REPORT: THE DRAGON HOUSE
FILE #: 121 & 122

The episode opens with a view of state prison inmate John Doe being readied for transport to a facility with higher security standards. Guards come in and shackle Doe, and the lead guard tells them to watch him carefully because he’s got the skill of a Houdini and can get out of almost anything. Doe also has a history of being vicious, the head guard warns. He once bit a man’s nose off because he didn’t like the way the man “looked down at him with it.” While the guards are talking and exchanging paperwork, a paperclip from amongst the papers falls to the floor. John Doe sees it, and fakes a coughing fit. Doubling over, he lunges at one of the guards and is immediately beaten to the floor with batons. On the floor, John Doe snatches up the paperclip with his tongue and hides it in his mouth. The guards yank him to his feet and drag him away… but he’s smiling as they leave the prison.

Later we see Jarod — in the guise of Dr. Jarod, a children’s orthodontist — standing in the lobby of his dental office going over the chart of Peter, one of his patients, and chatting with Peter and his brother about their dental hygiene. While they talk, a television set across the room alights with a “Special Report”. All eyes turn to the TV as a female reporter tells viewers that John Doe has escaped during transport from the penitentiary. Using the paperclip he’d stolen from the guard, he managed to pick the locks on his shackles. He got up into the cab of the transport van, and attacked the guards before they realized what was happening. Doe then locked the guards in the van and pushed the van into a lake, hoping to drown them. They barely escaped with their lives. A description of John Doe included the information that he was approximately 6-foot-one, and had a distinctive scar on his right hand. When a picture of the scar is shown on the television screen, Jarod immediately recognizes it, and rushes from the office.

BACK AT HIS LAIR, Jarod watches a DSA of himself, from 08-17-68, when as a child he was performing a SIM with another Centre subject, a boy named Kyle. Sydney and then-Dr. Raines were overseeing the SIM during which Jarod was posing as an interrogator, trying to get information out of Kyle by threatening him with a vial of acid.

On the DSA the child-Jarod complains that there is no reason to continue with the scenario since he had already proven that “the anticipation of pain is more effective than pain itself” . Raines, however, demands that Jarod finish the SIM, and Jarod opens the vial he’s holding and pours its contents over Kyle’s right hand. Both boys are horrified to discover that the vial really contains acid; and Kyle is severely burned. He screams, jumping back out of his chair. Sydney shouts, “You bastard!” at Raines, and demands that sweepers take Kyle to the infirmary immediately. As Kyle is taken away, Jarod cries, “Kyle! I’m sorry! I would never hurt you! I would never hurt you!”

The camera then shows us an image of the adult-Jarod, barely able to look at the DSA and at the pain he caused Kyle, as he mumbles to himself, “I would never hurt you.”

THE NEXT DAY, Jarod — now in the guise of FBI Special Agent Jarod Ness — arrives at the prison from which John Doe had escaped and talks to one of the guards there as he searches through Doe’s cell. The guard said they had never been able to find out who Doe really was, but that Doe often heard “voices” in his head, and would pretend to be someone different from day-to-day. When once Doe believed himself to be an IRS agent, the guard had Doe do his taxes for him, and Doe got the guard a sizable refund.

In the cell there are some hand-drawn pictures of a house with dragons “growing” from the rooftop, a photograph of a large white farmhouse, and mail from Blue Cove, Delaware addressed to Doe from a sender named “C.J.” Jarod reaches in behind the sink in the cell and retrieves a blue notebook similar to the red notebooks he himself used to record his SIMs (in The Centre) and adventures (once he escaped). The guard tells Jarod that Doe often spent hours scribbling in the notebook like a madman after visits from a doctor the guard euphemistically referred to as “Dr. Wheezy” (because he wheezed when he breathed… with the help of an oxygen tank). Inside the notebook are more drawings of the house with dragons on it, and the repetitive mantra:

I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES
I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES
I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES
I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES

The guard asks Jarod what the scribbling means, and Jarod says they mean Doe is dangerous.

Back at The Centre, Sydney, Broots and Miss Parker are testing Angelo’s ability to help them find Jarod. They have supplied Angelo with every one of Jarod’s red notebooks they can find, in the hopes that Angelo will be able to read through them and “absorb” Jarod’s personality and reasoning abilities. If he can “absorb” Jarod, perhaps he’ll be able to tell them where Jarod is, what he’s doing, and what he’s thinking about. The test is a gamble, and Broots complains that if it doesn’t work, “My butt’s on the line.” Miss Parker corrects him with: “Mmmm… Wrong piece of anatomy.”

IN AN APARTMENT IN AN UNDISCLOSED AREA, Harriet Tashman is making soup for herself. As she carries the pot of soup into the dining area to pour it into a bowl she’s already set on the table, the telephone rings. Still holding the pot, she walks to the phone and answers it. When the caller speaks to her, she starts shaking all over and drops both the phone and the pot of soup on the floor.

Later, FBI agents are gathered in Harriet’s living room when Jarod arrives and introduces himself as Jarod Ness, and tells the head of the investigation, Special Agent Korkos, that “Washington sent me” . Korkos is grateful to have an extra man on his team, and he details the Bureau’s history with John Doe, whom he describes as “a sick puppy” . Doe, he says, had no record before he showed up — “like he fell out of the sky” — about 10 years ago on a rampage of psychotic felony offenses that culminated in the kidnapping of Harriet Tashman. He stalked Tashman for several days before abducting her. Tashman herself was forced to drive the get-away car, but had the presence of mind to crash the vehicle, injuring herself but making it possible for pursuing Federal agents to capture Doe. Doe was put in prison, and had been there for the past ten years, until the morning he escaped from the transport van. Now he’s out, Korkos says, and is probably after Harriet again.

