My Only Real Ally (or You Most of All)

Leslie

Super Fantastisch
Title: My Only Real Ally (or You Most of All)
Rating: R (for language, violence)
Word Count: 13,963
Summary: Sydney Bristow, undercover in the Covenant as Julia Thorne, is sent by her new “employers” on a mission that might blow her cover – a mission that will force her to come in contact with someone who knew her as Sydney. What she could never have foreseen is that this job sets in motion a chain of events that will lead her down paths she never thought she’d take and to alliances she never thought she’d make. In the end, it all comes down to loyalties. What will she choose?
Song Used: Spring: Allegro and Largo by Antonio Vivaldi
Author’s Note: Special thanks to the guys at the ruslang Yahoo! Group for help with translation.
QT Quotes Used: I went a little QT crazy. ;)

From Reservoir Dogs:
Joe: How does freedom feel?
Mr. Blonde: It’s a change.

From From Dusk Till Dawn:
Seth: Now I’m gonna ask you one question, and all I want is a yes or no answer: Do you want to live through this?

Seth: Do you think this is who I am? I am a professional thief. I don’t run around killing people I don’t have to.

From Pulp Fiction:
Jimmy: I’m not a cob of corn, so you can stop buttering me up.

Mia: Don’t you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bulls*** in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Mia: That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the f*** up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

Lance: If you’re okay, say something.
Mia: Something.

Yolanda: You touch him, you die.
Jules: Well, that seems to be the situation.

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Commencement.

She wanted to cry, but she bit her lip to keep the tears inside as she half-listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. She stared across the street at the tanned men and women bustling around the bodega and adjacent street market. A slight gust of wind blew a strand of blonde hair across her face and she brushed it away absent-mindedly. She sighed, then realized that the director's voice had stopped ringing in her ears.
"Sydney? Are you there? Do you understand the protocol I just explained to you?"
She snapped back to reality.
"Yes! Yes. I understand."
"Good luck, Sydney." He sounded sincere, sympathetic.
"Thanks." She placed the receiver back on its hook and stepped out of the booth. She shivered, though the Mediterranean air was balmy and the breeze wasn't particularly strong. What now? She had to go back. Into the den of thieves. Shivering again in spite of herself, she began walking purposefully down the Italian sidewalk as she tried to ignore the deafening sound of the mass of jumbled pieces of conversation screaming in her head.

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She sat in the antique mahogany chair facing his desk, legs crossed politely, trying not to let the cold hatred show through her eyes as she listened to her handler.
"Julia, Julia, Julia. Have I the job for you. I think you'll enjoy this one." He was sitting half-on, half-off the desk, hands folded in front of him, his perpetual grin accentuating his odd features. He handed her a file, which she opened. She coughed suddenly to hide her shock at what she saw inside.
"I believe you know our mark already, Julia. Oh wait. You don't. Sydney did. But you'll have plenty of time to get re-acquainted on this mission." His black eyes sparkled, obviously enjoying the irony. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen this dude in a while, either. When you break him out, tell him ‘hi’ from his good ol' buddy Cole. Hah! I can just imagine the look on the little bugger's face." He laughed at his own joke. Sydney smiled, but rolled her eyes inwardly. What an idiot! But she was glad he was distracted enough not to notice the fear that was gripping and twisting at her insides. If any of her missions was going to out her to the Covenant, it would be this one.
"Is that all?" She asked.
"Yep, you're free to go." He gestured toward the office door. "Your job goes down tomorrow at 2300 hours, so you better get crackin'. Simon'll get you set up."
She thanked him and left the room, heading down the Rome building's long hallway. Once she got her equipment she would be headed to Los Angeles, where everyone knew her as Sydney. But she wasn't going as Sydney. She was going anonymously. She would have to blend into the night. Not even Kendall could be informed about this job. When she met with him later that night in a Tuscany CIA safehouse, she refused to breath a word about it.
"Sydney." He stepped in, as tall as she remembered him. She almost cried, she was so happy to see a familiar face from her former life. She smiled warmly, but maintained a cool emotional distance from him.
"Kendall."
"You look well."
"I'm trying," she mustered. He hesitated; he looked a bit uncomfortable, but he carried on.
"I brought you some gadgets from Marshall." She frowned at him, and opened her mouth as if to protest. He put up a hand to quiet her.
"Don't worry, he doesn't know anything. I made up a reason to get these made." She was relieved, and thanked him. He continued.
"I want you to remember that it is essential that you keep me apprised of every move the Covenant makes." He gave her the infamous Kendall pointed look. She nodded, choosing to keep demurely silent. He sighed. He had never been able to control her before, and he would not be able to control her now. Not even in this situation. She decided to change the subject.
"How is Vaughn?" Her voiced was clouded with emotion. Kendall wouldn't look her in the eye. Her voice grew quiet, almost a whisper. "I miss him a lot. I wish I could tell him I was still here, or at least that I'm alive." She looked up. Kendall's rigid gaze met her eyes.
"You don't want to know, Agent Bristow." This puzzled her.
"Yes, yes I do. Is he okay? Why don't I want to know? He is okay, isn't he? People can go on. If anyone's proof of the tenacity of the human constitution it's me, for God's sake." She was afraid now. Kendall sighed resignedly.
"He got married, Sydney."
It was as if the proverbial ton of bricks had actually materialized in front of her and slammed into her stomach. She wanted to deny it, tell Kendall he was lying, but she knew it would be a waste of time. She sat down. She couldn't meet his eyes. Then she began to cry in earnest, and she didn't care that he was watching. She let the tears flow until there weren't any left inside her. Finally, she looked back up at Kendall, all red eyes and cheeks, then stood up. Her eyes turned to slits and she spat out the words.
"I haven't been away that long, Kendall. You're telling me it took him a year to stop loving me?" There was a pause. "Bastard."
"Sydney, for the record, I don't think he ever stopped loving you." Kendall was trying to salvage the situation, but it was no use. She had to convince herself of something in order to dull the pain of the revelation. She had tried anger, and now it was time for apathy.
"Well, he is his own person. I can't tell him how to run his life, right?" She wasn't looking at Kendall anymore. She gazed out a tinted safehouse window. "Besides, he's not part of my life anymore, whether I like it or not."
Kendall sighed again. Sydney could tell he was uncomfortable. He changed the subject.
"Any new Covenant missions I should know about, Agent Bristow?" This distracted her out of her reverie.
"No," she answered hastily, adeptly reverting to agent mode. "I know how to contact you should one develop."
"I will await your notification." There was a short pause. "Take care of yourself, Sydney." He added, as tenderly as the hardened operative could.
Then he was gone. Sydney never acknowledged his exit. She just kept looking out the window at nothing, letting her mind go to another place and time. A place where there was no Julia Thorne; there was only Sydney, and she was happy.

