't the source of the chill; he swung his feet up onto the bed, settling onto a pillow. He stared unseeing at the ceiling as his mind wandered. The hairs on his arm began to raise, the sensations of insects walking on skin passed through him. Jarod's inner demons were moving in. Jarod crossed his arms over his chest. His leather jacket making a creaking noise as he moved. He squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the sensation of drowning that crept into his consciousness.
Images advanced behind Jarod's closed eyes. Chaotic. Terrifying. Bits of memory, fragmented and incomplete, stabbed at his mind. Jarod felt his stomach begin to knot around the icy stone at its center; the muscles of his neck so tense, he could feel them pulling at his skull and spine. A torrent of emotion enveloped him. The moment of his childhood helplessness, captured and suffocating, invaded his soul.
Jarod suddenly sat, swinging his feet back over the side of the bed, running his fingers through his hair. Finally, he covered his face with his hands, trying to block out the images he was seeing in his mind's eye. His breath was ragged, his face beginning to perspire despite the mild temperature in the room. After a moment, he pulled his hands away, looking at them, watching them tremble.
Jarod remembered Galacia 146 well, all too well.
The Centre - Sidney's Office
Sidney sat behind his desk, reviewing the report of the findings at Jarod's most recent lair, a converted warehouse Jarod had lived at for nearly a month. The sweeper team had photographed and tagged each item they'd found and forwarded the contents of the room back to the Centre. The forensic tech's had completed a survey of the recovered items and detailed their findings in the report Sidney now looked at.
Most of the findings were routine. What bothered Sidney wasn't what he found, but what he hadn't yet found. Sidney leafed through the glossy eight by ten photographs taken at the scene. He scanned each page, trying to find the message Jarod most certainly had left for him.
As Sidney reviewed the pictures of the lair, he noted that Jarod had placed sketches around the room. Each sketch revealed vivid images of fathers and sons drawn in bright colors. Some showed tender moments of embrace, others implied lazy days at the seashore or Saturday baseball games. A final, larger sketch had been placed over the bed where Jarod had slept. Unlike the others, it had been drawn in black and white. It had also been placed with apparent care to distance it from the other images, exaggerating the sense of separateness it already possessed. It was this final sketch that disturbed the elder man.
This larger sketch was composed of swirls of black charcoal surrounding and encroaching on the sole figure, a young boy, near the center of the image. The boy sat crouched in darkness with his young face turned up in an agonizing cry. A sense of desperation and despair infused the composition. Sidney hoped it was a reflection of Jarod's past, not his present. He suspected his charge was again having trouble sleeping.
Sidney had been aware of Jarod's lifelong difficulty with nightmares. He'd watched his charge battle the demons of his sleep since his youth. As Jarod got older, their intensity seemed only to increase. Sidney knew they were an unfortunate by-product of the sort of emotional trauma often caused by the people and circumstances Jarod became each time he "pretended". This latest sketch seemed to confirm Jarod's troubled sleep had continued despite his emancipation from the Center.
Sidney set down the file. His brow was lined; his thoughts turned to his own complicity in the traumas of Jarod's youth. At the time, he'd believed that science could justify all of it. He was no longer so certain. Age had brought him the uncertain wisdom that he could no longer hide behind science as justification for all he'd been party to at the Centre. A pang of guilt passed through the elder man.
Sidney's telephone rang, interrupting his thoughts. "Sidney." He announced neutrally into the handset.
"Sidney, I think there's something you should see." Broots was excited but realistic. Jarod had left breadcrumbs before. He was down in a storeroom where the boxes from Jarod's last lair were being kept. He'd told Sidney that he'd call if there was anything of interest in the boxes. There was.
"I'll be right there." Sidney replied quickly, flipping closed the file folder in the center of his desk. He returned the phone to its cradle and turned to stand.
"Going somewhere, Sid?" Miss Parker accused as she entered Sidney's office, smiling. She stopped, placing a perfectly manicured hand on her hip.
Sidney looked up, "Good morning, Miss Parker." He smiled politely, though his face didn't well conceal he'd have preferred his colleague had chosen a different moment to insert herself into his affairs.
Standing, Sidney added, "Broots just called. He may have found something." Sidney paused, waiting her Parker to respond.
Miss Parker stood straighter, leaning in toward Sidney, snapping her fingers. "Well, let's get going, Sid." She said in a tone more threatening than necessary. Sidney sighed and walked past her through the door. Miss Parker spun on a stiletto heel marching past Sidney to the elevator.
Storage Bay 2 - Sublevel 6, The Centre
Broots stood in a storage bay physically sorting through the boxes the sweepers had collected. He was cataloging the items to compile a database of the types of objects Jarod collected. He hoped to find a pattern that could help him search retail nets for purchases that might lead to Jarod's current location.
At the bottom of the second box was a plain manila envelope with Jarod's distinctive penmanship. It was addressed simply "Sidney". Broots knew he didn't have to ask permission to open it, but whatever Jarod had left for Sidney was likely personal. It seemed like sneaking a peak at some private chapter of Jarod's life to open it. Instead, Broots had called Sidney. He sat the envelope aside on top of a stack of boxes he was using as a makeshift table and waited. A few minutes later, Broots heard footsteps approaching.
Parker tossed the door open, stepping inside the storage bay with confidence born of being both the chairman's daughter and of not caring who's toes she stepped on if it meant getting the job done. "What'd you find, Broots?" She asked without hesitation. Broots looked up, making eye contact with Sidney was a few feet behind her. She locked eyes with Broots looking annoyed and commanding him to speak to her.
"Oh, Miss Parker. I didn't know you were coming..."Broots stammered. He'd not been expecting her and felt a bit off balanced by her sudden appearance. Sidney stepped past her, nodding at the technician with a supportive expression.
"Miss Parker decided to accompany me." Sidney explained, raising one eyebrow and glancing in Parker's direction disapprovingly.
Miss Parker looked annoyed again. "Yes, well, now that we're all up to date, let's get to it." Miss Parker sniped. Spotting the envelope Broots had called about, she stepped past Broots to the stack of boxes where it lay. "Well, well. What has genius boy left for you this time, Sid?" She picked up the envelope, handing it to Sidney with an expectant glance.
Sidney accepted the envelope reluctantly. He'd have preferred to open it in private. His hesitation was apparent. Miss Parker placed a hand on her hip, raising an eyebrow. She was impatient. Accepting her unspoken orders, Sidney turned the envelope over, carefully tearing the seal. He slipped his hand inside, feeling a single item. He pulled it free, replacing the now empty envelope on top of the stack of boxes in front f him. Sidney turned his attention to the carefully folded paper in his hands. Turning it over, Sidney realized he was holding an origami boat. On the bow were the initials "G.I.".
Sidney was certain the meaning of "G.I." would be clear once he had a chance to review his files. Jarod preferred to give Sidney the puzzle to solve rather than speaking to him directly. Perhaps it was Jarod's way of getting back at him for all the puzzles he'd forced Jarod to unravel during his time at the Centre.
"It's a boat, Sidney!" Broots announced, moving in closer to examine it.
"There you go, Sidney. We're in the presence of true genius." Miss Parker said sarcastically, raising her hands in the air and rolling her eyes.
"Give me that." She said crisply, reaching for the paper boat in Sidney's hand.
Sidney held his tongue, relinquishing the paper to Parker and stepping back. Having to tolerate Miss Parker's intrusion was irritating, but certainly not worth a battle. He tried to connect "G.I." with something familiar. He touched his chin, studying his memory for a clue to the meaning Jarod intended.
"And look here, gentlemen. Our ship has a crew." Miss Parker announced sounding pleased with herself as she slipped eight carefully cut paper figures from a pocket created in the center of the origami boat.
Broots laughed. Jarod's puzzles were tremendous fun to solve. Miss Parker shot him a disapproving glance and Broots stopped. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands in his pocket; any humor in the moment was now erased.
Parker handed the paper boat and crew back to Sidney. "What's Jarod up to, Sidney?" She asked, expectantly waiting for an answer. Sidney simply shrugged in response.
Miss Parker rolled her eyes, turning away. "Great." She threw her hands in the air. "That's just great." She turned back to face Sidney and Broots. Her frustration was apparent.
"How about you boys call me when you find something ~useful~." Parker spun and took a couple of steps, distancing herself from the conversation. Then she began pacing as she thought through her next action. She felt her blood pressure rising, and the acid churning in her stomach. Jarod seemed to specialize in aggravating her ulcer.
Parker was frustrated. She'd been a rapidly rising corporate star until her career had been sidetracked by Jarod's escape. She stopped walking and leaned against another stack of boxes, slipping a cigarette from the silver case in her jacket pocket. She lit it, taking a deep drag. She let her head fall back, relaxing as the nicotine soothed her ragged nerves.
