The first weeks of my sister’s corporate work went rather smoothly. It had me wonder why they had ever removed her from the corporate branch of the Centre in the first place because she really had a knack for that sort of thing. Her success had even silenced my father’s complaints about her not staying home with her feet up where he deemed she belonged.

Well, I could have foretold that. Whenever it came to money, my father was easily satisfied. And money she did bring in. Big time.

The only thing that worried me was that something had changed between us after I had told her about Jarod. Maybe it was just an elaborate case of kill the messenger, but it seemed as if she had distanced herself from me since then.

We still had dinner or lunch once or twice a week, but she often seemed absent-minded and wasn’t half as open about her feelings as she had been.

Still, I wasn’t overly concerned about it. Her emotional baggage wasn’t very interesting anyway.

And things were definetly going my way.

It was a few weeks after our last encounter that I finally managed to cross Miss Parker’s path. She was on her way from the cafeteria back to her office when I finally caught her without the usual Sweepers accompanying her. She always kept them around her, making sure that neither Sydney nor I would speak to her.

Today she was mercifully alone and so I took my chance and followed her into the elevator. I could feel my pulse hammering inside my throat, but I had to stand my ground for once.

She looked up from the chocolate bar she had been unwrapping and cast me an annoyed glare after which she slipped the candy bar into her pocket.

I waited for another floor to pass by and then hit the stop button with force. She was shocked at first and I found her hand fly up to her stomach in an automatic gesture. It was only then that I noticed that she had begun to show.

“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped at me.

“I just want to talk to you!” I replied and was relieved to hear my voice clear and without the slightest hint of a stutter. It even sounded slightly intimidating. Not to Miss Parker, of course, since her expression had only darkened at my words.

She tucked at her jacket with some force as if trying to hide the sign of her pregnancy from me, then put one hand on her hip.

“You pathetic little bastard,” she scorned. “Why can’t you have my secretary give you an appointment like anybody else?”

She tried to reach past me to restart the elevator but I refused to let her.

“Miss Parker, your Sweepers won’t let me talk to you. There was no other way to do this.”

She cocked her head at me as if I was talking complete nonsense.

“And have the Martians landed, too?” she asked mockingly.

“Stop it!” I told her, fear and fury equally ruling my bearings. “I am very much aware of the fact that you consider me second string, but I thought we were friends!”

She frowned but didn’t object, which encouraged me to ramble on.

“You just went on that mission without telling us and now you’re back and hiding in corporate!”

I was surprised to see fear in her eyes at my words, but her stance told me, that it was not me she was afraid of. I couldn’t tell why, but something in her barely disguised helplessness touched my heart and before I knew it, I had told her what I hadn’t even dared to admit to Sydney.

“You should really know, that I would always listen to you if you’d try to explain what you’ve done, Miss Parker. Maybe even understand…” My voice had softened considerably now. “I know that you’re not cruel and I’ve been clinging to the hope that all of this is just….”

I trailed off. One of her set-ups? A farce? What?

“What are you talking about?” she asked, annoyance now coloring her voice.

“Miss Parker… It doesn’t make sense to act innocent. I know. You know. And that’s it.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she had wanted to say I would never find out. Her hand flew up to her forehead as if she was dizzy and her legs gave way under her. I instinctively lurched forward and caught her in midfall.

“Miss Parker?” I asked, worried. “Are you okay?”

Miss Parker

“Miss Parker… It doesn’t make sense to act innocent. I know. You know. And that’s it.”

I was so frustrated at his words that I drew a deep breath. I had no idea what he was talking about and I was so damn tired of it all.

Some good-looking Centre-employee had winked at me at the corporate Christmas party, telling me how much he’d liked last year and I hadn’t had any idea what he was talking about. One of my neighbours had given me a deadly glare when I had asked about her dog, whom I had obviously nearly run over last year and I hadn’t remembered a thing. My secretary had reminded me of my father’s birthday and had looked at me with some dissatisfaction since I had obviously never forgotten it before.

I was so sick and tired of all of those situations.

And suddenly -without warning- this man’s words were triggering memories inside me. They came washing into my mind as if a wall had come tumbling down. It was only a second that I wondered whether it was all about wanting to remember before I felt too overwhelmed to think logically.

I felt myself sink forward against his chest, his aftershave making my stomach lurch before the wall broke completely and a string of seemingly incoherent scenes started playing in my head, accompanied by a staccato of sensations.

“What?” I asked, forcing an icy tone into my voice although I was already suspecting what all of this was about.

“Happy birthday,” he said, handing me the present with a nervous smile.

“You shouldn’t have.” My voice sounded flat while I tried to hide the fact that I was touched by his gesture. Esspecially since he seemed to be the only one who had remembered my birthday.

He looked at me with a look that would have suited a puppy and I allowed myself to acknowledge the fact for the first time, that this guy was completely smitten with me.

--

“Lemon ice-cream!” The little girl chirped happily. She looked quite like her father, the same puppy look, I thought. Just that it was far more becoming on a little girl than on a grown man.

