Part Sixteen

Miss Parker

In front of the window stood a little boy of about five years, as far as I could tell from my position by the door. I walked towards him, slowly, taking in his unruly dark hair and the light blue pajamas he was wearing. Had I ever seen kid's pajamas that weren't adorned with all kinds of cartoonish animals?, I wondered besides myself. The boy stood rigid, as if he hadn't noticed my presence at all so I called out softly: "Charly!" Now where had that come from? With a start I realized that in fact I didn't know a little boy named Charly. I instantly sensed that something was off, something about this setting and this child was completely wrong. I just couldn't tell what it was. After a moment he did react to my voice and turned around slowly. I recognized Jarod in his face even before he had fully turned around and an icy hand gripped my heart as I recognized in his eyes the same hollow loneliness that I had seen in Jarod's all this time ago when he had been a little boy.

The boy – Charly – stood motionless as he looked up at me with his father's melancholic eyes and as my hand automatically flew towards my stomach, I noticed that it was flat.

"Charly," I breathed and lurched forward, aching to hold him in my arms. Though warm, his body didn't relax into mine but remained stiff.

"Baby," I stepped back, now kneeling in front of him and carefully stroked the dark hair from his forehead. Only now I noticed that it was bruised and that his little hands were trembling. "Oh god, what did they do to you?"

His eyes seemed to finally acknowledge me and he shook his head in an eerie imitation of an adult's deprecatory frown.

"Why didn't you protect me, Mommy?"

I frantically searched my memory. Why hadn't I taken care of him? But when had I failed him? And how? What did I let happen despite the fact that I was filled with so much love for this little boy?

"What…?" I wanted to say but only a dry sob came out. "Baby, please, I…"

"Please help me, Mommy!" He was downright trembling now and his body suddenly felt cold. "You can't let them do this, Mommy. You need to help me. You need to wake up."

I reached out for him but he was suddenly backing away from me. "Wake up! Wake up, Mommy! You can't let this happen to me! You can't allow them to do this to me!"

"Who is them?" I asked, helpless, but he kept backing away into a sudden darkness that slowly enveloped me.

"CHARLY!" I yelled with all my might.

"You need to wake up!" His small, frightened voice sounded from the darkness that surrounded me and I opened my eyes wide and sat up with a start. I was in Val's living-room and the lights were dimmed. Someone had spread a blanket over my body and a cup of cold tea stood on the coffee-table next to me. I had no idea how long I had slept but the dream had shaken me. Where was Val? And Jarod, oh my god, Jarod. Had she gone to help him? Had she called that lawyer… what was his name again? The sound of footsteps made me jump and I was on my feet before my tired body knew it. I swayed for a moment, then vigilantly stared into the half-darkness.

From the doorway of the hallway a figure walked towards me. Too tall and too male to be Val.

"Who are you?" I demanded, but the man didn't answer. When he stepped out of the darkness into what little light illuminated the room, my breath caught. This must be Kenny. He was wearing a hat and long coat, gloves on both his hands. But what scared me most were the scars in his face. Val's Freddy Kruger comparison hadn't been that far-fetched after all, I thought grimly. What I had mistaken for wrinkles on my daughter's and Donald's drawings had in fact been long scars that looked as if they had been caused by burns.

"What do you want?" I asked increasingly frightened, my eyes darting around the room for a weapon. For god's sake! Why was I always pregnant when I got into those situations? I might have had a shot at beating this limping creature up, had I not been in my fourth month of pregnancy. High-risk pregnancy, anyway. Damn it. Val wasn't one for decorations and the only thing that might have been used as a weapon was the bottle of scotch that stood on a sideboard next to the door- behind the man.

He walked towards me slowly and intimidatingly despite the fact that something must be wrong with his legs since he was dragging one after him. Although the predator in me recognized it as a potential weakness, it somehow served to make him all the more scary.

He wasn't talking, just wheezing very slightly, which reminded me of Raines. But this couldn't be Raines. I had heard his dying mind scream down in the Centre's sublevels and the person in front of me was too tall to be him, anyway. And all of a sudden, like a blast, it hit me. The broad shoulders and the familiar air around the person that had now almost reached me… it all came back to me now. In my mind I suddenly saw Charles Baxter on the defendant's table, his incompetent lawyer taking redundant notes. I saw the jury members in their box, listening to my closing argument. And then it hit me like a painful hot flash of lightning that illuminated my conscious for a moment in a light that was too bright to be anything but maddening. "The Centre… oh my god…" I heard myself whisper then sank to the floor without being able to prevent it. I saw it all too clearly until my head connected with the courtroom floor. The dark cell down in the Centre's sublevels, the air vent under the bed and my brother who had managed to wriggle free of his restraints while the flames licked at his arms and legs- and his face.

