Hasani shot. Jarod kept his eyes closed but he immediately realized that he wasn’t feeling any harm. 

When he lifted his eyelids, he saw that Hasani had deliberately shot somebody else.

The scene before Jarod’s eyes was surreal. Raines moved a hand to his chest, covering the wound that Hasani had just provoked. 

It was only a matter of seconds, because after what felt like an infinite amount of time, the doctor raised rolled in eyes in his orbit and fell. 

The bullet had struck straight through his heart. 

He was dead.

After Raines’s body touched the floor, everything happened so fast that Jarod couldn’t almost figure it out. 

Lyle took his gun and aimed it against Hasani’s men. 

Jarod looked at his father, shouting to take cover; in the meantime, the Centre sweepers began a gunfight against the Africans. 

Three Africans and four of Lyle’s best subordinates looked for repair behind the columns, the doors, the tables. 

Bullets were flying everywhere.

Jarod grabbed Parker to walk her away from the firing line, throwing her to the floor behind a wall. He then positioned himself right next to her, covering his partner with his body and yelling at Angelo and Broots to look for cover, too. Broots and the empath and dragged Sydney far; following Angelo’s suggestion, the three of them ended up inside an air duct. 

Major Charles, Ethan, Jesse and the two mothers were trying to get away without being involved in the shooting, taking Michael with them.

§§§

“They opened fire!” Agent Braff shouted.

“Move!” Zane shouted in her earphone.

All the agents immediately follower her order and rushed through the corridor, aiming their guns at all the sweepers. 

One of them recognized Jarod and reached him, “Agent Morse!”

“There’s an injured man down there, you must take him to the hospital right now or he will bleed to death!” Jarod shouted, trying to speak over the sound of the shots, pointing at the air duct where Broots and Angelo were hiding along with a still unconscious Sydney.

The agent didn’t waste time: he called for a colleague, and they went looking for Sydney together. 

Jarod observed carefully while they reached the three men and he sighed in relief when he saw Sydney being taken away.

Angelo and Broots hadn’t been hurt, and that was the first good news of that day.

Parker was holding herself tight, frightened like never before in her life.

She wasn’t worried for the safety, but for her daughter’s.

The problem was that she needed to take care of herself, if she wanted to save the life growing inside her womb. 

Meanwhile, three Africans and three sweepers died under the fire. 

Mr. Parker was hiding behind a column, protected by Lyle. 

Hasani was the first to be reached by Zane’s agents and to be handcuffed. 

The woman recognized him as one of the members of the African section of The Centre.

Jarod leaned over to observe that atypical Mexican standoff: hidden inside a room there were Margaret, Major Charles, Ethan, and Catherine, who was still holding little Michael. The kid was probably terrified. 

Jesse had somehow been left behind and he was covering up behind a column not far from Lyle and Mr. Parker. 

On the other side, Zane and her men had ceased fire, mostly because there were just Lyle and Mr. Parker who were facing them, by now. 

Lyle glanced at his father and gave him a gun. 

They couldn’t afford being captured, or that would have really been the end.

When Agent Zane asked Lyle to surrender, he looked for alternatives around him. When he noticed Jesse, Lyle ran towards him with a sudden movement, taking everyone by surprise.

He dragged the kid to himself, aiming his gun to his head. 

“Let him go, Lyle!” Zane screamed at him. 

Even if she had never seen them before, she felt like she had always known those men. Their reputation preceded them, and Jarod had given her some horrifying information about Lyle. She couldn’t underestimate his madness.

“Jesse!” Miss Parker screamed, standing up and running towards her twin brother.

The room suddenly became quiet. 

Jarod took a weapon from the floor and joined Parker, who was already aiming a gun at Lyle and Mr. Parker.  

“Let him go, Lyle” Jarod said. “This is between you and me, he’s got nothing to do with it!”

“Oh, but he is you, and you are him.” He replied with a fanatic look in his eyes. “So, this is about both of you.”

“Lyle, it’s over, just give up.” Parker begged him. 

She couldn’t just help herself: whenever she looked at Jesse, she saw the young Jarod she had left behind.

Memories of their uncommon childhood surfaced through her mind and Miss Parker realized that she couldn’t let them hurt him again. 

She wasn’t crazy. She knew that Jesse was his very own person. 

And she cared for him, maybe as much as she had cared for Jarod when they were kids. 

He was vulnerable and powerless; she had to help him, at any cost, if she wanted to silence her guilt once and for all.

This was her absolution.

“Take me!” Parker cried, taking everyone by surprise.

“Parker!” Jarod screamed back at her, incredulous.

“Miss Parker, don’t!” Jesse asked, wriggling through Lyle’s arms like a mouse.

The woman proved her will by walking towards Lyle with slow and heavy steps. Then she threw her gun and widened her arms in surrender, “Take me, instead.”

