TEN YEARS AGO

Lyle’s day had been very long and exhausting. He’d been following a lead on Jarod and Parker in Oregon, but it had turned out to be a false one, like every single trail he’d been receiving in the last month.

When he entered his car, he leaned his head on the headrest and closed his eyes, sighing.

“It’s sad to be alone at the Centre, isn’t it?” a well-known voice asked him from the backseat. Lyle opened his eyes and stared at the rareview window. The last thing he saw was Jarod injecting something in his neck. A few seconds later, everything turned black.

When Lyle woke up again, he was sitting on a chair.

He tried to move his legs and arms realizing at once that he was tied up. He couldn’t move a muscle. A blinding light was pointing at him and he was cold. He looked down and noticed that not only he was shirtless, but also barefoot.     

He tried to muster up all his strenght and started to chuckle.

“Ok, Jarod. This is funny, but you’re getting repetitive.”

“I wouldn’t call this a ‘repetion’, Mr. Lyle. Call it ‘retribution’.”

Lyle’s eyes roamed around the room, looking for the pretender. Jarod’s voice was echoing all over the place, so Lyle couldn’t really understand where it came from.

“Jarod…you know that I can be very collaborative…We can – ”

“You are in no condition to propose any bargain this time, Lyle” Jarod walked towards his worst enemy, his face contracted into a grin of satisfaction, “For once in your life, will you please – shut – up.”

Lyle sensed immediately that Jarod wasn’t as accomodating as he’d been the last time they were in the same situation, so he just didn’t talk.

“I will ask only once.”

Jarod revealed the nature of the object he was holding in his hand, so that Lyle could see the gun.

“Where is Parker’s baby brother?”

“W–Who?”

Jarod chuckled. He knew this wouldn’t be easy. But he still tried to keep his calm.

“It’s a very simple question, you see. I want to know where your father and Brigitte’s son is.”

Lyle smiled, “Where are you?” he asked, looking at his side in the convinction that his twin sister was there, too. Jarod hesitated just the second that Lyle needed to guess that he was right.

“Come on, Sis. You really thought I would never realize about the two of you? I’ve always known that you and the lab rat were an item. Oh, Jarod, you should have been there to hear my sister telling me about our mother’s watch. She was so surprised when you left it in that container for her...What, were you trying to amaze my sister – or simply to get into her pants?”

Jarod punched him with all the strenght he had. Lyle spat some blood from his mouth, then smirked again. He knew that Jarod was hating this. He hated being manipulated like that. But Lyle couldn’t help it. Jarod would hurt him anyway, so he could at least have some fun at the pretender’s own expense.

Parker stepped ahead and her perfect shape appeared from the darkness. Lyle noticed that she looked tired and sad.

“Tell me, Sis. Is he worth it? Is Boy Wonder worth the betrayal of your own family?”

Parker approached her brother and moved until her face was close to his.

“You have no idea.” She replied, through clenched teeth.

If Jarod was surprised by her answer, Lyle was even more. His sister sounded resolute and serious, she didn’t have her usual mocking tone.

Jarod’s eyes left Parker and moved back to Lyle, “So, you want to do this the easy way…or the hard way?”

Lyle tried to smile again, “I don’t have the foggiest idea where the baby is.”

Parker scrutinized her brother’s expression, “He’s lying.” She simply stated.

Jarod sighed dramatically, then he caressed his gun. Lyle chose that moment to start laughin, “Jarod, don’t humiliate yourself more. You would never use it against me.”  

“Well, I don’t know, Lyle. He had the courage to shoot you in Dover.”

Lyle stared at his sister in disbelief. He was sure that Miss Parker was the one who pulled the trigger, not Jarod. Never the old good pretender, defender of the week and abused.

Jarod opened his mouth as another thought passed across his mind. He remembered his little brother’s corpse, lying at his feet. He remembered how cold he had felt under his fingers. Suddenly, Jarod raised his arm and aimed the weapon against Lyle. Parker watched him and understood that his inner feelings were coming to the surface again.

“You killed our brother”, Jarod hissed at the prisoner.

Lyle’s eyes were filled at once with a feeling he didn’t usually taste: Fear.

He’d never seen Jarod so angry, before. And he’d done so much to drive him crazy, in the past. He’d killed Kyle, but well, that had been an accident. Then he’d tortured him, but that was just Centre business. Ok, he’d kidnapped that silly little girlfriend of his, but it had been Cox’ idea.