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She had never hated nostalgia so much. Shrouded in the darkness of the night sky, she had driven past familiar houses and office buildings, down familiar streets and over familiar bridges. Nearly midnight, and the city of LA was still wide awake and shining bright. But she wasn’t here to enjoy a night on the town. She pulled up across the street from her target. She turned off the ignition, took a deep breath, and leaned down to get a good look at the back of the CIA holding facility. It looked dead. The good little agents in their starched shirts and black ties had gone home for the day long ago. Now it was just her vs. the security system.
She pulled a small box of plastic explosive and a spray can out of the trunk of the car and threw her day clothes into the back seat. Wearing only skin-tight black spandex, she hurried across the somewhat deserted road to the building. She sprayed the cameras, knowing the disillusioning solvent would only blind them for about eight minutes, then clung to the side on the building and pulled out a digital positioning unit to make sure she was about to blow up the right chunk of wall. Satisfied she was at the right spot, she checked to see if anyone was driving by, then molded the explosive onto the side of the building in the shape of a large, lopsided circle at the spot indicated on the device. She armed the explosive, shifted about five feet away, then set it off, watching the sparks fly in every direction and thanking the Covenant for engineering a low-noise version of the explosive.
She pushed the mass of brick that she had severed from the wall into the building, then jumped inside. She was right where she wanted to be – at the end of the holding facility hallway. She noted two sleeping inmates to either side of her, and slipped silently down the hall so as not to disturb their slumber. Her heart thumped so loudly, she was afraid the entire world could hear it. Dread clung to her stomach, but it was too late to change her course, and soon she had reached the cell.

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He was awake. She hadn’t expected that. Or, maybe she had. His hair was shorter; his face carried a worn expression. His bright blue eyes were dulled, the effects of being in solitary confinement for so long. He looked up as she approached, his training overriding her stealth. His eyes went wide.
“My God.” He exclaimed. She had taken out another Covenant device – this one for unlocking the cell door – and only glanced up at him as she set it in motion, rapidly working to find the codes for undoing the digital lock. She could still feel the fear in the pit of her stomach, and her mouth was dry. Please God, she thought. Let me convince him I’m not me. She began her spiel; he was still gaping at her, speechless.
“Mr. Sark, I presume.” She paused for acknowledgement but got no response other than an amazed stare. “I am here representing an organization known as the Covenant. They have a vested interest in your release. Since time is of the essence, we can dispense with formalities for now. My name is Julia; I know your name. Just let me get this done and I will explain everything in more detail once you’re free.” The device beeped and there was a loud clanking noise. The door opened, and she grabbed his arm. He shrank back.
“You’re dead,” was all he could manage. He had retreated to the cell’s solitary bench, his eyes transfixed on her face, his expression bespeaking disbelief. She was forced to step inside the small room.
“My job is to extract you, and if I do not do my job there will be hell to pay. I realize that being inside here for so long has probably had an effect on your psychological state, but I cannot allow that to eat up our time. We need to go. Now.” She was standing over him, and she forced herself to place her hands on his arms. But at the word “psychological” his expression had changed. He frowned, brushed her hands away and stood up.
“I’m perfectly capable of maintaining a healthy psychological state, regardless of my environment. But Sydney…”
“Julia.” She smiled slightly at him, playing her role.
“Julia.” He repeated. “You mean to tell me that you are not Sydney Bristow, and that you don’t even know who she is?”
“Sydney Bristow. I have heard of the woman. My associates have told me I look a lot like her. But according to them she is dead, as you seemed to imply earlier. Now, can we go? If you have any other questions, they are just as easily answered elsewhere as here.”
There was a pause; he was still drinking her in. Then he laughed; a loud, uproarious, almost maniacal laugh. When he finished, his eyes sparkled.
“By all means,” he said. “Let’s get out of this godawful place.”
She was taken aback a bit by his reaction, but didn’t let it show. She led the way out through the hole in the wall, at which Sark gawked with an appreciative open-mouthed chuckle, until they were safely across the street, in the car, and driving away.

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They were on the plane when the incident occurred. He was seated by the window, she on the aisle. He hadn’t asked many questions after they had escaped the CIA facility, and they were high in the air when he finally ventured a conversation.
“So, the Covenant… what it is exactly that they do? And what I really want to know is why they went through the trouble of extracting me from the custody of the CIA.” She looked at him. There was no familiar smirk on his face; he was being serious, for all that she could tell.
“The Covenant is an organization devoted to the inventions and writings of Rambaldi, a philosopher—“
“I’ve heard of Rambaldi. So these people go after his work?”
“Yes. We compete with the CIA and other organizations for the accumulation of Rambaldi artifacts, though right now they have amassed more than us.”
“I see.” He had been leaning toward her, watching her face, and now sat back in his seat, his eyes fixed on the back of the seat in front of him. “So why do they need me?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just get my orders, and carry them out.”
Sark seemed lost in thought, his brow furrowed. She was looking at him now. His face had become somewhat battle-scarred, but it was still as youthful as she remembered. His short-cropped hair was a big change from the feathery curls that had once encircled his head. She tilted her head to the side, studying him. It was so strange, this situation they were in. Then she remembered Francie, and looked away, a sob catching in her throat. How could someone so very evil look so very… normal?
“So, how does freedom feel?” Might as well keep the uncomfortable silences to a minimum, she thought.
“It’s a change.” He smirked then, like he always had, and for a minute she forgot she was Julia. Then she remembered.
“By the way, I was told to tell you that McKenas Cole says hello.” He turned his head back toward her at the mention of the name.
“Cole? My God. He’s part of this racket?”
“So you know him.”
“Oh yeah. We’re old ‘buddies in crime.’ I’m surprised he remembers me. Is he high up in the organization?” His eyes burned into hers.
“I don’t know his exact position hierarchically. He’s my handler.” She had changed back into her day clothes before they boarded the plane, and now she fiddled with the pleats in her skirt.
“Ah.” He was still staring at her. She glanced back up, meeting his gaze.
“Well, I appreciate that he sent you, considering your… abilities.” He smirked again. Typical Sark-the-womanizer, flirting with the ‘new girl.’ “I’ve been trying to figure out… Was that plastic explosive you used on the wall? It couldn’t have been. It was too quiet.”
“It was. Ma—“ She caught herself. “The Covenant has developed a ‘silent’ version. It’s the equivalent of a silencer on a gun, only for explosives.” She studied his face. Had she revealed herself? His expression revealed nothing. She breathed an inner sigh of relief and decided it was time to stop chatting up the blond assassin. She was tired. She watched him turn to look out the window, then dropped her head back on the head cushion and closed her eyes. It would be a few more hours till they reached Rome.