"Look here, Sidney." Broots slipped the paper figures from the boat out of Sidney's hands. "Look!" He said again, arranging the figures out in a line on top of the stack of boxes nearest him. "They're not all the same. See, seven of the figures have a cross drawn on them." Broots pointed, illustrating his observation. "But, the last one has a tear drop instead." Adding at the last minute he said, "...and his legs are shorter." Broots was excited. He loved finding Jarod's clues.
"I don't know what it means ... but it's something, right!?" Broots looked from Sidney to Parker, seeking validation. Parker and Sidney exchanged a glance. Both stepped in to take a closer look. Miss Parker was further away and scrambled to look over Sidney's shoulder at the figures arranged on top of the box. "Well, I think it's something." Broots added after a moment's silence, feeling somewhat deflated. Sidney smiled at him, nodding.
Sidney picked up the eighth figure, studying it. He turned the figure over, noticing for the first time a word on the back. He slipped his reading glasses out of his breast pocket, squinting to see the tiny word hand lettered on the rear of the paper figure.
"What does it say, Sidney" Broots questioned. He leaned in, blocking Sidney's light. "Oh, sorry, Sidney." Broots said as he stepped back, fidgeting. He knew they'd found something important. He was full of energy and anxious to get to work putting the pieces together.
"It says 'Remember'." Sidney commented in an amused voice. He replaced the figure on the top of the box, and shoved his hands in his pocket.
"Well, Sidney." Miss Parker said, interjecting herself into the conversation again, "Do you?"
"No." Sidney chucked. He returned the figure to the box top; placing it next to it's fellows.
"Well, what is our boy wonder up to?" Miss Parker mused to herself. Her face was tense. Her neck was beginning to flush red. She hated being outwitted by anyone, even Jarod.
"I have no idea." Sidney chucked again, smiling. He shrugged his shoulders for emphasis.
Parker sighed. "Why doesn't that surprise me." She nearly growled at Sidney. Looking away, she inhaled deeply on the cigarette again. Turning back, she blew smoke in his face. Then, she added. "Figure it out, Sidney." She punctuated her sentiment with a cold stare.
Having nothing else to say, Parker pivoted on one heel and stormed out of the storage room. Her response was more a reflection of her own sense of impotence when it came to Jarod than about any displeasure with Sidney or Broots.
This time it was Broots and Sidney who exchanged glances. "S-she needs to switch to decaff." Broots announced. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Sidney nodded, grinning. Jarod certainly did have a way of keeping everyone on their toes.
After a moment, a shadow crossed Sidney's face. "Broots," He hesitated. "Can you check something for me?" He asked.
"Sure, Sid. What is it?" Broots was eager to help as always. He and Sidney worked well together. Each respected the other's approach. Sidney especially appreciated Broots's resourcefulness and attention to detail.
"I need you to cross reference 'G.I.' in the case files with records boating accidents." Sidney's eyes seemed dark and distant. Something in the back of his mind was beginning to jog. Something he couldn't place just yet.
"Sure thing." Broots said quickly, glancing up a bit startled by the rapid change in Sidney's demeanor. "You remember something?" he asked.
"No." Sidney's replied, the answer a bit too curt to be considered completely honest. He knew the answer was in the clues Jarod had given him. He just couldn't remember...not yet.
Sierra Inn, Outside Bakersfield, CA
Room 10
Jarod had spent the last half-hour pacing the length of his room at the Sierra Inn, surprised at how reluctant he'd been to view the DSA he'd been thinking about all day. He stopped at the window, looking out at the early evening stars as they emerged from their daylight slumber.
Turning away from the window, Jarod began pacing. The carpet of the room was thin and rough, worn in the path Jarod walked by a hundred prior visitors. Under the circumstances, the small room held the same sense of confinement that Jarod's room at the Centre had. Jarod knew that was an outgrowth of the fear he felt at the idea of facing the ghosts of the Galacia Islander, but that fact didn't diminish his sense of anxiety.
Jarod's curiosity eventually outpaced his fear and he returned to the bed. He sat on the edge, collecting his thoughts. It had been nearly twenty years since he'd last viewed the crew case files from the Galacia 146. "Twenty years if you don't count nightmares." He quipped with himself. A dark sense of irony seeped into his words, resulting in a subtle grin behind his dark eyes.
The truth was very important to Jarod, perhaps more important to him than to others because he'd lost so much of his life to lies. He knew it would be painful to view the Centre's records of his Galacia simulation. But, he felt he needed to see it again; this time without the emotional filters his mind had no doubt added to his private recollections.
Jarod shifted, reaching for the DSA reader. He heard the springs creak as he moved. He slid the chrome case toward him. Hesitating for a moment, he closed his eyes taking a deep breath. It was time. Jarod lifted the lid, pushed the small silver disk into the DSA reader, and pressed play.
The black and white screen jumped to life. Jarod was not shocked to see Sidney's face as it had looked when he was growing up. Since he left the Centre, he'd begun reclaiming his life by looking at it as others had, on glowing screens far removed from the very personal and painful truth of what it was like to become the tortured souls he had "pretended" to be during his life there. In some ways, it had actually been a comfort to see Sidney change over the years as he viewed various DSA's. It gave him a sense of connection to that distant life.
Jarod shivered slightly as the room he knew so well from his incarceration at the Centre appeared in front of him on the DSA screen. The walls of the simulation lab were bare concrete with a cold industrial feel. The lab was packed with audio-visual equipment designed to enhance the pretender's sensory experience of the simulation. When these failed to produce the desired results, props or "lab assistants" substituted the "stimulus" deemed necessary to assist the pretender with accurately experiencing what the target had (or might have) experienced.
A white screen ten feet tall by twenty feet long occupied most of the far wall. Projected onto it were photographs of the disabled Galacia Islander along with the faces of the "targets" of the pretend, both prior to their departure that fateful day and the remains recovered during a period of "political openness" with the Soviets. Alternating with these photographs were other images declared "useful" by those who prepared the simulation. Some focused on the crew's injuries, others were navigational charts, and others yet were surveillance photos of the base where the unlucky crew had been held.
Jarod felt the muscles of his neck tense, becoming roped knots. He reached up, massaging the back of his neck with his left hand. He leaned his head from side to side in a vein attempt to relax. Even with the DSA showing only black and white images, the sim lab felt nearer than the pretender now was, or would ever be, truly comfortable with. He'd spent over two years running from that room, yet each time he saw it on a DSA, at some level, he felt back inside of it, trapped.
Jarod had completed hundreds of simulations during his time at the Centre. A few affected him more significantly than the rest. Even after completing those simulations, the thoughts and experiences of the "targets" invaded Jarod's mind and dreams. Jarod had come to believe that some experiences are so heinous and unjust that they refuse to die a peaceful death, either with the poor souls who first encounter them, or in the labs where geniuses like him attempted to extract them from the darkness. Galacia 146 had been one such simulation.
Jarod forced himself to concentrate on the desk to the left of the primary simulation staging area. It was Sidney's desk. Today, Jarod was watching this DSA to understand something more important to him than the fate of eight fishermen he'd never met. Today, his "target" was much more personal.
Jarod's eyes took on a dark intensity as he gazed at the DSA screen absorbing Sidney's words and expressions, carefully noting each gesture and subtle changes in posture. It was Sidney's actions, not the actions of crew or Soviet interrogators that captured the pretender's focus. Jarod had long since answered the questions about what each prisoner and interrogator had done and why. Nestled beyond the trauma of living the last harrowing hours of each man's life was a much more personal wound; a much more intimate one. Jarod wanted to know why Sidney had done what he had those days almost twenty years before.
"Why didn't you protect me?" he whispered under his breath between clenched teeth. "Why did you let them do that to me?" he asked, knowing only Sidney had the answer. Jarod's eyes were wet. He unconsciously crossed his arms across his chest, in a gesture of both self-comfort and self-protection. Jarod watched the actions of that unfold as the DSA simulation record played on.
Jarod flinched as a child-sized version of himself lay in spasm on the floor, writhing in agony and screaming on the screen in front of him. Jarod felt his hands begin to shake and pressed the "pause" button on the DSA player. A twenty-year-old image of his face lay frozen on the screen, eyes wide in fear and pain, mouth contorted in a silent scream.
Jarod became aware his chest was tight, and noticed he was breathing in short rapid gasps. He stood, taking a deep breath, and focusing on the muscles of his legs in an attempt to avoid being dragged into a haze of memories. He paced again, this time aware of the pounding of his heart inside his chest. He ran his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes, trying to block out the lingering images from the DSA.