No, now Jarod was really pissed off.

And he was ready to kill him, Lyle could see it in his eyes.

“I didn’t –”

“Don’t – lie!” Jarod screamed. A second later a shot was heard in the night and Lyle’s left thigh started to bleed. Parker didn’t flinch. She knew that Jarod was acting like a fool, but she had no right to stop him. This wasn’t about business anymore. God, it never was. This was about Kyle, about Ethan. It was something very personal to the pretender.

“You…crazy son of a bitch, you shot me!” Lyle shouted in agony. He started to wiggle on his chair, but he couldn’t reach his leg with his hands.

Jarod aimed the gun again, “I want you to say it…” he whispered, “Say that you killed Ethan to capture me!”

Lyle shook his head, he was very close to the tears.

“Say it!” Jarod urged him, firing three times towards the wall behind Lyle.

Parker closed her eyes until the echo of the shots faded.

“All right, I did it!” Lyle shouted. “I did it! I was the one who killed Ethan!”

Jarod’s eyes were filled at once with unleashed tears that he’d kept for days. Miss Parker approached him and with the sweetest movement she could muster up, she lowered the pretender’s arm and she took the gun. Jarod’s hands ran to his eyes, rubbing his face to dry the tears away.

Still looking at Jarod, Parker started to talk to Lyle, “Give me one reason not to kill you right now.”

Lyle was panting, “Sis –”

“Don’t call me that. I’ve never been your sister. The only brother I’m still interested in is Brigitte and daddy’s baby.”

Lyle was in pain, Parker could tell it. And yet, a few seconds later, he started to laugh again.

“Well that is ironic and funny, isn't it?”

Parker glared at her twin brother, “Ironic?”

Jarod came back to his senses. Lyle’s last sentence awfully reminded him of another psychothic man he’d known. Another pretender that had once taunted him about loosing the most important thing to his world.

“The last time I heard anyone saying something like that, Parker and I were told that Mr. Parker wasn’t her real father.”

Miss Parker gazed at Jarod and remembered the circumstances he was talking about.

“Alex?”

Jarod nodded. Lyle smiled in satisfaction. He was loosing a lot of blood, but he didn’t care anymore. If he was really going to die, then he would leave with a bang.

At that moment, Catherine’s voice started to talk inside Miss Parker’s mind. But she wasn’t alone. There was a new voice that the daughter could hear, a male one. The sweet and reassuring voice of her little brother. She closed her eyes, trying to listen to both of them.

“What’s going on, Parker?” Jarod looked at her, worried.

“They keep…telling something…about the baby…But I don’t understand…”

Jarod glared back at Lyle, who stared back at him, “That baby isn’t Brigitte and daddy’s biological son. She was nothing more than a vessel, you know that.”

Jarod and Parker exchanged a worried look. The pretender had no idea where Lyle was going with this, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“What the hell are you talking about? Who are that baby’s parents?” Miss Parker asked him.

Lyle smiled and looked at Jarod, scoffing him, “And I thought you were the genius.”

Jarod’s eyes roamed around the room. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening.

Parker wasn’t a genius, but as soon as Jarod looked back at her, she knew. She opened her mouth and let out a sigh, while a tear rolled down her face.

“Oh, this is such a charming scene!” he taunted them, “If I wasn’t already crying for the pain, I think I would cry along for the emotion.”

“How?” Jarod asked.

“All I know is what I’ve been told, and it’s not much, believe me. At that time daddy wanted another pretender for the Centre. You were still wandering around, helping the little guy. Alex wasn’t available and we didn’t know anything about Eddie, either. Raines didn’t want your clone to end up in the hands of our father, he believed he was too good, he didn’t want to lose his favourite pet. But the Triumvirate wanted results, so we needed a plan B, something to use until we would capture you.”

Jarod lingered for a moment on Lyle’s words. He spoke about them as things, as experiments, as lab rats. Lyle enjoyed the grimace of disgust on the pretender’s face, “Then Raines came up with this crazy idea of putting the chromosomes of two red files together into a cauldron to find out what would happen. The mother’s gene was a forced choice since my beloved sister is the only woman among the red files.”

Parker looked at him in disgust, not wanting to believe how mean he could be, even towards his own sister.

“To avoid any genetic problems, my gene was discarded, let alone Angelo’s. In the end, it was only a matter of time before they all realized that only your gene would be worth the effort. You are the genius, aren’t you, Jarod?”