As Korkos tells his story, and directs his investigators, Jarod looks around Harriet’s living room. Among the other religious trappings and icons there, Jarod finds a Bible with a devotional holy card in it of Saint Catherine of the Hills. The bottom of the card looks as though it had been torn off.

The investigators are interrupted by a man name Jenkins, who tells them he’s the building manager, and asks them when they’re going to be finished. Korkos tells Jarod to get a statement from Jenkins first, and Jenkins complains that he already gave a statement “to the other agent who was here this morning.” Jarod and Korkos look at one another, astonished. Neither of them had sent anyone to Tashman’s apartment earlier that morning.

Somewhere outside the apartment, John Doe is seen discarding his suit coat and fake FBI badge in a trash bin. Smiling, he walks up to a cab and slips into the passenger compartment. The cabby asks him where he wants to go, and Doe tells him to just drive. Doe then lights up a cigarette — even though there are NO SMOKING signs and indicators all over the inside of the cab. The cabby starts arguing with Doe, and demands that he puts the cigarette out. “But I just lit it,” Doe retorts, smiling softly. The cabby shouts: “I don’t care if you invented it. Put it out!” Doe grins at the cabby and says, “Whatever you say…”

BACK AT THE CENTRE, Angelo is still pouring over the red notebooks chronologically while Miss Parker, Broots and Sydney retreat to an adjacent glassed-in cubical. Inside the cubical, Miss Parker complains that the Angelo experiment is a useless waste of time; she suggests using a cattle prod on Angelo to jump start his brain. While Sydney tries to quiet Miss Parker’s display temper, Angelo finds a blue notebook in among the red ones. In the notebook are scribbled drawing of women, knifes, and carnage, and the repeated I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES mantra. Absorbing the negative imagery and verbiage, Angelo goes berserk. He races straight through one of the glass walls of the cubical, jumps on Miss Parker and tries to strangle her. It takes Sydney, Broots, and several sweepers to get Angelo off of Miss Parker and to drag him — blinking and confused — away from her and back to his space. When she asks Sydney what had just happened, Sydney apologizes saying Angelo’s attack must have been triggered by something he absorbed from one of the notebooks. Broots shows Sydney the single blue notebook and says, a bit startled, “It’s not red.”

AT THE FBI FIELD OFFICE IN ALBANY, NEW YORK, Jarod is going over all the FBI material on John Doe. Among the items available is a video tape made immediately after Harriet Tashman escaped from John Doe (on 06-03-87) after the kidnapping. It’s newsreel footage; a reporter tells viewers that Harriet is safe and is refusing to press charges against her kidnapper. The video shows Harriet being met outside her farmhouse by two people, a man and a woman, who are obviously her friends. They hug and comfort her, but when they realize their pictures are being taken by the press, they turn away from the cameras and try to shield their faces with their arms. The man in the video is somewhat thin and grey-haired; the woman looks younger and has long red hair. Jarod runs the video backwards, and looks at it again, freeze-framing an image of the red-headed woman. “Oh, my God,” Jarod gasps. “Mom – !”

LATER THAT SAME DAY AT THE TASHMAN FARM –which has the same large white farmhouse on it as was in the photograph taken from John Doe’s jail cell — in Upstate New York, Jarod meets with the farm’s caretaker, a young somewhat retarded man named Joe-Bill, who says he was pronounced caretaker after the former caretaker, his grandpa, died. Miss Harriet, Joe-Bill says, hasn’t been to the farm since “she got took”, but someone still sends money every month to keep the farm “looking pretty” . Jarod shows Joe-Bill a photograph of his mother and asks if Joe-Bill had ever seen her. Joe-Bill responds to the photograph with worry and says he has to leave. Jarod convinces him that it’s okay to talk to him, since the woman in the photograph is his mom and he’s trying to find her.

Joe-Bill reluctantly tells Jarod that he had been instructed by Miss Harriet and his grandpa not to talk about them; that he was to tell people “They don’t live here.” Jarod is astonished. “They lived here ?”, he asks, and Joe-Bill tells him that they lived above the barn. “Almost never came out… Always alone… She had red hair… He made planes out of wood; only planes.” They disappeared right after Miss Harriet was kidnapped, and he never saw them again. He said they reminded him of the family in The Diary of Ann Frank, the family who had kept themselves hidden from the Nazis. “Hiding…” Joe-Bill repeats, nodding. “Hiding…”

Jarod starts to head toward the barn to take a look at the upstairs living unit, but he gets a call on his cell phone from Korkos who says he’s got a lead on John Doe and needs Jarod to help him. Jarod leaves the farm, but tells Joe-Bill he’ll come back later.

The lead Special Agent Korkos was talking about was the taxi cab driver who had been unlucky enough to meet up with John Doe after his escape from the transport van. The cabby wasn’t badly injured, but was suffering from severe shock. After putting his cigarette out on the cabby’s tongue, John Doe had tied him up inside his cab with his mouth taped shut and his eyes taped open. Doe then left the cab on some railroad tracks, facing a tunnel. Korkos is taking Doe’s psychotic behavior seriously and issues a two-one-eleven order: Shoot To Kill .

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE CENTRE, Sydney is telling Broots and Miss Parker what he knows about the blue notebook they found mixed in with Jarod’s red notebooks. The blue notebook belonged to Kyle, another subject in the Pretender Project who was under the direction of Mr. Raines. What was unusual about the notebook Angelo found was that it had been written AFTER Kyle had supposedly been released from The Centre. Seemingly, Mr. Raines violated a Tower directive and had kept Kyle as his own pet project even after The Centre had signed a release for him. The only place where Raines could have kept Kyle without anyone seeing him was…. in SL-27.

