REPORT: BLOODLINES
FILE #: 221-222

MISS PARKER IS AT HOME IN BED having nightmares about the burning of the shackle-laden birthing tables in SL-27 at The Centre... Jarod is in his lair, in bed, having nightmares about Mr. Fenigor and the meaning of PRODIGY.

Jarod gets up and goes to the envelope he'd taken from Mr. Fenigor's safe deposit box (see the Bank episode). Inside it is a small silver key, a burnt business card to the NuGenesis Family Group facility on Atlanta, Georgia, and a telegram. The business card has a ten-digit key code written on the back of it: 12-072463-01. The telegram is partially in code, too, and reads:

From: (CIV2) To: (XASF)
PRODIGY
THE BOY.
240 RTE 1, CHARLEVOIX, MICHIGAN

Using the telegram as his guide, Jarod travels to Michigan and discovers that the Rural Route address was that of his parents, Margaret and Charles, and the home in which he had lived as a small boy before his abduction. The house that once stood on the property was burned down to its foundations, and there's little left but some framing, plumbing fixtures, and a burnt toy airplane. The real estate agent who's showing the property to Jarod tells him the property had a tragic past: the family's son had been kidnapped, and on the night of the kidnapping the parents disappeared and the house was destroyed by fire. The property now belonged to a company out of Blue Cove, Delaware (The Centre). The real estate agent asks Jarod if he's interested in buying the property, and he tells her, no. He's late for work.

IN ATLANTA., GEORGIA, Jarod appears at the NuGenesis facility as Dr. Jarod Spock and is hired as the new head of Inseminology. At the facility, Jarod is introduced to Dr. Nicholas Haring (the program director), Dr. DeWitt (a female staffer), and Jeremy (the head of NuGenesis' Lab and Records Department). Dr. Haring tells Jarod that NuGenesis prides itself on its care for its patients, its confidentiality standards, and the fact that it has always been on the cutting edge of reproductive technology. NuGenesis was established by Dr. Nicholas Haring and his brother, Boris. Boris was now dead, but his work was being assumed by his daughter, Dr. DeWitt.

At the facility, Jarod also meets Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, a young couple who are having difficulty conceiving a child and hope that the technological advances at NuGenesis can provide them with the pregnancy they're longing for. Jarod sees them as a loving couple, deserving of parenthood, and he pledges to do his best to help them.

AT THE CENTRE: Miss Parker discovers that Mr. Fenigor has been returned to The Centre (after the shooting at Dover Town Bank) and is in the SL-14 Infirmary AB-9. She tries to see him and talk to him, but finds he is under heavy sedation. When she tries to get him to regain consciousness, she's interrupted by a nurse over-seeing his care, who tells Miss Parker the Infirmary is off-limits to her.

Miss Parker leaves the infirmary and is later intercepted by Broots, who tells her that Mr. Raines is cleaning out his office and is seemingly readying to leave The Centre. She says she's not surprised by anything "that half-burnt wheezing ghoul" does, and wonders what Raines is really up to. In the meanwhile, she says, she wants Broots and Sydney to search for information on PRODIGY and the "Red Files". Broots says he'll get right on it, but that Sydney might be delayed because he's "occupied".

Miss Parker and Broots track down Sydney and find that he is in the middle of a neuro-regenerative therapy on Angelo. The therapy, created by Jarod, mixed ocular nerve stimulation and a regulated regime of doses of specially formulated serotonin to repair the synapses in Angelo's brain that had been damaged by the shock therapy he'd been given by Raines as a child. If the new therapy works, Angelo's real personality (that of Timmy) will re-emerge. If the treatment is interrupted at any stage, however, the neuropathways that are being repaired by the therapy will collapse again, and Angelo will lose his true self forever.

Angelo only has four more shots of the serotonin serum to go and his therapy will be finished. As the therapy progresses, he regains his ability to speak... and looks up at Sydney and says: "Thank you... Sydney."

AT NUGENESIS: Jarod sneaks into the Records Lab at the facility and tries to access the data related to the key code 12-072463-01. He's startled, however, when Jeremy arrives, asks him what he's doing and throws him out of the lab. If Jarod wants any records, he's told, he'll have to go directly through Jeremy.

Later that evening, Jarod is walking through the NuGenesis facility and comes across Corridor Seven, which leads to special teaching rooms and a nurse's station. In one of the rooms, he sees a woman with a young girl. The woman pokes the little girl's finger with a specially fabricated needle, and draws a small sample of blood from the girl. In flashbacks, Jarod remembers being in a similar room and having a similar blood test done on him before he was kidnapped by The Centre. Jarod tries to get closer to the room, but he's stopped by the janitor who tells him that Corridor Seven is a restricted area. If Jarod doesn't have a pass, the janitor says, he'll have to leave. Jarod tells him he's learning that are a LOT of rooms in NuGenesis where he's not allowed to go.

AT THE CENTRE: Broots enters Mr. Raines office and finds packing boxes littering the room. He's going through one of them, and finds a folder filled with 20 duplicate photographs of a 3rd Grade Elementary School class. Before he can figure out what the photographs signify, Broots is interrupted by the return of Mr. Raines to the office. Broots hides under the desk, and remain hidden for over an hour. While he's in there, he's subjected to view of Mr. Raines having to change his pants.

BACK AT NUGENESIS: Jarod is in his office, looking at DSAs of himself as a child, on the day he met Sydney at The Centre. Jarod had just had another blood sample taken from him, and Sydney gently puts a bandage on the finger.

Dissatisfied with not being able to see more of the rooms in Corridor Seven, Jarod against sneaks down to that part of the facility and manages to enter the room where the woman and young girl had been earlier. In the room he finds all sorts of teaching equipment, including a set of blocks with mathematical symbols all over them. In another flashback, he remembers a time when, as a child, he solved a complex mathematical problem by spelling the answer out with similar blocks.

BACK AT THE CENTRE: Angelo's therapy is continuing, and he seems to be progressing with remarkable speed. Miss Parker walks in on him while's he's sipping tea out of a delicate China cup, and she and Sydney listen while Angelo plays a version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the piano.

