Exactly fifteen years to the day after Jarod freed himself from the Centre, he knew it was time. In all those years, he’d located his family, liberated the young man who shared his face, reunited Angelo with his own kin, and helped an enormous number of people along the way. His life’s mission, almost accomplished. But there was one soul he’d never unlatched from the Centre’s shackles, and now it was too late. Well, two technically, if he counted his brother Kyle, long dead and longer driven insane. Or even three with Miss Parker, but he long ago gave up martyring himself with moral responsibility for her actions. But perhaps hope for Miss Parker also lingered somewhere in his mind. There was always the slim chance of convincing her.

But it was Sydney who concerned Jarod the most. Sydney, who with the stroke was now as debilitated and unresponsive as his long lost brother Jacob. In all the years since his escape, Jarod had never managed to get Sydney to admit his culpability, and had never finished hashing out his own pain and guilt. He had not considered that in one random moment Sydney would simply be gone, and with Sydney’s mind Jarod’s chance to redeem them both.

The idea was absurd when he first dreamed it up, then Jarod couldn’t stop thinking about it. The idle thought soon turned into an obsession, as his ideas tended to do, with nights-long sugar-filled brainstorming sessions and entire notebooks filled with equations, and eventually an elegant chamber with one single button. Then he’d spent a month researching the relevant time period, studying all his sims for that year, grilling his parents on their whereabouts from 1980 to 1982, even digging up whatever he could on Centre politics for that era. He’d waffled on the date for days, exploring the long winding consequences of different timelines. 1981 was the best window to accomplish his goals, he could feel it. Thirty years back. It was symmetrical. It was correct.

When he pushed that button, nothing would happen to his current self. Matter could not time travel, at least not under this particular protocol. It was not like mailing a package to the past. In that instant his mind would split and copy itself. One version would continue on in the current timeline, and never know whether he succeeded on not. The other would snap back into his body of thirty years past. He was a little epistemologically vague on what would happen to his past self’s consciousness – that did worry him a bit – but the math indicated that his actions would also cause a new splintered timeline branching off in the past, while his younger self would continue on the old path unawares.

Jarod couldn’t change what had already happened in his life. What was done was done, and all the regret and pain would remain intact somewhere in the universe. But he could, in a sense, rerun his life on a different track. And now that the idea occurred to him, Jarod was dying of curiosity just to see what would happen with a sparkling new set of thirty years. Would he make better choices, and convince others to do the same? Would he be happier? Could any of them be happier? What difference can one man’s mind make in the grand scheme of things?

He stepped into the chamber, and resolved to find out.

The transition was something like waking up for anesthesia, for there was no sense of time passing at all. On one blink Jarod was standing in a box in his 52-year-old body, and the next he was in the old sim lab, a prisoner again at age 22. The sim lab itself bowled him over with its familiarity, with its musty smell and terrible incandescent lighting and boxy analog equipment strewn across the horizon. But his body felt wrong, alien and twitchy even though it was recognizably his. Jarod staggered for a few seconds trying to regain control over himself, then collapsed onto the hard green linoleum. He’d always hated that floor.

“Jarod! What’s wrong?”

Jarod forced open his eyes, not having realized he’d closed them in the first place. And there was Sydney in full technicolor, not a recording, vastly younger than when Jarod had last seen him but not a spring chicken either. They were just about the same age now, which struck Jarod as comically absurd. He wanted to throw his arms around Sydney, who was currently looming over him with his patented Concerned Face but animated and alive, so it was probably a good thing that Jarod’s arms refused to cooperate with his brain.

“I think I need a break, Sydney,” Jarod managed to mutter. A break from what, he had no idea, for there had been an amount of uncertainty in the target date. Hopefully it was an activity that justified a random collapse and retreat. Then he chided himself for already falling into the trap of seeking permission for every little thing in his life. How hard some habits died. “I, uh, am not feeling well.”

Sydney’s furrowed brow rolled over into a full frown. “This is unexpected and alarming, Jarod. Perhaps you should visit the medical ward.”

