Behind him, the oxygen cart squeaked rhythmically as Willy pulled it along behind them. William Raines dragged in deeply of the oxygen that was being steadily pumped into his nostrils through the plastic canula, feeling his heart beat stronger as the life-giving gas permeated his blood and helped everything work just that much better for a moment. Striking blue eyes peered out at the Centre corridor from his sunken face and made those who actually dared meet his gaze look away quickly lest their audacity be seen and their face and name noted for retribution.

The knowledge that all of the power in the Centre was his to command was a heady stimulant all of its own – and one he indulged in displaying as often as possible to as many of his subjects, his employees, as he could. Fear of whatever punishment he could dream up and command as Chairman had replace the loathing with which he’d been regarded as merely the Chairman’s right-hand man – and that fear from those whose lives he could directly impact was the stuff he lived on now. He’d long since moved past any point where he would be satisfied with merely a wife, perhaps a child or two, and a respectable position in a powerful firm like the Centre.

No, with old man Parker’s suicide jump over the nighttime Atlantic, he had climbed to the very pinnacle of power. As Chairman, he literally controlled life and death matters for more people than he even dared imagine – not counting the minions who worked and slaved for him in the vast Centre organization. He’d coveted this job for more years than he could remember – and now, at last, it was his! Wielding the powers of life and death was intoxicating – exhilarating – and that adrenaline boost was a far better companion than any mere mortal could ever be.

Raines didn’t have to look to know that Willy, his dark associate in more ways than just superficial skin color, was watchful and alert not only to potential threats that might loom nearby, but of the slightest sign that his assistance was needed by his master. Willy had carried him, guarded him, served as a confidante and a way to intimidate others in a way that a short, frail, emphysema-riddled figure couldn’t. They were a pair – not quite but almost linked at the hip – with him as the brains and motivation and Willy as the brawn and the execution.

The two of them came to a halt in front of the elevator door and waited patiently. The trip from the fine office with its huge picture window that overlooked the sweeping Centre lawn that stretched all the way to the sands of the Atlantic to Sub-Level 15 and the Sim Lab that was the province of the hunt for the escaped pretender was one he made at least once a week lately. There would be the usual threats – made as much for protocol and because he COULD as for any other reason – and warnings to not let up on the efforts being expended. On the return trip, a stop-over in a ground-level office and similar threats and warnings would happen as well.

Damn Jarod! The most profitable Centre project ever to reach fruition had somewhere, somehow grown a mind of his own and the will to walk away and persisted in staying tantalizingly out of reach – and two teams of highly trained and well-paid searchers STILL couldn’t accomplish anything.

Why, he wondered – and not for the first time – was it that Jarod had been such a success, and yet subsequent efforts to engender a child through in-vitro fertilization using similarly gifted but otherwise unrelated parents had failed to produce another like him? Was it Sydney’s fault that Jarod had escaped – and was that why he could never be sure that the aging Belgian psychiatrist wasn’t helping his protégé survive on the outside instead of working to bring him back to the Centre? Why was it that the one subsequent success – a cloning – had chosen to turn his back on over a decade of VERY careful training and vanish into the woodwork with the original’s father? Why was it that the attempt to steal another youngster with the right genetic patterning had been foiled by the escaped Pretender himself – with the Centre constantly not only coming up short in the take-down, but usually looted to the tune of thousands if not millions of dollars now?

Raines sighed. Jarod was a blessing – and a curse. If it were anybody else, he’d just order his best assassins to take the Pretender out – eliminate him completely. But Jarod was too valuable an asset to destroy for all of the harm he’d done to Centre interests and his own, personal contributions to the Centre – and yet, there HAD to be a way to punish him.

He nodded in satisfaction as a thought slipped into his mind that Lyle had mentioned the other day – and he decided THAT would be the thrust of his discussions in the Sim Lab and Lyle’s office today. The time of the computer search programs that dissected every news story, the time Angelo was obliged to spend searching internet sites, would be better spent in increased diligence toward uncovering the whereabouts of Jarod’s family and taking them into custody. Yes, that was it. Such efforts would go a long ways toward bringing their lost Pretender back to the fold. After all, Jarod’s one exploitable weakness was family – especially the one of which he’d been deprived for so long. That made them valuable bait – alive OR dead.