"Why, Sidney, Why?" was the mantra silently pounding in his brain. It had been the question occupying his mind for much of the last few weeks. "Why would anyone do that to a child? Or, more importantly, why would anyone standby and let it happen." He wondered silently.
Jarod stopped pacing, and stared back as the DSA player. His mind was clearing. He'd noticed something important. Sidney had been in the room at the beginning of the simulation, "...but where was he at the end?" Jarod wondered. A shadow of pain lingered in his eyes.
"Where were you when I needed you?" Jarod accused the ghost of Sidney that hung in his mind's eye.
Exhausted and shaky, the pretender closed the lid of the DSA player, turning it off. He dropped heavily onto the lumpy hotel mattress, sorting through the information he'd seen on the DSA, consciously avoiding the images of himself and of the simulation itself.
Tonight, Jarod sought to reconstruct the actions and movements of the technicians and project coordinators in the room during the original simulations. When he'd done the series simulations known as Galacia 146 twenty years before, the pretend had been so intense it had engulfed each of his five senses. He'd not been aware of anyone or anything around him. All he saw and felt was translated through the filter of the pretend. He'd long ago answered the questions of the fate of the fishermen. This time he hoped to understand what Sidney's actions and motivations had been.
Thinking through the observations he'd made, Jarod concluded he'd have to review the DSA one more time, this time concentrating solely Sidney's movements to avoid being distracted by the other images. He needed to know where Sidney had been during each phase of the simulation. He needed to know how much of each simulation Sidney had approved of.
"Yes." Jarod thought. "I'll look at it one more time....but not now." With that, he walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He needed a hot shower. He needed to relax and feel clean.
Jarod undressed quickly, discarding his clothes on the floor, and turned the water on. He stepped into the white fiberglass tub flicking the switch to send the hot water to the showerhead. He turned, facing away from the flow of water. The hot stream pounding at his back was soothing. He breathed in the warm moist air, pleased to have a reprieve from his memories of the simulation lab. He felt the cold of the sim lab melting away. He stood, letting the water wash over him simply feeling warm.
Blue Cove, DE
Tech Room -- Broots's Office
Broots had come in early and
was just returning from the break room with a fresh cup of coffee. Debbie, his daughter, had the lead in the fifth grade drama project. He chuckled. "They used to just call them school plays." He said quietly, and smiled. He planned to leave early today to catch the afternoon performance at George Washington Elementary.
Broots looked happy as he walked back to his desk, sipping the hot coffee. He liked coming in before the rest of his coworkers. For once, the Centre was quiet. He'd also come in early because he was anxious to see the results of several search algorithms he'd started after meeting the night before with Miss Parker and Sidney.
Nearing his desk, Broots could see his computer screen flashing a message. "Data search complete: 23 matches found" flashed in a red box in the center of his screen. He slipped into his chair, setting his coffee aside. He leaned forward and he began typing, his attention focused on the file transfer protocols and data path he sought. "Touchdown!" he thought, grinning. "Or not..." He raised his eyes brows, shrugging, not wanting to get too hopeful too soon. He knew it could be a false lead, but it was the first hit in almost a week. He couldn't help but be a little bit excited.
Broots typed for several minutes, pulling up the file information and digitized records his search had located. Attached to the primary files were several wire service reports and diplomatic service memorandums. The Centre had been contracted by an unnamed government agency in the mid 70's to investigate the "Galacia Islander Incident". The government had apparently opened their records because several classified documents were embedded in the Centre's file database.
Broots scanned through the documents, picking out the salient points from the attached summaries. "Man... oh man" he sighed. "No wonder Jarod wanted Sidney to remember this.... I mean, gees, who could forget it." He said under his breath. Broots glanced over his shoulder suddenly aware he was still inside the Centre, and that the Centre had eyes and ears everywhere.
Broots reached for the phone, quickly dialing Sidney's office. "Pickup...come on." He tapped his foot. Sidney's voice mail kicked on. Broots sighed, and waited through the message. He'd forgotten Sidney wouldn't be in yet. An electronic, slightly feminine voice instructed him to leave a message at the tone. "Sid, I've found what Jarod was.... I mean, I found it, Sidney. 'G.I.', I know what it means. Call me."
Broots hung up and drummed his fingers on the desk. He debated about calling Sidney at home, but decided against it. As excited as he was, he knew that waiting another hour for Sidney to arrive wouldn't hurt their chances of finding Jarod. "Besides", he reasoned with himself. "Everyone here has so little private life. It wouldn't be right to interrupt the little time Sidney has away from here."
Broots sat, sipping more coffee. He was beginning to feel caffeine jitters. He decided to review the files in more detail. Maybe he could figure out exactly why Jarod wanted to remind Sidney of the Galacia Islander. He cross-referenced the Center logs to see who the project coordinator was and who had worked on the Centre's part of the project. He quickly ran into standard Centre security firewalls and began carefully working his way past them. Thought Broots could never be completely certain, he believed it was likely that he'd been recruited primarily for his skill at doing exactly what he was now, defeating the best database security on the market.
Broots glanced at his watch. Sidney should be there in about 45 minutes.
Sierra Inn - Room 10
Jarod lay sleeping on his side facing the door, unconsciously preparing for a sweeper team to crash through it, taking him back to the Centre. His eyes shot from right to left beneath closed lids. Perspiration glistened on his forehead. His body jumped minutely against the paralysis of sleep as he winced and fought the demons in his mind. His breathing was fast, jagged. He'd drawn his shoulders in, bracing himself against an unseen foe in his dreams...nightmares.
It was another night like many others for the pretender. Since being taken to the Center as a child, the nightmares had never stopped. Tonight, Jarod's dreams were chaotic blends of the various Galacia simulations. The dreams had been worse for the last few weeks. Each night, he'd revisit the tortuous last hours of the Galacia's crew as they died in a Siberian prison. Each dream ended with him taking the place of the eighth crewman. He'd be chained to a wall with rats moving in. He could see their sharp yellowed teeth as they approached, but he couldn't escape them. He'd cry out, pleading for Sidney to come...but he never did.
Jarod's breath came faster, with his voice beginning to hold an edge of fear audible in the words mumbled in his sleep. Grunts and cries of pain began replacing his frantic breath. His closed eyes bolted around from right to left, as he frantically sought help. His heart was pounding now. Earlier winces became small tensed, jerking struggles. Jarod's closed eyes, looked squinted as he grimaced in pain.
Finally, bolting awake, the pretender sat upright in bed, drenched in sweat. "Sidney!" he screamed. Jarod gulped spasmodically for air. The dark room seemed closed in and small. Jarod blinked quickly, surprised to find himself awake and no longer in the frightening realm of his nightmare. The sweat on Jarod's arms was quickly turning cold and icy. His mouth felt full of cotton, his throat acid from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Jarod sat for a moment, startled to find himself in a hotel instead of a prison in Siberia.
Grief quickly began replacing the terror that had filled his consciousness a moment earlier. Jarod's body began relaxing, but his hands still trembled. He sat further up, and shifted so he was leaning against the headboard. He wrapped his arms around his chest in a self-protective hug. He tried to use the calming technique Sidney had taught him as a child, simple calming breaths and counting.
Jarod felt emotions welling up. The darkness was moving in again. He pulled his knees to his chest. He hugged them and burring his face as his body shook as tears took hold. He looked like the child who'd spent so many nights huddled in the dark of his room at the Centre, afraid to cry out, afraid to sleep. He was that boy, just grown larger and physically stronger by the years since past. He rocked, letting tears silently roll down his cheeks, hoping they could take with them some of the pain, some of the memories. "Sidney, where were you?" he whispered to the darkness. "I needed you...." He trailed off.
Jarod began rocking himself back and forth, letting numbness replace the pain inside of him. He tried to let the images of the past and his dream fade away into the darkness. He started humming a piece of an old lullaby. His voice was horse, but the thought of the simple tune calmed him. He didn't remember the words, but he knew the melody. Catherine Parker once held him and hummed it to him after a nightmare like this one.
Jarod had not known why Catherine Parker came to his room that night, but he'd rejoiced at the time. He remembered her coming to him and scooping him up off the cold floor where he lay huddled, crying in the dark. She put him on her lap, encircled in her safe arms. She'd rocked him for hours, humming the simple song over and over. He'd not felt that safe, that loved, for a very long time since then. She was shot and killed a few weeks later.
The intensity of the dream was subsiding now. His heart was calmer and he'd finally quit shaking. Jarod looked up at the ceiling. His mind was clear and sharp again. His body and mind were both beginning to calm. He stood, flexing and stretching. His arms and legs felt cramped. His stomach felt uneasy, knotted, but he attributed that to his emotional state and not to his lack of dinner. The worn carpet underfoot was comforting. It reminded him he wasn't at the Centre.
