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My Name Is Sydney - by MMB

Chapter 1: Trapped



Not again...

Sydney stared down at the contents of the red folder he'd found laying smack in the middle of his desk blotter when he'd come to work that morning with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach that was almost painful. He'd known that the Centre would be finding him new projects to work on now that Jarod had decided to leave few if any clues to his whereabouts or activities since his escape from the plane crash in Africa. Even Broots had found his computer talents reassigned from the search effort to more challenging programming projects, and Miss Parker had found her time more and more eaten up with more generalized security-related issues either for the Centre or even the Triumverate.

But this...

He picked up the phone receiver and punched in the extension number, then gently replaced the handset with a sigh when he finally accepted that the file folder, and the responsibility toward the person whose history it contained, would not have been placed in his hands capriciously. There was very little chance that he'd be able to argue his way out of the assignment, knowing Mr. Raines and the oxygen-starved ghoul's tenacity once he'd made a decision. What made it worse - by simply making it understandable - was that there was a certain logic behind the decision. Were he Mr. Raines, now saddled with responsibility for the entire Centre, he would more than likely make the very same decision for the very same reasons. Worst of all was the fact that the idea was not only intriguing but also exciting to contemplate.

Damn it.

He, Sydney, WAS the foremost authority on those gifted individuals known as Pretenders. There were few other professionals on the face of the globe with the experience of having mentored one from early childhood well into adulthood. With this new apparent orphan falling into the Centre's guardianship, it stood to reason that he, Sydney, would be the logical choice of mentor. He knew exactly where all the pitfalls of the process were, what the consequences of failing to avoid them might be, and the real intellectual stimulation that came with working with such a flexible and razor-sharp mind. Training a Pretender's mind to function at the high levels needed to run the complicated sims had stretched his own intellect immensely, and he had felt the dearth of that kind of mental challenge keenly because it was so addictive. To be able to stretch again...

What was he thinking?!

He sat back in his chair after flipping the file folder closed again. He now knew better than to trust the Centre's report of the child's personal history. He'd seen the same kind of report once before - a small boy discovered after both parents were killed in an accident. He'd bought into Jarod's manufactured history as an orphan for decades, and so followed the Centre's directives on how to train him, how to treat him, without question. At least, until Jarod had taken it into his head to escape the Centre and begin questioning everything he'd ever been told - by Sydney and by the Centre. And then Sydney had learned the depths to which the Centre had been capable of sinking, the obscene nature of the lies that he'd so quietly swallowed whole and then worked from.

He had yet to forgive himself, and really didn't expect forgiveness from Jarod - ever.

Now this...

The very first page of that file was a report of this little boy's discovery at an orphanage after his parents had been killed in an auto accident. Except for dates and circumstances of the accident - and the fact that the signature at the bottom was William Raines' rather than Jacob Green's - it could have been an exact duplicate of Jarod's intake form. That fact in and of itself gave Sydney pause.

Sydney steepled his fingers contemplatively under his nose and closed his eyes. He had spent the last six years of his life discovering and then struggling unsuccessfully to come to terms with the monstrous thing he'd been a part of - the theft and exploitation of another human life. He'd actually come to the point of quietly cheering on Jarod's ability to stay five moves ahead of the Centre retrieval effort, not to mention the do-good-ing that had so characterized his former protégé's interaction with the outer world.

What was more, he had been in exactly this position before when Gemini had come to his attention - only with the motivation to be a part of making sure that same monstrous process had been short circuited before it even got started. That move had almost lost him what few friends he had left in the world.

The condemnation in Miss Parker's face when she'd learned that he'd demanded to be put in charge of Gemini had only been bearable because he knew that he was taking that step in order to free the boy. Still, her censure, as well as Broots' obvious disgust, had been an outright agony that could never be expressed, and only their forgiveness when they figured things out had made his life bearable again. It seemed that deep within Miss Parker's conscience had grown the same reluctance to be a part of the obscenity any longer.

That wouldn't be the case now - would it? How could she ever forgive him if he went along this time...

The phone chose that moment to begin to ring. He sighed and picked up the handset. "This is Sydney."

"Syd? Got a minute?" Why didn't it surprise him that it was Miss Parker?

They had spent hours and hours together after her return from Carthis, very quietly and secretly exploring the limits and fine-tuning the capabilities of her inner sense. That time together in such close psychic proximity had welded a very clear connection between them that could spill open easily - and did so often quite unpredictably. He knew that all he would have to do would be to extend a mental tendril to be able to know not only her mood, but her physical condition - and he was quite aware that her skills in that respect so far outmatched his that it wasn't funny. She'd probably sensed his mental disquiet without even trying.

"What can I do for you?" he asked in a distracted tone, sensing the same disquiet and distress in her and knowing suddenly exactly what was coming.

"I received notice today that we're reactivating the Pretender Project, and I've been assigned to design improved security systems for the Sim Lab and associated living quarters. I was just wondering what you knew about this..." Her voice told him volumes, and his inner sense filled in the gaps quite capably. She was repulsed, disgusted, and very upset by the mere idea that another child would have to go through the same kind of upbringing that she'd slowly discovered had been Jarod's.

He sighed again. She was probably the one person to whom he could talk freely, and yet, if he told her... Then again, if she had been assigned security for the project, she'd find out eventually anyway...

"The project folder is sitting on my desk," he admitted, hoping his tone was communicating his own discomfort with the idea effectively and that her inner sense could pick up on his own revulsion at this development. "I've been assigned to mentor..."

"Don't tell me you're going along with this, Dr. Frankenstein?" Miss Parker's voice was aghast and appalled.

He closed his eyes again. She wasn't thinking or feeling beyond knowing something was amiss. "Are you?" he shot back gently. He'd learned with her that sometimes the tiniest of nudges was all the guidance she needed - in this instance, it would be only the tiniest of reminders that she was in very much the same position. He was trapped, as was she. Choice had very little to do with it for either of them.

His nudge worked. She was quiet for a while. Then, "What are we gonna do, Syd?"

"What we can, Parker, what we can."

Sydney heard the long sigh on the other end of the line, and knew that they were now functioning on the same wavelength as far as this new challenge was concerned. "Thanks, Syd," she said softly.

"Have dinner with me this evening?" he asked suddenly. "We haven't seen very much of each other lately, and this will give us a chance to catch up." And compare notes privately, he sent through the “inner” channels. "Pick you up at seven?"

"I'd like that," she answered softly. The connection between them warmed perceptibly. Message received. "Talk to you later, then, Syd."

He replaced the handset thoughtfully, and picked up the file folder again and opened it to study the personality profile page at last. The boy's name was James, his age five and a half, his parents allegedly killed in an auto accident two weeks earlier, his IQ off the charts. It was déjà vu all over again, he thought unhappily, closing the folder again and getting reluctantly to his feet - surrendering to the inevitable, and yet being once again dedicated to a completely different outcome. He was getting too old for this.

But he could put off the next few minutes no longer.

Sydney pushed all his doubts and hesitations and apprehensions into a tiny mental box which he then stowed in a very dark and secret corner of his psyche, not to be opened again until that evening, when he was safely away from the Centre completely. He then carefully and deliberately pasted a well-practiced neutrality on his face as he put his hand on the button that opened the glass door to the Intake waiting room, where the small tow-headed lad was absently tinkering with the Erector set left there deliberately to see what would happen.

"Where am I?" the small voice demanded of the first adult he'd seen in what must have been hours. "Where are my mom and dad?"

"My name is Sydney," Sydney intoned for the third - and hopefully the last - time in his life, "and I'll be taking care of you for a while."









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