Broots, Miss Parker and Sydney venture into SL-27 and look for a place where Raines might have kept Kyle. They find a room in which someone had obviously been forced to live; and from which that someone had tried to escape by clawing on the door until their fingernails left heavy striations in the door’s surface. Broots also finds a room where an old Brain Child computer (the first generation of super computers) had been housed. The computer and its reels of magnetic tape were burned and melted in the fire that gutted SL-27, but Broots believes that if some of the information had been backed-up onto the machine’s primitive hard drive memory before it was damaged, he might still be able to retrieve it. Miss Parker tells him to try.

Later, Broots calls Miss Parker and Sydney to his side, and says he’s still got his computers going through the data from the Brain Child, but that he’s managed to retrieve one complete SIM of Kyle from 09-12-68 and transferred it to a DSA format so they can view it. On the DSA we see Kyle spewing racist dogma and simming the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He says King deserves death because he’s disrupted the country and caused inexcusable chaos. “Now who are you to make that judgment?” Mr. Raines asks him. Kyle responds that it’s his duty to kill King, and says, “I decide who lives or dies… I decide who lives or dies.” Horrified at what they’re viewing, Sydney turns away and exclaims, “My god! He did it!” He tells Miss Parker and Broots that Raines had always said he wanted to take one of the pretenders and feed that pretender enough negative reinforcement to strip the pretended of his morality. Raines wanted to create a sociopath… and with Kyle, he apparently succeeded.

LATER, IN AN ELEVATOR AT THE CENTRE, Sydney confronts Mr. Raines with what he knows about Kyle, and demands to know where Kyle is. Raines steams, “Don’t commit political suicide over ancient history… If I were you, I’d stop dwelling on the past. Jarod is your only life-line in this place, and the longer he’s out there, the weaker your influence on him becomes.” Sydney responds to Raines with, “On my grave, Raines. If Kyle is alive, I’ll find him.”

MEANWHILE, loitering in Sydney’s office while he waits for his computers to sort out more of the Brain Child’s information, Broots turns on a television and starts to watch it. At first, he’s unaware that Angelo is also in the room, wearing a straight jacket. When a news announcement comes on over the TV regarding John Doe, Angelo makes his presence known to Broots. Angelo squirms his way out of the straight jacket, walks up to the television set, and on the image of John Doe on the set writes: “SL-27” Broots understands: Angelo is telling him that John Doe IS Kyle.

BACK AT THE TASHMAN FARM, Jarod goes into the loft above the barn to see where his family lived. They had left in such a hurry that many of their personal belongings were left behind. The small room is decorated with hand-made quilts and wall hangings; there’s a work bench and unfinished hand-carved model airplanes; there’s a mobile decorated with origami swans (the kind Jarod had been taught to make, before he was taken by The Centre); and there’s a baby’s crib. Joe-Bill tells Jarod that he remembers hearing the baby cry, but never actually saw it because he wasn’t allowed up in the loft. On a dresser beside the bed in the loft is a carved wooden box. Inside the box Jarod finds a Bible with another devotional holy card in it depicting Saint Catherine of the Hills, and there’s an address along the bottom of the card that reads: Route 1, Hillshire Meadows, Mass. Also, on the page marked by the card in the Bible, a passage is highlighted which reads: “And under the hand of God Ye little children shall never be lost.”

The next day, John Doe/Kyle is found “pretending” to be a gas station attendant in Massachusetts on the route that leads to the St. Catherine of the Hills Convent. When a father and son drive up in a convertible, and the father threatens to slap the boy for whining about having to go to the bathroom, John Doe/Kyle reacts with violence. He nearly breaks the father’s arm and drags him out of the vehicle yelling, “Hey! You shouldn’t treat children like that! You should love your children, always!” John Doe/Kyle then gently lifts the child out of the car and points him in the direction of the men’s room. While he’s doing this, John Doe/Kyle notices Harriet Tashman driving by on her way to the convent. He gets into the driver’s seat of the car, and speeds away leaving the father and son stranded at the gas station.

BACK AT THE CENTRE, Broots is ready to show Sydney another SIM that was lifted from the Brain Child’s memory bank, but he tries to hide it from Miss Parker. He tells her, “I know you don’t respect me, but… I just don’t think you should watch this disk.” Irritated, Miss Parker blows him off with a sharp retort, “Play the damn disk.”

On the DSA we see Kyle as a child again working with Mr. Raines in 1970. Raines is telling the boy that “hate dictates reality”, and when he has enough hate built up he can focus it to accomplish anything he wants. Kyle, with a gun in his hand, tells Raines that hate isn’t just a word, it’s a feeling, and, “I have it… here .” Kyle puts the gun to his heart to show Raines where the hate is living. Pleased with Kyle’s performance, Raines slaps him across the face… and then promises him the reward of a trip to The Dragon House. Satisfied with the reward, Kyle turns back to the target he’s been shooting at. The DSA shows us that the target is a life-sized cut-out of Catherine Parker. Kyle shoots several bullets through it, all over its head and body.

Miss Parker can hardly believe what she’s seen. “He was teaching him to hate my mother… to shoot my mother!” Sydney says this explains Angelo’s attack on her earlier. Angelo had absorbed Kyle’s “hatred” for Catherine Parker, and mistaking Miss Parker for the look-alike Catherine, had attacked her. Miss Parker says she going to inform her father of what Raines had done, but Sydney stops her saying that her father probably already knows what Raines was up to. “This is The Centre…We must be cautious.” He tells her she must take care in revealing too much to her father what she knows about Kyle and SL-27. They had been hidden for all these years, after all; news of their discovery might cause repercussions.

