Chapter 7. The Situation.

  Miss Parker arrived at Broot's SL-5 office, expecting a nervous welcoming parade put on by her one-man technical crusader. Instead, she found an empty room that smelt distinctly like stale donuts and cheap coffee and was inhabited by the incessant drone of 30 state of the art computer systems and a matching 30 incandescent light globes.

  Retrieving her phone with all the precision of a woman scorned, she hit number 2 on her speed dial, biting her lip to quell the all-encompassing compulsion to put a bullet through each and every light source in the room. Her brief encounter with Jarod, having been less than fruitful and her father's sudden hands-on interest in the pursuit of Gemini, successfully shattering whatever reserved patients she once possessed.

  Without giving Broots a chance to speak, she began their conversation, "Where are you?" Her question was delivered as a demand, rather than an inquiry or request.

  "Mm...Miss Parker... Where are you...?"

  "I am in your office Dilbert and you had better have one hell of a good reason as to why you are not..."

  Broots let his intense fear whisper for him, not even aware of her fleeting reference to his favourite cartoon character, "I...I'm locked in the janitors closet in the lobby... I told you before..."

  "You told me that we had a situation. It had better not be you locked in a closet, because as far as I'm concerned..."

  Broots dared interrupt her, "Yyy...You better get down here Miss Parker... If anyone finds..."

  Miss Parker sighed impatiently, "I get it Broots... Come find you and unlock the door..." She begun the short stalk back to the elevators, "You mentioned ‘we,' I'm guessing your ‘closet friend' would not be a particularly welcome guest..."

  "Quite the opposite," he scoffed without restraint, before continuing in his usual stuttered ranting, "Pp...Please hurry... If we get caught..."

  "Keep your pants on. I didn't survive for this long around here without learning a trick or two." She hung up the phone, pressing the elevator's ascend button continually until the doors shut behind her, a small smile biting at the corners of her mouth with the memory of a devious childhood discovery that was about to resurrect its rebellious self.

<~>

  Sydney studied the bare cinder-block walls that constituted the three solid walls of the less than welcoming cell he now occupied. Granted that he should be regretting his chosen course of action regarding Mr Lyle, all he could think about were all the times he'd let Jarod down and how he'd be damned if he was going to stand by and do nothing whilst Miss Parker saw to it that Lyle resumed his all-encompassing governance over the pretender. He'd had to do something, but a large part of him was glad that he only ended up in a holding cell rather than the unmarked grave he could have expected, had Lyle have not realised his compounding value in terms of Jarod's future...

  With all the grace of a falling tree, Sydney was thrust back to reality by the distant echoes of a fire alarm. Smiling absently at the loud crank of the fire door blocking all access to and from the nearly deserted sublevel, Sydney remembered the last time he'd been left on this side of a sealed fire door... A certain audacious brunette popping into mind...

<~>

  "But you promised! You told me that as soon as Jarod finished his work, that he could teach me origami!" A defiant young Miss Parker stomped her foot in frustration, her arms folded tightly across her chest, crushing her neatly ironed red dress. Her attire was that of a special occasion, not an origami lesson.

  "Jarod needs his rest Miss Parker... He can teach you origami another time..." Sydney was un-phased by her outburst, it striking him as nothing more than water off a duck's back. Though he saw the potential for the rage that fuelled her father, Sydney knew this little girl's temper was kept in check by the tranquillity inherited from her mother. Hence, he continued to gather the papers from Jarod's last sim without giving her tantrum a second thought.

  Miss Parker stomped again, "Is that your final answer?" Her sweet young voice had taken on a distinctly darker and all too familiar tone, causing Sydney to stop what he was doing and face her. The way she enunciated the word ‘final,' in particular, stole his attention.

  "I am sorry Miss Parker, but Jarod has to rest now..." Sydney picked up the manila folder he'd been compiling, "And I have work to do..." He offered her a saddened smile, searching her expression for the source of this particular outcry.

