I was walking along one of the upper hallways that were lit by the sunlight that came streaming in through the windows, positioned high up near the ceiling. Whenever I entered the building in the mornings, I marvelled at the beauty of this place that at the same time struck me as very inappropriate. This was what visitors, successful businessmen and powerful allies, saw. This was what represented the Centre to the outside world- a wealthy cooperation with a good taste in furniture.

Who would have suspected that the truth was so much more sinister?

As usual I headed for the elevator, clutching my battered briefcase to my chest. I would now head down to the sublevel where my office was, lit only by a dim lamp and the screen of my computer. Depressing, really.

While I was waiting for the elevator to descend I looked around to watch the few people that were passing by this early in the morning. I was still at the system checks and they had proved to be far more extensive than I had expected. Secretly, I guessed that whoever had assigned me to that particular task had known that and was very eager to keep me busy. But that didn’t change the deadline. The Centre didn’t allow for delays.

“This is beautiful.”

I would have turned around at the sound of that sentence anyway, for it was very seldom that those words were uttered inside this building, but what really made me gasp was the voice that was speaking them.

It was her.

I had been waiting for her to miraculously reappear but I hadn’t expected it to be just now. For some things you are never prepared, even if you have been eagerly awaiting them. Like your wife going into labour. I had been too shocked to move and Miss Parker’s appearance had the same impact on me.

I was left staring at her while she crossed the hall, rather slowly, as I noticed beside myself, a look of wonder in her eyes, that matched neither her personality nor her relationship to this place. What the hell was wrong with her?

And why on earth had she dyed her hair blond?!

Sam was walking on her right side, another Sweeper on her left. The latter was holding on to her elbow as if he was supporting her in a subtile way. Strange, I thought. The Miss Parker I knew would have already broken his arm. Twice.

They came past me and immediatley picked up their pace as Sam laid eyes on me.

“We are in a hurry, Miss Parker,” he whispered, but I understood him anyway.

She just nodded, still looking at her surroundings as if she’d never seen them before.

She was probably happy to be home, I thought with a jolt of sarcasm. Mission accomplished, I added grimly.

It was Sydney who had silently approached me from the opening elevator, who put it in just the right words: “Now she’s finally sold her soul.”

Sam guided me into an elevator and watched me while the floors were sliding by. During the drive in the car and our trip to another ER where I’d been prescribed more ulcer medication and a lot of rest, we had started talking to each other.

I had voiced my concerns on how stupid I was to willingly come along with him since I had no idea whether he wasn’t some psychotic killer who had somehow learned about my helpless state. He had acknowledged that and assured me that he wouldn’t hurt me.

And did I have another choice than to trust him?

At some point our conversation had slowed to a halt and while he’d been concentrating on the road, my thoughts had wandered back to what had happened in the hospital.

The ultrasound there had confirmed Dr. Hopkins’ findings and I suddenly found myself not only on my way home but also a mother to be. How to deal with that particular piece of information, I had no idea.

I was barely six weeks along, a beaming young doctor, probably some intern, had told me, pointing at a screen that showed only a washed up picture of white moving inside dark grey. Sam had remained silent at the sight of it, then had left to make a phone-call.

The doctor had handed me the sonogram picture, placed it inside my palm as if it was some treasure to behold. I had been far too shocked to look at it properly so it had remained a blurry black and white mess to me.

Then we had been back on our way, Sam concentrating on the street, me staring out at the first flakes of snow swirling by, pulling the coat he had lent me tighter around my body. What a mess, I’d thought. I had run away from the man I could just not make any sense of but loved regardless and was carrying his child.

What an irony! It seemed like fate took great pleasure in kicking me in the ass.

Esspecially since I had actually been taking contraceptives. They had been in my handbag, clearly labelled as such. How on earth had I managed to get pregnant despite that? Of course there were failures… but why me?

Although everybody seemed to congratulate me on that baby, I couldn’t view it as a blessing, but rather as a burden.

The elevator doors opened and its sound made me snap out of my reverie.

I was going to meet my father now, the only living relative besides a twin brother and that made me nervous.

Sam led me towards a set of double doors that he held open for me to step through. Suddenly I felt horribly exposed, wearing only casual slacks and a burgundy sweater I had put on this morning. Everybody around here was so neatly dressed in suits and I felt like everyone was staring at my tousled hair and worn off make-up.