Oh, God, not Medical, thought Jarod. They tended to be well-equipped with the latest medical gadgetry and were obscenely fond of using it on whomever was rolled through their doors. Have needles and unethical performance enhancement drugs, will poke. Plus there was the non-zero chance that they would discover his heightened cortisol levels and wonky synaptic activity and realize something was amiss, and put him under heightened scrutiny.

In the flash of a moment, Jarod considered his options. Originally he had planned to play along for a week or two in order to ingratiate himself into his old life. Now that he was here in the flesh, however, he doubted he could stand a single minute reliving one of the Centre’s simulations. Nor did he feel like rehashing the years of coy psychological cat and mouse that he and Sydney had already played. This was the moment break old patterns and start a new game.

“Help me up, would you Sydney? I don’t need Medical.” He reached up and Sydney pulled him to his feet. His body felt smaller somehow, more compact with the muscle tone of youth, but he was rapidly regaining control over it. Jarod took a few seconds to look around to assess the current sim, which based on the books and diagrams strewn about a nearby table appeared be the research phase of an aeronautics test. One of those that turned out to be a Defense Department project, although he had been told otherwise at the time. Jarod turned away from it, done.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” Sydney said, interrupting Jarod’s train of thought. Jarod focused on the gentle probing of his old teacher, watching Sydney watch himself. It had been a long time since Jarod had experienced that clinical stare, the constant assessment of his mood and behavior. Sydney had largely ceased treating him like an analytical object not many years after his original escape. Perhaps that had been his form of letting go.

“I am myself, Sydney, but I’m not sure either you or I know who that is at this point,” Jarod said. “Can we go to your office to talk? Some place a little more private.” There was no true privacy at the Centre of course, but at least there were fewer cameras for Jarod to deal with in Sydney’s office.

The office was located one level above them with windows looking down, so that Sydney could keep an eye on him in the sim lab even when Jarod was ostensibly alone. Once up there, Jarod rummaged around in his desk for a pair of scissors, then adeptly cut the audio feed on the two cameras in the room, both the obvious one and the one hidden inside a wall clock. No one would notice the problem until the DSA editor for his project spliced together his personal feed, probably a few days hence.

Sydney watched all this with probing silence, leaning back against the window with his arms crossed. “Do you feel more secure?” he asked, once Jarod finished.

“Not really, no,” Jarod said, and flopped back into a guest chair across from Sydney’s desk. His younger body really was quite fit and spry, and he longed to take it out for a good jet fighter dogfight or swim across the English channel or something else adventurous that would put it to the test, but first things first. “Listen. I’m going to tell you something. Then you can respond. But you should know from the onset that you are not going to be able to change my mind. But this is your opportunity to make peace with me and what happened in my childhood here.”

Sydney’s eyebrows shot up at that, but he still didn’t say anything. Jarod could practically see words like delayed adolescent opposition forming in his head.

“The Pretender Project is no more. I will not be performing any more simulations or other projects for the Centre. I will not be a prisoner in this building any longer. You will not chase me down or spend fruitless years trying to convince me to come back. You will not harass my family. If you do, I will make it my mission to destroy this place and everyone who runs it.” In truth, he already had numerous plans to take down the Centre with as little bloodshed as possible, but in the current moment a bit of leverage wouldn’t hurt.

“Jarod, is this about your family? We’ve spoken about this many times. You know that they gave up because they believed in you reaching your full potential. And here we have done that. What do you think you can accomplish out there that compares to the work we continue to do here at the Centre?”

A flash of anger rode through Jarod, which he willed down through well-worn practice. “Do you believe the lies that come out of your mouth, Sydney? The current simulation was paid for by a subsidiary to Raytheon, and eventually will become part of the drone technology that will be used to blow up hundred of civilians. And my brother and I were kidnapped from our parents on June 2, 1963. Stop deluding yourself that anything the Centre tells you bears any resemblance to the truth.”

“Your brother? You don’t have a brother that I know of. Who put these ideas into your head?”

“He’s assigned to one of Raines’s secret projects on sublevel 27,” Jarod said softly. “Kyle. We did a few sims together a few years ago. You know of him, and yet you turned a blind eye as usual. I think you know enough about the Centre to not go shouting all this out loud in the wrong ears.”