I snapped back into the present with a start and found his hand on my swollen stomach. It was warm and the touch was gentle, which terrified me more than anything else.

"How is my little nephew?" Lyle's voice, though breathless and obviously damaged from all the smoke he must have inhaled five years ago, hadn't lost its typical edge. Hadn't I already known who was in the room with me, I would have known now.

"Don't you ever die?" I spat.

"One day , I will. But I will likely outlive you, Sis. Since you will only live until you give birth to my new project."

His hand was around my upper arm and I struggled to free myself of him, but he was already cutting off my circulation.

"Don't fight it." With that he raised his second hand and pressed a wet cloth to my mouth.

In my mind, my little boy was screaming and my own voice was calling for Charly again.

Jarod

Val grinned brightly as I walked towards her, the stale air from the interview room still in my lungs. From my own experience as a criminal lawyer I knew that Val's friend Clifford Denton had done a terrific job at getting me out of custody. He had threatened, negotiated and in the end had got me off. For now. I was not to leave town but I hadn't been about to, anyway.

"Well, chap. Thank god you didn't get your butt put behind bars permanently."

"Thank you, Val. Thank you so much." I only now noticed how relieved I was. Being locked up –if only for the night – would not only have kept me away from my family, but would have also terrified me. Since my days at the Centre I had developed a certain claustrophobia in small locked rooms. I hugged Val impulsively and felt her hug me back firmly, despite her comment: "Nah, nah. Don't overstep our boundaries, pal."

"Where's Parker?" I asked, a little embarrassed myself by my outburst of gratitude for Val's being here.

"She's at my place. Fell asleep there and I didn't have the heart to wake her. Didn't want to leave her alone, though. So I called Dr Summers to watch her."

I felt my stomach sink. "Dr Summers?" I asked, alarmed. Then, without waiting for an answer, jogged towards the exit, cell-phone already in hand.

Miss Parker

When I opened my eyes, I groaned with the headache that sliced through my head. The light was dull, but bright enough to hurt my eyes. Where was I? I felt dizzy as I tried to sit up on the bed I had been resting on. Well, resting was not the right expression since I did not feel rested at all. I looked down on myself and found that I was only wearing my slacks and tank-top. Someone had removed my cardigan and socks, so I felt vulnerable. My eyes caught the nasty purple bruise that was developing on my upper arm and suddenly it all came back. Lyle. My son.

Lyle wanted my son. He had called him his project and since he had told me he'd kill me as soon as I had given birth to the baby, I had a pretty clear idea about what his plans were. Would he keep me locked up for five months? I shook my head slightly. He couldn't… There was a syringe in the wastebasket next to the bedside table. Next to it, an empty ampule. What had they injected me with? I felt panic gradually overtake me and rested my hands on my stomach to calm myself. I had found a way out of Lyle's imprisonment before. I would be able to do it again. I just needed to stay calm. But something else was wrong. Something that wasn't to do with the dark room with the boarded windows, or with the locked door next to the bed. Oh my god. How long had I been here for? The thought shot through my tired brain when I realized that my stomach was much fuller than it had been when I had last been conscious. I could also feel the baby kick me once, twice, which was as comforting as it was unsettling. There was no way I was still four months along. I looked and felt like nearly seven. Oh my god! They couldn't have kept me under for such a long time! Jarod and Sammy had to be out of their minds with worry. And what if they would just send me back into oblivion as soon as they had noticed that I was awake? Would they keep me under until I went into labor and then just shoot me afterward? I suddenly felt sick. I didn't have time. Gingerly, I got to my legs which carried surprisingly well, given the fact that I hadn't used them for three months. But I was still wearing the clothes I had been abducted in and I could smell nothing but my perfume on them. Something didn't add up. Something was odd and wrong. There was a searing pain in my back that intensified when I realized that there was no drip in sight and apart from obvious marks from the needle in the wastebasket, there was no sign on my skin that suggested that I had been hooked onto an IV-line. Which I must have been to survive without actually eating or drinking anything for such a long time. I felt so weak that I fell back onto the bed. What was happening to me? What were they doing? And most importantly: Where was I?

Sydney

I hurried upstairs, taking two steps at a time to reach Sammy's screams. They sounded terrified and very different from how this extraordinary little girl usually reacted to nightmares. I opened the door to her bedroom with so much force that it hit the wall while my trembling fingers searched for the light switch on the wall. Finally the light came on and I saw her trembling form, sitting on the bed, half entwined in her sheets.
"Sydney!" she opened her arms for me and with horror I see tears smeared all over her pale little face.