Miss Parker, nevertheless, goes to her father with a truncated report on what she knows about Kyle. Mr. Parker is unconvinced, especially since she offers no proof of the statements in her report. “I need tangibles,” he tells her. She asks him if he knew what Raines had been up to with Kyle, and Mr. Parker snaps in return, “Would I have allowed him to continue if I did !?” Miss Parker apologizes for upsetting him, and asks that she be allowed to probe the issue further. She will bring Mr. Parker the best tangible evidence she can find to prove her assertions are accurate. “What kind of evidence?” Mr. Parker asks, and Miss Parker answers with a simple, ” Kyle .”

AT THE ST. CATHERINE OF THE HILLS CONVENT, Harriet Tashman arrives at almost the same time Jarod does. At first, he doesn’t realize she’s there. But her presence is made obvious when Kyle, disguised as a monk, attacks her and drags her screaming back to her car. Jarod tries to rescue her, but is almost run over by Kyle, who speeds away with Harriet as his prisoner. Backtracking Kyle’s moves, Jarod finds the car Kyle stole from the gas station. In the front seat is a blue notebook, with drawings of The Dragon House in it, and more of the same mantra: I DECIDE WHO LIVES OR DIES .

LATER, BACK AT HIS LAIR, Jarod calls Sydney and asks him about The Dragon House. “What is it,” he asks Sydney, “some kind of ad hoc torture chamber? A Centre asylum? A safe house?” Sydney says he doesn’t know, but he’s trying to locate the place. Jarod also says he knows about Kyle, and asks, “Was he sent to kill my parents?” Again, Sydney insists he just doesn’t know, but will do his best to find answers for Jarod. “Quickly, Sydney,” Jarod says. “Please.” After Jarod hangs up, Sydney rounds up Broots and asks him to hack into Mr. Raines’ computer.

Some time later, Jarod gets a phone call from Sydney who tells him that they’ve located The Dragon House in Delphi Shores, New Jersey. He warns Jarod that Mr. Raines and Miss Parker will probably be focusing on The Dragon House, too, so it won’t be safe to go there. He also warns Jarod that Kyle won’t be the same person he knew when they were in The Centre together as children. Jarod ignores the warnings, and seeks out The Dragon House anyway.

Before he goes there, though, he creates a diversion to get the FBI out of the area while he goes searching for Kyle and Harriet. With the use of chicken skin and a blow torch, he creates a phony scar on his right hand, and fakes a break-in at an ATM machine in Boston. Video cameras at the ATM record the assault, and photograph the perpetrator’s hand. After being tipped off (by Peter, one of Dr. Jarod’s dental patients) about the attempted break-in, and seeing the video footage of the hand they believe belongs to John Doe, the FBI team scrambles to Boston hoping to be able to catch John Doe there. Jarod is left behind on an eighteen-eleven : desk duty.

While the FBI is off combing Boston, Jarod goes to New Jersey and finds The Dragon House. Harriet Tashman’s stolen car is parked outside in plain view. Armed with a pistol, Jarod goes into the house, which is unlocked, and creeps upstairs. In an upstairs room, Kyle has Harriet tied to a chair in front of a table that holds a car battery from which live leads dangle. Kyle demands to know where “they” are, and Harriet says she can’t tell him. He then threatens to electrically burn her with the leads from the car battery, but is distracted by noises elsewhere in the house and leaves the room for a moment. In that moment, Jarod enters the room through another door, introduces himself to Harriet, and tells her he’s there to rescue her. He gets her untied and is almost ready to leave with her when Kyle returns to the room with a gun drawn.

Both Kyle and Jarod are startled, however, when through a third entrance to the room, Mr. Raines and a pair of sweepers appear. “I knew I should never have allowed you two to get together,” he grumbles, and then tells the “boys” they’re to come with him. Jarod growls back, “I’m not going anywhere with you.” And Kyle responds in like with, “Neither am I.” He shoots at the car battery on the table creating a sudden flurry of sparks and noise.

With that distraction as a cover, Jarod rushes Harriet out of the room, and Kyle runs out through the door from which he had entered. Mr. Raines sics the sweepers on all of them. Jarod and Harriet exit the house and are crossing a patio when Kyle appears in front of them. Jarod tries to calm Kyle down by telling him, “Kyle, you know me. I’m Jarod.” Kyle responds with, “They said Jarod was dead.” And with his gun drawn, he threatens to shoot Jarod, claiming, “I decide who lives or dies.” But Jarod has his own gun out and levels it at Kyle saying, “Not this time.”

While the two men threaten each other, Miss Parker arrives at The Dragon House with Sydney and her own team of sweepers. When she sees both Kyle and Jarod on the patio in broad daylight she shouts triumphantly, “I hit the lotto!”, and races toward the two men. At the same moment, Jarod is just about to pull the trigger on his weapon, when Harriet pushes the gun down and yells, “Jarod! No!”

Before Jarod can ask Harriet what she’s doing, he sees Miss Parker racing up behind him. Harriet grabs him by the arm and drags him away. Kyle, also seeing Miss Parker and the sweepers, takes off in another direction. “Which one? Which one!?” the sweepers call to Miss Parker, and she directs them to, “Get Kyle!” first. The sweepers charge after Kyle and tackle him on the lawn. It takes three of them to get him under control. Miss Parker smiles at the capture, but her expression changes drastically when realizes that Raines is watching her from a balcony of the house… and that Jarod has escaped with Harriet Tashman.

In their get-away car, Jarod is furious with Harriet. “You could have gotten us both killed! Why didn’t you let me shoot me him?”

Harriet explains: “I stopped you because… Kyle is your brother. “

Stunned, Jarod can say nothing in response.