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When they had reached Covenant Headquarters in Rome, Sark had been rushed off to another room without explanation and she had been left alone in the main hall.
“Julia?” It was the secretary.
“Yes?” Sydney smiled sweetly at the woman.
“You can go home now. Cole called. He says congratulations on a job well done, and that he’ll see you tomorrow at 0900 hours on the dot.”
“Thank you.” She was puzzled, but smiled again. What were they doing with Sark? Oh well, she thought. It was no skin off her nose. She didn’t care if they killed the little sonofab****. And her bed did sound lovely just then. She turned on her black pump-clad heel, walked out the front door, and hailed a taxi to her awaiting hotel room and its linen sheets and puffy pillows.
 
His lips were squeezed together, as if someone had stapled them that way. She noted the somewhat grim expression on his face. Were her eyes playing tricks, or did he look even wearier than he had the day before when she had found him awake in his cell in LA? They were both standing in Cole’s office as he explained to them that he was sending them on a mission together. Her heart sank.
“This one’s really important, guys, so try not to screw it up, okay?” He pushed two folders toward them on the desk. They glanced at each other, then picked them up. Sydney thumbed through the information in the folder.
“The Cube?” She looked up at Cole wonderingly. “What is it? What does it do?”
“My dear, that is for us to know, and you not to care about. It doesn’t matter anyway. All you have to do is find the silly thing and bring it here.” He pressed a pointed finger on the desk in front of her. He was grinning jovially. Sydney nodded; she had gotten used to Cole’s crazy antics by now. Sark was giving him a look like he wanted to murder him. She almost laughed at his expression, but managed to stifle it. Sark looked down at the file again.
“This says we’re looking for a man named Saint Aidan. Tell me that’s an alias.” His head remained turned downward, but his eyes shifted up at Cole. The older man laughed.
“Yep, but actually, we don’t know this guy’s real name. We don’t even know what he looks like. That’s why there ain’t a photo.” Cole took a swig from a coffee mug that had been sitting on his desk. Sark looked unnerved.
“How are we going to find the man if we don’t know his name or what he looks like?!”
“Trust me, Sark old boy. Trust me.” He had come around the desk and proceeded to pat Sark on the shoulder. Sark’s murderous look returned. “We aren’t as stupid as we look. This outfit may not be operated by our previous employer,” — he winked at Sark — “but it’s got almost as much brains behind it. I’m tellin’ ya. Trust me.” He handed them each a photocopied fax. “This just came in, my friends. St. Aidan frequents this bar in St. Petersburg, Russia. That’s where you’ll be going. All you gotta do is walk in and say, ‘Yo, St. Aidan,’ and whoever’s head pops up, you know it’s him.” Cole looked pretty proud of himself, but neither of his young prodigies acknowledged yet another of his failed attempts at humor.

Back in her hotel room, Sydney flopped down on her bed with the file, rereading it for the tenth time. She flirted with the idea of calling Kendall, but decided that she would wait until she knew more about this St. Aidan guy before she contacted him. Just before she turned out the light, she found herself thinking about Sark. Would he catch on that she was still herself? What had the Covenant told him or done to him to make him so dour? She sighed. This was by far the hardest job she had ever done for the CIA. I better get a huge bonus for this, she thought as with a click the room grew dim and her head finally hit the pillow.