Jarod walked to the bathroom, fumbling for the light switch. He clicked on the overhead light and turned, facing the mirror. He reached with one hand, turning on the water and letting it flow. Jarod leaned in, one hand braced on each side of the sink. He looked deeply into his own face. "I'm never going back there. I'm never going back. I can't." He thought, imagining each word as a bold statement. The words, even unspoken, help steady his mind. Jarod was familiar with grounding himself after a nightmare. He'd done it so often that it was no longer difficult.
Jarod paused, looking more closely at the face looking back in the mirror. He was still learning to accept what he looked like. He wasn't shocked to see his brown eyes and angled jaw, but he still struggled to think of ~that face~ as his own. With bitterness, Jarod remembered that he had rarely been allowed to see a mirror while he'd been at the Center. It had been decided that he would be more successful at 'pretending' if he wasn't "burdened" by a sense of identity.
Jarod leaned over the sink and splashed his face with water, drying it with a rough white towel that hung from the bar on the wall. "I'm okay. I'm a Pretender. I can be anything I want to be." He said just under his breath. He paused, hearing his inner voice's sarcastic reply, "Oh yeah! Right now you want to be sleeping. Some Pretender you are." Jarod shook his head smiling at the irony of the moment and flicked the light switch off. It was only 1:00am. Morning was a long way off.
The Centre, Blue Clove
Corridor 2 South, Near Employee Entrance 5
Miss Parker sauntered down the hall, wishing she'd had a second cup of coffee before leaving home. The clicking of her heels was buried among the sounds of the other corporate and technical staff rushing through the corridor on the way to their respective offices. She stopped, waiting for an elevator. She pivoted, looking around her. The scurrying in the halls reminded Parker of rats in a maze, only this time the rats were wearing suits and skirts. The corner of her mouth turned up in a dark smile.
"Good Morning, Angel." Mr. Parker raised his voice to be heard over the din.
Miss Parker tensed slightly as she heard the familiar voice behind her. Much as she wished it wasn't the case, her father rarely bothered to track her down for purely social reasons. She turned, facing her father. "Daddy." She said in reply to his greeting. She blinked quickly. She was feeling slightly off balance.
Miss Parker leaned in as her father kissed her cheek in his typical manor. She couldn't resist the emotional pull she felt toward the man. She wanted his acceptance, she always had. But, unfortunately, moments like this tended to make her feel more like the fish on the end of a line than a beloved daughter.
"What brings you down here today?" Miss Parker managed, disliking how nervous she felt around her father. She always felt like a child when he spoke to her.
"Oh, just checking on the pursuit, Angel." Mr. Parker said in a casual voice. He seemed to intentionally make eye contact with his daughter, scanning her face for something. Miss Parker doubted his inquiry at this moment was purely coincidence. She'd check with Broots to see what stones he'd over turned since last night. It appeared he'd found something of interest to the Tower if her father was here now.
"We're making progress." Miss Parker hedged. Glancing out the corner of her eye, she noted the lights indicating the elevator's position were climbing closer.
"Good, Good. Jarod's very important to the Centre, you know. Very important." Mr. Parker said. His face became stern as he looked at his daughter.
"Yes, of course." Miss Parker replied. She nodded slightly, her voice having lost the edge and strength more typical of her.
Miss Parker felt relieved as a tone chimed in front of her, announcing the arrival of the elevator. "I've got to go, Daddy." She announced as she stepped forward past the door. Once inside, she turned to face her father as the doors began to close.
Mr. Parker smiled at his daughter. She noted only his lips smiled, not his eyes. "Good talking to you, Angel. You'll be sure to keep me informed." He said, raising his voice to be heard as he watched her go. Miss Parker nodded in reply as the door closed.
Miss Parker felt her shoulders relax as the elevator jerked to life. Every conversation with her father seemed complicated. She glanced over her shoulder self conscious of the feeling she'd momentarily lost control. She took a deep breath, looking at the ceiling. She now wished it was a gin and tonic waiting for her at her office, not coffee. "Damn you, Jarod." She said under her breath. Since he'd run away, everything at the Centre had become more complicated.
The Centre, Tech Room - Broots's Terminal
"Don't you think we should wait for Miss Parker?" Broots questioned Sidney. His shoulders were tense. He didn't like doing things behind her back. She had a habit of taking it personally. Broots cleared his throat nervously. Before Sidney could answer, Miss Parker strolled into the room.
"Yes. I think that would be a lovely idea." She said, placing one hand on her hip and raising an eyebrow as she looked disapprovingly toward Sidney. Turning her attention to Broots she added. "What have you got, Broots?"
"Oh, Miss Parker." Broots stammered. "I'm glad you're here." He had a guilty expression and felt his cheeks flush. He knew he'd not been doing anything wrong, but it always felt that way when Miss Parker was around. He turned to face his terminal. He typed several quick commands bringing up the files from this morning. He selected an item, and clicked his mouse. His printer sprung to life and a list of coded files emerged.
"I did a little research...and it looks like I hit the mother load." Broots grinned and slipped the page off his printer. He handed it to Miss Parker and turned back toward his computer, typing another command. Sidney leaned over Miss Parker's shoulder taking in the information on the page he'd printed.
"What is this, Broots?" Miss Parker asked, looking annoyed. Then she added, "This could be Bill Clinton's black book for all I can tell." She tossed the paper back at Broots, touching her forehead and grimacing. A headache was starting and it was only eight in the morning. Before the paper had a chance to fall, Sidney reached out and grabbed it midair. He examined it closely, running his finger down the list of coded numbers and dates.
Sounding slightly annoyed with Miss Parker's lack of attention, Sidney explained, "It's an archive list of simulations done on a project called Galacia 146." He placed the paper on the corner of Broots's desk.
Broots swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to summarize all the data he'd read. He glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of his colleagues. "It's about the Galacia Islander - that's our 'G.I.', Sidney." Broots glanced Sidney's direction, and then looked at Parker.
"Galacia Islander was a ship that got stuck in the ice...sort of. It was off the coast of Alaska and the Russians picked up the crew. It's not clear from these files exactly why, but the crew was taken for debriefing to some super-secret military base in Siberia." Broots nodded for emphasis.
Broots typed a DSA file code into his computer. "Jarod worked on the project. He has the complete DSA files still, but here's a piece of it that was encoded with the report." Broots hit a few more keys and a box appeared on his screen. "It's only a few seconds long." He said. Broots looked at Miss Parker, making sure he had her permission before he clicked an arrow at the bottom of the box. She nodded.
Thirty seconds of streaming video played on with Parker, Broots, and Sidney all focused on the small screen. The image was of Jarod being given instructions from Sidney to become the first crewmember from the Galacia Islander. Young Jarod turned, facing a large projection screen with the man's face. Jarod's expression shifted and he began talking about how afraid he was, and how he feared he'd been abandoned by his government. He was afraid someone, an interrogator, would hurt him...torture him. Then the video ended.
Broots and Parker turned to face Sidney. Parker spoke first. "Remember now, Sidney?" She asked in a sarcastic voice. Sidney nodded and looked away. His brow was furrowed. Sidney looked at the computer screen rather than making eye contact with the others. He was self conscious of the image they'd just seen. His work had been very important to him, but he doubted either of his colleagues could understand why he'd done what he had. What disturbed him more was the feeling that he still didn't understand why Jarod was revisiting this particular simulation and what message Jarod was trying to give him in the process.
Broots seemed out of breath, but he continued, swiveling his chair to facing the computer again. "Here's where it gets interesting." He said.
Broots pulled up several files as he explained. "Well, it looks like there were eight crew members...from the news accounts, anyway." Broots selected a file and a black and white image of a newspaper clipping appeared on the screen. Heavy dark print announced '8 Lost at Sea'.
Miss Parker tilted her head and interrupted, speaking under her breath. "That explains our paper dolls." Broots looked over his shoulder at her. She touched his shoulder; looking annoyed he'd stopped. "Go ahead." She instructed.
"But, it's strange..." Broots paused slightly before proceeding. "See, in the files you made, Sidney, you only reference seven crewmembers. Seven, not eight." Broots finished, pointing at a list of simulations and a summary he'd brought up on the screen.
Broots paused again, glancing Sidney's direction. Sidney seemed distracted. He was no longer looking in Broots's direction. His eyes were distant with a crease growing in his forehead. Sidney was concentrating, remembering.
"Where's our lucky eighth crewman?" Miss Parker asked to no one as she leaned in over Broots's shoulder, scanning the files listed on his screen. They seemed to be coded based on the date and which of the crewmen Sidney had assigned Jarod to simulate.