Broots enters the lab and shows Miss Parker and Sydney one of the photographs of the grade school class that he'd pilfered from Mr. Raines' office. Angelo leaves his piano, to get up and look at the photograph over Miss Parker's shoulder. When he sees it, he grabs the photograph from her and cries, "Red Files... He can't be doing it again! Not again!" Angelo then rushes out of the room. Startled by his cries, no one chases him right away. Miss Parker looks at Broots, agog, and says, "He said ' Red Files '." Broots tells her that Angelo must know a good deal about the Red Files to be so upset; and Miss Parker wonders if he knows something about her mother's death, too. Broots, Miss Parker and Sydney then run off to try to track Angelo down.

In a panic, Angelo rushes into his space, writes the word PRODIGY on the bottom of the school photograph, and stuff the photograph into a digital scanner. He then e-mails the image to Jarod.

AT NUGENESIS, Jarod is in his room working, when his lap-top computer announces that he has an e-mail transmission. He opens it to find the image sent to him by Angelo. Jarod realizes the photograph's significance immediately: "Oh my god, they're doing it again," he says to himself. "The Centre's going to make another Pretender."

Furious, Jarod calls Sydney on his cell phone and demands to know what's going on. When Sydney is unable to provide him with much information, Jarod insists that he knows The Centre is about to kidnap another child -- one from the class of grade schoolers in the photograph. "Are you just going to sit by and let it happen again?!" he shouts at Sydney. Sydney tells him he doesn't have any more information to give him at the moment; that it was Angelo who seemed to have the best idea of what was going on but wasn't "verbal" enough yet to express himself clearly.

Jarod calms down slightly and asks if the therapy he created for Angelo is working. Sydney tells him it's working wonders. Angelo seemed to be progressing wonderfully until he saw the picture of the school children. "He saw something that seemed to trigger a bad memory," Sydney tells Jarod. Jarod growls, "I know how he feels," and abruptly hangs up on Sydney.

Later that evening, while Jarod is out of his office, the janitor walks in and starts poking around Jarod's desk. He finds a file in Jarod's "IN" basket that has the scanned photograph of the grade school class... and he also finds a photograph of Jarod's mother, Margaret.

AT THE CENTRE, Miss Parker, Broots and Sydney finally find Angelo, curled up in a fetal position in SL-26, near an entrance to SL-27. They try to comfort Angelo and ask him to return to the lab for his therapy, but he refuses to go. "Answers below," he tells them, and points to SL-27.

Broots, Miss Parker, Sydney and Angelo all go down into SL-27 and find themselves in a room with another birthing table in it. The word INCEPTION is written on the small window on the door of the room, and Sydney says it must have been a delivery room. When Sydney peeks through the small in the door, he can see workman in the corridor outside. They are rebuilding SL-27! [That's why Raines was moving his things out of his office; he was planning to start up his projects in SL-27 again.] “Answers here!" Angelo insists, but Sydney and the others feel uncomfortable staying in the place with the workmen just on the other side of the door. Sydney convinces Angelo to return to the levels above so his therapy can continue, and Angelo agrees to go.

AT NUGENESIS the next day, Jarod once again tries to sneak into the Records Lab. This time he's grabbed by the janitor who tells him that if he keeps trying to break into restricted areas the in place, he's going to get caught. He then tells Jarod, "If you want help, I'll help you." Jarod asks the janitor why he should trust him, and the janitor says, "Because your mother did." He produces the photograph of Jarod's mother and hands it to him.

Jarod and the janitor go outside the facility to talk, and the janitor tells Jarod that he had been with NuGenesis in its earliest years when it was both a fertility clinic and an adoptions agency. He had met Jarod's mother when she and her husband Charles came to NuGenesis trying to get a baby of their own. Margaret had always treated the janitor with respect, and he came to like her a great deal. He could remember the look on her face when he first saw her with her new baby son -- the gleam of happiness in her eyes -- and he also remembered the utter look of sadness in her face when he saw her briefly again after her son had been kidnapped.

"Part of your pain is because of me," the janitor tells Jarod. He knew that weird things were going on in NuGenesis, thanks to the experiments and tests headed by the facility's co-founder Dr. Boris Haring. Dr. Boris paid the janitor to keep his mouth shut, though, so the janitor never informed the authorities about what he saw there. After Dr. Boris died, the "weird stuff" stopped for a while. It only recently resumed... when Dr. Boris's daughter, Dr. DeWitt, took up her father's position in NuGenesis.

AT THE CENTRE, Angelo is going berserk. His memories are coming back to him in a jumbled flood and he can hardly stand it. Miss Parker tells Sydney to stop the treatment until Angelo settles down, but Sydney reiterates that if the therapy is interrupted at any stage, Angelo will irreversibly revert back to his former state... and they'll never find out what information is trapped inside his head. Unbeknownst to Sydney and Miss Parker, Sweeper Willie has overhead everything they've said, and he immediately calls Mr. Raines on his cell phone.

AT NUGENESIS the janitor takes Jarod down to the basement where all of Dr. Boris's old files and films were stored. They come across a safe, and the janitor asks Jarod if he's a safe cracker. Jarod produces the key from the envelope he'd gotten from Mr. Fenigor and says, "Maybe today I don't have to be." Jarod tries the key in the lock on the front of the safe and pulls at the latch. The safe opens without any problem. Inside of it are red-colored file folders and spools of 8mm film. Each file and spool is coded with a 10-digit number. (There are no names mentioned; numbers are used for identification purposes.) Jarod matches the code on one file and one spool of film to the code given to him by Mr. Fenigor and seems astonished. "You find something?" the janitor asks him. Jarod answers with an almost tearful, "Yes, me... and the Red Files."

While the janitor sets up the spool of film in a reel-to-reel movie projector also found in the basement, Jarod goes through the Red File that's about himself. There's nothing personal in it, however. Only medical information such as blood type, height, weight, coloring... that sort of thing. There is a "destination" listed at the bottom of one sheet of paper in the file, but it's been blacked-out and Jarod can't read it. The janitor starts up the 8mm film, and Jarod stands beside him to watch it. On the film Jarod sees Dr. Boris... and HIMSELF as a child at the NuGenesis facility, in a room similar to the one he'd seen in Corridor Seven. Dr. Boris gives Jarod a complex mathematical problem to solve, and Jarod solves it within seconds using blocks with mathematical symbols on them. Jarod understands that before his kidnapping by The Centre, Jarod had been tested by Dr. Boris at NuGenesis.