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Sydney placed her wig firmly in place; the black curls hung around her face like springs. The large, dangly gold hoops she wore in her ears swung erratically as the van made its way down the uneven streets. She adjusted the cranberry colored halter top of her one-piece bodysuit and peeked out the back window of the fake, white, cable company van. Sark was driving. The streets of damp St. Petersburg flew by her vision, until finally the van rolled to a stop across from a small tavern. She read the sign. Gavan Svyatykh. The Saints Haven. This was the place. She opened the back of the van and jumped out. Sark looked at her via the rearview mirror.
“Good luck.” He gave her a cockeyed smile.
“Thanks,” she said, and closed the van door. What a trip! This was her second mission working with Sark, but she still felt weird. It was so hard to draw the line between good guys and bad guys these days.
The bell jangled as she stepped inside the door of the Gavan Svyatykh. She looked around, annoyed that the Covenant couldn’t provide her a picture of her mark. There were eight men sitting at the bar, and a few men and two couples at tables at various locations around the tavern. But the bar was the central point of the place, and the jovial, rotund, white-haired, red-faced bartender was wiping out glasses and joking loudly in Russian to the old men who sat on stools at the long wooden table. Everyone in the place looked to be no younger than fifty, except for the couples, who looked to be in their thirties, she thought. There was an empty stool at the end of the bar, and Sydney sat down. She spoke in Russian with a slight American accent.
“Vodka shot.” She tapped the bar with her palm. All the gray heads at the bar turned to look at her, not a few with lust in their eyes. She played it cool. The bartender handed her her drink, and she swigged it down in one gulp, slamming the glass on the wood surface. She winked at the gaping men. They chuckled.
“I’m looking for St. Aidan,” she addressed the throng. A wrinkled hand faltered as it lifted a shot glass halfway, then put it down again without drinking. Sydney looked down the row of men toward the owner of the hand. He was of medium build and looked to be about sixty. He had dark gray hair, large, black, sunken eyes, and a hard, thin face with long lines like parentheses around his mouth. He looked at her, fear in his eyes. Then, in a move that caught even Sydney by surprise, he jumped up from his stool and ran into the men’s lavatory toward the back of the tavern. Sydney followed him and opened the door to the lavatory just in time to see him climb out the window at the back. She kept up the chase, and was very soon upon him, as his wingtip-clad feet faltered on the gravel. He had left his suit jacket at the bar, and was dressed now in only a white dress shirt and slacks. Sydney grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into the tavern’s back wall. But his reaction was one she didn’t expect. He stared at her, and he looked so much like Sark had back when she had appeared in the CIA holding cell a few days ago, she was almost distracted enough to release her grip on the man entirely. As it was, she merely loosened it so that he could talk.
“You… You! You are the woman. You are her. The prophecy. Oh my God!” He was shaking. She frowned as she heard Sark’s voice in her earpiece.
“What is he talking about? Julia?”
“Not right now, Sark. I think he’s delusional. Give me a minute.” With that, she slapped St. Aidan across the face. Her detainee began coughing uncontrollably. She was getting annoyed. There was a puddle nearby, and she gathered a cupped handful of water and splashed it in the man’s face. That seemed to revive him. He calmed down a bit.
“OK, first I want your real name.” She ignored his previous comments judiciously.
“You are the woman in the prophecy. You will render the greatest power to utter desolation.” He said it matter-of-factly now. Sydney realized that she wouldn’t be able to reach the man if he kept harping on that, so she pulled a lipstick out of her bra. Popping off the cap with one hand, keeping the other on St. Aidan, she began to talk hurriedly.
“St. Aidan, or whoever you really are, I am being monitored for sound, so I am using this device” — she indicated the lipstick — “to create interference on the connection. I know that I resemble the woman in the Rambaldi prophecy on page 47 of his manuscript. I work for the CIA, but right now I am in deep cover within the Covenant. You may not believe me, but you have no choice. You have to trust me right now. Now I’m gonna ask you one question, and all I want is a yes or no answer: Do you want to live through this?”
St. Aidan nodded silently, too shocked to verbalize. Sydney continued.
“Your file says that you are a Rambaldi follower and expert. The Covenant has me on a mission now to recover an artifact called ‘the Cube.’ They say that you know something about its whereabouts. If you agree to cooperate with me, I can make sure that the Cube stays safe. If not, I have no way of telling you what the Covenant will use it for or do to you if you do not help them find it.”
“But the Cube…” He finally spoke. “It mustn’t be touched.”
“I know. But we have to touch it in order to keep it safe. Do you understand?”
“Will the CIA obtain the Cube if you are able to keep it from the Covenant?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will not help you, the Covenant be damned.” She was getting restless, as she knew that her feedback device was running out of time.
“Listen to me. The CIA doesn’t own me. You and I can work out another arrangement later. But it is essential right now that you come with me and provide the Covenant with the information it needs.”
“How do I know you aren’t really one of them?” He squinted his eyes at her, untrusting.
“You don’t. But you don’t really have a choice, do you?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked away, sighed, then looked back at her pleading eyes. He nodded. The lipstick beeped. She slammed him back up against the wall.
“I don’t need for you to agree to come with me.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “I have other ways of getting you where I want you.” With that, she slammed her head into his, smashing his skull against the wall so hard that it knocked him out.
“Piece of cake,” she breathed as she flicked black curls out of her line of vision. On cue, the van pulled up. St. Aidan was loaded into the back. Sydney hopped into the passenger seat, smiling triumphantly at Sark, and they sped away into the fading sunlight of the morning.

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They pulled up to what looked like a deserted warehouse just as the sky was turning orange, indicating the oncoming dusk. As they stepped out of the van, Sydney noted the surveillance cameras. This was no deserted warehouse. Sark hopped out of the van and waited for her to follow. His eyes were cloudy now; they lacked the villainous spark Sydney remembered from her days as a double agent. She wondered what had changed.
St. Aidan was still out cold when the two operatives opened the van’s back door. They lugged his body inside the building, which looked just like a deserted warehouse inside, too, to the untrained eye. Sydney spotted a video surveillance system, but surprisingly, no bugs. They set their mark down on a chair and tied him there. After tying one last knot around his ankles, Sark stood up to take a better look at the man they had apprehended. Sydney heard him take in a sharp breath. She looked at him. His eyes were wild, turned colorless like they always did when he was experiencing some kind of emotion and didn’t want to let on.
“What’s wrong?” The look on his face scared her. He turned to her as if her voice had awakened him from a daydream.
“What? No, nothing.” He shrugged her off, but turned to look again at St. Aidan.
“I’m going to wake him up now, okay?” She was still curious, but decided not to pry any further… at least not yet. Sark just nodded. She pulled a small bottle out of a small hidden pocket in her jumpsuit and soaked her sleeve with its contents. She walked up to the old man and stuck her sleeve under his nose. His head began to jerk and he began coughing fitfully. His eyes flew open, and he took a long breath. He had to blink repeatedly as the bright rays of the now setting sun streaming through the warehouse windows hit his eyes. When he could focus his vision, he looked around himself frantically, then realized he was restrained and tried to break free of his fetters, to no avail. Sark was standing a couple of yards away, as if the old man was going to bite him. He stared at their captive throughout the whole ordeal, and Sydney’s eyes moved from St. Aidan to Sark and back, wondering what was about to happen. She sensed something was very wrong, but wasn’t sure what it was. Finally, the old man looked steadily at Sydney.
“You!” It was accusatory and amazed at the same time. Before Sydney could say anything, she heard Sark’s voice float by as if from a distance.
“Who are you?” The old man looked at Sark, realizing his presence in the room for the first time. His eyes bespoke bewilderment. He ignored the question, just gaped squinty-eyed at Sark, trying to see the young blond man who had addressed him from the shadows. Then, it happened.
Sark lunged. His hands were wringing the man’s neck before Sydney could even get her legs to move toward Sark to pull him off the man. The old man sputtered, trying to cry out, but unable because of Sark’s firm grasp on his neck. Sydney saw the fierce look of pure hatred in the young assassin’s eyes. She managed to grab Sark by the shoulders and wrench him off their captive, yelling “Sark!” in the process. St. Aidan had been coughing and trying to catch his breath once more, but he went still when he heard her shout.
“Wh-what did you call him?” He was staring in amazement at both Sydney and Sark now. Sark wiped his mouth with his arm and sniffed, his eyes still fiery. But he was slowly walking backward, as if he were mentally trying to keep from attacking the man again. Sydney laid the Julia act on thick.
“We’re not here to answer your questions, old man. You’re here to answer ours. You better be careful, or my associate here is liable to end your life even before you have a chance to do that.” She moved closer to St. Aidan with every word, and her face was now level with his, only inches away. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?”
But the man wasn’t listening.
“Sark.” It was almost a whisper. Sark, who had been trying to ignore him, now shot him a look.
“Julian?!” Sydney looked sharply at Sark, who returned her gaze, then looked back at the restrained man. He cleared his throat, his chin in the air, eyes like slits.
“Father.”
The next few minutes seemed like decades. Sydney was caught completely off guard. She had thought that after everything she had gone through, nothing could shock her now. But as she looked frantically from Sark to St. Aidan, she realized she had been mistaken. Sark broke the silence.
“It seems our little contact friend here has more in common with me that our mutual search for Rambaldi’s Cube.” He smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “On a happier note, I can tell you who he is. His name is Andrian Lazarey. And he is my father.”
 
