Jarod looked around the hotel room in amazement.  He had never seen such large beds before and they were each covered with the same flowery, shiny-blanket type item.  And each bed had two pillows.  He slowly sat down on the side of the bed closest to the window.  It was a lot softer than his hard, narrow bed back in the Centre.

Sydney quietly watched as Jarod explored his new surroundings.  It was fascinating to watch as Jarod tried to fit what he now saw with what he knew from the Centre.  Jarod was now examining the bedside lamp, trying to determine its function.  Sydney gave a satisfied nod when Jarod’s busy fingers accidentally turned on the light.  Jarod first froze into place, and then his head cocked to one side in confusion.  A deft twist of the switch turned the light back off, then on, then off.  He only stopped playing with the lamp when Sydney indicated that it was time to leave for breakfast.

******************************************************************

Miss Parker left her office and headed down to the residential sublevel.  She purposely turned her back to the bullet hole in the elevator’s back wall.  A bullet hole from the single most important and life changing event in her life.  A bullet hole left from when her mother committed suicide.  The elevator bell dinged and Parker left the car as quickly as she had entered.

The information in Jarod’s file gave his room number as SL18-154.  Room 154 was 2/3 of the way down the south-eastern corridor.  She passed two different sets of sweeper’s offices, complete with surveillance monitors and listening devices.  Jarod would have also had to pass these offices to reach the elevators.

“Impossible,” she thought to herself.  “He’s not an idiot, he would know better than to try to reach the elevators.  But, how then?”

As she paced down the corridor, a slight draft brushed her.

“Of course, the vent!”

She looked up and saw the hallway vents were quite large, at least four foot square.  More than large enough for an adult to enter by.

“But first he would have to leave his room, and even then, these ceilings are at least 10 feet high,” the logical side of her brain argued. 

“Well, duh, the vents in his room,” the sarcastic side argued back.

After reaching Jarod’s room and determining that the lock was indeed working properly, Miss Parker entered the cell.  And a cell, it was.  Gray concrete walls formed a small square; a stainless steel bunk and a commode/sink combo were situated on one side of the room with a gun-metal gray desk filled the free space on the other side.  And, she saw as she looked around from the doorway, a vent over the bed.

A satisfied smirk graced Parker’s face as she approached the vent.  The vent cover refused to move when she tugged on it, though.  A small frown appeared and she gave a more determined pull.  And, again, the cover failed to move.

Miss Parker looked back at the sweeper that had followed her down the corridor. 

“I want this vent way checked out.  I want to know how easy it is to remove the cover.”

“Yes, Miss Parker,’ the sweeper hurried from the room.  He knew Miss Parker’s reputation and was in no hurry to test the validity of it.

Miss Parker headed back toward the bed and to the mannequin it still held.  She observed the position the imitation man laid in, how the face was turned away from the camera, how the hand just peeked out from under the thin woolen blanket.  All in all, it was a very life-like pose and she could understand how the camera sweepers could misinterpret the image. 

“But only for a short while,” she thought to herself.  “The dummy doesn’t move and the sweepers should have picked up on that.”

A scuffling noise brought her attention back to the vent.  A light shined through the holes in the cover and fingers poked through. 

“It’s soldered closed, Miss Parker,” a voice from the vent announced.  “Looks like it’s been closed for quite a while, too.”

Miss Parker’s eyebrows rose as she turned and left the room.

“How the hell did he get out, then?”

******************************************************************

Sydney was lying on one of the queen-sized beds back in the hotel room.  He knew he needed to sleep, but his brain was going non-stop.  He couldn’t believe that he had actually left the Centre, and taken Jarod with him.  That alone meant his life was forfeit if the Centre ever caught up with them.

“But it’s worth it,” he thought as he looked over at Jarod’s sleeping figure.  “He’s worth it.”

A small smile flitted across his face as he remembered their time in the restaurant.  Jarod had followed Sydney’s advise and ordered the bacon and egg breakfast special.  Jarod had enjoyed the scrambled eggs and the crispy bacon.  The hash-brown potatoes and orange juice were also quickly consumed.  But the sourdough toast covered with strawberry jelly was obviously the hit of the meal.  Jarod had heaped so much jelly onto the bread that Sydney had become seriously concerned about the sugar rushing through his young friend’s body.  Fortunately Jarod had fallen asleep almost the minute his head had hit the pillow.  Sydney’s eyes started to close as he yawned and then they refused to re-open.  And then he fell asleep, too.

******************************************************************

Broots sat down at his computer station and released a deep sigh.  The rumors of the escaped Pretender were the first things he had heard this morning.  To be re-assigned from security software development to the pursuit team was the last thing he wanted.  To have the legendary Miss Parker lead the team chilled his blood.  His heart beat a little faster as he thought of her long bare legs, but then pounded in fear as he thought of both her cold gray eyes and of what she would do to him if she caught him thinking about her legs.

“Better to just do your job,” he reminded himself.

The file Miss Parker gave him told him the doctor was basically computer illiterate, at least by Broots’ standards.  That over 90% of the world’s population would fail to reach those standards never occurred to him.  His superior computer ability was one of the few things that gave him any satisfaction.

Jarod, on the other hand, would probably give Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame a run for his money.  That man could make a computer do things that Broots didn’t even know were possible.  Of course, he had been isolated from the world for over thirty years, so just how hard could it be to catch him?

“A basic search program should be all that’s needed,” he said to himself.