"What's wrong, little one?" I asked and pressed her head to my chest in an outburst of protectiveness.

"It's Mommy, Sydney. Mommy is scared. Very scared! We need to help!"

Miss Parker

"You shouldn't have woken up so early." Dr Summers voice drifted towards my ears as I felt her lift me gently back onto the bed. Why had I been on the floor in the first place? I wondered but couldn't remember the moment I had passed out.

"Early?" I croaked. "How long have you been drugging me? Three months?"

Dr Summers laughed, light-hearted. "Now don't be daft. You've been under for only two days."

"This… this is impossible!" I protested. "Look at me!"

She grinned and busied herself with another syringe. "That's the wonders of medical science," she snickered. "Growth hormones. How did you think the Centre produced so many test subjects in so little time? They've always loved to speed things up a bit. Most would call it unethical but it's perfectly safe- Has been at the Centre since the seventies." She flipped her forefinger against the syringe and a bit of liquid emerged from the top. I couldn't remember ever being so frightened in my life while Dr Summers just chatted away lightly as if she was talking about kittens and flowers. "Didn't you ever wonder while you were showing so early? This baby has been much bigger than it would have been without my intervention from the start."

"Can't be," I croaked. "The doctor at the hospital said he was a little on the small side."

Summers laughed as if I had just cracked a hilarious joke. "Yes, that must be because I altered your file a bit. Said you were five and a half months along. Which you would have been hadn't you discarded those pills." She made a disapproving sound and caught my weak arm with so much force that I couldn't even wince when the needle went into my vein.

"I have only been taking those for a few days," I managed, hoping to keep her talking and to find out that she had in fact NOT tampered with my pregnancy.

"I know but remember those vitamin shots I have given you on your appointments? " She smiled and patted my forehead, then bent my arm towards me, holding it in place for a moment. "You'll feel sleepy for a while."

She sat down next to me on the bed and took my hand in hers. "It's too bad you won't live to see how nicely your connective tissue has prevented stretch marks on your stomach. I am amazed. Back at the Centre I was told that it was the same with your mommy. Must be the good genes."

She laughed and helped me have a sip of the water on the bedside table.

"You know, I've always liked you. Even when you didn't even see me back at the Centre. Well, you didn't come down to the infirmary often anyway, did you?" She shrugged and I was too exhausted to reply, which she didn't seem to mind at all. "I've always liked your hair. So pretty and shiny." I felt her hand in my hair when she tangled a few strands around her fingers. "And porcelain skin like a beautiful doll." Her fingertips ran across the skin over my cheekbone indeed as if I were just a giant doll. I turned away my face.

"And I knew you'd have such beautiful babies, too. You know, I was so sad when you lost that first one." She pulled her legs up onto the bed and curled up next to me in a grotesque imitation of a little girls' slumber party. She whispered into my ear as if she was telling me a particularly juicy secret: "That psychiatrist carried you into the infirmary. You were barely lucid then, and your pretty suit was all drenched with blood." She giggled in a nauseatingly inappropriate fashion. "You weren't aware that you were calling for 'Tommy' in your sleep, were you?" She shrugged. "Well, that's all in the past." There was a short moment of silence. "When you woke up, anyway, you had the weirdest look in your eyes when I told you that you'd lost the baby. And I meant it when I said I was sorry." She nodded like a little girl that was trying to emphasize a point. "And then I realized that you hadn't even known. It's dangerous for the baby if the mother doesn't take care of herself at all in those early stages of pregnancy," she went on to explain. "But it wasn't your fault. You were grieving… and that plan was flawed."

She was the nurse. The little blond nurse that had told me with so much sympathy in her voice that I had lost Thomas' baby.

She sat up again with a triumphant look on her face. "This one, however, is great! We've increased the dosage now, so it'll take only a week or two and then we'll have the little one in our arms. Isn't that exciting?"

I felt anger bubbling up. "And then you'll kill me!"

"Yeah, that. I didn't like the idea. You're just too pretty to die. But Lyle wants it, you know. And he's right. The little guy is never going to become a good pretender if he has his Mommy around all the time. They grow so attached! Like Jarod did… Anyway. Let's talk about something more fun."

"Like I am going to beat you to death with a stick?" I asked weakly.

"You're mean, Miss Parker. Don't always be so mean," she said.

"I would be so much meaner if only I could…" I muttered and felt myself drift off to sleep.