AT THE TASHMAN FARM, Harriet tells Jarod a little bit about her own background and how she came to be involved with his family. She had been in a nunnery along with another young novice named Catherine Jameson. Harriet went on to take her vows and join the cloister, but Catherine left the convent before her vows were taken to marry a man named Mr. Parker. Harriet tried very hard to remain dedicated to the vows she’d taken, but eventually came to realize that she didn’t really have “the calling” required to be a nun, so she left the convent. In 1969, after she inherited the farm, she got a call from the Mother Superior at St. Catherine of the Hills convent telling her that Catherine Jameson. (now Catherine Parker) needed help. Catherine brought a couple — a man named Charles and a woman named Margaret — to Harriet and asked her to shelter them. They had had their sons abducted, and were afraid and on the run, and Margaret was 8 months pregnant with her third child — Jarod’s sister, Emily. So, Harriet took them in and hid them. Emily was born one month after they went into seclusion.

Years later, after Harriet lost all contact with Catherine, she started getting threatening mail and telephone calls from Kyle who had some how figured out that she had a connection to his parents. “He was desperate,” Harriet tells Jarod. After Harriet was kidnapped (and managed to escape from Kyle), Jarod’s family vanished, and Harriet went into hiding herself.

MEANWHILE, AT THE CENTRE, Mr. Raines has Kyle strapped into a mechanical chair and is using electroshock aversion therapy on him, trying to burn out of his brain what memories he has of The Centre and what had happened to him there. Mr. Parker walks in on the “treatment”, and is furious because Kyle hasn’t forgotten as much about his time in The Centre as Parker and Raines had hoped he would have. “He remembers too much!” Mr. Parker snaps. “Jarod alone is bad enough!”

Miss Parker barges in on the session, ignores what’s being done to Kyle, and demands that her father explain why Mr. Raines has Kyle when she was the one who brought Kyle in. Mr. Parker diverts her attention from Raines and what’s going on in the room by telling her angrily that she missed her best chance at capturing Jarod and he got away. “Mr. Raines and I will handle Kyle,” he tells her as he all but pushes her out of the room.

Standing in the corridor outside the room, Mr. Parker catches Sydney’s attention and asks him if he believes Jarod will ever return to The Centre. Sydney answers that there’s nothing in The Centre that Jarod wants, “And Jarod always has an objective.” He also tells Mr. Parker that even though no one had ever figured out how Jarod had escaped in the first place, their new security measures were “quite beyond anyone’s capabilities, even Jarod’s.” Seemingly satisfied with the reply, Mr. Parker goes back into the room where Raines has Kyle, and shuts the door. In the corridor, Miss Parker remarks to Sydney that this was the first time she had ever heard Sydney doubt Jarod’s ability. Smiling slightly, Sydney replies, “Let’s just hope they believed it as much as you did.”

BACK AT THE TASHMAN FARM, in the sunshine, warm and relatively safe, Jarod remembers the day (when he was a child) when Raines and a pair of Sweepers came to snatch Kyle away from his space: the room right next to where Jarod was being kept. Jarod remembers looking through a slit in the door, and seeing Kyle being bodily removed from his room and carried away. Kyle kept struggling and crying for Jarod’s help, but there was nothing Jarod could do to stop the men from taking him. After Kyle was gone, and the noise of his kidnapping quieted down, Jarod looked up to the screen on the ventilation shaft in his room. Angelo was inside the duct, on the other side of the screen, and slipped down to Jarod the Flying Cross medal Kyle had brought him to The Centre. Jarod took the medal and hid it in a nook behind the sink in his room [just as, in his prison cell, Kyle had hidden one of his blue notebooks.]

AT THE CENTRE HYBRID BIOTRACT 42, Miss Parker meets with Sydney and Broots and asks them to help her get in to see Kyle again. She believes Kyle may be responsible for her mother’s death and she wants the chance to confront him. Sydney tells her that he’s being kept in a special room to which Sydney has no access, and is being monitored by surveillance cameras around the clock from the Tech Room. Broots, who works in the Tech Room, suggests that he might be able to divert attention from Kyle’s holding-room long enough for Miss Parker to get a quick visit with Kyle. He’ll over-ride the security cameras by feeding them a “loop” of film footage (showing Kyle in the room), and will be able to shut down the door locks for a short period of time.

A short time later, Miss Parker, Broots and Sydney put their plan into action. Sydney distracts one of the guards by asking him for directions to the new accounting offices in the building, and Miss Parker slips past him to the door of Kyle’s cell. Broots then distracts the guards watching the surveillance monitors by “accidentally” tipping a cup of hot coffee into his lap. While he’s “ooo”-ing and “ouch”-ing loudly from the burning coffee, the guards turn away from the monitors to look at him and shake their heads. While he’s got them distracted, Broots feeds the video loop into the camera, so when the guards look back at the monitor they think they’re seeing Kyle lying on the bed in his cell, but they’re actually just looking at the same piece of video tape, looped over and over again on itself. With the guards distracted, and the security systems down for the moment, Miss Parker slips quickly into Kyle’s cell and shuts the door.

Kyle is lying on a fold-up bed, in shackles, but sits up when she enters the room. He looks at her, surprised, and says, “You look just like her.” Miss Parker responds with, “That’s what they tell me.” When Kyle makes no other verbal overtures, Miss Parker sidles up to him cautiously and sits herself on the edge of the bed next to him.

Miss Parker: “You’re the one who decides who lives or dies, right?”
Kyle (smiling): “You know my work.”
Miss Parker (through her teeth): “Did you kill my mother?”
Kyle’s expression goes flat. He even looks a little sad.
Miss Parker (angrier): “Did.. you.. kill.. my.. mother?!”
Kyle: (very softly): “No – “
Miss Parker (almost pleading): “Then who?”

Kyle closes his eyes and tips his head down. Miss Parker rises to her feet and stands in front of him and asks him point-blank, “Was it Mr. Raines?” Kyle opens his eyes and looks up at her but doesn’t answer. The two of them then hear the squeak and rattle of Mr. Raines’ oxygen tank outside the room, and Miss Parker searches the small cell for a place to hide.