  Miss Parker smiled sweetly in return, her posture softening and her arms dropping back to her side. Her eyes however, emitted no fondness at all, "You're not sorry. But you will be." She turned on her heels and skipped out of the sim lab flicking her dress around with all the outward appearance of an innocent and happy little girl dressed for a party.

  Sydney stared after her bewildered, never had he seen such contempt emanating from those eyes. He made a mental note to consult Catherine about it later, before resuming the route to his office, Jarod's precious sim results in his hand.

  Sydney hadn't made it three steps down the corridor, before the fire alarm begun to sound. Quickening his pace to reach the stairwell before the sub-level was sealed and the sprinkler systems engaged, Sydney couldn't help but smile at his gross under-estimate of the resourcefulness of Miss Parker. She was after-all, her father's daughter...

  It wasn't until he reached the stairwell, just missing the lockdown in time to be positioned right underneath the sprinkler system when it engaged, did he make the mental note to never cross the chairman's daughter again. Not only had she ensured that he and all of Jarod's work were drenched and consequently, that Sydney would be paying the price for denying her permission to see Jarod, but she had also managed to get her origami lesson from Jarod.

 She was certainly not one to be taken lightly. That much was certain.

<~>

  In hind sight and had he have had the time, Sydney would have chased after the girl and found that the source of her anger was yet another failed appearance by her father, followed by an unfortunate encounter with Dr Raines... In fact, the more he thought about the incident, the more he would have encouraged the origami lesson and avoided all ensuing conflict...

  All of which, Sydney thought, was beside the immediate point. If anyone was behind this particular fire alarm, he would have been willing to bet an arm and a leg that it was at the hands of a very familiar brunette indeed. The really worrying thought however, was that Miss Parker very rarely, if ever, pulled the same trick twice. The fact that she would pull the fire alarm again, even all of these years later, told Sydney that there was still a lot more about this situation that she was yet to disclose. And that thought was genuinely terrifying by anyone's standards.

<~>

  At the sound of the deafening fire alarm, Broots began to panic even more about being trapped in the closet and it took all his strength not to begin pounding his fists against the door and alerting the lobby staff, who were currently occupied with evacuating the building.

  Breathing rapidly and to the point of near exhaustion, Broots prayed over and over that Miss Parker would hurry, nearly passing out in shock when a shadow came to a stop outside his dark and terribly enclosed prison.

  Opening the door rapidly, Miss Parker managed to knock a terrified Broots to the floor, exposing the full extent of the situation.

  For just under a second, Miss Parker was speechless.

  "For future reference Broots, a situation isn't 6ft tall and rounding out the Centre's most wanted list..." She tossed a set of shiny new handcuffs at Broots, who remained stunned on the floor where he'd fallen, concentrating hard on her words that were barely audible over the sounds of the sprinkler system and the evacuating stampede of employees, "...A situation is a mildly disturbing email or an appearance by the Centre's resident Ghoul... This..." She waved a flippant hand at the shadowed blonde figure's form, "This... is a disaster, a walking, talking, catastrophe... A pure cataclysmic inundation of all that is horrific..." she paused to regain her breath and more importantly, her composure. After all, it wasn't every day that she was genuinely speechless, let alone twice over the course of the week from Hell, "Get him to my office... And make sure you are not seen..."

<~>

  Without further word, Miss Parker calmly joined the frantic stream of employees evacuating the Tower and lobby and found herself a high-visibility position on the assembly point grass, from which to look incredibly irritated at being so inconvenienced. Inside her focus was being completely devoted to the task of maintaining her façade, more or less to stop herself from thinking about the figurative nuclear warhead that would now be en-route to her office...

  It was only a matter of minutes before she was joined by Mr Lyle, a not entirely unexpected event, "Enjoying the fresh air, Sis? I wouldn't have picked you for one to participate in evacuations..."

  She raised an eyebrow in response, "In ten minutes, the fire warden is an ex-employee..." not taking her eyes away from the building before her, she continued, "This is a joke." She gestured to the building, the stream of evacuating employees now a mass gathering of nervous but chatty individuals on the lawn, "There's no fire. I'm going back to my office." She motioned back towards the main entrance stairway but was prevented from going anywhere by a firm grip around her wrist.