“Parker, come back here, now!” Jarod lashed out, attempting a move towards her; but when he saw Lyle tightening his grip around Jesse’s neck, he had to reconsider. 

Jarod stored Jesse’s frightened expression in his memory. Even if he wanted to be considered an adult, he was only an innocent kid.

He sent him an encouragement look, but he couldn’t help remembering when he was the one with that look on his face. 

Something inside Jarod died, at that moment. 

Lyle licked his lips, tasting the decision he had been asked to make. 

He could finally have the thing he’d always wanted: his sister at his mercy. 

Most of all, by choosing her, he would benefit of the situation. Jarod would never fight him, if it meant putting Miss Parker and the little bastard’s life in danger.

Lyle tightened the grip on his weapon, he truly wanted to shoot Jesse. 

If he couldn’t kill Jarod, he would at least get revenge by killing a Jarod. 

He eventually changed his mind when he saw Parker approaching him a bit more. He rapidly pushed Jesse away from himself and took his sister between his arms, tightening his arms around her.

Jesse took the opportunity to run and join Ethan, who checked on him.  

Jarod, Parker, and Lyle were catapulted back in time, in Dry River.

“Damn it, Parker!” Jarod snorted, he could feel the longing desire to use his gun against Lyle surfacing from his inner self.

“Well, now we’re going to make a nice trip. It’s gonna be me, daddy, and my lovely sister. A nice family reunion. Mom, care to join us?” Lyle quipped at Catherine, stepping backwards. 

“Son, please, do the right thing.” Catherine begged, walking out from the room she had been hiding into.

Michael was now in Margaret’s arms; she was trying to cheer him up and make him stop crying.

Not even his own mother’s voice dissuaded Lyle from being the man he had always been. 

There was no room left for conscience, inside him.

“What do we do, sir?” a couple of her agents asked Zane.

“Put your guns down or I promise I’m going to place a bullet inside my twin sister’s wonderful skull.”

While the agents obeyed and put their guns to the floor, following Zane’s example, Jarod made a step forward, without even thinking about lowering his gun.

“That’s enough, Lyle. What do you wanna do?” Mr. Parker asked him, noticing that it was over for them. “How could we possibly run? For heaven’s sake, let her go!”

“Shut up, dad, we can still make it. It’s all about leverage, am I right Jarod?”

“What the hell do you want, Lyle?” the pretender snapped at him in answer.

Parker was strangely silent and submissive, like nobody had ever seen her before.

“I want to see what happens when I kill someone important to your world, Jarod.” Lyle told him.

Jarod opened his eyes wide, remembering the words that Alex had said to him a long time before.

I want to see what happens when I kill someone important to your world.

So, it was true. 

Lyle had been called to Africa to train the pretender, but he couldn’t because Alex was too unstable. And yet, he had left an indelible mark, turning him into a sociopath. Just like Raines had done with Bobby Bowman.

“It’s not too late, Lyle.” Jarod said. “You’re the result of a sick mind. Raines turned you in something you would have never been, if Catherine had been there.”

Mr. Parker had never seen his family reunited in the same room. 

His wife, daughter and son were all there with him. 

Of course, his children were a result of his brother’s semen, but Catherine was right at least about one thing: he’d always loved his daughter. 

He had lied to protect her, to keep her by his side; he had manipulated and betrayed her more than once. 

But he did love her. Maybe he never really showed, but he did. 

Mr. Parker couldn’t accept the idea of something happening to his Angel, let alone if Lyle was the one hurting her. Sure, he was his son, but he had come to the picture only in the last few years and covering his affairs to protect the Centre had always been hard.

“You talk to me as if I had a conscience, but you should know by now, that I don’t have one.” Lyle told his father, while he kept moving towards the SL-19 elevators area. 

All the people in the room were following the Parkers, pushing them against the wall. The elevator doors were opened, and Lyle knew how important it was to get inside with Miss Parker as a hostage.

“Jarod is right, Lyle. You must stop.” Mr. Parker said, trying to convince him.

Lyle glared at him. “You’ve always loved her more than me, uh, daddy? You let Raines take me away as soon as I was born!” he yelled with resentment.

“He said you were dead! He told me the truth only years later.”

“We didn’t know you were alive, son.” Catherine gave support to her husband, knowing that for once he was telling the truth.

“Not much of a loss.” Parker joked, sarcastically.

“Damn it, would you please stop it, Parker?” Jarod reproached her, afraid for her safety. Then he addressed himself to his nemesis. “Lyle, I’ll do anything. Please, let her go.”

Lyle smiled, pleased of seeing Jarod begging him.

“No, Jarod.” He smirked. “She dies, you lose, I win.”

Mr. Parker suddenly remembered that he was still holding the gun given to him by Lyle. 

He looked at the weapon and then at his family.