Lyle

I sat on a chair next to the bed and watched my sister sleep. She looked vulnerable with her naked feet and her protruding stomach under the tank top that was now stretched. Soon, she would be dead and I would be able to hold her little boy and make him the best goddamn pretender the world had ever seen. I would rebuild the Centre, gain back the Triumvirate's trust and become rich and successful again. And maybe the scientists that would roam the Centre's hallways would even find a way to restore my face. They had got Jarod off for now, which had been a blow. I had planted the evidence so carefully- how would they let him go on bail? I sighed. Not everything could go all according to plan. While he wasn't as incapacitated as I had hoped he would be, there was no way he could find his wife here. Not before it was too late, anyway. He'd probably come after me for revenge, but I would see to that. Their tendency to make rash decisions based on nostalgia might be what had drawn them together in the first place. And to prevent such actions on her part, I had brought something else that would keep her calm.

"Wake up, Sis." I shook her slightly and she groaned, then opened her eyes.

"I curse the day you were born," she whispered flatly.

"Your birthday, you mean? Is that the reason you never celebrate it?"

She turned even paler than she had been in the first place. "Oh don't you think you were alone for even a second during those past five years. I was always there. Always waiting and watching." I laughed.

"Bastard." She was struggling to get up, but her stomach was in the way. She grimaced and lay back down when I put just the tiniest bit of force into my hold on her forearm. "Easy, easy, Sis. Here's someone I want you to meet." I pushed the neighbor's little boy, whose name always escaped me, towards her.

"Donald!" she breathed but he didn't dare speak. Good boy. Quick on the uptake.

"I killed his father who couldn't keep his mouth shut after all. Summer and I have been good to the little guy and we promised the father we'd return him. That kidnapping story gave his PR agency more PR than they would have ever been able to generate themselves. But he got scared when he saw his wife deteriorate. Had no idea the poor thing, but I needed him, didn't I? To keep you well-behaved once I needed you to be." I grinned. "So I killed the man. At least I still managed to talk his wifey into blaming you for everything… Well, well, I sound like one of the villains in the James Bond movies who tells the victim all his plans."

Parker had taken the boy in her arms and held him for a moment. "Are you okay?" He nodded.

"So I think I have made myself clear. If you try to get away from me - which you won't manage in your condition, anyway - I'll make this little boy feel it. Are we clear? If you're nice and well-behaved, I'll let him go once I'm finished with him. You know, I don't kill children. I have a good heart, sis." She didn't even give me one of her long, hateful stares, just hugged the child close to her. Whatever. Five years of family life were bound to soften even a Miss Parker to the point of stupidity.

Miss Parker

"Donald, are you okay?"

He nodded. "Yes. They let me watch TV and let me eat all my favorite food. They just didn't let me go home. I'm scared, Miss Parker." His lower lip quivered and I was glad I had learned how to deal with frightened children over the past years. Not my own, mostly her friends who were scared of me.

"I'm so sorry you have to endure this!" I told him. "It's all my fault." Why? Because I was born into that horribly dysfunctional family? Because my brother was a sociopath? I forced myself to breath slowly through my nose and ignore the sharp pain in my stomach. I didn't have my ulcer medication with me, so I would have to endure the pain. I lay back on the bed, anxious not to let the little boy see my suffering. That would have probably scared him even more.

I prayed to a god I didn't believe in, that he would save him and my little boy. Maybe even me if I deserved it at all. But how would anyone find me? How could they if even I didn't know where I was? The baby's kick was even stronger now and I felt sick with the thought that they had influenced his growth. Even if the medication was as safe as Dr Summers had said, it was just not right. And what would they do to him once I was dead? They'd make him the scared little boy in my dream. Charly, my son, who had tried to warn me when Lyle had already been in the house.

Wake up, Mommy.

Save me.

But it had been too late. Suddenly, I couldn't help but hiss with pain just as I had five years ago, when I had felt my first contraction. I had lain in bed, frightened not necessarily by the pain but by the implications. Soon I would have to be a mother. It had come so much easier to me than I would have ever expected. And now? The fear was much greater. I couldn't tell how far along I was, how much the baby had developed, yet, but I knew that it was too early. When the contraction had subsided, I felt tears in my eyes. This wasn't possible. How much more bad luck would I have? If they took Charly from me and made him live at the Centre or a place that was equally frightening and horrible, at least he would be alive and there would be the faint chance that Jarod could save him. But if he died right now because I was in premature labor, I would be glad to be killed by Lyle. The doctor had warned me when I had first been at the hospital, that I could go into premature labor if I didn't take my ulcer medication regularly. And I had. Until now.

Half an hour later, another contraction hit and I felt panic begin to rise inside me.

Oh my god, this can't be happening...

TBC