The door closed behind me and I found myself faced with a heavy oak desk and a white haired man behind it.

He got up to greet me and gave me a smile.

“Angel,” his voice boomed and his arms came up around my body in a brief and somewhat awkward embrace. “We’ve been missing you.”

I tried to read his face but there wasn’t much concern there. I would have expected a worn look in his eyes, fatigue and lines around the eyes that spoke of a lack of sleep caused by his daughter being missing. But on the contrary, he looked quite rested and content. Far more than I did, actually.

“Would you like to sit?” he asked me, guiding me towards the couch where my legs finally gave way and had me sink into the pillows. “That’s better,” he sat, pouring a glass of water for me. “Pregnant ladies shouldn’t overexert themselves.”
I stared at him.

“You know?” My voice came out all husky and tired. I really needed some sleep.

“Of course. Sam told me about it.”

He never mentioned my ulcer-condition as he went on about how happy he was to become a grandfather and that everyone would take good care of me, but the words didn’t really register with me. It was the way he wasn’t touching me, the way his eyes seemed to flicker away from my gaze whenever I tried to look at him and the tone of his voice that betrayed the happiness he kept talking about.

I felt myself shiver as I realized that everything about this man was cold. And he didn’t even once ask about my opinion, obviously didn’t care whether I wanted this baby. I felt my throat tighten, suddenly felt nauseous thinking of the imposing building I was in.

I will never get out if they don’t want me to.

Now he took my hand and patted it slightly.

“You must be tired, Angel.”

“I am,” I finally managed and he nodded in acknowledgement.

“Sam is going to drive you home,” he said.

“No, wait…” I trailed off, didn’t even know what I called my own father.

“Please…” I began once again. “Do I have any family? Do I have other children or a husband?”

He waved dismissively. “You live on your own.”

I felt a stab of disappointment at his words. Not that I cared much about children or a man other than Jarod, but I wished for some warmth. Not the business-like manner this man acted on. Someone who was sincerely happy to have me back. Not an empty house full of memories that I couldn’t grasp.

I felt on the verge of tears as he guided me towards the door.

“Wait! Don’t you want to know where I was and what I have been doing during the last two months?”

He smiled, a real smile for the first time and I felt myself relax a little despite myself.

“It doesn’t matter as long as you are back, Angel,” he said. “I understand that you are suffering from amnesia and do not remember a thing. It is going to be a slow process but you will remember eventually.”

He placed his hand on my shoulder and repeated the smile- more automatic this time.

“Just go home and rest to make sure that my grandchild will be fine.”

“I don’t even know whether I want to be a mother at this point in my life!” I blurted out, but felt like I was crashing into a brick wall. His gaze changed and his eyebrows seemed to hover closer to his eyes, casting a shadow over them.

“Of course you will be,” he said.

It was almost six o’clock in the morning and although I hadn’t slept for a long time, I didn’t feel tired at all.

Jarod had left a long time ago but I was still staring at two different blood-tests and a third page of results. I drained the cup of coffee that stood next to me on the nightstand of the on call-room and then shook my head in confusion.

The first sheet of results from the blood-tests was the tox-screen Jarod had ordered when Miss Parker had been admitted after the car-crash. No alcohol, no drugs, no medication of any kind but fertility drugs, hormons. We hadn’t pursued that lead since fertility drugs weren’t likely to cause a woman to crash her car. In fact, Jarod hadn’t even seen these results since he had been far too occupied with the woman herself.

And it wasn’t unusual after all. There was still the possibility that Miss Parker had tried to conceive a baby with whatever man she was involved with in her old life.

What I didn’t understand was that those fertility drugs still showed up on the latest blood-test I had done. That one had confirmed a pregnancy, too. I hadn’t expected her to be pregnant, really, but the pregnancy test was standart when we were considering the option of surgery.

All of those findings wouldn’t have confused me if not for one thing. I stared at the third page of results until the numbers began to blurr in front of my tired eyes.

Jarod had returned to the hospital after his first hurried departure and had brought along pills recovered from Miss Parker's handbag, that he’d wanted me to have analyzed. The label had said it to be contraceptives, but they had been quite the opposite: Fertility drugs that clearly explained the high hormon levels in all of her blood tests.

What scared me about this business was Jarod’s reaction to these results. It wasn’t easy to understand why he had turned sheet-white at my announcement, but I had come up with a theory. You just had to connect a pretended amnesia and fertility drugs disguised as contraceptives.