As Parker and Broots spoke, Sidney's eyes were drawn to the pile of oversize paper rolled up on the far corner of Broots's desk. Sidney realized Broots had brought the sketches from Jarod's last lair to his office so they could be digitized into the database. At the moment, they sat next to a scanner.
Sidney had taught Jarod to trust his instincts, and it was now that same sort of instinct that drew Sidney to the sketches. The elder man took a step forward. He unrolled the sketches and sorted through them, selecting the dark, nightmarish image Jarod had focused on in the largest drawing. Sidney held it up, examining it again. He intuitively knew it was important and related to the subject at hand.
Miss Parker noticed Sidney sort through the sketches, but didn't interrupt. She turned her attention back to the computer screen; her eyes slowly crawling down the page. There was one file that stood out. She pointed at the monitor screen. "What's this one?" She asked Broots. "It's coded differently than the rest." She said.
"Oh, that's been logged by someone other than Sidney." Broots explained, as he continued typing. He was running a system search to see if he'd missed any files.
Parker put her hands on Broots's shoulders and felt him tense slightly. She ignored his discomfort and flexed her hands slightly. She considered the information on the screen in front of her for a moment and then spoke. "Broots, the answer to Jarod's puzzle is in that file. Open it." She instructed.
Broots typed something, and a small red glowing box appeared on the screen. It requested a security code to access the file he'd selected. Broots tried typing something, but a chime toned and the words "Access denied" appeared in the box.
"I can't open it, Miss Parker. It's locked." He paused, expecting her to be angry.
"Well get it unlocked." Miss Parker said in a voice less threatening than Broots had expected. "I want to get in there." She announced.
Miss Parker straightened again letting her hands fall back to her sides. She had a distracted expression. She was thinking about the conversation she'd just had with her father. She was more curious than ever now. "What secrets are you hiding?" she said under her breath. Broots raised an eyebrow, but then realized her statement wasn't directed at him.
Miss Parker turned, facing Sidney. "When you finish your trip down memory lane, maybe you could help us figure this one out, Sid." Miss Parker tapped her foot, watching Sidney. He ignored her.
"What did you remember? Cough it up." Miss Parker demanded. She felt impatient. It felt like they were wasting time following another of Jarod's riddles instead of getting on a jet on the way to capture him. Sidney looked up, but Parker couldn't read his expression.
Sidney's spoke slowly, as if some dark memory weighed him down. "The simulations of the first seven crewmen were routine." Sidney explained in a neutral voice. "The men I'd asked Jarod to simulate had been interrogated..." he hesitated for a moment before continuing, "some of them had been tortured, but Jarod had simulated dozens of similar scenarios before and he had no difficulty with any of them."
Parker shook her head, incredulous. An ironic smile was pasted on her face. "You tell Jarod to simulate torture and you call it routine." She paused, "You're some piece of work, Sidney." Parker seemed genuinely amused by Sidney's comment. He met her eyes with an angry glance.
Sidney continued, speaking more easily now that the more charged element of the disclosure had been made. "After the simulation, Jarod seemed depressed and refused to eat on several occasions. At the time I assumed he was over-worked, so I gave him more recreation time. In a few weeks, he was back to his usual self." Sidney finished
"And how does that fit?" Parker asked, pointing at the sketch in Sidney's hands.
"After the simulation, Jarod had trouble with nightmares." Sidney explained, and turned the sketch so Parker could see it. "I was concerned, but his symptoms improved over the next few weeks." Sidney seemed to struggle to explain something he understood, but didn't want to admit. "It looks like his nightmares are back." He finally said, turning his gaze to the image on the page he held.
Parker shook her head and turned away. It seemed like an accusation to Sidney. His face flushed, and anger burst forth. "It was science." He announced. Sidney took in a deep breath and regained control of himself. He turned to face her and added. "I would never have hurt Jarod. I was his protector."
Miss Parker ignored Sidney's comment and directed her words to Broots. "We need to know about the eighth sailor." She said simply. "We need to know what's in that file." Her eyes looked sly. She was scheming. She knew when they'd found a good lead, and this was one.
"Okay, Jarod, let's walk down memory lane." She said to herself. She also knew when she was being lead somewhere Jarod wanted to take her, but usually, it helped get her a step closer to finding him. She could live with the trade off. She leaned in over Broots's shoulder again as his fingers flew across his keyboard. He tried various security codes on the locked file without success. She glanced over at Sidney. His gaze had returned the sketch he'd been holding earlier. It was now resting face up on the far edge of Broots's desk. Sidney's eyes seemed to study it though his hands were shoved in his pockets.
Sidney had a feeling he knew what was in the mystery file. He recognized the code when Miss Parker had first pointed it out. It looked like one that Dr. Raines had used back then. What bothered him was that Raines shouldn't have been associated with the Galacia project.
Miss Parker sauntered closer to Sidney, interrupting his thoughts. She crossed her arms and spoke, using an almost seductive voice. "Sidney...what do you know about the eighth crewman? And, what does he have to do with your new found interest in art?" She asked.
Sidney considered his words for a few seconds, and then answered her gaze. "I know enough." He said simply. Sidney paused, and then added, "I wouldn't permit Jarod to simulate that experience." Sidney's words were clipped and shortened. He pressed his lips together. Broots and Parker exchanged a glance. Sidney ignored them, captured for a moment by his own memory. He let his eyes fall back to Jarod's sketch.
Parker raised her hands, exasperated. "What?!" Parker was loosing patience. "What aren't you telling me?"
Sidney picked up the index list Broots had printed. He glanced at it briefly. Ignoring Parker, he turned to Broots. "Broots, did you find the medical record of the crewmen from the simulation?" Sidney asked.
Broots shruged. "Yeah, I think so." He brought up a list, and scrolled the cursor down, highlighting a coded file.
Parker looked at Sidney. "Why? What's in it?" She said, her eyes narrowing.
"Your answers." Sidney said, turning his face to meet her eyes.
Broots selected a print option for the file Sidney'd asked about and a dozen paged proceeded out of his printer. Parker looked at Sidney. He picked up the pages, and then handed them to her. She accepted them, with a slightly confused look on her face.
Then, Sidney turned and walked to the door. There, he reached out and grabbed the doorframe for a moment, steadying himself. After a moment's pause, he slipped quietly out of the room and down the hallway. Parker watched him leave the room, a bit surprised at the elder man's reaction. She'd rarely seen Sidney in such a dark mood.
Parker glanced back at the pages in her hands. She quickly scanned the report. The first two pages summarized autopsy findings on the first seven crewmen. They'd all had numerous broken bones. Most had obviously been beaten. It appeared they'd all died within days of their capture. Autopsies indicated all seven died of single gun shot wounds to the temple. They'd been executed.
As Parker turned to the third page, the report changed from post mortem reports, to a report detailing a medical and psychological examination of another patient, presumably crewman eight. His name had been Roger Schitowsky. He'd been only 23 years old. Most importantly, he'd been returned to the United States alive -- if you could call his condition living, anyway. She was startled by the description she read.
Miss Parker's face went pale. She glanced up, her eyes needing a break from what she was seeing. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, then looked at the ceiling as she took a deep breath. Broots had never seen her react this way before. She looked really rattled. He looked away. It seemed rude to stare.
Parker returned to reading, self-conscious about permitting Broots to see any weakness. Parker turned the page again and reviewed the findings of the US Army medical panel who'd examined crewman eight. It appeared that the Russians had packaged him in a body bag, thinking he was dead. Routine inspection at a US base in Japan revealed he still had a pulse and resuscitation efforts had been initiated. During brief periods of lucidity in the days that followed he'd reported an experience nearly too horrible to imagine.
The man's initial injuries were similar to his fellow crewmen including broken ribs, cheekbones, fingers and toes. What distinguished him from the others was his emaciated appearance which was explained by the next finding. From the pressure sores on his ankles, wrists, back and buttocks, a medical panel had determined that he'd been chained to a wall and simply left.
Miss Parker shivered. She didn't know how long it took for skin to break down into the large gaping ulcers described in the report, but she imagined it was a long and agonizing process. She thought about what it must have been like to sit there, waiting to die, as your skin dissolved. Parker felt a knot growing in her stomach. Disturbed, She forced herself to read on.
During an interview, the crewman had described his position in a cell below a leaking pipe. He'd managed to catch the falling water in his mouth to stay alive, but the water that had kept him alive came at a price. He sat constantly in a puddle of cold water with a steady drip drop pounding him relentlessly for weeks. Finally, too weak to move, the rats had begun moving in. He'd lost parts of his feet to the rats while he was still awake. As he'd lost consciousness, the rats had moved in toward his torso, eating other soft tissue including portions of his abdomen and thigh.