“I took the liberty of putting together a file on Dr. Stuart Campbell.” Sark’s voice was measured, calm. A contrast to his demeanor the day before.
Cole eyed him, then took the file from him. “Cool.” He flipped through it. “Impressive.” He was looking at a photo of Campbell’s small Johannesburg, South Africa mansion. “So this guy has the Cube?”
“No,” Sydney jumped into the conversation. She had been standing off to the side, and she stepped forward to clarify for Cole. “He has the map that will tell us where the Cube is located.”
Cole frowned. “OK, what exactly did this Lazarey guy say again? Run it all by me, in order, from start to finish.”
Sydney looked at Sark. His face was passive. She plunged in.
“Lazarey told me that he didn’t have the Cube—“
“And you believed him?” Cole was incredulous. She gave him a look.
“—otherwise he would have gone after it himself. As a follower of Rambaldi it’s his job to protect all of Rambaldi’s works. The Cube is one of them… It makes sense.”
“I see.” Cole sat on the edge of his desk. “Go on.”
“He told me that though he didn’t know the location of the Cube, he knew how to find it. This man” — she pointed to the file in Cole’s hand — “owns a map that he has come to believe reveals the Cube’s whereabouts. As you’ll read in the file, Campbell is the wealthy heir of his international banker father and a retired professor of early century African history. He collects artifacts, and happened to come upon the map after it was found in an archaeological dig in South Africa in 1990. Lazarey and some of his fellow Rambaldi followers tried to buy it off of Campbell when they found out that he had it, but Campbell wouldn’t sell.”
“Did you ever stop to consider that Lazarey might be lying?” Cole looked at her as if she were the stupidest person he had ever met. It made the blood in her veins boil.
“I told her that.” Sark spoke up. He had been quiet for so long, Sydney had forgotten he was in the room. She turned to him now.
“It’s all we have to go on.” Her voice was quieter. Sydney could see that something terrible had happened between Sark and his father, and that it was still eating him up inside. As much as she disliked him, she felt for him. She had been there, too.
“Well…” Cole mulled it over in his head. “OK, what the hell. You two are off to South Africa. We have a great guy down there – name of Jansen. Top notch. You can stay with him. You leave tomorrow at 1300 hours. I have to have a chat with The Boss before I let you two go gallivanting off to South Africa for possibly no reason at all. You’ll get my call.”
The two operatives nodded and left the office. Sark brushed past her and strode down the hallway without so much as a sarcastic remark her way. She sighed and pushed a dangling strand of hair behind her ear. They had left Lazarey in a Covenant holding facility in Tula, just outside of Moscow, where the Covenant had another active cell. All the way there, Sark had bitterly refused to believe that Lazarey was telling the truth. After his initial outburst, he had remained reserved for the rest of the interrogation, but Sydney could see that he was obviously broken. It was getting even more difficult for her to play her role around him now. She just wanted to tell him the truth and ask him “why?” But it was not that easy. Nothing was ever that easy.

She called Kendall that night from her hotel room. He wasn’t pleased.
“Do you realize how much of the taxpayers’ money you wasted blowing a hole in that wall? Not to mention, the Washington branch is none too pleased that a dangerous terrorist is out on the loose once again, and the blame has landed squarely on us. You know, there were other ways of getting him released.”
“You mean like asking?” The phone’s receiver was wet with sarcasm.
There was silence on the other end.
“I see your point, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are in trouble.”
“I’ll have to deal with that later. I’m kind of working undercover right now.” She was tired and even though she knew she kind of deserved it, she wasn’t thrilled to be getting lambasted by Kendall at that moment. “So, ready for the info you’re paying me to get?”
He sighed, relenting, and she told him what she knew.
“Well, at least you’re getting somewhere on the Cube’s location. Just keep up what you’ve been doing, go after the map, see if it’s valid, and then we’ll go from there.”
“OK.”
“Oh, and Sydney?”
“Mm hmm?”
“I’m billing you to replace that wall.”
She laughed. “Good luck finding an address to send it to.” She could hear Kendall chuckling quietly as she hung up.