Since there is no other information about his family in either the film clip or the Red File Jarod becomes somewhat despondent. He tells the janitor, "I feel like I found the treasure chest and inside there's only dust." The janitor boosts his spirits a little by showing him a small calling card inside the file with a notation on it that reads: OAKVIEW 555-6507. The phone number was to the Oakview Lodge in Stone Mountain, a short drive from NuGenesis. The janitor said Margaret and Charles had stayed there while they were involved with NuGenesis. "It might be treasure. I might be dust," the janitor says, but Jarod takes the card and gratefully thanks him anyway.

AT THE CENTRE Broots gathers Miss Parker and Sydney together and shows them a bit of security video he'd found in the main frame under the code name CATHERINE PARKER. The video was of the Inception Room in SL-27 on the day Miss Parker was born. Viewing the video, Broots, Sydney and Miss Parker see Catherine Parker giving birth, and being attended by nurses and (then) Dr. Raines. Seeing Raines handling the delivery, Miss Parker remarks, "Eeew... this is too weird... I think I'm gonna puke... I can't believe he saw me nude." Miss Parker is born without complications, but then on the video Dr. Raines remarks that there's some trouble with "the other one". A boy child is born immediately after Miss Parker, but makes no sound. Dr. Raines says the boy is stillborn and removes him from the room immediately, after giving nurses orders to see to the girl baby and to Catherine. The video then cuts off in a blur of static.

In the Centre with Broots and Sydney, Miss Parker is flabbergasted. She had a twin brother... and no one ever told her about it. She asks where the rest of the video was, and Broots tells her she saw everything that was on file. The video had ended abruptly because the camera failed, or because someone had purposely removed a part of it.

Miss Parker goes to Mr. Parker's office and demands to know why she was never told about her twin. Mr. Parker tells Miss Parker her brother had been stillborn; that there was a little marker dedicated to him in Area 66 of The Centre grounds. He'd take her there to see it if she wanted him to. Miss Parker tells him, no, she'll try to find it herself. She accepts that the child was dead, but is still hurt that no one ever mentioned him to her. Mr. Parker tells her that they just never saw the point of telling her about it; no one wanted to upset her.

IN STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA that evening, Jarod arrives at the Oakview Lodge and is immediately accosted by Lewis, the caretaker, who at first mistakes Jarod (who's dressed in black) as a burglar. Jarod tells him he'd like to rent one of the cottages connected to the Lodge, and he'd like to know if anyone on the property had been there in the late 50's. Lewis says he'd been there since he was a child. Jarod pulls out the photograph of Margaret, shows it to Lewis, and asks him if he remembers seeing someone like her. Lewis looks at the photograph and grins, "Oh my lord, you must be Baby Jarod!"

Walking the grounds to the cottage where Margaret and Charles had stayed in the 50's, Lewis tells Jarod that he remembered them as a loving and gentle couple who stayed there for about six months while they did business with NuGenesis in Atlanta. "Funny thing is," Lewis says, "You don't look like either one of your folks." Charles was an Air Force pilot whom Lewis referred to as "Major Charles", and had once saved Lewis's life when Lewis fell through the ice on the lake one winter. Lewis shows Jarod the cottage where they stayed, and allows him to stay there himself if he wants to. "You're sort of like family," Lewis tells him.

AT THE CENTRE that same evening, Angelo gathers up the last of the serum he needs to take, along with some hypodermic needles, and runs away. In his wake, he leaves a note which reads: IN FINDING TIMMY YOU SET ANGELO FREE. THANK YOU SYDNEY. When Miss Parker discovers this the next morning, she's furious... and so is Mr. Raines.

AT OAKVIEW, Jarod is seated on the porch of the cottage and watches the sun rise while her peruses the photograph of Margaret and the one of the elementary school class.

Later that same morning, he arrives at the Elementary School under the guise of Mr. Jarod Kotter, their substitute teacher for the day. While the children recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Jarod looks through the attendance roster and finds that listed beside each child's name is the name of their physician (in case of an emergency). Jarod finds that in his class there are three children who physician of reference is Dr. Nicholas Haring at NuGenesis. The three children are Ari Thompson (a girl), Albert Williams, and Davy Simpkins.

After the pledge, Jarod divides the class up into small groups and has each group work on a different project: some get to drawing on the chalkboard, some get to make play dinosaurs, etc. He makes sure that Ari, Davy, and Albert are in a group together, and assigns them the task of solving a mathematical problem. To assist them in their answer he provides them with a set of blocks that have mathematical symbols on them. The children study the problem and start manipulating the blocks. But before they finish, Jarod is distracted by the site of Jeremy, the lab technician at NuGenesis, approaching the school from the parking lot. Jarod excuses himself from the classroom for a moment, so he can see what Jeremy is up to. He watches Jeremy enter the school, go to another classroom down the hall from Jarod's classroom... and hand a lunch box over to his daughter who is a student at the school. The girl gives Jeremy a hug, and Jeremy leaves with a smile.

Relieved, Jarod returns to his classroom to find that the mathematical equation he gave to the NuGenesis group of children is already completed with the correct answer spelled out in the blocks. Jarod asks which one of the children solved the equation, and all three giggle and point at one another. They gleefully refuse to tell him who solved it and run off to play with their other classmates.

AT THE CENTRE that evening, Mr. Raines and his Cleaner Gar and Sweeper Willie go to see Mr. Parker. Raines says he's ready to re-establish the PRODIGY project and wants Mr. Parker's blessing. Mr. Parker gives it, and Willie and Gar set off to get the test-subject child. Raines also throws SEVEN RED FILES onto Mr. Parker's desk and says Willie found them hidden in Angelo's space.

AT OAKVIEW that evening, Jarod is startled to hear a knock at the cottage door. He calls, "Lewis?” but there's no answer. He goes to the door and opens it slowly, then grins and opens the door wide when he sees that on the front porch is Angelo. Angelo steps into the cottage, gives Jarod a tight embrace then tells him, "I got here as quick as I could." Overwhelmed by Angelo's appearance at the cottage, and by Angelo's new-found capacity to speak so clearly, Jarod at first can only smile and stare.

After the two settle down for a while, Angelo looks at himself in a floor-length mirror in the cottage's living room. He says of his reflection in the mirror, "This is Timmy now... It's good to be me. Thank you, Jarod." Timmy then says that he heard that Kyle was dead, "It feels sad to know that." Jarod says, yes, it did feel sad... and then he looks at Timmy more closely. Jarod grabs up the bag of blocks the children had used in his class earlier that day and walks them over to Timmy.