Raines closed his eyes. What a day that would be – the day the Pretender was brought back to the Centre! That would be the day that Sydney would be obliged to work with his old protégé under the supervising eye of Willy – or maybe even Cox. One way or another, Centre profitability ran directly through the Pretender Project – and that Project needed to stop hemorrhaging Centre funds and turn lucrative again. Capturing Jarod was the one, sure-fire way to accomplish that – but it was by no means the only possibility.

There was always the option of making the Pretender an unwilling contributor to continuing his heritage through progeny. There were many ways to extract genetic samples from a man – both pleasant and less than pleasant for the man in question – and those samples used in combination with ovum from a similarly pre-disposed female to engender the next generation of Pretenders. That was, after all, what had been done before. Jarod’s sample mixed with ova gathered from Miss Parker while hospitalized for her ulcer had resulted in the infant that a former assassin, Brigitte, had carried to term. Believed by all to be Mr. Parker’s youngest son, the lad was being raised almost entirely by and in the Centre – by professionals that he had personally hired and designated as suitable to the task. The problem with that is that young Master Parker was at a ‘hands-off’ stage, when all of his informational input needed to come from trusted guardians.

Raines sighed – he so loved to be right there, in the middle of all of the action. He’d loved to stand on an upper catwalk while Jarod had worked the more difficult SIMs years ago, and he hadn’t lost that itch to be where the action was. Nowadays, when that itch overwhelmed, he could go down to Bioengineering and see how they were coming along with the newest cloning experiments. Considering the number of years and the hundreds – if not thousands – of failures prior to achieving a viable and fully realized Pretender clone, improving the process and making it more productive would have its benefits both in terms of new Pretenders for the Centre as well as technology to sell to agribusiness – and perhaps even the military.

The skeletal man indulged himself in a chuckle, not worrying in the slightest that the passing file clerk blanched at the idea that the Chairman was chortling evilly with no apparent reason. It was the stuff of science fiction that he was considering – the concept that society would jump at the chance to not have to bear with fighting its wars with the blood of its sons and daughters, but rather with the blood of artificially created humans designed with that one purpose in mind and no other.

The elevator chimed softly, and the silvery door to the small boxlike car slid aside on nearly silent tracks. Once more Raines focused on the squeak of his oxygen tank on wheels and cast his eyes about quickly to take in the reactions of those in the vicinity to its sound as he and his companion stepped into the vehicle. Were it not an outrage – and if he didn’t intend to send sweepers to discover exactly who they were with word that they were summarily fired – he would have laughed out loud at the way people who were coming in this direction would abruptly about-face and head in the opposite direction. Fear did that to people – and the word of people losing their job for doing what everybody at the Centre dared do would just cement that attitude that much more firmly into place.

The door slid closed, shutting Raines and Willy into the elevator. Raines nodded, and Willy obediently pressed the button for SL-15 and then stood back, silent and ever-ready. The ride from the fourth floor of the Tower to the fifteenth underground floor took long enough that Raines had time to lift his eyes to the hole near the top of the elevator car.

Old man Parker had ordered that the hole never be repaired – that its presence there to certain people in the know would function as an effective warning – and it was one order that Raines had had no intention of countermanding until just recently. Sydney and, in her time, Miss Parker had been quite capably hamstrung by the memory of what that hole represented – although lately the knowledge that the event the hole was SUPPOSED to represent had been faked had removed much of its deterrent value. Raines made a mental note to himself to speak to the head of maintenance and have it seen to at last.

Damn Jarod and his pressing Miss Parker so effectively to uncover the secret to her mother’s real end. The result of his interference was evident every time she looked at him. Where once it had been simple repugnance and distrust, now it was outright loathing, if not open hatred. And when the time had come for demonstrations of loyalty to the new order upon the demise of the old Chairman, hers – and that of her entire team – had been conspicuously absent.

