The Centre
The Centre is a corporation run by the chairman, Mr. Parker in Blue Cove, Delaware. In 1963, they kidnapped a boy named Jarod in order to harness his genius for their research. The Centre's North Tower is memorialized in a brand new official website www.thepretender.org/tower/. The Tower website was used to release the ten-page preview of the new graphic novel for The Pretender.
Raised in The Centre[]
Grew up around The Centre[]
Centre Operatives[]
- Sweepers are Centre operatives who move in to seek-and-destroy any target The Centre sends them after. They also defend and protect specific members of The Centre's upper echelon. They're the guard dogs of The Centre. Sam the Sweeper is most closely associated with Miss Parker, and Willie is most closely associated with Mr. Raines.
- Cleaners are The Centre's second-generation super-Sweepers. They clean up and reorganize after the Sweepers have done their work. They can also make people "disappear". After Mr. Lyle had executed a building full of Centre personnel in "A Stand Up Guy", Broots asked what would become of the bodies of the people who were killed. Miss Parker answered him with, "Nothing. They don't exist anymore."
- If the Sweepers fail, we assume, Cleaners would move in to expunge the Sweepers themselves along with any evidence of their presence (and their failures). Brigitte is a Cleaner, Gar is a Cleaner, and Miss Parker used to be one. Interestingly, Gar was first introduced to viewers in the Past Sim episode, in which he appeared as a right-hand-man to Mr. Lyle. Gar was then seen in the series as Mr. Raines' personal Cleaner. Gar was an excellent shot, loyal to Raines, and interested in the details of Centre operations. He asked a lot of questions of his superiors so he knew what going on around him. He also had a somewhat arid sense of humor and a ready smile. In the Bloodlines episode, when Miss Parker failed to shoot Jarod as he escaped in a Centre-owned jet, Gar smiled at her vaguely and quipped, "Guess you gun jammed, huh?" Few people in The Centre could get away with teasing and insulting Miss Parker like that. Sadly, this most interesting Cleaner was killed in the blast that, in 1998, inundated The Centre's 27th sub-level. All that was left of him was pieces, including his hand.
Centre Projects[]
Centre History[]
The Centre was founded about 1900 by Mr. Raines and Mr. Parker's grandfather, and Miss Parker and Lyle's great-grandfather: the crypt keeper in Carthis who murdered his family.
Structure[]
The Centre logo in 1996.
The Centre has an above-ground facility and a complex system of sublevels (SL). it was known that the Centre had 26 sublevels, but in time it was revealed that there was actually 1 more i.e. SL-27.
SL-27 was built as a "private playground" for Mr. Raines, where he did many of his awful experiments such as the experiment that turned Timmy into Angelo.
It also contains the Renewal Wing and Containment Area. Sydney, in a bold display of defiance against The Centre, set a bomb to go off in SL-27 in the dramatic finale of Season 2.