When the door opens and Mr. Raines and some sweepers enter the cell, Miss Parker is nowhere to be seen. Raines has the sweepers take Kyle away, then he himself exits the cell. Sydney stops by the doorway to look in, but can’t see Miss Parker either. So as not to draw attention to himself, he doesn’t loiter near the door for very long. As soon as everyone is gone, Miss Parker crawls out from under Kyle’s bed.

BACK AT HARRIET’S FARM, Harriet tells Jarod that she may know of someone who can help him find what he’s looking for. Jarod: “Who?” Harriet: “Solemn vows die hard. I’ll have to go see them. Alone.” Jarod tells her it’s too dangerous for her to go anywhere by herself, but she tells him she’s willing to take the risk, and will be gone for a few days. Jarod tells her he might not be there when she gets back. He tells her that he’s spent almost a year trying to find clues to his past, and now the best clue is back in Blue Cove, Delaware. “I’m going to get my brother,” he tells her. “I’m going back to The Centre.”

SOME TIME LATER, Sydney stops in his office in the evening to find a lamp on his desk lit, and the word REFUGE spelled out in PEZ candies on the top of the desk. Smiling, Sydney looks around the office and in the adjacent room and finds Jarod hiding in the shadows. “God, how did you get in?” Sydney asks, amazed. Jarod isn’t sharing his enthusiasm for their reunification, and answers flatly, “The same way I got out.” He then demands to know why Sydney never told him the truth about Kyle being his brother. Sydney tells him he didn’t know that Jarod and Kyle were related; all he did know was what his own brother Jacob had told him. Before he can elaborate further, however, Sydney is interrupted by the sound of Mr. Raines and the oxygen tank entering his office. As Raines comes in, Jarod pulls back into the shadows and disappears.

Jarod reappears in the cell-like space he was kept in as a child (before he was moved to his larger adult quarters). There are still drawings he’d done taped on the walls, a model of a molecule, an old typewriter. He reaches into the nook behind the sink, but cannot find the Flying Cross he’d once hidden there. He walks around the room, then hears noises in the ventilation duct that connects to the room. He looks up at the screen covering the duct and can see the Flying Cross medal being fed down slowly on its chain through the grate of the screen. Jarod reaches over and takes hold of the medal then steps back as the screen opens out into the room, and Angelo climbs down out of the duct. The two men stand and look at each other, then Jarod grins and says, “Angelo!” He gives Angelo a long hardy embrace, and even laughs a little. Angel smiles crookedly at him, when Jarod pulls back for a moment and says, smiling, “Look at your hair .”

Jarod takes another step backwards and his foot lands on a box of Cracker Jacks that Angelo had dropped there. He picks it up, and hands the box back to Angelo saying : “Cracker Jacks… C.J… You’re ‘C.J.’… You’re the one who sent all those letters to Kyle when he was in prison. You’ve been in contact with him, just like you’ve been in contact with me .” Angelo nods a jerky nod and looks sheepishly at Jarod.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CENTRE, Mr. Raines has Kyle strapped and gagged on an upright diagnostic table. He’s talking to one of The Centre doctors, and demands that the doctor perform a frontal lobotomy on Kyle “to bring him peace” — even though there is no directive from the Tower authorizing Raines to the doctor to do any such thing . Too afraid to confront Raines directly, the doctor promises to have Kyle ready for the operation in 15 minutes. Raines leaves the room, and the doctor follows after him to start up the preparations for the operation. When both of the men are gone, the screen over the ventilation shaft in the room opens up, and Jarod climbs out. He goes directly to Kyle, removes his gag and starts to undo the shackles that bind him to the diagnostic table. Kyle demands to know who Jarod is and why he’s helping him.

Jarod tells him, “I’m Jarod.”
Kyle: “Raines said Jarod was dead.”
Jarod: “Not hardly.”

Jarod then tells Kyle that they’re brothers, and as proof, he hands Kyle back the Flying Cross medal Angelo had kept for them all these years. Angelo climbs out of the shaft as well, and Kyle smiles at him, recognizing him. Just as the three are getting ready to leave the room, the doctor returns, and Kyle lunges at him, throws him over a table and tries to strangle him. Shouting, “No. No!” Jarod rushes to Kyle and restrains him. “Nobody gets hurt!” Jarod then pushes Kyle toward the ventilation shaft and Kyle asks, “Where are we going?” Jarod answers him with the word, ” Home.”

When Kyle is safely in the shaft, Jarod stands aside to let Angelo go in next. But Angelo refuses to go with them. He says, “No. I decide who lives or dies,” and pushes an alarm button. Sirens and lights go off all over The Centre, and Angelo races out the door of the room into the corridor. Jarod reluctantly leaves Angelo behind, and climbs into the shaft with Kyle. The two of them run through the maze of shafts, and Jarod shows Kyle which set of shafts will take them to a conduit that opens in a field outside of The Centre.

MEANWHILE, with the alarms still screaming, Miss Parker gathers a team of sweepers and goes looking for Jarod and Kyle. Through a headset, Broots tells her they’re in sub-level 19, then in sub-level 20. She races after them. Broots then tells her that motion detectors indicate that they’re in the ventilation shaft directly in front of her in sub-level 20. She levels her gun at the shaft and has sweepers remove the screen there. When she sees Angelo sitting in the shaft, blinking at the noise and lights, she swears into the headset, “Damn it! It’s Cousin It!”