He asks Timmy to touch the block to find out if Timmy can "empath" anything from them. If Timmy can tell Jarod which of the children solved the mathematical equation with the blocks, then Jarod will know which of the children The Centre is after. Timmy tries and tries to "feel" something from the blocks, but then has to admit sadly to Jarod, "Timmy feels nothing." Jarod gives Timmy a consoling pat and says he understands. Timmy then goes to the small upright piano in the cottage and plays a more confident and sophisticated version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for Jarod.

A cuckoo clock goes off inside the cabin, reminding Timmy that he needs to give himself his next injection of serum. Jarod watches as Timmy administers the injection to himself, and something occurs to him. "We're all special because of what's in our blood," he says. If he can get blood samples of the three NuGenesis children and run a scan of them, he'll be able to see which of their samples contains the same "anomaly" in it as his does... as Kyle's did... as Timmy's does... then he'll know for certain what child The Centre is after.

AT NUGENESIS the next morning, the janitor tells Jarod that each of the children connected to NuGenesis has several blood samples on file in the lab. He gets a sample for each of the three children Jarod specified: Ari, Albert and Davy, and gives the samples to Jarod. Jarod then takes the three samples to Dr. Haring, and tells him he has three color-coded blood samples of people who might make excellent egg donors for the Brewsters (the couple he'd met on his first day at NuGenesis). Considering Mrs. Brewster's cycle, he says, he'd like to get a work-up done on the sample as soon as possible. Dr. Haring agrees, and turns the samples over to Jeremy, telling to do a work-up on the samples ASAP. Jeremy does as he's told.

While Jeremy is in the lab working on the samples, he sees something in one of them that sparks his interest immediately, He calls Dr. DeWitt, and tells her he has something she needs to see right away. What Jeremy doesn't know is: Jarod has been spying on him, knows that Jeremy is excited about the anomaly found in one of the samples, and knows that Jeremy has contacted Dr. DeWitt.

When, later that same morning, Dr. DeWitt rushes up to Jarod outside the NuGenesis facility and wants to talk to him, Jarod is not surprised. Dr. DeWitt tells him that she needs to know the name associated with the color-coded blood sample Jarod had provided to the lab. The blood seems perfect for a test she's doing she says, and she's anxious to find out who the blood came from. Jarod tells her he'll try to get a release of information for her as quickly as possible, and asks to see the color-code of the donor she's interested in. She hands him the code, thanks him for his assistance, and hurries back to her lab. Jarod matches the color code on the sample Dr. DeWitt was so excited about, with the blood sample derived from... DAVY SIMPKINS. Davy is the one with the special anomaly in his blood; he's the one The Centre wants to make into a new pretender.

Rather than revealing the truth about the blood sample to Dr. DeWitt, Jarod leaves NuGenesis and drives with Timmy over to the house where Davy Simpkins is supposed to be living. Jarod is somewhat confused, however, when he finds out that the name on the mailbox reads: Watanabe. Jarod and Timmy go to the front door of the Watanabe house and ring the doorbell. Mrs. Watanabe -- a delicate looking Asian woman -- answers the door, and Jarod asks her if this is the house were Davy Simpkins lives. Mrs. Watanabe tells him that she and her husband were Davy's foster parents, but that Davy had just left a few minutes ago. A man from Children's Services had arrived earlier and took Davy away, saying he'd been able to find Davy a permanent placement. Smiling, Mrs. Watanabe says that Davy called the man "the Snowman" because of his pure white hair. Jarod knows that Raines' Cleaner Gar has pure white hair, and he asks if Mrs. Watanabe knows where the Snowman was taking Davy. She said she heard him say something about the local airstrip. Jarod thanks her and he and Timmy speed off to the small local airport.

When they arrive at the airport, they see Gar loading a happy Davy onto a small plane. Davy is oblivious to the danger he's in, and goes with Gar willingly. Both Jarod and Timmy jump the fence surrounding the airfield, but can't get to the plane before it lifts off and flies away. Furious and desperate, Jarod punches at the air and hangs his head in frustration.

AT THE CENTRE, Broots surprises Miss Parker and Sydney with another new discovery. Going through Raines' packing boxes again, he found a DSA that had more the security video of SL-27 and the birth of Miss Parker. Miss Parker is astonished at Broots' "bravery", and is anxious to see the DSA. When Broots plays it, however, Miss Parker gets a shock she's not ready to handle.

The video shows the same birth sequences as the other piece of video they'd all viewed earlier. Miss Parker is born, then the twin is born and is silent, and Dr. Raines carries it out of the delivery room. But Raines' DSA version goes on to show Dr. Raines in the hallway outside the delivery room. He hands the newborn twin over to a nurse, and activates a wall telephone. While Raines is waiting for a response on the telephone, the nurse rocks the newborn and pulls the blankets away from its face. The baby boy's eyes are wide open; it coos at her, and moves its fingers. Miss Parker's male twin WASN'T stillborn; he was ALIVE when Raines took him away from Catherine. Raines talks into the receiver of the wall phone and says, "The male baby's ready for transport to NuGenesis," and the DSA goes dark.

FROM OAKVIEW, Jarod calls Sydney, tells him he knows The Centre has kidnapped Davy Simpkins, and demands to know where the boy has been taken. Sydney doesn't know, but assumes The Centre would put the boy in a safe-house for a short time before delivering him to The Centre. He promises Jarod he'll try to find out where that safe house is.

AT THE CENTRE, Miss Parker bursts into Mr. Parker's office with a portable DSA viewer. While her father sits there staring at her, she shoves things on his desk aside, turns the DSA viewer to face him, and shouts that she wants to know about her twin brother. He tells her he's already gone over that with her; her brother was stillborn. Miss Parker shouts that her brother was alive when he was stolen from Catherine, and to prove it she shows her father the DSA she herself had viewed earlier.