He thought about Catherine, a beloved wife who had spent years on the run to hide from the Centre. 

He thought about Raines, a brother who’d been turned down by their parents only because he was the weakest link of the chain. 

He thought about his Angel, his daughter Charlotte, who was now at the mercy of his son’s hereditary madness. 

If he looked carefully at Lyle’s expression, he could see the same insanity that had filled his grandfather’s eyes.

Was this really the legacy he wanted to pass on to his children?

It was the end, and Mr. Parker was finally realizing that all the important people of his life had abandoned him, he was alone. Alone with his demons and sins, for which he would have to respond, sooner or later.

“You’re surrounded Lyle, my agents are waiting for you in the upper sublevels.  There’s nowhere you can run.” Zane intervened.

Lyle chuckled like a mad man, “Well, then my sister and I are going to go out in style.” 

Parker opened her eyes wide; she’d been closer to death before, but this was the first time she was really terrorized of dying.

“That’s a pity” Lyle spoke again. “I would have been a great uncle.”

Parker seized the moment.

She took advantage of Lyle’s hesitation to give him an elbow to the gut and she towards Jarod.

groaning in pain, Lyle rose his arm and shot in their direction, his desire to kill his sister had never been so burning.

Mr. Parker lifted his arm and did the same thing, but he shot his son.

Acting like in slow motion, Jarod put himself in the line of fire to protect Miss Parker, hit by a bullet which had her name written all over it. 

A second later, he was lying at her feet.

“Jarod!” Parker yelled, kneeling to check on him.

“Lyle!” Mr. Parker began shooting at his son and he hit his shoulder.

Zane took advantage of that moment to run towards Lyle along with another agent, but she didn’t make it in time because Lyle shot another bullet, this time against his father. 

“James!” Catherine shouted, feeling powerless in front of the terrible scene in front of her. Father and son fighting against each other. 

She ran to reach her husband.

Even if she had noticed her father being hurt, Miss Parker only had eyes for the pretender.

“P-parker…” Jarod moaned. 

She noticed that the bullet had hit his back, probably puncturing his lung.

Lyle looked at her in hatred while Zane reached him with cuffs in her hands.

Miss Parker reciprocated Lyle’s look full or scorn. 

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Looking at the hideous man whom Jarod had always warned her from, she took the gun left by Jarod’s hand, she lifted her arm, and she shot Lyle precisely to hit his head.

Her brother fell before Zane could do anything to intervene.

Lyle was dead.

“Jarod!” Major Charles shouted, relieved that he could finally run towards his son to check his wound. He was soon joined by Ethan, Margaret, and Jesse, who was already crying.

“M-mom.” Jarod managed to say. 

His eyes betrayed the huge emotion he was feeling in seeing his mother so close to him, even if the pretender was afraid he wouldn’t have time to tell her how much he’d miss her.   

“I’m here, son.” she said, taking his hand and kissing it. “I’m here. We’re together.”

“I wanted to say…so…many things.” he moaned again, his blood running from the wound.

“You’ll tell her, Jarod. Hold on, help is on the way!” Ethan interrupted him, even if he wasn’t sure of what he supposed to say to his brother.

“Y-you were amazing, little brother.” he said to Ethan, who nodded, sighing in tension.

Jesse was still crying silently, wishing he could hide it.

“I t-told you once.” Jarod reassured him. “It’s okay to cry.”

Jesse nodded, sniffing.

“Even if – It makes you look like a girl.” Jarod joked, trying to smile. 

For a moment, he had really been afraid of reliving Kyle’s death. He thought he’d lose another brother.

But they were all safe. 

His family was safe.

She was safe.

“E-Ethan, take care of her and the babies, ok?” Jarod said, coughing.

“Stop with the nonsense, ok?” Miss Parker took his collar. “You won’t die. Don’t you dare die on me now that you’ve managed to blow up this damned place, are we clear?”

“Doctors are on their way!” Zane screamed after receiving the communication from the medical squad.

At that moment, Broots and Angelo reappeared behind them: now that everything was quiet, the agents had let them back to SL-19 to assist their friends.

Broots sighed in relief when he saw Miss Parker; but the relief soon turned into anguish when he realized that Jarod was lying at the floor in a pool of blood and, not far from him, Mr. Parker was dying. 

“Jarod!” Broots shouted.

“Jarod…pain.” Angelo whispered, kneeling next to his friend.

“Broots – H-how is Sydney?” Jarod asked him.

“He’s on his way to the hospital. He woke up and keeps asking about you. He’s gonna be fine, Jarod.” Broots reassured him. 

It was Parker’s turn to sigh in relief. 

At least one of the most important men of her life would get better.

“Dad, call Emily, she must be g-getting crazy at home, alone.” Jarod coughed again.

“Would you stop talking? Think about yourself, for once!” Parker lashed out.