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Nicholas Jansen greeted them on the landing strip. He was a short, muscular black man with a huge, bright white grin and crow’s feet. Sydney liked him immediately. It’s too bad he’s Covenant, she thought.
“Let me help you with those bags.” He reached up and grabbed a large, black, leather case that Sark held out to him, and Sydney placed a smaller brown bag in his other hand. Weighed down with luggage, all three of them headed to a rusty, beige Lincoln Towncar on the edge of the strip. The trunk was gaping open already when they reached it, and they stuffed their things in the back and hopped in.
On the way to Jansen’s apartment, Sydney learned that he was an assassin by trade – “mainly freelance,” but liked to keep tabs on old friends, like McKenas Cole. He didn’t do many jobs anymore, he said, because he was “getting old.” Sydney laughed. The man may have been pushing sixty, but he still looked like he could do some serious damage.
“I only have one guest bedroom, guys. Sorry.” He looked from one to the other. “But don’t worry – there are two beds.” Sydney was deadpan. Sark managed a smirk. Jansen chuckled. “And there’s a TV and a separate bathroom. That you guys are gonna hafta share. Sorry; ain’t no other way.” Sydney nodded and Jansen winked at Sark as the two headed toward their room with their bags.

That night over bourbons, Jansen helped them hash out their plan. Campbell would be playing golf all morning the next day, so they had a good enough sized window to work with. As for infiltrating the mansion itself, first, Campbell had guards – how many, their intel didn’t cover. “Not too many,” offered Jansen. Sark had rolled his eyes and offered Sydney a crooked smile. She couldn’t help but laugh.
After the guards, there was a security system to disable. A small box on the inside of the house controlled the system, so they would have to set it off first before disabling it. But there was a short delay, so as long as they could disable it within one minute of setting it off, they were safe. Then once inside, the map was displayed in a digitally locked frame. They would need their code descrambler to open it. After that, all they had to do was hightail it out of there before they were discovered.
“Easy as pie.” Sydney smiled at them both.
“Hope so,” said Jansen, clearing away the glasses. “I’m gonna turn in, guys. You’re welcome to stay up as late as you like, but I advise you go to bed soon. You have an early start tomorrow.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Sydney joked with a grin, then stopped herself, remembering. Sark looked at her strangely. She said nothing, just looked down at her folded hands, pretending to pick at her fingernails. Finally, she sighed, and headed toward their room. Sark followed.

“I’m not tired.” She sat on the edge of the bed near the door. The room looked like a hotel room, though it was a bit smaller, and decorated with African décor that one would probably never find in a hotel room in America or Europe. There was a window in the wall above the bed to Sydney’s left and a nightstand and lamp between the two beds. The TV sat on a dresser against the wall opposite the nightstand, and a closet lined the wall to Sydney’s right. The door to the bathroom was next to the dresser.
Sark didn’t answer, but found the remote control to the TV and flipped it on. He flopped onto the other bed, and let out a long sigh as he laid back, arms crossed behind his head, resting them on the two pillows that happened to be there. He closed his eyes; he didn’t even look at the TV screen.
Sydney couldn’t help but watch him. She drew her legs in to her body and hugged them, propping herself up against the bedframe. He was just lying there; she could see his chest rising and falling irregularly, trying to find a comfortable rhythm. And his eyes remained closed. They stayed like that, the two of them, for about ten minutes, quiet except for the TV droning wordlessly in the background.
“Are you going to stop boring a hole in my left temple, Julia?”
She almost jumped.
“Well it might help if you talked about whatever was bothering you. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells whenever I’m around you. This has got to stop if we’re going to be a team.” Was this Sydney Bristow talking? She shuddered. No, it was Julia Thorne. Her voice grew quiet. “What is it about your father that makes you hate him so much?”
He ignored her question. “He’s lying.” He stared at the ceiling, his arms still supporting his head. “I think he’s lying.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“But why wouldn’t you put it past him?” She was trying to ease it out of him, but Sydney was peeking through her façade.
“Because he is like that. Anything to make me miserable, make me fail.”
She was quiet. What could she say? He clicked off the TV and turned and lay on his side on the bed, facing her. “He was…” His voice trailed off. Then he started again, almost in a whisper, but still strong, angry. “He was a terrible father, and a worse husband. He… he did things that a father should never do, would never do. He wasn’t a father; he was more like a tyrant.” He paused, looking away from her.
“I remember times…” He clenched his teeth together. “I told my mates at school that I had gotten a black eye getting hit in the eye with a ball playing baseball with my father.” He looked at her again; she could see sadness deep in his eyes. “You think he played baseball with me? No, he played punching bag with me.” Sydney was almost in tears. Could this be the Sark she knew? Surely this was a different man altogether. But she believed him. She could tell by his eyes that he was telling the truth. She was horrified and disgusted. Was it any wonder Sark was able to kill people without remorse? And every time he probably wished it was his father… That man sitting in the cell in Tula. Sydney almost choked on the idea.
“He was worse to my mother. God rest her.” Sydney looked at him, fear in her eyes.
“He didn’t…”
“Kill her? No, not physically. But he killed her soul. In the end, she had to escape, and she brought me with her. I was eleven.”
He turned away from her then, and as he did the lamplight revealed a glistening cheek. Sydney didn’t know what to do. Comfort the wanted terrorist? It sounded ludicrous spelled out that way. But now was not the time to be rational. She walked over to his bed, where he now sat facing the window, staring numbly out at the darkness beyond the glass. She sat down next to him and tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder. His face – the silent tears were drying now – didn’t change, and he didn’t move or react to her touch in any way. But she stayed there, holding silent vigil. He didn’t move, and neither did she. So they just sat there in the silence of the lamplit room, watching the stars that blinked and glimmered in the African night sky.

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Sydney awoke with a start. A familiar nightmare. She was running from the rush of water, but Vaughn was ahead of her. The door closed, and she hadn’t made it. One last look at him standing on the other side of the shatterproof glass, then the flood enveloped her. She shook her head as if that would erase the dream from her memory. That’s when she realized that she wasn’t in her bed. Her head rested on something that felt harder than a pillow. It was… a ribcage. Sark’s. She sat up abruptly, looking down at his sleeping form. An arm stretched out languidly above where she had been lying. He stirred, recognizing the missing warmth of her body. He opened his eyes.
She stood up, not meeting his gaze, grabbed shampoo out of the bag sitting on her unused bed, and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door with a click.