She had been playing one vicious game with him, I thought. I so much as guessed that they had met before their encounter in the ER and I wondered what bound them together.

It was the utter rage in Jarod’s eyes that kept me up. What would he do? He had stormed out of my office, had slammed the door behind him and I had been able to hear his tiles screach on the ground of the parking-lot even through the closed window.

I hung my head, propping my chin up on my fists. What the hell was going on here? And who was a danger to whom? I sighed. With both of them gone, I would most likely never find out.

I opened Miss Parker’s chart and put the two blood tests back in, then closed the folder. For good.

Sis looked tired but definetly hot when I spotted her being led towards the parking-lot by Sweeper Sam. I quickened my pace until I had caught up with them and smiled at her.

“Hello, Sis. I’ve been told that you don’t remember your life,” I opened the conversation casually and felt Sam’s irritated gaze on me. Time to get rid of him, I decided.

“You’ve been driving all night,” I told him in the most friendly voice I was capable of producing. “Why don’t you just leave and let me take my sister home?”

He looked reluctant to leave but a very pointed gaze of mine had him scurry away, although not without touching Parker’s shoulder in a gesture of farewell.

Touching, I thought. Looks like she’s suddenly getting along with people.

“Then you are my brother?” she asked and I nodded, placing my hand onto the small of her back to lead her towards my car.

“My name is Lyle,” I said and held the passenger-door open for her. “And I am glad you are back. I have been so worried.”

She looked at me and I was amused to see gratitude in her eyes. Very nice, for a change.

I put the car into gear and watched her look at the Centre’s ghastly reflection in the window. She looked almost scared. Very vulnerable, very sweet, I thought with a sudden surge of something I could not quite identify.

“Do I live close by?” she asked, studying my face, probably looking for resemblances.

“It’s not far,” I replied. “How are you feeling? Don’t you remember anything at all?”

She seemed to fall for my friendly ways and at the end of the drive I congratulated myself on winning her trust so easily.

“Would you like me to accompany you inside?” I asked politely and at the same time wondered whether we had ever talked so civilly.

“That would be nice.”

She looked at the dark windows with an almost frightened gaze, absently fumbling with the keys she had been given. She was still a bit unsteady on her legs as she walked up her driveway and into the dark house. Easy prey, I thought, feeling the muscles in my arms tighten as my fingertips brushed her neck.

My sister had always been a serious rival to me. It would have been so easy to dispose of her right now. But so deadly for my career, too, so I braced myself for another round of acting the concerned brother.

My hand found the light switch and we walked into the living-room.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“You’ve always had a good taste in furniture,” I said although I had no idea whether what I said was true. But that was nice for a change since I usually knew damn well when I was lying.

She walked straight towards a few pictures that stood on a shelf and looked at them, almost afraid to touch them. How would I explain the absence of my picture in this? Would she realize already that I was not one bit the friendly brother I pretended to be? Her gaze was clouded as she picked up a picture of her mother.

“Who’s the kid?” she asked, frowning.

“You,” I replied.

She looked up, then realization dawned on her face.

“Then this is our mother?”

I understood. She’d thought it was her, just like everyone else usually fell for the resemblance.

“Yes,” I said.

“Where are you on the picture?”

I refrained from shifting uneasily as I would have wanted to and just shrugged, hoping that the boyish smile I gave her had reached my eyes.

“I guess I was running ahead as usual,” I lied. “I was always on the run.”

She shrugged, then replaced the picture and turned back to me.

“Thank you very much for driving me home,” she said. “I think I will just go to bed now. I am very tired.”
I bent forward and stroked her cheek lightly. Her skin was very soft to my touch.

“Then I’ll better leave. If you care for lunch tomorrow, I could tell you a little bit about your life.”

Her eyes lit up. “Thank you. That would be great.”

“I’ll be here at two.”

She nodded her agreement.

Already at the front door, I turned around again and smiled at her once again although I couldn’t see her face since it was half obscured by the shadows.

When the door had closed behind me I passed the two Sweeper cars that would be parked around her house 24-7 for the course of the next few months. Raines and my father couldn’t risk her getting away after all. Not with the child she was carrying.

I smiled to myself.

In contrast to my father I knew how to handle this. And when she trusted me enough, I would find a way to be in charge. And we would see what the Centre would offer me to get her and that precious little future-pretender back.