“The Tower will never let you leave,” Sydney said. "You might think I am your jailer, Jarod, but I have very little control of the situation.”

“I’m not asking the Tower for permission, and I’m not asking you for forgiveness either. I only want you to understand what is happening,” Jarod shot back. “We both can make choices, and I hope yours will be better ones.”

“You should think about this before taking any action, Jarod, I really don’t think you are ready to face the outside world yet.” He pressed a button on his desk to summon the guards, to take Jarod back to his cell. Jarod wondered if he had pushed too far, too fast. Well, too bad. Sparing Sydney’s ego wasn’t the catharsis he came traveling thirty years for.

“No one’s ready for the outside world, and yet parents push their children out into it nevertheless,” Jarod said. “You have to let me go too, Sydney. Voluntarily. I’m a person, not your personal lab rat. The Centre doesn’t own me.”

“But they believe they do.” The sweepers arrived at the door, their faces deadened to their job.

“The Tower is about to find out otherwise. Do you even understand that you don’t own me either?”

Sydney waved at the guards to haul him off, and didn’t answer. At least he had the decency to look troubled and conflicted. Jarod decided that was progress, and enough for one day.

* * * * *

Jarod sat around in his cell-slash-room for another day before Sydney returned. In the interim, he had plenty of time to contemplate the potential foolishness of his actions and run scenarios in his head. He had to assume Sydney informed the Centre of his plans to walk away, and consequently security was likely tighter. He had no doubt that actual eyeballs were on his security feeds now, as opposed to the lackadaisical monitoring that was probably present before he, as they would think of it, acted out.

Ultimately, though, he had no regrets. Not one more minute of his life doing sims, he decided. Playing along might buy him time to get away easily, but the actual act of escape wasn’t his main concern yet. He wanted Sydney to see, to understand that he had been backing the black hats all along. Jarod didn’t expect an apology, for he didn’t think Sydney would ever be able to admit to himself that the “work” he’d devoted his life to had been unethical from the start. But he did believe Sydney could be made to understand that it could not continue, that even now was leading down some very dark paths, and that a good deal of evil unleashed on the world could be stopped if they acted now instead of waiting for the leadership at the Centre to magically improve. It wouldn’t.

There was soft knock at the door, to Jarod’s surprise. No one ever knocked, and his younger self would have found it bizarre. Instead he called out, “Come in,” as it were an ordinary day.

Sydney clicked open the then-cutting-edge magnetic key lock. He looked around briefly at the spartan setting before locking his eyes on Jarod. Sydney hadn’t come down here very often by this stage in Jarod’s life, and Jarod wondered if he was realizing how little it had changed from when he was a small child.

“I take it you’ve disabled all the cameras you could find in here too, Jarod?”

Jarod waved a hand. “I know where they all are, Sydney. I suppose that’s one thing you could say about living in a closet, there are not a lot of places to hide bugs. What have you found out, about what I said?”

Sydney took in a breath. “I was able to access sublevel 27. Kyle was not there, but I found evidence he lived there. Raines informed me he was out on assignment.” That last phrase he spit out, hardened.

“Did he tell you what the assignments are?” Jarod pressed.

“I can guess, with Raines in charge, that it’s nothing benevolent,” Sydney said. “I found the other sim lab. Raines always did have his own theories about how Pretenders could shaped into perfect soldiers. But I can’t believe that the Centre would risk exposing themselves by letting him out in to the world.”

Jarod raised his eyebrows at this. “They will do whatever they are paid to do, Sydney. Is that your concern with me? Exposing the Centre to the outside world?”

“I’m more concerned with your state of mind, Jarod. How do you know all this? Why the sudden change of mind about your life here at the Centre?”

“I’ve been thinking about it a long time, actually,” Jarod said. That was true even for his younger self. He’d thought and thought about leaving, fantasized about it really, but his damned passivity and inertia prevented him from taking action until the truth was overtly staring him in the face. It wasn’t only Sydney who blinded themselves to their own culpability. “What was your plan with me, this whole time? Did you think I would obediently stay in this building forever, until I died of old age? What about my right to explore the world, to love, to have children, to live like a normal human being? Has that ever crossed your mind?”