The Triumvirate had noted that absence, he had no doubt. The African consortium that controlled so many of the Centre purse strings had since made it clear that while it supported his administration of the Centre, it recognized Miss Parker’s and her twin brother’s rights of inheritance as well. If he couldn’t bring the Centre back into the black, then it was entirely possible that the Triumvirate would displace him rather finally in favor of one or the other of the twins.

This was why he was so set on keeping the sense of competition keep between the two. In the end, HE wanted to be the one to choose the Parker that was willing to be the most ruthless, the most cunning and the most persistent that would be the one to finally haul Jarod’s ass back into his cell in SL-22 – and back into servitude doing SIMs for the Centre to profit from – as his successor. And making success capturing Jarod a question of life or death seemed the most efficient motivator for both of the people in question. After all, the Centre NEEDED ruthlessness, cunning and patience as prime elements in the character of the one chosen to lead – and capturing Jarod would be the ultimate test of all of that.

The problem with having to choose which one of the Parker twins to allow to inherit the coveted position of Chairman was that both exhibited a very specific and potentially debilitating weakness. Miss Parker’s was a tendency toward the softness that had ultimately defeated and killed her mother – a tendency that Jarod, from the outside, sought to strengthen and enhance. So far, the efforts to keep that tendency under control had worked – but for how much longer, Raines had no way of knowing. With old man Parker gone, only HE was in any position to exert influence – and Parker’s blatant, undisguised loathing for him almost guaranteed that whatever he tried to convince her to do, she would try to do the opposite. If left unchecked, that tendency to softness would mean that so much of the power base the Centre enjoyed, thanks to the Machiavellian natures of previous Chairmen, would be frittered away. Raines didn’t want that – and no doubt, neither would the Triumvirate.

Lyle’s weakness was far more difficult to control. The man was a sociopath – a success in that regard that Raines continually enjoyed – but had begun indulging in certain… behaviors… that could be disastrous. His obsession for stalking, kidnapping, raping and then killing oriental women had already brought the scrutiny of law enforcement far too close to Centre affairs than was wise or desirable. What was more, it was nearly impossible to predict when Lyle would simple vanish for a week, only to return with an odd and deeply satisfied smirk on his face that told of another body carefully hidden somewhere – he hoped. Raines had tried to make it clear that such activities HAD to be curtailed; but as with his sister, Lyle’s overt capitulation merely disguised a hatred and loathing that would burst loose in rebellion – and another dead woman – possibly at the worst opportune moment.

The elevator gently halted beneath his feet and chimed softly as the door slid back once more, allowing the passengers an opportunity to disembark. Raines stepped forward, exiting the small car two steps ahead of Willy, who carefully maneuvered the squeaky wheels of the oxygen cart over the slide track. In front of him, the double siding door of the Sim Lab – once the arena where Jarod had been kept and made to perform, now a psychological research facility with Sydney reigning virtually supreme – beckoned. It was time to put aside thoughts of Lyle and his damnable murderous bent, of Miss Parker and her inner marshmallow nature, and of Jarod and his knack for tweaking the Centre nose.

“Let’s have some fun,” Raines said quietly to his dark companion, bringing a very short-lived but sincere smile to the man’s face. The moment Willy had restored his stony poker-face, Raines began walking forward – knowing the squeaky wheels of his cart to be as good as a town crier announcing his approach. Already he could sense the frustration and dread of those who would be waiting inside the lab to hear what he had to say this time.

Yes, fear was a powerful intoxicant – and Raines knew he was the one most adept at both wielding it and enjoying the afterglow. It was a gift – this view from the summit of Centre power – and William Raines intended to enjoy it for as long as he could. He’d earned it, by God!

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Miss Parker | Sam | Broots | Mr. Raines | Sydney | Mr. Cox | Willy | Angelo | Mr. Lyle | Jarod