Miss Parker's thoughts turned to the paper dolls she'd seen the day before. Clearly, Jarod had been telling them about this crewman with the doll whose legs had been shorter than the rest. She shivered.
The report continued, but Miss Parker couldn't. She looked up again, facing Broots. "It seems Sidney has scruples after all." She said as she dropped the report on Broots's desk. She now understood why Sidney had refused to let Jarod simulate that experience. She turned, and walked in a circle around Broots's desk. She put her hand to her head, rubbing her temple, trying to force away the headache that had grown from a dull ache into a full blown pain.
Broots picked up the file, pulled in by a dark sense of voyeurism. He flipped the page to a report titled "Post Extraction Interview." Here, the crewman discussed his descent into hell; pleading for help initially, he later begged to be killed as the torture and hunger became too extreme to bear. "Gessus...." Broots said under his breath, the blood draining from his face.
Broots read on. As crewman eight sat, immobile day after day, he'd been able to smell the kitchen, but food was never brought. He'd been able to see the sun out a small window as he lay shacked to a cold stone wall, but he'd sat shivering in the cold unable to feel it's warmth. Broots felt the hair on his arms stand up as his body had a sympathetic response to the images he saw in his mind's eye.
Once the initial interrogation by the Russians was over, crewman eight had simply been left in his cell. He assumed they'd decided to let him die a slow death in punishment for a crime he'd never know or understand. According to the report, the sailor denied being a spy and told the American's who cared for him that he never known why he'd been treated so much more harshly than the rest. His best guess was that it was simply because he was the last one to be interrogated. They'd done this too him because they could. There was no more to it than that. The panel of experts writing the report had agreed.
Broots felt numb...and nauseas. He turned to the final page. It was a file summary stating that crewmen number eight, Roger Schitowsky, died four days after his return as a result of multisystem organ failure stemming from systemic infection and shock. He'd spent his last two days in and out of consciousness, screaming. He' been in agonizing pain that even narcotics seemed unable to control as the infection ravaged what was left of his body.
Having finished the reading, Broots placed the report in front of him on the desk. He sat trying to digest what he'd just seen. A shiver went up his arm. "That...that" He stammered and pointed at the pages in front of him. His stomach churned and he couldn't speak.
Parker nodded. She sat in a chair next to Broots's desk and extracted a cigarette from the silver case she carried. She deftly lit the slim white tube inhaling deeply. They sat in silence.
Parker finally spoke. Her eyes looked wet and her face was still pale. She seemed to speak automatically. "We still need to know what's in that locked file, Broots." Her voice was tired. "We need to know why Jarod lead us here." She said in a near whisper.
Broots nodded. "Okay."
Parker rose to her feet, her legs seeming les steady than they'd been a few minutes before. She walked to the door. Hesitating there, she called back to Broots. "Call me as soon as you know what's in that file." Broots nodded in response. Parker brought a hand up to her abdomen, and looked pale again. She slipped out into the hallway, her footsteps retreating toward her office.
Broots's fingers flew over his keyboard; his mind relieved to have a technical task to focus on. He called up several files, accessing various decryption algorithms he'd designed. He'd learned some time ago that you could rarely find the information you needed at the Centre without breaking a few of the rules. Broots kept his eyes on the screen as letters and numbers scrolled along. He tried not to think.
Sidney's Office -- The Centre
Sidney sat in a high backed leather chair. He stared out, his eyes seeing nothing. He was captured by his own thoughts. He revisited the Galacia simulation and the weeks following it in his mind's eye, trying to put the last of the pieces of Jarod's puzzle together.
Sidney reached for the telephone. He dialed Broots's extension and waited for an answer.
Broots answered quickly. "Tech Room, This is Broots." He said.
Sidney's voice was quiet, detached. He knew what the answer would be almost before he asked the question. "The locked file. It's a simulation record?"
Broots paused, looking at the file name and coding. "Yeah." He said. "I think I can get it open in a few more minutes." He added.
"Good." Sidney said, and hung up the phone. He thought again of Jarod's sketch of darkness and isolation. Sidney already had a good idea of what the file would tell them. Someone, likely Raines, had simulated the eighth crewman using Jarod. That's why Jarod had been so upset in the weeks that followed the original simulation.
What bothered Sidney most was that he hadn't known. "I should have." He thought. Guilt born from his protectiveness for Jarod burned inside him.
What Sidney desperately needed to know was what why Jarod had led him back to this simulation. "What's is it, Jarod?" He said under his breath. "What do you need to tell me?"
Sidney steepled his hands under his chin. Anger brewed in his belly. The tactical information had been extracted by pretending the other seven crewmen. There was no advantage to the Centre in completing the final simulation. Sidney suspected Raines had completed the simulation simply as an exercise to see how Jarod would respond.
Sidney's controlled exterior gave way. He made a fist and pounded it on his desk. "How could Raines have been permitted to do that!" He shouted. He was furious, though he wasn't certain if he was more angry with himself or the Centre. "I should have known...." he said more quietly as his anger turned to self-recrimination and grief.
Miss Parker's Office - The Centre
Miss Parker had recovered from the trauma of reliving Jarod's past earlier in the morning. She now sat at her desk reviewing a Center intelligence report on Jarod's most recent known location. She felt impatient. She wanted to move on. Miss Parker had always preferred being in action. She felt more in command that way.
Miss Parker put the report down and fingered the edge of the folder. She thought back to the conversation she'd had with her father that morning. "What secrets are you hiding, Daddy." She thought to herself. Her eyes narrowed. She didn't like being used.
Her telephone rung and she reached for it. "What." she said with a flat tone.
"Miss Parker, it's me." Broots announced.
"What is it, Broots?" She said finding herself torn between irritation at his interruption and pleasure that he might have found the missing link to the dual puzzle of Jarod's game and her father's visit.
"That locked file is a simulation record." He announced, sounding pleased. "It looks like ~Dr. Raines~ came in after Sidney was finished and had Jarod complete one last simulation." Broots voice had a conspiratorial tone.
"The eighth crewman." Miss Parker said, anticipating where Broots was headed.
"Yup." Broots said. "It's all here."
"Thanks, Broots. I'll be there in a minute." Miss Parker said. She thought for a moment and spoke in a more tentative voice. "Broots," she said, "who authorized that simulation?"
Broots glanced down the summary page he was looking at on screen. "It looks like it was your father, Miss Parker." He tried to deliver the information with neutrality. He hoped she wouldn't shoot the messenger.
"Bastard." Miss Parker said under her breath. She hated being played for a fool. "So that's what you were worried I'd find." She said, thinking of her father.
"Huh?" Broots asked, confused.
"Never mind, Broots." Parker said. "Put what you have together and bring it to my office. I want to see every piece of paper attached to this project." She instructed. "And bring me that sim." She added more forcefully.
"You've got it." Broots answered. He hung up the phone and reached for a file folder. It was going to take time to get it all together, but Parker was his boss and he wasn't about to defy her. He hoped Sidney wouldn't mind is telling her first.
Broots highlighted several items on his screen and selected print. In the background he had a feeling that Sidney already had the answers to Jarod's puzzle. Broots had suspected as much since that morning. He guessed that Miss Parker and he were playing catch up to something Sidney already knew.
"Oh well," he thought. "At least I get to be part of the chase." He said as he collected the pages from the printer. He figured by the time he and Parker were done sorting through the file, there'd be a new abandoned lair to discover. The Galacia project appeared to be another dead end.
Broots sighed. He had the distinct sense that this riddle had never truly been about finding Jarod. It had always been about unfinished business between Jarod and Sidney. He smiled briefly about that. Something seemed right about it.
Broots finished collecting the documents he'd printed and shuffled them into folders. It was time to meet with Parker. Maybe they'd find something useful after all, he considered. "Naw, probably not." He thought and smiled. Jarod was never that easy to figure out.
Sierra Inn, Room 10
Jarod had reviewed the simulation and his memory a dozen times. He knew Sidney had been in the room as each of the first seven simulations started. He'd talked Jarod through the beginning of each one, helping the young Jarod slip inside the mind of his targets. Sidney, always a mentor and protector, had walked Jarod through the initial stages, carefully guiding the boy past the emotional pitfalls of working on such intense pretends.
Jarod closed his eyes, mentally seeing it all again. The men he "pretended" to be were asked questions. With Sidney's help, he'd been able to find their answers. He knew what each man had thought. He knew who each man had been. He knew they were all innocent. He'd been able to tell Sidney this with certainty. Sidney had simply nodded as he answered each question.