Miss Parker couldn’t speak. But Jarod asked Lyle the thing she wanted to know the most.

“Why?”

Lyle chuckled again, “After all these years, you still wonder why the Centre does what the Centre does?”

Parker sighed and Jarod noticed her torment.

“I delivered him with my own hands, Jarod…”

“Parker…”

“That’s the best part!” Lyle interrupted him. “And to think that you wanted to kill Brigitte before she could have your baby!”

While Lyle burst out into a psychothic laughter, Parker ran towards him and jumped over his chair. They both fell to the ground as she started to choke her brother to death.

“Parker!” Jarod shouted, trying to drag her away from him.

“Let go of me! I’ll kill you! I swear to God, I’ll kill you, Lyle!”

“Parker, he’s the only chance we have to find the baby!” Jarod told her.

Parker let Lyle go with reluctance, then Jarod lifted the chair and helped Lyle move to a sitting position again. He caughed and Parker started to clean her hands, which were now dirty of her brother’s blood. Jarod tore up a piece of his shirt and tightened it around Lyle’s leg, trying to contain his bleeding.

“Where is he, Lyle?” the pretender asked him.

Jarod tightened the piece of shirt so heavily that Lyle closed his eyes and moaned in pain.

He would have never imagined things would change so fast. One second he and Parker were just two fugitives trying to find her baby brother. The second later they were two parents desperatly looking for their son.

“I will need a guarantee.”

Parker chuckled, she knew her brother too well, “Ok, let’s make a deal, Lyle. You’re giving us the boy and we let you go.”

Lyle moved his eyes from the pretender to his sister.

“Alive”, Parker added.

“And I should assume you will just let me go away?” Lyle asked her, incredulous.

“You’re our only chance to ever finding our son again, Lyle.” Miss Parker answered. “We get the boy, you keep your useless and pathetic life. And after that, we’re going to disappear and you won’t hear from us ever again.”

Jarod approached Parker and touched her left arm to make her turn towards him, “We can’t trust him, Parker.”

“He’s our only hope, Jarod. That baby needs a family, we can’t let him grow up at the Centre as we did. I don’t want him to become like…”

“Like me?”

Parker was mortified, but that was just the truth. Jarod never had a normal childhood and he still suffered for what the Centre had done to him. She couldn’t stand the idea of her son caged behind the very same walls. He deserved better. He deserved his parents.

Jarod touched his gun again. For the first time in his life, he wanted to kill. He’d killed a man before, but he hadn’t had choice. Damon was threatening to kill Broots, Jarod had shot him to save his friend. Killing Lyle would be just a pure pleasure to satisfy his will of vengeance.

“I know he killed your brothers, but don’t forget who you are.” Parker told him, as if she was reading his mind.

Lyle felt that was the right moment to talk, “Jarod, I swear to you. If you let me go, I will do everything I can to keep the Centre out of your way.”

“Always the coward, Lyle.” Jarod hissed at him.

“It’s not cowardice. It’s just caution. You will need a man inside the Centre, someone to help you finding the boy and disappear for good. Sydney and Broots aren’t there anymore, and now that Mush-head is gone, too…”

“Don’t call him that!” Jarod screamed furiously.

“Ok, Ok…” Lyle whispered. “What I’m saying is that I’m a man of my word. And what I want is to live my life the best way I can.”  

“Meaning?” Parker asked him.

“Well, Sis, as soon as you two disappear I’m going to be the king of the Centre. Daddy dearest is– God only knows where, Raines is almost on his way to hell and without you to step on my feet…Well, let’s just say I’ll be the only one the Triumvirate will trust.”

Jarod looked at Parker. Lyle did have a point. They could trust him at least on that.

“I want you to call out Jarod’s pursuit.” Parker sentenced.

Lyle chuckled, “Sis, are you totally out of your mind? What do you think is going to happen after you two guys will run away with the boy, the last pretender the Centre has?”

Jarod murmured, “They will intensify the search, of both of us.”

“Exactly. And I won’t be able to avoid it, there won’t be a booby prize after your premature disappearance. But I will keep the Centre far, as long as you promise not to interfere with my personal business anymore.”

“Why would you do that?” Parker asked her brother.

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You’re my only sister, after all.”

Miss Parker stared at Jarod in disbelief and resignation. They had no other choice.