I whistled as I started the car and drove off.

The house… my house was spacious but not huge. Just enough for a small family, I thought. Not really suitable for a single person, but then again my brother had told me that it had been my mother’s summer house. Since she had died early I supposed that I had remained there for nostalgic reasons.

I wandered all the rooms. The kitchen, the living room, the dining-room, the bedroom, looking at everything. Still it was like a stranger’s house.

I opened the drawers, looked at the pictures –no recent onces as I realized- and felt the fabric of my clothes.

Nothing.

No recollection. No sudden flash of remembering. Just the same emptiness that had persisted during the last two months.

And I missed Jarod already. He had become the only constant in my life and now he was gone. The circumstances of our argument were still a mystery to me. Why had he been so intent on keeping my past from me? I still didn’t understand.

I had felt completely alone after the disturbing encounter with my father, but my brother’s warm ways had served to cheer me up a little. He seemed to genuinely care about me and that gave me a little hope for the future.

Still it was unsettling to know that the decision about whether I would carry the baby to term or not had been made without my consent. Of course I had given it a little bit of thought already. Under whatever circumstances it had been conceived and as unwanted as it was, it was still my child and some distant part of me had already started caring about it, but the decision should be up to me, shouldn’t it?

I lay down on the bed and rested my head against the pillows, wishing for Jarod to be here, but startling as it was, I didn’t even have his phone-number. No way to reach him and so many issues to deal with. I felt so overwhelmed that all I was capable of was pulling the blanket over my head and going straight to sleep.

We didn’t get to see Miss Parker during the next few days. She was never at her office, never even at the Centre. My friend Jake from security had told me that her presence hadn’t once been recorded in the security files since the one time I had seen her.

I had tried calling her but her numbers were out of service. I had tried driving by her house, but had been stopped by Sweepers. I had talked to Lyle but he had told me to get lost.

Was she too ashamed to let me contact her? Did she know that I knew about the disgusting plan she was carrying out? Why wasn’t she coming to work? What was she doing all day? None of these questions I could find an answer to.

Sydney proved to be even more uncooperative than Lyle. He just remained silent when I told him about what had happened, then advised me to stay away from Miss Parker.

“She is not who you thought she was,” he told me solemnly. “I know that you…” There was a short and pretty meaningful pause. “…care about her, but you should really try to forget about that whole affair.”

“Forget about it?” I spat. “And what about this kid?”

He looked up from his notes for the very first time during the whole conversation.

“What do you mean?” he asked curtly.

“The baby. She wouldn’t have come back if she wasn’t pregnant, would she? So there is Jarod’s baby to save and I bet he doesn’t even know about it.”

“Jarod hasn’t called a single time in the last few months,” Sydney pointed out. “I can’t reach him.”
I nodded. “Then we have to do something… talk to her! She can’t do this. She has a heart. I’ve seen her with Debbie… she can’t just… just give the baby away. There’s still time!”

“You told me yourself that there were Sweepers around her at all times. You won’t get the chance to talk to her, let alone get her out of there.”

I was starting to get angry at Sydney.

“Listen! If you don’t want to do anything, I will do it alone!” I told him. “I can’t just let it happen.”

Sydney sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose in frustration.

“You are an honorable man, Broots, but there are some things one better stays out of.”

I walked towards the door, then turned around a last time before I left.

“Are there, Sydney?” I asked, shocked myself at how cold my voice was capable of sounding. “Like Jarod’s imprisonment? Did you look away, too, because you just surrendered to the Centre?”

Sydney looked up and there was pain in his eyes.

I left.

“Good cop, bad cop?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” my son told me, shrugging in the boyish way that was so completely at odds with his actual personality. “Although I guess that we’ve normally got a kind of ‘bad cop, worse cop’ policy going on around here.”

That, I could not deny.

“What are you implying?”

He adjusted his tie in a swift gesture, then flattened it against his chest.

“I am implying that we do a little theatre-play. I am centre-stage –no pun intended- in the starring role of caring twin brother and you play the occasionally appearing father who caring brother has to defend amnesia-sister against.”

I frowned at his colorful choice of words.

“So you say I should frighten her so you can gain her trust. What would we do that for?”

He smiled.

“For the effect. If she trusts me, I can feed her with all sorts of information that will make her oblivious to what is really going on. I understand correctly that you want this baby and Jarod for whatever it takes? But your favourite player is disabled by amnesia. That’s where I come in.”