“To be honest, I find all that unimportant, compared to our achievements here.”

“Sydney, just because you gave up your ambitions for a life outside of this place, doesn’t mean I have to. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

At that, Sydney, who was normally unflappable even in the face of the Centre’s weirdest spectacles, blanched at the direct affront. “You can imagine yourself as anything you want, Jarod, with perfect clarity. What is it that you want so badly from the outside this building?”

For a split second Jarod considered reciting all the jobs he had done, from firefighter to school teacher to racecar driver to, yes, shrink. But he also perceived that none of that would convince Sydney, not coming from the mouth of his young self who hadn’t actually done any of it yet. He had spent his entire life acting out these things, and listing them would only signal to Sydney that he was fantasizing more of the same. So instead he listed experiences of a different sort.

“I want cook dinner for myself. I want to crunch a spoon through the sugar topping of a creme brulee into the pudding below. I want to dive into cold water of a lake on a hot summer day. I want to hike through Kathmandu and the Appalachian Trail. I want to pick a ripe huckleberry off a bush in the woods and stuff it into my mouth. I want to make love to someone on a beach. I want to hug my proud child on their first day of kindergarten.

“Who are you to lock me in here and tell me I have some greater purpose, Sydney? I’m the one who gets to determine my purpose. You wanted to created a Pretender, and you succeeded. Walking out those doors won’t change that. Doesn’t some part of you want to see what I can really do?”

He plopped back onto his tiny bed and crossed his arms, ignoring Sydney’s astonished face. “I’ll give you one more day to come around. Then I’m not going to be sitting here waiting for you to feed me stimulation. You can go now. Maybe look up the real recipients of my sims as your next phase of research.”

Jarod looked away, and Sydney huffed from the room. The door still clicked to lock behind him.

* * * * *

The door lock next engaged a few hours later without warning or a knock. Jarod half-expected Raines to be there, or even Mr. Parker, but his next visitor was someone of a completely different kind. A young Miss Parker strode in and stared at him like she owned the place. “So. I hear you really kicked the hornet’s nest. Nice work, Jarod,” she said without preamble, as if she hadn’t been absent from his in-timeline life for seven years.

Jarod had never laid eyes on Miss Parker at this phase of her life. After being shipped off to boarding school as a teen she had never visited him again, not once. She already embodied the classic adult Miss Parker elements, impeccably dressed in an Italian-tailored power suit and possessed of her usual swagger and the underlying hard edge she’d carried since her mother died. But her youth made her look less than fully formed to Jarod, like she needed to molt one more time to be an adult. Good thing he hadn’t looked in a mirror, as the same thought probably applied to himself.

“It’s nice to see you too, Miss Parker,” he said. For the first time Jarod felt the urge to fall into the role of his younger self. His relationship with her hadn’t been poisoned, not yet, so it wouldn’t do to taunt her. “And yes, I do intend to leave. Sydney has been rather … flustered.”

She snorted at that. “What’s Syd going to do without you, lock himself in the sim lab in the fetal position and surround himself with twins?”

“He’ll manage to keep himself busy, I’m sure. What are you here for, Miss Parker? Are you here on your own, or does your father have a message for me?”

Miss Parker considered him a for a moment, and then to his surprise sat down on the thin mattress next to him. “You know, I always wanted to see you get out of here, Jarod. It seemed like a real waste of talent to keep you cooped up like a passenger pigeon. So good for you.”

“Okay,” Jarod said, shoving himself back against the corner wall and evaluating her. “What’s the catch?”

“Does there have to be a catch? We can’t just talk like old friends?”

With the Centre, there’s always a catch, Jarod thought. “You haven’t been down in the sublevels for years, Miss Parker. I assumed you were as done with this place as I am. So why come back now?”

For a millisecond she lost her swagger, and seemed more like the girl he remembered from long ago. “Last month, Daddy offered me a job. It sounds great on paper. A lot of advanced training and then a position in Corporate. Ultimately he wants to groom me to take over for him, running this monstrosity.”