Then, there was a moment where something was different. It occurred at the same point in each simulation. As a child, sensing this change had left Jarod frightened. He had always been fearful when he didn't understand what was happening. Finally, it had been clear. Sidney was gone, that's what was different. Jarod remembered Sidney being absent throughout the next phase of each of the first seven simulations. During the eighth one, Sidney had never appeared.
Sitting at the window in his room at the Sierra Inn, Jarod kept his eyes closed, remembering. A slow anger replaced the fear he'd felt as a child as he wondered where Sidney had gone during the most difficult parts of each simulation. A sense of betrayal seethed inside him.
Jarod opened his eyes, staring out the window, considering everything he'd seen and felt as a child. As the simulations had marched on, the men he "pretended" were beaten by their interrogators. He felt the blows in his mind. He heard the snapping of bone and the dull thud of punches. He sensed the pain inside each of them. Jarod had known the despair each man felt as he began to break. He knew their fears and the words they'd used to plead for mercy. He knew their horror as the end came. Jarod's stomach tightened as he remembered.
Jarod's eyes turned dark as he recalled his own emotions during that time. Sidney had left the sim lab after the initial interrogation sims were completed. As Jarod focused on the prisoner's last hours, Sidney was nowhere to be seen. Other technicians coached him for answers to the final questions about what each man had thought or felt. And, in that moment, the world of pretend and life collided as Jarod felt the same emotions these men did. He felt abandoned and alone. All of the men he'd "pretended" during the Galacia simulations had felt that way. They'd all been thrown to the wolves.
Jarod's face took on a childlike quality except his ancient eyes, eyes that had seen too much. Jarod remembered in the final moments of each simulation, pleading for help. And, as the simulation ended with the sound of a single gun shot that signaled the death of the "target", Jarod had screamed Sidney's name, pleading for him to come and save him. In that moment, it had felt like it was ~him~ about to be shot, not some fisherman five thousand miles away.
Jarod stood, stepping away from the window. He was aware his heart was pounding again. In his ears, he heard the hollow ringing sound of the gun being fired. The memory of it all was very present in the motel room as he stood, frozen in the center of the room.
One thing Sidney never truly seemed to understand was how real it felt to be inside someone else's mind. He never seemed to know how terrifying it was to momentarily live inside the mind of a man who was about to be murdered. He never seemed to see damaged it caused to live inside the mind of a man who had his feet eaten away by rats while he was still alive. He never seemed to understand how real each thought and emotion was to his young pretender.
Jarod felt his stomach knot. His eyes were angry. His hands, however, were shaking. He ran his fingers through his hair as he walked back to the window. Looking out, he watched dust be caught by the wind, and carried along for a few feet before dying again in a swirl. He felt his throat catch, tears tried to climb up from a long buried slumber. He pushed them away. This wasn't a time for grieving. It was a time for answers. Sidney was gone when Jarod had needed him. It was time to find out why.
Sidney's Office, The Centre
Sidney's telephone rung. He reached for it. "Sidney." He said into the receiver. An almost electric feeling passed through him even before the person on the other end spoke. He'd always had a unique connection to Jarod.
"Miss me, Sidney?" Jarod asked in a tone more sarcastic than curious.
"Jarod! I'd hoped you'd call." Sidney said, genuinely pleased to be speaking to him. "I've been worried about you."
Jarod retorted quickly, "It seems to me your concern is a bit late." His anger was giving way to the hurt her felt. Despite reviewing the DSA again, all he'd really learned with certainty was that Sidney was gone during most of the later part of all the simulations and for the entire simulation of crewman eight's experience. What he craved knowing was why. Some deep inner pain begged for Sidney to tell him that he had not been abandoned. Sidney could hear that pain in Jarod's voice, but he truly wasn't sure what he should say.
Sidney spoke hesitantly. "You were wronged. We both know that." He said and stopped. Sidney wasn't sure what Jarod was looking for, wasn't sure what to say.
Jarod's voice trembled as he replied. "How could you leave me at a time like that?!" He said, the true emotion he felt seeping through a carefully prepared façade of righteous anger.
"The Galacia simulation." Sidney said in a flat voice. He didn't want to think about it.
"You left, Sidney. You left when I needed you." Jarod said. His voice still trembled, but this time it was anger that made its way to the surface. He made a fist. "Where were you, Sidney?!" He demanded. Tears welled up in the pretenders brown eyes. He blinked them back.
Sidney felt old and small. He knew one day these questions would come, but he was no better prepared for them than he'd been when Jarod was a boy. "I didn't leave you." He replied simply.
"What..." was all Jarod managed to say. His mind spun in a torrent of contradicting emotions. He'd seen the DSA. He knew it couldn't be true, though he desperately wanted it to be.
"Jarod, I didn't leave, I was still in the lab." Sidney said. He took a deep breath. It was time to revisit the past whether he liked it or not. Sidney continued, saying, "As you completed the first simulation, crewman one, I saw your face." Sidney paused for a moment, the image floating before him.
Jarod felt his heart pounding, but it felt as if everything around him had stopped, frozen in time as he remembered. The air felt electric, as if he and Sidney were now jointly traveling through time to the dark simulation lab of his past. A finger of ice crept up his spine as he listened.
Sidney continued, his voice sounded reticent and guilt ridden. "You looked so frightened." He said. Sidney's voice lost its strength. Across the continent, Jarod's legs felt weak. He lowered himself into the chair near the window. Silent tears began rolling down his cheeks as he nodded, listening to Sidney's confession.
"You looked so alone..." Sidney said as he struggled to find the next few words. He was unfamiliar with the intensity of this type of disclosure. He switched hands with the telephone hand set, moving it to his other ear.
"I was alone..." Jarod whispered back through the telephone, wishing Sidney was closer, wishing he could see his mentor's eyes. Jarod's face tightened and his shoulders pulled inward as a wave of emotion engulfed him.
Sidney shifted, uncomfortable in his chair. "I... my superiors wanted answers quickly and you'd already found the most important ones." Sidney's voice was detached again. He'd cut himself off from the feelings that had been growing in his belly.
"So you decided to leave me there...let me finish the simulation alone?!" Jarod's anger was back. Sidney felt as though he'd been struck in the chest. He sat, in silence.
"Sidney? Sidney, say something." Jarod demanded. "Where were you?" He asked, the hurt slipping past his indignation.
Sidney's eyes fell to his shoes as he sat at his desk holding the telephone. As a boy, Sidney'd seen terrible things in the war torn countryside of Europe. More times than he could count, he'd looked away as someone was beaten or raped. He wanted to survive and sometimes that meant looking away from the evil around you so as to avoid garnering its wrath. As he sat in his office now an old man, he thought back to those days.
Sidney sat looking at his polished leather oxfords, reminded of the many times he'd memorized the stitching on his small dusty leather shoes as he walked on the road that lead away from his village. He could hear the soldiers sometimes laughing and sometimes shouting as he walked. He'd not had the courage to stop the evil they'd committed there. He'd felt very much the same way the day he'd watched Jarod in the Galacia simulation so many years ago.
Jarod's unanswered question hung in the air between them. Finally, Sidney spoke, quietly answering Jarod's plea to know where he'd been. "I didn't leave you, Jarod." He sighed. "I was there." Sidney's face looked very old, his eyes sad. On the other end of the line, Jarod sat, torn between anger and relief.
Sidney continued, but his voice was zapped of energy. "I was still in the simulation lab. I went to the observation area to call the client and update them on our findings." He paused, remembering each moment of that day with crystal clarity. "When I'd finished, I turned and saw your face." Sidney's mind brought the image back.
Sidney's words cascaded with urgency, pleading for his protégé to understand. "Jarod, you were so young, so small." Sidney's voice failed as he fell into silence for a moment. He felt his chest begin to ache, his body substituting this sensation for the emotions he was unwilling to feel. "You were... so helpless." Sidney said, emotion finally breaking through as his voice caught.
Sidney sat up straighter in his chair, trying to regain his composure. He needed to admit what had happened. It had haunted him and he needed to confess and cleans his soul. He gripped the phone more tightly and spoke into it, pleading for Jarod to understand. "I couldn't stand to watch you be in pain, Jarod. I watched from the observation room, but I couldn't stand to be there with you." He said.
Sidney remembered standing there at the window of the observation room, frozen, paralyzed. A single tear escaping down his cheek as he'd felt the shiver go up his spine when Jarod cried out his name. Sidney had never forgiven himself for the moment of weakness that permitted him to stay standing, watching, instead of going to the boy who cried out for him.
"Why didn't you come back..." Jarod's voice trembled; the wound he felt was obvious in the tone. He sounded quiet and childlike.