“I love that stuff,” I told her, wondering at the same time what had made me open up to her about it.

“My Dad says that I shouldn’t eat so many sweets,” she objected.

“Do we have to tell him? Could be our secret…” I smiled at her.

--

“Could be our secret,” my mother told me and winked at me while her hand came up to softly smooth my hair back from my face. I smiled at her, happiness and excitement filling me.

“I like secrets.”

--

“I hate secrets…” I felt tears welling up in my eyes and a scream forming in my throat. “Why is this place full of gruesome secrets?! Why do you have to rub my face in it everytime?”

I hated myself for not being able to stop the sobs from shaking me..

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?! Let me go on with my life and go away.”

My hand held on to the phone as if clinging to a lifeline and a distant part of my conscious recognized my knuckles turning white.

“You don’t really want me to do that, Miss Parker.”

His voice. Jarod. “I’ll stay until you’ve given me what I want.”

And I knew he would.

The smell of the aftershave floated back into my nose and the scenes that had been playing inside my head dissolved immediatley. I was confused. It had been like changing the channels on TV, just that I knew that it had to have been memories. Strange it was, that I remembered those few moments but absolutely nothing beyond it.

My body felt weak and all I wanted to do was sit down. Instead I was clinging to the man- Broots. That was his name.

He was holding me and his hand was softly stroking my back in a soothing motion.

Inside me, conflicting emotions were battling each other and all I could do was witness this fight as if it was another person’s life I was watching.

On the one hand I wanted to push him away violently, hurt him physically and emotionally and on the other hand it felt good to be held by him. The few things I remembered about him had told me that I could trust him, that he cared about me.

But why was it that I wanted to hurt him so badly anyway?

I straightened up slowly, tugging at my jacket.

“Feeling better?” he asked, still holding on to my shoulder.

“Yes,” I replied monosyllabicly, unsure of what else to say to him.

“Let’s go somewhere you can sit down,” he told me in a worried voice. “You still look pretty unsteady.”

I hadn’t noticed that the elevator had been back in motion and so I jumped slightly when the doors swished open and revealed my brother and Sam.

“Hello, Sis,” Lyle said in a warm voice and motioned for Sam to take me by the arm. “I am so sorry you got stuck.”

Despite my dazed state I noticed the evil glare he gave Broots and his helpless shrug. Lyle obviously thought that I couldn’t hear him when he snapped at Broots: “I told you to stay away from my sister.”

The rest was lost on me while Sam lead me towards my office. There was only one thing that I could say for sure: Something was very wrong.

Maybe what came next was a warning issued by my subconscious but like a flash, another stray scene began playing inside my head.

Lyle looked at me, a sneer on his face while my father held on to our shoulders, trying to be the binding element between two people that I suddenly understood despised each other beyond compare. I looked back at him and felt hatred rising inside my throat.

“Miss Parker!” Sam’s voice sounded worried and I realized that I must have looked pretty dazed.

“I’m fine,” I replied curtly, suddenly feeling the urge to run out of this building and leave it all behind. If we had actually hated each other, what was my brother’s reason to treat me so differently now? Somehow I suspected that this was not about a fresh start, but about something far more sinister.

“It’s okay. You can leave.” I told Sam in the steely voice I used around the Centre and nodded to him.

“Call me if you need anything,” he replied, then left. I waited until he had turned the corner before I opened the door to my office and stepped inside. I crossed over to my desk and pulled out the drawer, finding what I was looking for in a second.

I hadn’t really used my cell-phone except for some business calls, so I wasn’t familiar with the caller list, but I quickly found what I was looking for while I scrolled down the names. I hit the call-button.

Broots picked up the phone after only a second.

“Miss Parker!” he said. “I thought your cell-phone was out of service!”
”For you, probably,” I said, not realizing at first, that I had picked up a pretty harsh tone with him out of sheer impulse. I deliberately softened my voice. “Meet me in the diner outside Blue Cove tonight at ten,” I said. “I’ll shake off those Sweepers.”

“But…”

I hung up before he could say anything else.

I was nervous while I was waiting for Miss Parker in Monica’s Diner, a small and somewhat shabby place that Miss Parker had probably chosen for its dark corners. I sat in one of those, huddled over a cup of stale coffee, waiting for her to enter.

She had seemed different in that elevator and her fainting had scared me. What if something was wrong with her?

I had really tried to view the whole situation like Sydney did. I had wanted to just give up on her and get acquainted with the fact that she was selling her child to the Centre. The thing was that I just couldn’t.

When she finally pushed through the doors and looked around for me, my heartbeat quickened. And that wasn’t just down to me being nervous.

“Miss Parker!” I called for her, raising my arm.

She came over and slid onto the chair opposite me.

“Hello, Broots,” she said and something about the way she spoke to me was unfamiliar.

“Are you okay again?” I blurted out the first question that came to mind.

“Just fine,” she replied, then took a deep breath. “What can you tell me about Lyle?”

Of all the questions she could have asked, this was the one I would have least expected… well, except for “Would you like to marry me?” probably.