Jarod packs Kyle into a van and drives him away from the area. Jarod drives all night, and during the night Kyle awakens beside him in the front seat, thrashing and shouting from nightmares he’s having. Jarod settles him down and offers him a PEZ dispenser as a “taste of freedom” . Kyle bites the head off the dispenser and yanks the candy out with his teeth. When, later, Kyle creates an origami swan (just like Jarod often made as a child), Jarod is pleased to find, “You do remember.” But Kyle warns him, “That Kyle was a million years ago, Jarod. By the time I broke from The Centre, my head was mush. All I could think about was finding my… finding our parents, and if anybody got in my way I just ran over ’em. Before long, I was running from the law. By the time I figured things out and got to Harriet… I just… I never wanted to hurt her. I just thought she knew where they were…”

By morning, Jarod drives the van up to Harriet Tashman’s farm — and Kyle recognizes it immediately from the photograph “CJ” had sent him in prison. Jarod takes Kyle up to the loft above the barn and shows him where their parents lived. Kyle says he can feel them, but that “they don’t have faces.” Jarod tells him that’s “because we don’t remember; or The Centre wouldn’t let us remember.” He then shows Kyle the baby crib and tells him about their sister, Emily, “She was born after we were gone.”

BACK AT THE CENTRE Miss Parker is forcing Angelo to “absorb” as much information about both Kyle and Jarod as he can in the hopes that he’ll be able to tell her where they went. When Angelo starts snarling and thrashing around, Broots worries that they should have put Angelo on a tether. And when Angelo doesn’t respond to Miss Parker’s demands for information, Sydney tells her, “Just let this ‘quack’ handle it, hmmm?” and he walks up to Angelo, addressing him as, “Jarod”.

Sydney squats down in front of Angelo and tells Angelo/Jarod that if he’s truly been able to absorb Jarod’s personality then Angelo/Jarod must know that Sydney is trying to help him, and that he is the only one who can protect Angelo/Jarod and Angelo/Kyle from Mr. Raines. In response, Angelo pushes Sydney backwards… to get him off the photograph of the Tashman farm Sydney had been covering with his foot. Angelo/Jarod picks up the photograph and holds it out to Sydney saying in a small voice, “Going home… Safe here…”

Miss Parker snatches the photograph away from Sydney and walks out of the room with it, not realizing that Mr. Raines has been eaves-dropping on their experiment with Angelo, knows about the photograph, and knows where Miss Parker is going.Later, we see Mr. Raines on the phone to FBI Special Agent Korkos. “Do you want to know where John Doe is?” he asks.

AT THE TASHAMN FARM, Harriet returns to find Jarod walking around the barn. She says she has some good news for him, but she’s startled to find that Kyle is there, too. Afraid, she ducks in behind Jarod, but Jarod tells her that it’s all right. “We all want the same thing now.” Kyle looks out through the barn doors, and notices several sedans driving up the dirt road toward the farm. “Someone’s coming,” he tells Jarod. Jarod steps up next to him, sees the FBI vehicles, and tells Kyle and Harriet that they all have to leave.

Jarod drives the get-away van, with Harriet in the front next to him, and Kyle sitting in the cargo area in the back. Korkos and his FBI agents pursue the van through dirt roads and into a hilly area, where Korkos manages to shoot one of the van’s back tires. Jarod loses control of the van, and it rolls over several times. No one inside the van was wearing seat belts, so when the van flipped over, they were all thrown around. Jarod and Harriet are bruised, but Kyle’s injuries look worse. There’s blood on his arm, forehead and running from his mouth. He also tells Harriet and Jarod that his leg is broken. They are willing to carry him out of the van, but he demands, “Jarod, go ! Find our parents!” He then hands Jarod his Flying Cross medal (which both brothers assume was a gift to Kyle from their father), and begs Jarod, “Don’t tell them what I became.” Jarod doesn’t want to leave Kyle behind, but Harriet pulls at him to leave.

Jarod flees with Harriet and is running up a hill when the FBI agents arrive, approach the van and start shooting. Some of the gunfire strikes the vans’ gas tank and the van explodes in a huge, thundering fireball. On the hillside, Jarod sees the explosion and screams, “No!”, but Harriet doesn’t let him loiter there. She pulls him out of sight and then gets him to stop running for a moment. She tells him they have to split up, and she hands him a piece of paper: it gives him directions to a coffee house in Boston, Massachusetts, where Jarod’s family will come to meet him. He hardly has time to thank Harriet before she hurries away… and disappears.

AT THE CENTRE, Miss Parker overhears a discussion between Mr. Parker and Mr. Raines. Parker says he’s got a lead on Jarod — based on a phone tap they had had on St. Catherine’s convent for over 30 years — and he wants Raines to go to Boston and bring Jarod back to The Centre. Miss Parker contrives to get Sydney and Broots to BOSTON, too, and they arrive almost at the same time as Jarod. Miss Parker gives Broots a gun — “It’s hot, and good to go.” — and also offers one to Sydney, but Sydney shows her that he’s brought his own gun.

Out on the sidewalk, beside a busy intersection, near a pizza parlor, Jarod is walking briskly. He’s so intent on his purpose that he doesn’t notice the black sedans and black-dressed sweepers (male and female) who are following him at a discreet distance, and moving themselves into position.

Jarod watches some of the traffic go by the sidewalk, and he notices a taxi cab with three people sitting in the back seat: two women and a man. The woman seated on the driver’s side of the back seat, nearest the side of the street on which Jarod is walking, is seen in profile. It’s Jarod’s mother, Margaret. Jarod watches as the cab pulls up to the curb in front of him. The back door of the cab opens, and Margaret steps out onto the sidewalk several meters ahead of Jarod. She looks up the street trying to see if she can find him. We also see for a brief moment, a younger woman lean out of the back of the taxi. Like Margaret, she has dark red hair. We assume this is Emily. She, too, is looking for Jarod.