Mr. Parker watches the DSA recording... and then starts to tremble all over. He suddenly has difficulty breathing, clutches at his chest and then holds his left arm as though he's having a heart attack. Miss Parker says, "You didn't know about this!", and rushes around the desk to help him. He composes himself, and shakes off her comforting touch. Growling, he tells her he knew nothing about the child being alive. He yanks the DSA out of the player and puts it into his coat pocket, then rises to leave the room. Before he goes, he softens a little and says, "In some ways... It's like a gift." Miss Parker asks, "A gift?" Her father responds with a wistful and affectionate, "I have a son."

Being someone who has fought all her life to gain acceptance and validation from Mr. Parker, Miss Parker is stunned by his comment and the tone of his voice. All her twin had to do was be a "son" to get an immediate display of affection from Mr. Parker. She understands that if her twin is still alive, she'll be in direct and immediate competition with him for Mr. Parker's attention.

She's distracted from her private’s thoughts, however, by the sight of the Red Files on her father's desk. Without his permission, she takes them to Broots and Sydney, and they try to figure out what all the medical information means and who it concerns.

AT OAKVIEW, Timmy is lying in a hammock, sunning himself, while Jarod sits nearby. Jarod tells him that when he first escaped from The Centre one of his favorite things to do was to take long walks in the sunshine. Feeling the sun on his face made him feel free.

The two go back into the cottage where Timmy spends some time at the piano, playing ever more elaborate tunes, and gives himself another injection of the serum. He has only one more treatment to go, and he'll be whole again. While the current dosage is working on his brain, Timmy tries to remember, for Jarod, if he'd been taken anywhere special before he was transported to The Centre when he was a child. Jarod has no recollection of a safe-house himself, and hopes that if Timmy had been taken to one, it might be the same one where Davy is now. Timmy tries hard to remember, and recalls fragmented images of a huge glass mansion with a bronze statue of an angel outside on the front lawn. Pushing himself harder to remember more details, Timmy recalls seeing a marker that read: ANGEL MANOR.

AT THE CENTRE, Miss Parker goes over their copies of the Red Files with Broots and Sydney, but they're having difficulty getting any information out of them because they don't know what the key is to all the code numbers being used. Sydney says the only person who might be able to help them is Mr. Fenigor. Sydney and Broots go to see Mr. Fenigor in the infirmary and ask him about the files. Slipping in an out of consciousness, Fenigor is able to tell them little, but he does mention a blue box in SL-27. "Blue box... Inception..." he says, and indicates that there is more information there linked to an EIGHTH Red File. Sydney also asks Fenigor about Centre safe houses, and Fenigor mutters something about "Charleston".

Sydney calls Jarod on his cell phone and tells him about the "Charleston" reference, not knowing if it will help or not. Jarod puts that reference together with Timmy's memory of Angel Manor, and thanks Sydney for his help.

AT ANGEL MANOR, Mr. Raines is walking through the mansion with Gar, and Gar asks him what it is exactly he's doing to Davy. Raines explains to him that he's going to flush Davy's mind, and then hyper-stimulate those areas of the brain that we wants to develop. Gar asks him if this was the same thing Raines did to Angelo, and Raines wheezes, "Angelo was a mistake; trial and error." With the new technology he has, he says, he can be more precise about which parts of the brain he wants to attack. Gar asks him if he did the same thing to Jarod when Jarod was a child, and Raines tells him, "No. Jarod was a natural pretender. I'm merely trying to re-create him."

Both men hear a loud disturbance outside the front of the mansion, and Raines has Willie, Gar and some other Sweepers go out to see what's happening outside. Raines follows them, his oxygen tank in tow. Outside, there are crushed boxes of Cracker Jacks on the lawn. Gar follows a trial of the caramel-corn, and is startled when Timmy jumps down from a tree and starts scrambling across the lawn in front of the mansion. All of the Sweepers, and Mr. Raines, try to follow him, but Timmy is very quick. He's able to duck into a storm drain, out of reach, before anyone can catch him.

In the meanwhile, Jarod has gotten inside Angel Manor and shuts off all the power to place. Lights, security alarms, cameras... everything goes black. Inside the mansion, Dr. DeWitt calls for someone to re-activate the generator. When no one does, she rushes outside to inform Mr. Raines of an intruder. Jarod gets to the upstairs room where Davy has been put. The boy is lying on a gurney with electrodes taped to his chest and chest. He's alive, but he's not moving. Jarod gently but quickly removes all the electrodes, lifts Davy off the gurney and carries him out.

Outside the manor, Dr. DeWitt shouts to Mr. Raines that the power's gone off in the building, and Raines understands immediately what's happening. His eyes go wide and he tells everyone to get back inside and see to Davy. By the time everyone gets into Davy's room, the boy is gone... and so are Jarod and Timmy. Raines looks at the empty gurney and simply growls, "Jarod."

Driving back to the Oakview Lodge, Jarod glances into the back seat of his car where Timmy is sitting with Davy in his lap. Jarod asks if Davy is all right, and Timmy cries, "They hurt him like they did me. -- Like they did me!"

AT OAKVIEW, Jarod gets on the telephone to Sydney, while Timmy tries to comfort and care for Davy. Davy is conscious, but he doesn't speak or react to anything. Jarod demands that Sydney tell him what Raines was doing to him. Sydney tries to explain Raines' methods as best he can, and tells Jarod that if he wants to reverse Davy's condition, he'll have to do it within three hours, or the damage to the boy's brain will become irreversible and he'll remain in that semi-vegetative state.

Jarod tells Sydney that he has one ray of hope: his therapy on Timmy seems to be working well, and if he can do the same thing for Davy, Davy should recover, too. Sydney is pleased to know that Timmy is with Jarod, is safe, and is progressing so well. He then tells Jarod that he's seen copies of the Red Files (the one Miss Parker pilfered from her father's desk), and he believes they indicate that Jarod and Miss Parker may be related.

AT THE CENTRE, following the clues given to them by Mr. Fenigor, Sydney and Broots return to SL-27 to try to find the "blue box" and the "8th Red File" Fenigor mentioned. Broots finds the blue box among a mess of electrical wires in a junk room in SL-27, and while he's working to disconnect it, Sydney walks off to look at how the reconstruction is coming along. The workmen have apparently retired for the night, so Sydney is alone when he walks the hallways. He comes across a clear plastic conduit that leads to a station box on the wall at the end of one of the hallways. It's a bank of three old "pneumatic tube" carries. In one of the tubes, the cylinder used to transport information through the tubes is still intact. Sydney picks up the cylinder, looks at it carefully, and then replaces it when Broots comes up to him, announcing that he's been able to retrieve the blue box without damaging the information inside of it.