Jarod tried to smile, “You know, P-parker. I hope our daughter has…your strength…and your smile…and most of all…your…eyes…” 

He half-closed his eyelids while Miss Parker burst into tears, “Jarod.”

“Jarod!” Major Charles shouted.

But it was useless to call him, he had lost consciousness. 

At that moment, the doctors entered the room dragging a gurney. 

They took the pretender outside, while the major part of the family followed.  

Parker was unable to move.

When her tears finally stopped streaming down her face, she realized that her mother and father were still behind her, so she joined them. 

Catherine was holding her husband’s hand, for he seemed to have just a few minutes to live. The doctor next to him looked at Miss Parker and shook his head.

“Dad, we should take you to the hospital…”

“No!” Mr. Parker replied to his daughter. “It’s supposed to be that way. Just leave me here.”

“Oh, James.” Catherine murmured. She was trying to feel indifferent in front of her husband’s death, but she was failing.

“Dad.” Parker said. “Why did you do that?”

“I d-didn’t want to leave t-this world before deserving your forgiveness. I’m sorry Catherine, I should have been…a better husband.”

The woman sighed. She had dreamed of hearing those words hundreds of times. She had prayed for him, she had hoped that one day, eventually, he would repent. She couldn’t know that this would happen on his deathbed. 

“I forgive you, James. You saved Charlotte.”

“Our Angel.” He smiled at her. “Forgive me if you can.”

Miss Parker couldn’t say anything. She didn’t feel like to forgive that man, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction to know that she was grateful because he had showed her some affection, at least in the last seconds of his life. 

While he exhaled his last breath, Parker bended and gave him a kiss. 

When she saw him giving up, she looked at her mother with intensity.

The doctor touched his wrist and announced, “He’s gone.”

The two women held each other while Catherine stroked her daughter’s hair like she used to when she was a little girl. 

Parker was sobbing.

“You can’t imagine…how much I missed you, M-mom.” she managed to say, through a sob and the other.

“I missed you too, honey. But I promise, we’re making up for lost time. We will put these thirty years of sufferance behind us.”

Parker nodded, without raising her head from her mother’s tender held. 

She had so many things to say, thousands of questions to ask. 

Her father was dead, now her mother was the last key to find inner peace. 

Even if Miss Parker knew that Catherine was right there in front of her, she couldn’t feel happy for this reunion.

Jarod was dying. 

She could hardly imagine her life without him.

Fate was playing a dirty hand with them: now that they could finally be together, they were destined to be apart, maybe forever. 

The two women stood in that embrace for a couple of minutes and nobody around them tried to separate them.

Andrea Zane was the one who interrupted that intense moment when she approached Miss Parker to say, “We’re heading to the hospital, we may escort you there.”

Parker lifted from her mother’s hold, “Thank you, Agent Zane. For everything. Jarod would have never made it without you.”

“We’re the ones that must be grateful. It’s just because of Jarod if today we put an end to The Centre. The building was turned upside down like a sock, all the men who were directly involved with the pretender project are dead or under arrest. Our colleagues in Africa reported that the mission against the Triumvirate fortress was successful. All the senior members of the Triumvirate surrendered without resistance, in hope that they might get less severe punishment for their cooperation.”

Parker looked incredulous. 

She didn’t know that the NSA and other American agencies had planned an attack to the Triumvirate power base.

Zane smiled, “This should have been a surprise.”

“Jarod would have loved it.” Parker replied, realizing that she was already using the past to talk about him. 

God, why didn’t the voices guide her, tell her that everything would be fine? 

“He’ll be glad to know this, when he wakes up.” Catherine corrected her.

Parker watched a group of agents taking away Raines and Lyle’s corpses. 

Her mother looked the scene with shock. 

How could Miss Parker make her understand what a man Lyle had turned out to be? How Raines had manipulated him, creating a twisted mind?

“He’s never been my brother.” she explained to Catherine “The only lesson I’ve learned at The Centre, the most important thing that Jarod taught me is…that it’s not blood that binds.”

“I know, sweetie. Lyle has never been my son. If only had I been a mother to him, like I was for you during your childhood…”

“It wasn’t your fault, Mom.” Parker cheered her up.

While a huge sadness took possession of mother and daughter, the only survivors of the Parker family, Catherine looked at a very disappointed Agent Zane. 

“I wanted them to go to trial. They could have confessed everything we wanted to know about this place.” Zane commented.

“We’ll take care of it, agent.” Catherine cheered her up. “Don’t worry.”

Noticing Zane looking at Lyle’s dead body with a preoccupied expression, Miss Parker felt the need to justify her actions. “Lyle had it coming. If Jarod doesn’t make it, this will be the only satisfaction I got.”

Zane pretended she hadn’t heard her. 

She knew that she would need to hide many things with the department to save those persons’ lives. 

Yet, strangely, that didn’t bother her at all.