Strange, that I didn’t even trust my own son. I wondered whether anybody in this family had ever trusted another. If not, my children had turned out exactly like I wanted them to. Trust is expensive and the price you pay for it is usually too high.

“So you want me to play along in your little game?”

“Sure!” He sounded almost cheerful now. “Don’t tell me you feel like it is too much to ask! You’re basically playing yourself, now, aren’t you?”

I began stuffing a few folders of files into my briefcase and didn’t look up from the task when I finally spoke to him again.

“Christmas Eve, son. Let’s see how it turns out.”

I looked up to watch him leave as soon as he had turned his back to me. As he pushed through the double doors with just the right amount of force to have them fly open but not crash into the walls, I wondered whether he had a secret agenda and whether he knew about ours.

Miss Parker

Christmas was approaching fast and I had no idea what to do about it. Before our discord Jarod and I had been planning to spend Christmas together at his house. Now the only person I could think about spending the holidays with was my brother Lyle.

He had been a great help over the last few days. He’d helped me settle in and had kept me entertained by showing me around the town I had grown up in and couldn’t remember anything about.

Everything still felt weird and although I had gone through the few personal items I had been able to find in the office upstairs, I could still not find out about the woman I had been.

Lyle had made it a habit to drop by almost every evening so we could sit in the living-room and talk. And there was always something to talk about. He told me about our family’s cooperation where I’d had worked as a business woman. At least my travellings explained my knowledge of foreign languages.

Today we sat there again, fingers wrapped around cups of hot and sickenly sweet tea that he had made in my kitchen and I finally asked the question that had been on my mind for ages now.

“Who is Jarod?”

I had told him which town I’d been in and that I had stayed with a doctor who’d quickly become more than a friend, but I had never actually said his name.

“How come you know that name?” he asked, looking slightly alarmed.

“Came across it,” I replied vaguely. I wanted his unbiased opinion which I knew I would not get if I told him that I’d slept with the guy.

“You better forget about it again,” he said with emphasis.

“Why?”

“Well, there are things that we would want erased from our memory. You are so lucky, so I don’t want to be the one who gives it back to you.”

My heart had begun to beat faster inside my chest. What had happened between Jarod and me? So it hadn’t been a coincidence after all, that we had met?

“I want you to tell me,” I told him sternly.

His gaze lingered on my face for a second and I saw something flicker in his eyes when they met mine.

“Jarod is a part of your past that you have told me a thousand time you want to forget.”

My hands had started trembling and for the first time during my pregnancy I felt really and truly sick. Straightening up, I tried to ignore the feeling of vertigo and grabbed Lyle’s arm.

“Tell me.”

He seemed to recognize the fear in my eyes and touched my shoulder in a comforting gesture.

“Jarod once worked at the Centre. You two have known each other for years. Since you were children, in fact.”

So far the story concurred with what Jarod had told me, but I still couldn’t begin to relax. What horrors were there that he had kept from me?

“He’s always liked you a little more than you liked him. Many others were sweet on you in the Centre, but he was different. Well, actually he was a good guy. Liked by everybody, very competent in his job, but when it came to you, he seemed to lose complete sight of reality. He really pursued you, but you turned him down quite a few times. One time too many, I guess, because he truly freaked out.”

The hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach grew with every single one of his words.

“He assaulted you in your office and threatened to kill you, nearly raped you. It was sheer luck that your secretary was able to call security in time. He was fired after that, of course.”

Suddenly I was unable to hold on to the mug in my hands any longer. It slipped through my fingers and collided with the floor in a loud crash. Hot tea spilled into all directions and seeped into my trousers, but I didn’t even feel the sting.

“He tried to…?” I couldn’t even say it. We couldn’t possibly be talking about the same man who had taken care of me, whom I had fallen in love with, whose child I was carrying…

“Are you alright?” he asked and I felt his hands grab my shoulder through a daze.

“Is something wrong with the baby?” He sounded suddenly alarmed, guilty, even.

Oh yes. Everything is wrong with the baby.

Of all the lies Jarod had told me, I had thought that our love was none.

Despite all my sorrow I was eternally grateful for the comforting arms of my brother that I could sink into.

Sometimes, it’s almost too easy to actually get a thrill out of it, I think when I stroke my sister’s hair while she tries to calm down in my arms.

I want everything. And I will get everything.