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The Campbell mansion was isolated from the city and surrounded by lush greenery, in addition to a wrought iron fence, upon which Sydney and Sark perched, sweating in the morning heat. The two marauders didn’t have to worry about being spotted in the daylight. Not a soul was in sight. The only evidence of anyone occupying the large house was the sound of the Allegro of Vivaldi’s Spring emanating from its general area. Wearing a white tank top and khaki shorts, Sydney carried a waist pack with the equipment they would need inside it. Sark was wearing a holster around his shoulder, securing a Beretta pistol at his side, just in case. Through her binoculars, Sydney made out the figures of two unarmed guards strolling back and forth on the cement walkways that crisscrossed the verdant lawn. Sark mused.
“Time to find out what’s the truth and what’s not.” She looked at him.
“Ready?” He nodded. They jumped.
Guard Number One spotted them first. He pounced on Sydney before she had the chance to ready herself for combat. She struggled to free herself from the unwelcome burden, as Guard Number Two, hearing the gurgled noises emitting from Sydney’s mouth, came to investigate and was tackled by Sark. Number Two fought back, kicking Sark in the mouth, making him stagger backward. Sydney had managed to free herself from Number One’s viselike grip, and proceeded to high-kick the man in the chin, trying to knock him out. Meanwhile, the strings swelled and the trills echoed throughout the courtyard, mingling with the grunts of Number One, Number Two, Sydney, and Sark alike. In the end, Number One and Number Two lay slumped under a particularly large tree, and Sydney and Sark brushed themselves off, Sark wiping blood from his mouth.
“I always get hurt. No matter what the job is, there has to be some pain involved.” Sydney smiled. “Ah well, I suppose I ought to get used to it.” He offered her back a crooked smile.
Suddenly, Guard Number Three came out of nowhere. He attacked Sark from behind, his arm crooked around Sark’s neck, choking him. Sark flailed his arms and legs, trying to gain freedom, but in vain. Sydney acted fast. She grabbed the Beretta out of Sark’s holster and pointed it at Number Three, looking him directly in the eye.
“Don’t think I won’t,” was all she had to say. Number Three released his hold on Sark and stepped backward, hands in the air. Sark rubbed his neck, making a face. Then he whirled around and hit the man hard across the face with a grunt. Number Three crumpled to the ground, dead to the world. Sark slapped his palms together.
“That ought to do it for today.” He took the Beretta back from Sydney. “Thanks, Jules.”
“Jules?” She gave him an incredulous look.
“You’d prefer Ju-Ju?”
“I’d prefer Julia, thank you very much.” She raised her eyebrows at him – he was trying to hold back an all-out laugh – then pulled the schematics for the surveillance system out of her pack. “OK, I can see where the disabler is located on the inside.” She pointed to the corresponding place on the wall inside the house, which was now about four meters away. “I’m going to go in and disable it, then you can come inside and help me find the map.”
“OK.” He nodded, then added, “Good luck.”
She smirked at him, made sure she knew her destination, then ran inside the house as fast as she could, pulling open the French doors attached to the side of the house and running again to a small white box on the opposite wall. Grabbing her decoder, she quickly hooked it up to the bottom of the box and tapped her feet impatiently, stealing quick glances outside at Sark, standing quietly with his arms folded, waiting, as the device began to decipher the surveillance system code that would allow her to disable it. She checked her watch. Forty seconds… What was taking so long?! Finally, the very last digit blinked onto the box’s tiny screen, and she pressed the disable button. She checked her watch. Fifty-eight seconds. Perfect. She grinned triumphantly. Then, turning, she waved to Sark that it was safe to enter the house. He came inside.
“God, this man is swimming in it.” Sark gaped. The house was richly decorated. The hall they were standing in was decorated in a black and white Modern style, and the living room adjacent to it – where Sark now stared – was done in ornate, almost Oriental, red and gold.
The CD playing from an unknown location in the house moved to the next track: Vivaldi’s Spring: Largo. Sydney turned to peek into a room on the opposite side of the hall. The walls were painted in forest green, and gingery earth tones dominated the room’s adornments. A cherry wood frame hung on the wall above a large fireplace in its center. She approached the frame and stared at its contents. Displayed in the frame was a round piece of what looked like matte leather, and on it were painted various elaborate shapes, drawn in a scientific-looking 3-D, all in different colors – black, red, green, even blue. In the corner of the piece, written in elegant, ornate lettering, she read the word, “Tesserea.” Latin for “Cube.” This was the map they were looking for. Sark came up behind her.
“Is that it?” Sydney turned to him.
“I think so.” She checked the frame. “Look.” She pointed to the digital lock, then took out the decoder once again, attaching it to the lock. There were only three numbers on this device, and the frame was open in a matter of seconds. Sydney pulled the piece of leather out of the frame and was rolling it up when they heard the sound of car wheels on gravel coming from outside. They looked at each other.
“Not as many holes on the green as we thought?” Sark mused. Sydney looked at him.
“I guess that’s our cue.” She stashed the map in her belt, and the two of them scurried out the way they had come, just as they heard the key turning in the front door lock.

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Both rogue agents were out of breath when they reached Jansen’s Lincoln, which they had borrowed for the job, about a block from the mansion. They slid into it and took off down the road. The adrenaline was still coursing through their veins at speeds almost as high as the read on the odometer, and they grinned toothily at one another. Sydney took out the map.
“So, what have we here?” She arched her eyebrows at Sark, taunting him with the rolled piece of leather. He rolled his eyes at her.
“Let me see it.”
“No, you’re driving.” He tried to grab it from her, but the car swerved abruptly, and he was forced to put both hands back on the wheel. She unrolled it in her lap, staring at the designs that made no sense to her. “Lazarey will know what these mean.” She looked at Sark.
He looked back at her, his eyes no longer laughing. The adrenaline’s effect had worn off. He looked tired. The rest of the ride back to Jansen’s house was silent, save for the hum of the Lincoln’s air conditioner and the sound of tires rolling and bumping over the gritty dirt road.
 