“Lyle?” I asked, puzzled. “All I know is that your brother is a mean, sick bastard.”

“Well, that’s more than I know,” she said and looked as if she was bracing herself for something. “Broots… I am not exactly sure about our relationship but I’ve got a gut-feeling that tells me that I can trust you... I don’t remember a thing about my old life.”

Broots stared at me in silence when I had finished telling him the story of my life which, considering my age, was pretty short.

I could tell by the sense of foreboding I suddenly felt when I looked into his eyes, that he was about to tell me something that would shake me to the core.

“You know something,” I demanded. “Tell me.”

“Look… You just disappeared and… and… we were looking for you and we found something… we found out about why you were gone…” he muttered, avoiding my gaze.

“Will you look at me when you’re talking to me?” I snapped, pushing his chin upwards with my hand. It was the panic that I felt inside, that made me raise my voice, but it did its magic with Broots.

“We… we found out that your father sent you on a mission… to…” He obviously had some difficulty to phrase it. “Well, to get pregnant to Jarod.”

I felt as if someone had swung a hammer at my head.

“But why?” I asked, still completely unable to make sense of all of this.

“You don’t remember…” he told himself rather than anybody else.

And then he began to tell me about people that were called Pretenders and Jarod being one of those. He told me that he had been chasing him over the past four years and that I wouldn’t be free from the Centre until I’d caught him. But the last thing he told me, finally caused me to drop my face inside my hands, willing to block out the world entirely.

“It’s just that what they really want is your baby, Miss Parker. It could be their new Pretender.”

“But that would mean that I would never see my baby again,” I said weakly, already knowing his answer deep inside my heart.

“Yes,” he said. “That would be what it means.”

Suddenly I understood why the strange man I had been talking to a few weeks ago had despised me that much. I realized why my father hadn’t even listened to my objections to my pregnancy and why my brother suddenly stuck to my side although we supposedly hated each other.

But it wasn’t the evilness of my family that made me desperate. It was what I had done. Had I really been willing to deceive Jarod like that? Pretend to love him, have his baby and then just give it to the Centre where it would lead a life in mysery?

Maybe I deserved every second of the hell my life had become.

“God, I won’t let them do this…” I whispered, perfectly disgusted at who I had been. I felt the curve of my stomach under my hand and imagined the innocent life inside. What kind of person had I been? Who did something like this? How cruel and cold-hearted had I been? I felt hatred welling up inside me like a storm. Hatred at the Miss Parker I had been. No wonder nobody had been calling me by my first name! I had been more of a machine than a human being!

Suddenly I felt very alone.

“Hey, Miss Parker.” Broots’ hand had reached across the table and covered mine protectively. “We won’t let them do this.”

I looked up and saw relief in his eyes. He had believed me to still be willing to carry out that plan but he had still listened to me. How did I deserve friends this devoted?

“Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you so much.”

“You look pale today, Miss Parker,” I told her and she jumped, startled. Her eyes widened at the sight of me and she looked frightened for a moment, before she had herself under control once again and rose from her desk.

“You should have knocked,” she told me in a neutral voice.

“I was just looking for you,” I told her with a smile. “My name is William Raines and I am a friend of your father’s.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, but it sounded like the opposite.

I searched her eyes for some traces of what I knew soon had to be visible in them, but found only her hard gaze. Still, that didn’t mean anything. She was less emotional than her mother, had more self-control. Maybe she was still able to hide it. To suppress it, even.

I wheezed and saw disgust flickering in her eyes.

“I just decided to drop in and see how you are,” I said.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Thank you very much.”

I decided that she wasn’t ready yet. It would probably take a few more weeks.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said and I could see in her expression that she had received it as what it was. A threat.

Although Miss Parker’s despair was haunting me, I felt incredibly relieved. It might be just down to the fact she didn’t remember making a deal with the devil, but she wouldn’t give her child up to the Centre.

For me, that was all that counted.

In consequence I gave up all my freetime to be able to do my work and search for information considering the Centre’s plans while Miss Parker would just pretend to go about her business so nobody would suspect anything was wrong.

What we both wanted to find out was the truth. What they were planning considering Miss Parker’s baby was not our primary goal to find out because we had a pretty clear idea of it. It had been Miss Parker who had asked me to find out why she had ever agreed to something like that.

She had looked shattered with the news and there had been nothing that could cheer her up. So now I searched every Centre database for the video footage of the deal they’d made.

I was pretty sure that it had happened at the Centre. Esspecially since a few DSAs were missing. Two from Mister Parker’s office, three of Raines’ and one of hers. But I would find them. Eventually.

But there was still another question on my mind, that was far more difficult to answer. How had she begun to suffer from amnesia? She had told me about the cars-crash she’d been in and how her doctor’s were pretty sure that the head-trauma hadn’t been severe enough to cause long-term amnesia.

The problem was that we were dealing with the Centre here. There had to be more to it than just that. Deep down we both knew that there had to be a reason for her amnesia. We would just have to find out, what it was…