AT NUGENESIS, that same evening, Jarod is working in the lab trying to synthesize a dose of the serotonin serum for Davy, as the janitor stands guard. Jarod is so involved in his work, that he's unaware that Miss Parker has entered the building and is looking through his offices and files. She finds on his desk the card with the Oakview telephone number on it. As she lights up a cigarette, she dials the number and waits for an answer. When she hears "Oakview Lodge", she smiles, deposits her still burning cigarette in a small ashtray on Jarod's desk, and leaves the facility.

Several minutes later, Jarod finishes making Davy's serum, and seals it in a small glass vial. He then prepares to leave the facility himself. The janitor goes with him as far as the lobby, and Jarod thanks him for all of his help. As Jarod tries to exit the building, however, he's stopped by Dr. DeWitt, who walks into the lobby demanding to know where Davy is... and Gar who comes up behind Jarod with his gun drawn. When Gar tries to advance on Jarod, he's struck in the legs by a wheel-enhanced mop bucket, hurled at him from across the room by the janitor. Gar goes down and Jarod jumps him, knocking the gun from Gar's hand, but also dislodging the vial of serum from his coat pocket. Jarod sees the serum go flying across the room, and he immediately leaves Gar, makes a dive for the vial, and catches it just before it can hit the floor and break. Gar pulls a second gun out of his clothing and aims it at Jarod.

Jarod gets to his feet but is surprised when he hears the cocking of a second gun. He and Gar look over to where the janitor is standing, and discover that the janitor had retrieved the first gun Gar dropped when the bucket hit him. The janitor tells Jarod to run. Jarod warns him that he doesn't know what he's getting himself into, but the janitor insists that he'll keep a bead on Gar so Jarod can escape. Jarod runs out of the building and across the front porch. He can see through the French doors there, however, the moment when the janitor glances over to look at him -- and Gar shoots the janitor directly in the chest. Jarod screams, "No!", as the janitor crumples to the lobby floor. He then sees Gar rushing toward the French doors. Gar starts shooting, but the bullets don't penetrate the heavy glass in the French doors until Jarod is out of range. Jarod escapes and Gar swears loudly to himself.

AT THE CENTRE, pouring over the information in the blue box, Sydney and Broots discover some of the significance of the EIGHTH Red File, and realize that it can be used as a key to unlock some of the secrets of the other seven files.

AT OAKVIEW, Jarod drives up and rushes into the cottage to tell Timmy that he has the serum for Davy. Timmy is sitting on the couch, with Davy popped up against him in his arms. He looks across the room, and Jarod follows his gaze to where... Miss Parker is standing. Miss Parker grins and points a gun at Jarod. Jarod simply narrows his eyes at her and says, "Well, it's good to see you again.... SIS."

Miss Parker tries to pretend that she's not affected by what he's said, but he knows he has her attention. Ignoring the gun she has leveled at him, he tells her he's found copies of the PRODIGY Red Files, and understands what some of the information in them means. The key is the 8th file, he says, as he shows it to her. Still, Miss Parker tries to feign disinterest, but listens to everything Jarod tells her.

Jarod says NuGenesis was used in the 60's as a sort of "screening" facility for The Centre and the PRODIGY project. Children who were genetically predisposed to Pretender-quality genius were found and tested at NuGenesis, and then kidnapped by The Centre. At first everyone had thought there were only seven children who NuGenesis had screened and The Centre had isolated... but the most interesting file was the 8th one. Miss Parker tells Jarod to get to the point.

Jarod tells Miss Parker that the 8th file was about HER. She had been tested by NuGenesis, too, and had the same genetic predisposition in her blood as all the other children. What was more, Jarod tells her, one of the other seven children in the project was her twin brother. Miss Parker asks Jarod if HE is her twin.

Jarod pauses for a long while and smiles mischievously... Then he admits that, no, he is not her twin. But, he tells her, he's narrowed the possibility down to TWO of the remaining six files. Her twin is either Timmy (Angelo)... or Bobby (Mr. Lyle). Miss Parker just stares at him for a moment then says, "So, you're telling me my brother is either a psychopathic killer... or moosh head? I need a drink... a big one..."

With Miss Parker involved for the moment in her own thoughts, Jarod moves to deliver the serum he's created to Davy. Miss Parker focuses on him again, however, points her gun at him, and tells Jarod she's not going to let him do anything until she has the time to figure out what the hell is going on. Jarod tells her to shoot if she wants to, but he's going to help Davy. When Jarod takes another step toward the boy, Miss Parker aims her gun at the wall and pulls the trigger, firing a loud warning shot into the stone wall. The sound terrifies Davy and he starts to whimper and squirm in Timmy's arms. "False bravado..." Miss Parker says to Jarod. "Never liked that in a man." She walks up to him, pulls the vial of serum out of his hand and walks across the room out of his reach, near the front door.

Timmy immediately gets to his feet and yells at her, “Help us!" Miss Parker is startled by his outburst and turns her attention toward him. Then in a pleading, but slightly softer, voice Timmy says, "Your mom... maybe my mom, died trying to save children like Davy. Do it for her." Miss Parker thinks about this for a minute, then displaying anger over the fact that she been put into a moral dilemma again by her circumstances, she says to Jarod through her teeth, "Do it -- ", and she holds out the vial of serum to him.

Just as Jarod reaches for the serum, Lewis comes bursting through the front door with a shotgun, saying that he heard a gunshot, and wanted to know what was going on. As he enters, he accidentally hits Miss Parker in the back with the door. She's shoved forward and onto the floor, and the vial of serum flies out of her hand. As in the lobby at NuGenesis, Jarod makes a diving leap to catch the vial before it hits the floor, but this time, he's not successful. He just misses it, and it shatters on the floor in front of his open hand. Miss Parker jumps up from the floor, punches Lewis in the head, and grabs his shotgun away from him. Lewis falls to the floor unconscious, and Miss Parker steps over to where the vial is lying is fragments, and the serum is splashed out all over the floor. She asks Jarod what they can do now. Jarod gets to his feet slowly, and says, "Nothing... It's all over..."