Sidney shifted in his chair again, turning to face his desk; he leaned forward, supporting his weight with his arms. "I couldn't."
"Why..." Jarod said, speaking the question he'd thought a hundred times. "Why?"
Sidney replied more easily this time. His words felt more like explanation than confession. "I was supposed to protect you, Jarod, and I couldn't." Sidney's eyes fell back to his desk. "I had been assigned to extract information about the seven sailors from the ship, and I had no choice but to complete the simulation." He finished.
"Seven?" Jarod's thoughts spun. "What are you talking about Sidney?" He demanded.
Sidney spoke more slowly and precisely, wanting to be certain Jarod understood. "I did not approve the final simulation, Jarod. I never knew they did that to you." He gulped back a frog in his throat and continued. "I was responsible for letting you go through the simulation of the first seven crewmen, but I ~never~ would have let you 'pretend' the eighth man's interrogation." Sidney hoped Jarod would forgive him. He felt his palms sweating and switched the hand set back to the other side.
Jarod's face was contorted, his mind confused. "Then how..." was all he could manage. The realization of what the Centre had done to him ~without~ Sidney's approval came crashing down on him. He finally knew why Sidney had not come to him during the most harrowing moments of the eighth simulation. He hadn't known about it. Jarod's cries had truly gone unheard.
Sidney spoke again, knowing he had little comfort to offer. He'd let himself be lulled by false promises. He now wished had had more to offer Jarod than those same weak words. "They promised me you'd be alright. They promised me no one would be hurt." He finally said.
Sidney pleaded with Jarod to understand. "I let myself believe them and I left you in the care of a technician I trusted." Sidney felt breathless. His excuse seemed worthless even as he spoke it. "Raines must have taken over after I left."
Jarod felt rage erupting from a dark place deep inside of him. "You should have known, Sidney! You knew what they were capable of.... You knew you couldn't trust them." He said through clenched teeth. Tears followed and Jarod began to feel numb. Confusion and rage tangled around inside him. He was hearing the answers he'd sought, but they offered him no solace.
Sidney's shoulders fell slightly. There was little left to say. "Yes, Jarod. I should have known." He admitted. Sidney was face to face with the truth that had haunted him for much of the last twenty years. He'd not protected Jarod when he should have. He'd failed him.
Sidney's eyes fell back to his shoes again. He spoke, no longer for Jarod, but for himself. He now revealed the truth he'd never admitted even in private. "I watched through the glass as you cried and screamed. I let myself believe you weren't ~really~ feeling those things, that those feelings were simply those of the 'target'." Sidney remembered so clearly how he'd justified his standing by.
"After the first few simulations, I simply couldn't watch anymore. I
convinced myself you didn't need me." Both Sidney and Jarod knew that had
been a lie, but it was the lie Sidney had wanted to believe.
Sidney continued, saying, "You were moving quickly through the simulation material. I let myself believe my work was done." Sidney finished. Silence grew between them. For Sidney, there was nothing left to say. Jarod knew the truth now.
Jarod felt acid burning in his stomach and tension in his neck. The truth was what he'd come here to find, but he now discovered that it offered him no comfort. The wounded child within him wanted some grand reason for Sidney to have left him. As a boy, he'd imagined that Raines had taken Sidney away, or he'd been in a car crash and been hospitalized. Now, hearing the truth, his mind rebelled at the idea that Sidney had simply walked away and lacked the courage to come back. Jarod stood, touching the glass of the window in front of him. It was cold and hard. Jarod's eyes showed the pain he'd never be able to express in words.
"And, the nightmares, Sidney." Jarod said, hoping for one bit of comfort. He gulped hard. "You had to know then." He pleaded. As a boy, he'd needed Sidney to be there so desperately. "You must have sensed how much I needed you then." Jarod reasoned.
Sidney shook his head. Regret tore at his mind. "You were such an extraordinary child with an incredible gift." Sidney said. He smiled as he remembered how vibrant Jarod had been. Sidney tried to explain saying, "I knew you had been troubled by the simulation, but you seemed to regain your balance in a few weeks." Sidney frowned, knowing it was a pale excuse, but he had nothing more to offer.
Sidney shook his head, angry with himself but hoping Jarod would understand. "I let myself believe that you recovered from it all." He explained. More hesitantly he added, "I wanted to believe you'd forget the simulations in time. I hoped you had."
Jarod felt tears coming and pressure in his chest. He'd never been able to forget moments like those he'd experienced while simulating the Galacia crewmen. But, he had his answers.
Sidney could hear Jarod breathing, but he no longer spoke. "Jarod?" Sidney asked, hoping he was still listening. "I never intended to hurt you." Sidney promised.
Quietly, Jarod replied. "I know, Sidney." In his voice, bitterness and disappointment were both present.
Jarod spoke again, sounding defeated. "You never intended to, but you were a part of it, Sidney. You and Raines." Jarod was tired. Weariness seemed to wash through him.
Sidney winced as Jarod classed him in the same category as Raines. He liked to believe he was nothing like Dr. Raines. After all, he'd always cared for his subjects. But, at some level, he knew Jarod's characterization was accurate.
Sidney listened again, worried about how his disclosure was effecting Jarod. "Are you alright?" Sidney finally asked. His question was tentative. He wasn't sure he'd earned the right to ask Jarod that question.
Jarod forced himself to smile slightly. "I'm managing, Sidney." He said. His anger had fallen away. Sidney should have been many things, including stronger, but he wasn't. The pretender realized in that moment that they'd both been victims of the moment when fear defeats character. Sidney'd had the choice to remove himself to his shield of science and justify everything else. He'd been able to forget Jarod had been a young boy who desperately needed him because it was easier than facing the truth about what was happening to the boy. Jarod understood that, he just couldn't accept it.
"Is there anything you need?" Sidney asked, wishing he'd had better answers to give Jarod.
Jarod walked with the phone in hand, to the bedside and sat down. He felt spent. "Did you love me, Sidney?" he asked in a tentative voice. Jarod rarely admitted he needed to know that. Sidney had let him down, but he was still the nearest thing to family Jarod had ever known.
There was a silence as Sidney struggled to find words. "I've always cared for you." He finally managed. His voice was ambiguous. He knew Jarod needed more, but he knew it was more than he could give. Silently, Sidney wished he'd been more the man Jarod needed, and less the man he was.
Tears began rolling down Jarod's cheeks again. Sidney couldn't bring himself to say it. Jarod doubted he'd ever hear those three words from his mentor. The pain he felt for the loss of his childhood increased as he felt distance growing between himself and the man on the other end of the phone.
"You should have stopped them." Jarod managed to say. On the other end of the phone, Sidney sat, wishing he had.
"I know." Sidney finally replied. The Centre had been a place where you followed orders. He wanted to believe everything he'd done had been as simple as that. But, Sidney knew he'd once promised Jarod refuge. He wished now he'd had the strength to honor that promise.
Jarod hung up the phone, feeling dissatisfied but complete. Knowing Sidney had been just a few feet away behind a mirrored glass panel or that he felt guilt about finally walking away when Jarod had needed him did little to diminish the pain he now felt. Sidney had still never come to the boy's aid. But, Jarod had his answer. He knew where Sidney had been. He knew why he'd not come.
Sidney leaned forward and replaced the hand set in its cradle. He sat in his office at the Centre in silence, acknowledging the crime he'd been party to by walking away. Sidney had known Raines would move in if he stepped away, but he'd simply been too weak to stay in the room and watch Jarod in such pain. He'd not had the strength to watch and do nothing; he'd not had the strength to see it and intervene. His inherent sense of self-protection had permitted himself to call it science and forget the young boy he'd promised to protect. Even then, he'd had suspected Raines had moved in and completed the last simulation. He had let himself believe that wasn't the case, but he'd always known it was true.
Jarod stood at the window in his motel room and watched the dust scatter in the brisk winter wind. Finally he turned and walked to the bathroom. His legs felt heavy and he felt drained despite the early hour. He turned, facing the mirror and flicked on the lights. He placed his palms on the edge of the counter and leaned forward. He faced the mirror, and let himself slip inside the face he'd seen so many times as a child.
Jarod allowed himself to become Sidney, as he'd been when Jarod was a boy. He revisited the Galacia simulations once more, but this time inside his mentor's mind instead of his own. Finally, he knew enough to complete the simulation he'd been preparing. This time, he wanted to be Sidney. He wanted to know how Sidney had felt about him. He wanted to be inside the moment of Sidney's inaction and know with certainty that Sidney had cared for him. Jarod concentrated and the Sierra Inn slipped away.
Perhaps it was enough to know Sidney had loved him. Perhaps it wasn't.