Carefully, Jarod said, “And what do want? Do you even want to work here, in the place that keeps children as experiments? The place where your mother died?”

“It’s a great opportunity for advancement,” Miss Parker said neutrally, like she was reciting a corporate mantra.

“You can do better,” Jarod said. “We can both do better, don’t you think?”

Miss Parker stared at him with her best poker face, which had never covered up much. There always had been a brutal honesty to her. “Well. Daddy has an offer for you too. Head of the Experimental Division. So if you want to have an influence on all those other baby lab rats, now’s your chance. They’ll throw in a house, too, so you don’t have to live a monk in a dungeon anymore.”

At that, Jarod repressed the urge to laugh, which he knew would only antagonize her. But really, the Centre had a limited set of strategies up its sleeve, and it seemed they wanted to to try and capture him a different way. He had to admire the evil genius of Mr. Parker, for if he had sent his daughter down here with that offer to his real twenty-something self, he’d have snatched at in a heartbeat. Even now he was sort of tempted, in order to take down the Centre from within. But the potential for corruption was vast. Just like Miss Parker. Just like Sydney.

“That does sound like an excellent opportunity for advancement,” Jarod said. “But I can’t take it. There’s too much going on in the shadows of this place. Do you think the likes of Mr. Raines is going to follow orders from me? You don’t even know one percent of what they’ve done. Now’s the time in your life when you can walk away with clean hands.”

“Maybe I want bloody hands,” Miss Parker muttered. “Maybe I never wanted to be Miss Prim and Proper.”

But Jarod could tell he’d sowed a tiny seed of doubt, and decided to let her off the hook.

“You’ve delivered your message, you’ve done your duty to your father. Now tell me all about your adventures in college, Miss Parker. Like a friend. You know, up until now, I’ve only ever lived vicariously through you.”

At that she gave a smile, spontaneous and genuine. It had been decades since he’d seen that, at least directed at him.

* * * * *

An hour before Jarod’s imposed deadline, just when he was contemplating escape routes, Sydney returned. He seemed calm, more like his older self. “Let’s go for a walk, Jarod.”

They took an elevator up the arboretum level near the Tower, where Jarod had only been rarely allowed. A couple of sweepers followed them at a distance as the two of them wandered among trays of orchids, with bored expressions on their faces, obviously not expecting a jailbreak. Sydney hadn’t told the Tower about his timetable to leave.

“Mr. Parker wants to throw you into a real cell, you know,” Sydney said softly. “I told him that would never work, that no one can really force you to do anything.”

“I know,” Jarod said. It was a pity it took him so long in his life to realize that. “I’m glad you are coming around to knowing it too, Sydney.”

“I still disagree with your decision, Jarod. Strenuously. But I can’t be the one to hold a gun to your head either. The Centre may not agree with that assessment. I do not know what they will do when they discover you are gone.”

“I don’t know exactly, either. Keeps life exciting,” Jarod said.

Sydney turned to look at him with about the most fatherly expression he could muster. “I don’t know what prompted this change of heart But I wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you, and what we’ve accomplished together. Perhaps at some point you can tell me what this moment was really about.”

“It’s even weirder than you think. Maybe when the dust settles, you and I can go for a beer. Except you’ll probably have a glass of red wine and I’ll have a Shirley Temple. But, you know, a drink.”

Sydney shook his slightly, but also held out his hand. Hugging would be unthinkable, but still, it was an offering of peace. Each had something in his palm when they shook hands. Sydney handed Jarod one of the Centre’s magnetic key cards, while Jarod slipped him a piece of paper. Sydney’s eyes widened as he read what was on it. A name and 1981 address of his old love. Sydney didn’t yet know about his son.

“You still have a lot of life in you, too. Sydney. Decades. Always keep that in mind.”

“Good luck, Jarod. Call me anytime. All I can give you is a 30 minute head start.”

He turned away and motioned the guards to follow him out of the arboretum, leaving Jarod by himself. Jarod didn’t hesitate to swivel in the opposite direction, and began to run.