  "Why are you in such a hurry?"

  With a sharp glare she shook Lyle's grasp free, "The sooner I get Jarod Junior, the sooner I get to leave this place." Her reply spoken through tightly clenched teeth.

  Lyle jogged to catch back up to her as she stalked away across the grass, "Speaking of which, any news on that front?"

  "I wouldn't know. Broots is probably wetting himself in the sealed tech room as we speak and Sydney hasn't been answering my calls for the last hour... But you wouldn't happen to know anything about this little charade or Sydney's disappearance, now would you...?"

  Lyle visibly suppressed a grin as he let his twin proceed up the stone stairs unaccompanied, "You should really keep them on a shorter leash... You can't lose someone if they're right next to you..."

  Parker smiled to herself as she walked back into the lobby, ignoring his supposedly taunting comments. The highly polished marble was now sopping wet on account of the sprinklers that were shedding but a few remaining drips, but Parker was more concerned about the fact that Lyle clearly had no clue who he was dealing with down in the newly refurbished bowels of SL-27. Jarod was more than just Houdini, Einstein and Mozart combined into one highly irritating package; he could make himself disappear; he was a modern day Batman, who had temporarily swapped his black leather for regulation scrubs. And judging by the most-unwelcome time bomb currently assembling itself within her office, it was only a matter of time before Lyle learnt just whom he was really up against.

<~>

  Lyle watched his sister disappear into the dripping wet lobby and pulled out his phone, calling the first number in his speed dial and waiting impatiently for his call to be answered, "So how did their little meeting transpire?"

  Mr Cox's eyes twinkled as he watched Jarod still restrained to the infirmary bed and doing all that was humanly possible to ease his boredom, from behind the one-way glass, "Jarod maintains his ignorance in the matter."

  "Do you believe him?" Lyle placed a weary hand in his pocket, keeping half an eye on a newly forming corporate gathering of interest, from where he was positioned on the lawn.

  "She does."

  Lyle watched distractedly as Mr Parker openly gesticulated a conversation between himself, Raines and Lyle's associate from before. He eyed the trio suspiciously, barely registering Cox's response, "Anything I should be aware of?"

  Mr Cox watched with great concern as Sam's attention dropped to his phone.

  All sweepers were prohibited from carrying any electronic devices in Jarod's presence but it was what Sam did next, that really caught Cox's attention.

<~>

  Pulling her phone from her pocket, Miss Parker keyed in a familiar number, pushing open the heavy fire door and exposing the concrete stairwell that could and would, take her up to her office, "I need to call in a solid you owe me, but I need you in my office yesterday. And don't worry about Lyle and Cox, all will be forgiven... Oh and Sam, bring a spare uniform and some extra restraints..."

<~>

  Answering his phone without so much as a single word, Sam listened to his mystery caller's instructions, though openly failing to respond in any sort of distinguishable manner other than to hang up upon the call's end.

 Shaking his head clear in disbelief, Cox's eyes drifted toward Jarod who was making no attempt to disguise his interest in this blatant disregard for protocol, before focusing back on Sam, just in time to catch him calling in a replacement.

  Considering Lyle's question with a fleeting regard, Cox informed his co-collaborator of the latest development, "...Sam just left his post..."

<~>

  "What was that? It sounded like you just said that Sam left his post...?" Lyle craned his neck further, straining to overhear the discussion taking place just a few inaudible feet away. The exclusion was visibly eating him from the inside out, though Cox having obviously regained a fraction of his attention.

  "He did... It seems as if he received a better offer..."

  Now Cox had Lyle's complete and un-divided attention, "When did he leave?" Lyle checked his watch carefully, glancing back toward the lobby, his sister having disappeared inside the building minutes ago.

  Cox checked the elevator surveillance from a monitor to his left, "Elevator's on SL-23 as we speak."

  "That scheming little witch..." Lyle hung up his phone and headed directly for the stairs. If his sister thought that she could poach valuable sweepers away from babysitting the Centre's greatest asset, then she had another thing coming...

<~>