Dana chose not to wait for an answer and hung the phone up after telling Lyle that a sizable donation in the Center's name was made to South African orphanages.
"And you'll be looking in all the wrong places for that money, Lyle," she said to herself. Then she walked to a desk, sat down, logged into a computer and began making phone calls. She was impersonating a stockbroker.
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Her notebook color of choice at the Center was black. Letting her make her own decisions was never done in the Center. It was a rare gesture from Sydney, much like the favors he did for his previous project.
Dana's was black, a color she chose to represent how she viewed herself. The color of the notebooks would eventually change, but at that moment, she felt dead inside. She needed something to make her feel alive again. It was a sensation she hadn't felt since the first time she tried to escape the Center.
"Sydney, have other children come through here?" A younger Dana asked.
"Why do you ask?"
"I've been here for twenty years and I haven't seen anyone my age or younger. The only time I'm allowed out of my cell is for the simulations. Mr. Lyle has me taken to a room on the first floor the night before a simulation is witnessed by the buyer."
"You'd be free to walk the building if you quit running away," Sydney pointed out.
"You know I can't do that. You taught me to never give up. That's why I keep trying. I can't spend the rest of my life being buried deeper and deeper under ground," Dana's voice cracked as she spoke. "I will get out of here, Sydney. Five years from today, I'll be in the wind."
"On with the simulation, Dana," Sydney urged.
"I decide who lives or dies," Dana quoted, doing as she was told. "Sydney, what is this sim? And why am I performing it?"
"This simulation is from our search for two pretenders. Brothers. One was under my care. The other was under the care of Mr. Raines."
"But why?"
"We want to see what would have happened had the circumstances been different. How we could have brought them home."
"What circumstances?"
"We start with the older brother. He escaped the Centre and was missing for nearly two years. Mr. Lyle found him in Arizona. You know this."
"The older brother would have lost a piece of himself if the younger never showed. He would have been returned to the Center in Blue Cove, but that's temporary," Dana said nearly finishing the sim.
"What makes you think this isn't Blue Cove?" Sydney asked.
"It didn't matter which way I ran, Sydney. I always reached water..."
The memory faded as Dana read her notebook. Unlike Jarod's notebooks, hers did not include newspaper clippings. She wasn't trying to find her family. She wasn't even looking for the same kind of people Jarod always seemed to be helping. She wasn't sure what she wanted now that she was as free as a Centre experiment could be while on the run.
Her computer froze on her for the tenth time in an hour.
"Damn," she muttered under her breath. Dana didn't want to call I.T. again. They'd have assumed the wrong thing. And she wasn't about to tell them her magnetized wrists were the real cause.
It was desperate, but it was a move she was going to have to make. She removed her phone scrambler from her desk drawer, turned it on, and called Sydney.
"Hello? Jarod?"
"Is there a way to turn off the magnets?" Dana asked, her voice throwing Sydney for a loop. He hadn't expected to hear from her so soon.
"I don't know, Dana. If there was a way to do so, I would like to think Mr. Lyle has it built into a remote control. As to which button you would push, I'm afraid Lyle would be the only one to answer that."
Dana sighed before saying, "What is the remote for? And how does it work?"
———————————————————————
The hair on the back of Dana's neck stood on end. Something wasn't right. Whether the problem was on her end or the Center's was the question. The only way she was going to find the answer was to go home and call Sydney while hacking into the Center's database.
There were a lot more official looking vehicles owned by civilians these days so while her suspicion did rise the closer she got, she didn't think much of the ones she drove by until she arrived at her building.
Close calls hadn't been experienced since Dana left the Center's island. But she knew it was time to leave Boston when she saw Mr. Lyle's head pop out of her apartment window.
She left Boston, and continued driving until she reached a neighboring city. It was something she'd noticed in the sims of her predecessor's escapes. She never mentioned that pattern while she was in the Center because she wanted it to keep working if she ever managed to escape herself.
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Lyle searched through Dana's mail to see what her next move was going to be. Aside from mail delivered to her alias, there was no sign that she lived there.
"How long did you say she's been here?" Lyle asked the landlord who was behind him.
"About three months. I don't know what she did for a living but she always had money. Miss Edwards was never late paying the rent so I didn't ask... there was something thing suspicious about her though."
"How so?" Lyle has a feeling he already knew the answer.
"She never left the apartment until two weeks ago. Whenever I came to collect her rent it was always in cash. Always approached something as if she's never seen it before."
"She never left until two weeks ago. Did she say where she was going?" Lyle asked.
"She got a job working as a stock broker. Talked me into buying a few shares of this company that's just starting up. I was skeptical at first because the company was in the news. The owner and his wife were being charged with fraud. Edwards convinced me they were being framed. Believing her was not a mistake. They made me ten thousand in less than a week."
After getting the name of the company, Lyle and his sweepers left to see Dana's office.
——————————————————
Lyle, followed by his gang of sweepers, exited the elevator of the building where Dana worked. He started with the employee closest to him, displaying a photo of Dana. He was promptly directed to her desk.
It was empty aside from one thing to let Lyle know she was there. And it wasn't her notebook. It was a cage made of popsicle sticks. The ceiling was outfitted with dying Christmas lights to give it the same green appearance as her cell. Several of the bulbs were dead, which only added to the ambiance. The dead bulbs were fastened where the cameras in her real cell had been placed.
Lyle tried closing the cell's door. It popped back open. It was spring-loaded.
"So much for being a wild card," Lyle said.
"Oh, you're looking for Nichole Edwards," Dana's former boss said. "She worked here for about two weeks. My best employee after only a day. I don't know how she did it but she brought in over a trillion dollars and saved me from having to spend twenty years in prison for crime I didn't commit."
"Are you sure it was this 'Nichole' and not someone named Jarod?" a sweeper asked?
"It was definitely Nichole. Jarod was here last year when I worked for another company. He's the one who told me I should start one of my own. I owe this place to both of them."
The sweeper who spoke packed up the wooden cage as Lyle thanked Dana's boss for his help.
As they left the building, Lyle received a phone call. After years of looking for the previous Pretender, these calls were torment.
"What do you want, Jarod?" Lyle asked. He looked around to see if he find the caller he assumed was on the other end.
"That's twice now someone thought I was him," Dana said. "Did you like my present?"
"It's brighter than where you're going when I bring you back."
The line went dead. It was bad enough Jarod played these games with Lyle and his sister. Now he was getting them from another source.