"No, it's not," Timmy says. Jarod and Miss Parker look over to him and he reaches to a nearby table and lifts up the vial that contains his final dosage of serum. Knowing that if Timmy doesn't receive his last does, he'll deteriorate into Angelo again, and the regression will be permanent, Jarod tells Timmy he won't do it. But Timmy is insistent. He indicates Davy and tells Jarod, "He's a boy. Let him be a boy." Timmy then takes Jarod's hand, put the vial into Jarod's palm, and folds Jarod's fingers over it. Jarod walks over to the couch and sits next to Davy, as Timmy walk across the room to where the upright piano is. While Jarod prepares a hypodermic needle with the serum for Davy, Timmy plays a beautiful and elaborate version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the piano. Miss Parker collapses into a chair and starts to cry. Tears pour down her face as Jarod injects Davy with Timmy's serum, and Timmy finishes this tune on the piano. AT THE CENTRE, Broots is venting to Sydney about how awful things are at The Centre: children being kidnapped, babies who are stillborn but aren't, genetics testing.... Sydney tells him he's going to put a stop to the PRODIGY project this time; he wasn't going to let The Centre continue with its experiments on small children. Broots reminds him that when Catherine Parker tried to stop it she was murdered... and when Mr. Fenigor tries to expose it, he ended up in the infirmary. Sydney says he already "feels dead" inside, so what difference does it make. He's going to stop PRODIGY. Broots asks him how, but Sydney doesn't answer. He simply leaves the room.

AT NUGENESIS, Gar has found Jarod's office... the card with the Oakview telephone number... and Miss Parker's cigarette butt. He calls up Mr. Raines and tells him he knows where Jarod and Davy are, and he knows who's with them.

AT THE CENTRE, Sydney is in the hallway in SL-27 where the pneumatic tube relay was set up. He sticks a bomb with a digital timer into the cylinder inside one of the tube, and seals the relay box up tight. He then attaches a hose to the side of the relay box, and with a small electronic pump, pumps gasoline into the whole system. "In twelve hours," he says, "I'm putting you out of business."

AT OAKVIEW the next morning, Jarod is sitting on a bench on the front porch of the cottage with Davy sleeping beside him. Jarod listens to the birdsong and watches the sun rise. Lewis steps out of the cottage onto the porch and squats down next to the bench, as Miss Parker watches him from inside. Lewis tells Jarod jokingly, "That lady with the legs... she's got a wicked right hook." Lewis rubs his jaw and Jarod smiles and nods his head. "It's difficult," he says, "to distinguish between her bite and her bark."

Lewis then hands Jarod a photograph. "It's a young one of you," he says. Jarod accepts it, and sees that it's a photograph of Margaret holding "baby Jarod" in her arms. She's standing on the same porch Jarod is sitting on right now; and Charles can be seen as a blurred reflection in the windows behind Margaret. Jarod thanks Lewis for the photograph, and asks him if he know whether Margaret and Charles were his natural parents or his adoptive parents. Lewis says he doesn't know that, but he does know that they loved one another, and they loved Jarod.

Davy stirs at Jarod's side, opens his eyes and looks around him. "Where am I?" he asks, and Jarod grins, thankful for his recovery, and tells him he's safe. Davy gives Jarod a closer look and asks, "Aren't you the substitute teacher?" Jarod chuckles and answers, "Yes, I am. Yes, I am."

Inside the cottage, Timmy is playing the piano, but the melody deteriorates as Timmy regresses and Angelo re-emerges. Miss Parker is nearby and tells him, "I wish I could have known you... the real you." Timmy looks over to her and says softly, "I wish I could have known the real you, too." He then says he wonders if he will ever find out who his parents are, and asks Miss Parker to tell him about Catherine. Smiling, Miss Parker comes close to him, and obliges him with short comments about Catherine's smile, her compassion, her love of children... Miss Parker says she wishes she could see her mother again, and Timmy reminds her that whenever she looks in a mirror she sees her mother "every day."

Miss Parker gives Timmy a grateful and loving look, and then her expression saddens as she realizes that he's deteriorating further and faster. She says she knows it’s hard for him, but before he reverts back into Angelo completely, she wants Timmy to try to remember whatever he can about Catherine's death. Timmy tries... but Angelo can only remember vague images of a "man in a dark suit" shooting at Catherine several times. He doesn't recall the man's the face, and doesn't know who the man was. Mr. Fenigor would know who the man was, though, he tells her.

Miss Parker thanks him, and Timmy/Angelo turns back to the piano again... but the music he plays is awkward, uncertain, and out of key. Nevertheless, Miss Parker listens to it, and tells Angelo that it's beautiful.

Within a short time, Jarod has Davy dressed and tells Miss Parker they must leave before The Centre zeros in on them. Miss Parker tells him she can't let him leave, but before she can do anything to stop Jarod, she -- and everyone else in the cottage -- are surprised by the appearance of Gar, Willie, and several other Sweepers, who burst into the small cottage from all angles with their guns drawn. "Time to go home," Gar says to Jarod.

AT THE LOCAL AIRSTRIP, Miss Parker, Gar and Willie escort Jarod, Davy and Angelo to a Centre jet that is standing on the runway. Jarod tries to convince Miss Parker that this isn't something her mother would do, and she tells him to shut up. When they're a few feet away from the jet, Angelo starts convulsing, clutches his chest, and falls to his knees on the runway. Jarod asks him if he's all right, but Miss Parker won't let Jarod anywhere near Angelo. Willie goes to pick Angelo up and set him on his feet again, and Angelo stabs Willie in the calf with a hypodermic needle he'd been concealing in his clothes. Startled and in wild pain, Willie starts to stumble backwards, screaming. He bumps into Miss Parker, knocking her off balance. Angelo then jumps up and rams into both of them with his whole body, knocking them all down in a pile. Jarod attacks Gar and throws him over on top of Miss Parker, Willie and Angelo. He then grabs Davy around the waist and, carrying the boy under one arm like a football, runs to the jet.

Mid-run, Jarod kicks the pilot away from the jet's door and climbs up the stairwell. Miss Parker gets back onto her feet and aims her gun at the jet as Jarod, now inside, pulls the door closed. Before she can fire a shot, however, Angelo jumps up in front her, his arms out wide, and pleads, "Save Davy!" By the time Miss Parker can get Angelo out of the way, Jarod has the door of the door closed and lock, and is starting up the engine. The jet taxis down the runway as Gar and Willie both get to their feet. Willie is having trouble walking, but Gar rushes up next to Miss Parker just as the jet with Jarod and Davy in it gathers speed and takes off. Gar looks at Miss Parker and quips, "Guess your gun jammed, huh?" Miss Parker gives him a frigid look.

AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Davy is playing at the side of a large swimming pool with Mrs. Brewster, the woman whom Jarod had met on his first day at NuGenesis. Jarod is nearby talking to Mr. Brewster. He's given the Brewster's an envelope stuffed with cash so they can take Davy away and start a new life with him somewhere where The Centre will never find them. At first, Mr. Brewster is reluctant to take the money, but Jarod convinces him he'll need it. Creating a new identity isn't cheap, he says, and he knows it. "If you don't want to do this, I'll understand." Mr. Brewster says that if everything Jarod has told him about Davy's circumstance is the truth, then Davy will need all the love and protection they can give him. Jarod thanks them for seeing to Davy's future. Mr. Brewster sees the photograph of Margaret and "baby Jarod" that Jarod is holding, and asks Jarod if that's his family. Jarod answers, "It will be... some day."

AT THE CENTRE, Angelo's regression is complete -- and irreversible. He sits, quiet and distracted, only vaguely aware of the conversations and noises around him. Miss Parker stops in to see him, then excuses herself to the infirmary where she sneaks into AB-9 to see Mr. Fenigor again.

When he sees her, Mr. Fenigor smiles and says, "Catherine..." He's slipping in and out of consciousness and has trouble focusing, but Miss Parker informs him that she's Catherine's daughter. "Catherine isn't here," she says. From behind her Jarod's voice is heard saying, "She's here... in spirit."

Miss Parker turns to see Jarod standing behind her and pulls her gun out to threaten him with it. She asks him how he got back into The Centre, and he tells her, "The same way I'll get out." She then asks him what he's doing there, and he says, "I want to know who I am, and I'd rather die trying than live not knowing." He steps up to Mr. Fenigor and asks him who his parent are. Miss Parker, too, is persistent, and asks again how her mother died. Mr. Fenigor is groggy and somewhat confused, but he manages to say something about, "... The man in the dark suit... The man who killed your mother... Jarod's father..."

Jarod's eyes go wide with shock and he's so stunned by the information that he must take a step back. Miss Parker leans into Mr. Fenigor to try to get more information out of him, as Jarod runs from the room. Realizing that Jarod's escaping... and realizing that Jarod's parent was responsible for the death of her mother... Miss Parker rushes out of the infirmary shouting Jarod's name and shooting at him. He dodges bullets all the way out of SL-14, and manages to stay a few steps ahead of Miss Parker. She stumbles at one point, and must stop to reload her weapon, but keeps up the chase, following Jarod all the way down into SL-27.

Security cameras operating in the refurbished portion of SL-27 alert The Centre to an intruder; alarms go off. Broots and Sydney react to the alarms, and patch into the security system so they can see who's down in SL-27. Sydney had believed that everyone had been removed from SL-27 for the time being and is horrified to discover that Jarod is down there... with the bomb!

The security alarms also get Willie's attention, and he rushes to tell Mr. Raines and Mr. Parker that Jarod has been seen in SL-27. Everyone converges on that level.

Jarod runs through the main corridor of SL-27 but finds that all the access doors have been locked down, and he can't get through any of them. Miss Parker catches up with him, and tells him she's got all the information she needs now from Mr. Fenigor. She's going to shoot Jarod. Jarod asks her how she can be so certain Mr. Fenigor was telling them the truth; with all the lies and deceit they'd lived through throughout their lives, why would she accept anyone's word as "the truth" without verifying it first. Miss Parker is beside herself with anger, however, and doesn't want to listen to him. She's about to shoot him, when Mr. Raines and Mr. Parker appear, and tell Miss Parker that they want Jarod alive.

Suddenly, Broots and Sydney rush into the corridor. Sydney is shouting, "Jarod! Jarod! Get out! There's a bomb!" Further back in the sub-level, they can hear the initial explosion as the bomb in the pneumatic tube device goes off, fed by the gasoline. "Forgive me," Sydney says softly.

A huge wall of fire, contained in the narrow hallways of the sub-level, blasts its way down corridors and through locked doors. All along the way its fed with more gasoline from the pneumatic tubes that line the walls and ceilings of SL-27. At the end of the corridor where Jarod, Miss Parker, Sydney, Broots, Mr. Raines and Mr. Parker are all standing, the door to the Inception room is blown off as the firewall reaches it, and the fire streaks straight toward them.

The episode ends with a close-up on Jarod's face, illuminated by the bright orange glow of the wall of speeding flames....

DATA

Date: 05.16.1998
Writer: Steven Long Mitchell, Craig Van Sickle
Director: Fred Keller

Notes:

Jarod researches the eight Red Files. We learn about Project Prodigy and NuGenesis.

Angelo is able to briefly become Timmy again.

Broots finds an old DSA of Miss Parker’s birth, which reveals that she has a twin brother.

Sydney blows up SL-27.

Jarod creates a treatment to repair any damage to Angelo’s brain, turning him back into Timmy.

Jake Lloyd (Star Wars: Episode I) makes third appearance.

Names & Occupations:

  • Jarod Spock, Reproductive Scientist
  • Jarod Kotter, Teacher

Last Name Origin:​

  • Spock, Famous Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock
  • Kotter, Welcome Back Kotter

Discoveries:

  • The Pledge of Allegiance
  • A drug to cure Angelo

Credits:

John Beasley (Ed Thomas)
Kevin West (Twin)
Lauren Schaffel (Ari Thompson)
Daniel Hansen (Albert Williams)
George Coe (Dr. Nicholas Haring)
Haley Joel Osment (Davey Simpkins)
Nancy Everhard (Dr. Cynthia DeWitt)
Rachel Winfree (Realtor)
Robert Mortimer (Man)
Denice Kumagai (Mrs. Watanabe)
Keene Curtis (Mr. Fenigor)
Amir Aboulela (Gar)
Eleanor Comegys (Nurse)
Robert Curtis Brown (Mr. Brewster)
Dan Wilson (Worker #1)
Kim Robillard (Louis King Rue)
Caryn West (Twin)
Robert Ruth (Worker #2)
Jake Lloyd (Timmy / Young Angelo)