From behind Margaret we see Jarod mouth the word, “Mom?”, and then see Margaret turn to face him: the son she hasn’t seen for over 30 years. She recognizes him immediately, and is caught between tears and joyful laughter. She covers her mouth with her hands. Jarod takes another step, then stops and mouths the word, “Mom”, again and his face opens up with wonder and joy, as though he can’t believe she’s real. But his expression changes drastically when he realizes that, further up the sidewalk, Sydney is standing close by. From behind Margaret, Sydney mouths the word, “Jarod -“, and Margaret looks back to see who’s talking. Sydney then looks off to his left, and Jarod follows his line of vision with his own eyes. There’s a black Centre sedan parked nearby, and Sweepers are pouring out of it, their guns drawn.

We see Jarod’s joy turn to outrage over the betrayal and panic for his mother’s safety. We see him shout, “NO!”, and then look to his mother and scream, “RUN! GO!” Margaret looks around her, sees the danger, but waits for a moment, not wanting to leave her son again. As a female Sweeper trains a gun on Margaret, Margaret gets back into the cab. Emily draws back into the cab, too, looking very despondent. The cab pulls away from the curb even before Margaret can close the door. She leans out, and we can see her calling to Jarod, “I love you! I love you!” before the door closes, and the cab drives away.

When one of the black sedans filled with Sweepers pulls out to chase after the cab, Sydney steps off the curb into traffic and puts his own body between the sedan and the fleeing cab. The sedan lurches to stop in front of him, close enough so that he can slap his hands on the hood when it stops. Miss Parker rushes off the curb, and drags Sydney away from the sedan. We can see her shouting, “Get out of the way!” She then levels her gun in Jarod’s direction, and yells his name. At the same time, we can see the guns of two other Sweepers come up behind Jarod’s head, and one of the men puts a hand on his shoulder. Jarod’s shock turns to rage –

Eyes flashing, furious, he beats the nearest Sweepers into the sidewalk with his bare fists, confiscates one of their guns, and rushes away down an alley. He’s stopped almost immediately, however, by the sight of Mr. Raines, standing in a backstreet crossroads in front of him. “Hello, Jarod,” Raines says without emotion.

Gun in hand and pointing it at Raines’ face, Jarod walks up Mr. Raines growling, “You stole me from my parents. You had the FBI kill my brother, and now you’re trying to kill my family. What have I ever done to you!?”

“You exist – ” Raines responds flatly.

Directly in front of Mr. Raines now, Jarod raises the gun closer to Raines face and threatens to shoot him point-blank. Raines shows no fear and even seems delighted at the prospect of making Jarod this angry. The gun shakes with Jarod’s rage, but then Jarod lifts it up, away from Raines and tells him, “No. I’m not going to let you do to me what you did to my brother. You, leave me alone .”

Jarod then turns his back on Raines and runs back up the alley the way he’d come. When Jarod’s back is to him, Raines pulls out his own pistol and levels it at Jarod’s head. But before he can fire, though, a gunshot is heard from somewhere else, and Raines’ oxygen explodes on impact — engulfing Raines in a flash fire of bright red and white flame. Jarod turns, shocked, to see Mr.Raines stumbling around the alley, aflame, but doesn’t stop to help him. He escapes into the city.

Broots, a sweeper, Miss Parker and Sydney all run up to where Raines is now lying on the ground, still burning. The sweeper smothers the fire, while the others watch. Miss Parker quips, “I thought he gave up smoking.”

BACK AT THE CENTRE, Mr. Parker is on the telephone with an as yet unseen “Mr. Lyle”. Nervous, Mr. Parker tries to explain to Mr. Lyle what happened in Boston, how Mr. Raines was injured, and why Jarod got away. When Lyle demands to see him, Mr. Parker complains, ” Why? Let’s talk now.” The plea has no effect, and stuttering slightly, Mr. Parker agrees to meet with Mr. Lyle shortly. Before Mr. Parker can give a closing “goodbye”, Mr. Lyle hangs up on him.

Miss Parker enters the office and says she wants to talk to her father. He seems pleased to see her, but when she starts asking questions about Raines “accident” and about her mother’s death, Mr. Parker become evasive, “There are no easy answers… There are still great repercussions from your mother’s death. When I can tell you more, I will. Trust me.” Frustrated, Miss Parker’s eyes fill with tears, but she fights back the urge to cry outright. When sweepers come to take Mr. Parker to see Mr. Lyle, Miss Parker just stares at all of them in disbelief. This is the first time she’s realized that her father wasn’t the overwhelming force in The Centre she believed him to be. After her father is “escorted” from the room, she gasps, catching her breath, and shakes her head, still not wanting to believe what she’s just seen.

Later, when Miss Parker is in Sydney’s office talking to Sydney and Broots, Broots shows them the ballistics reports on the bullet that struck Mr. Raines’ oxygen tank. It doesn’t match the bullets in any of the guns used by Centre personnel. They don’t know who had shot at Raines.

DAYS LATER, Jarod — dressed in a pale suit, standing outdoors — calls Sydney on his cell phone and tells Sydney that even though he’s tired, he’s never going to give up looking for his family. He then asks Sydney to tell him where Kyle’s body was buried. Sydney tells Jarod that the fire in the van burned so hot for so long that it incinerated Kyle’s remains. There was no body left to bury. Irritated that he’s again being left with “nothing”, Jarod goes silent for a moment. In that silence, Sydney warns him that the forces at The Centre are more determined now than ever to find him, and he asks Jarod if Jarod knows what he’s going to do next. Jarod answers, “I have a few ideas… Catch me if you can.”

Jarod then shuts off the cell phone, puts his sunglasses on and smiles up into the sky. In the lenses of the glasses we can see the reflection of the launching of the space shuttle.