The Tula Covenant cell was nearly pitch black. The only light came from a tiny grate high up on one of the walls. There was a table in the center of the chamber, and the old man sat on the single chair in the room, his forearms resting on the wood surface. There were large, dark circles under his eyes, and he was bent over, not meeting his interrogators’ eyes.
Sydney hadn’t been able to convince Sark to stay out. She could tell that something had changed since they had first picked up Lazarey. He wanted to confront his father; he was sick of suffering silently and alone, keeping everything hidden away behind the cold, hard shell he so easily put up to mask his true feelings. She could tell, because she saw it in his eyes. He was not as good at veiling his eyes.
She slapped the map down on the table. Lazarey looked up. He stared into her eyes, his black ones burning holes in her brown ones. She looked away. “We need you to translate this for us.” Lazarey’s gaze turned to the shadowy figure of Sark, standing a few feet farther away, then he looked down at the piece of tawny leather before him.
After a few minutes of silence, he pointed to a figure on the map. “Here.” Sydney and Sark both moved closer to see where he was pointing. “This indicates that the Cube is somewhere in the Fish River Gorge in Namibia.” Sydney squinted her eyes at him, applying her CIA training to his face. He was telling the truth.
“See, here?” His hand moved to a set on jumbled numbers and what looked like complex algebraic equations. “These indicate the exact location using longitude and latitude…” He began mumbling to himself, counting quickly in his head, occasionally using his fingers to help him. He looked up at Sydney. “I need something to write with.” She looked at Sark, who pulled a pen out of his pocket and handed it to her. She gave it to Lazarey, who began writing furiously on the table. After about two minutes, he stopped, triumphant. He circled two numbers and pointed to them each respectively. “Latitude. Longitude.” He eyed Sydney again. She didn’t dignify his stare with a response, and simply pulled out a pad of paper, taking the pen from the old man’s hand, and jotted down the numbers. She turned to Sark, who eyed her. She knew what he was thinking.
“We have what we need. Let’s go.” They were halfway out the door when their captive spoke again, his voice husky with emotion.
“Wait.”
They turned back to look at him, but Lazarey was looking only at Sark, his eyes full of sadness.
“I never meant to hurt you, my boy”
“I don’t believe you.” Sark spat it out.
“I had an obligation to a higher cause. Following Rambaldi was my life, my purpose, my calling. I could not abandon my faith, and that meant making some sacrifices in other areas of my life.” Sark bit his lip, trying to keep the anger from spilling out of him unabated. “But I loved you dearly, Julian. You had to know that.” He made a weak gesture toward his son, his eyes filling up with tears.
“I’m not a cob of corn, so you can stop buttering me up.” Sark finally let it out. “And for the record, no, I never knew it, and I still don’t believe it. You said it yourself; following Rambaldi was your life. I was – my mother was – just something in your way, a hindrance to your ‘calling.’”
“But I am leaving you everything – my entire fortune goes to you. When these… monsters… kill me, which I do not doubt they will, everything – all of it will be yours! You can use it to buy the life you never had… the life I could never give you.” His eyes pleaded with his son. Sydney stood behind Sark, utterly appalled at what she was hearing. But she didn’t show it.
“You think I want your money? Do you think that’s all I ever wanted? Your fortune? My inheritance?” He glanced at the surveillance cameras in the cell. Then he looked back at his father, and went on in a hushed tone dripping with spite. “You’ll never know the extent to which you have made my life a living hell. Everything bad that has ever happened to me – everything – has been because of you, in some direct or indirect way. I hate you.” The last words shot out of his mouth like Teflon-coated bullets. They wounded Lazarey visibly, but Sydney couldn’t help but feel that he deserved it. She put her hand on Sark’s arm. He turned to her, understanding that the time had come to leave.
“Goodbye, Lazarey,” she said quietly. She knew Kendall would instruct her to save the man, possibly even put him in protective custody. But she couldn’t think about that right now.

That night they stayed in a hotel room in Tula. They hadn’t spoken the whole ride there, and the silence continued even after they had settled in. Sydney understood Sark’s disinclination to talk, but she also knew from previous experience that it was better to talk than to hold it in and let it eat at your insides.
“Don’t you hate that?” He looked at her abruptly.
“What?” He was still a little stand-offish.
“Uncomfortable silences.” There was a pause. She chuckled, trying to ease the tension in the room. “Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bulls*** in order to be comfortable?” He caught on. He smiled.
“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”
“That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the f*** up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.”
They shared a look. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then closed it again, looking away.
She realized something then that scared her. She understood him. And even scarier, she could have been him. But fate had decreed that she use her pain, her upbringing, and her skills for good. Fate had handed Sark a wildcard, and he hadn’t had anyone to give him direction. So he fell in with people like her mother, and Sloane, and now the Covenant. She shivered at the idea. Even she was caught up in the tangled web of terrorism. If she hadn’t been programmed when she was so very young, she might have become Julia Thorne. And then everything would have been different.
Sark called Cole to let him know they had to location of the Cube while Sydney flipped through stations on the TV. She stopped on a channel that was airing an I Love Lucy marathon, and almost started crying. She and her mother had watched reruns of the show when she was little. She looked up at Sark, still on the phone. He winked at her. She smiled. Not very different at all, she thought.
That night they had talked about things that had nothing to do with the world they found themselves entangled in now. They talked about ice cream and sailing and books and lasagna. They talked about places they wanted to go and places they had been. They talked about what they had wanted to be when they were small. They talked so much and so eagerly, Sydney forgot to call Kendall. The night ended in stockinged feet on Sark’s bed, under a blanket, watching I Love Lucy in the dark.

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She awoke to see two huge blue eyes staring into hers. He smiled. She smiled back. It wasn’t awkward.
They got up together and looked out the window at the sun, attempting only half-successfully to shine through the rain that poured down on the city, creating wide rivulets that flowed swiftly down their window. He turned to her then, and nothing could have prepared her for what he said next.
“Sydney.” She looked at him sharply.
“Julia.” She looked puzzled. They had gone over this before, hadn’t they?
“No.” His expression was intent. “Sydney.”
She stepped backward, suddenly afraid. “Wh-what are you talking about?”
He sighed. “I know it’s you, Sydney. I’ve known it’s you… this whole time. Since… since you came to get me in LA.”
She felt betrayed; she felt helpless. Fear gripped her. She realized it was no use continuing to put on the act for him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She was still standing away from him, as if he would bite her if she got too close.
“I don’t know exactly. At first it was because I didn’t really know what I was getting into, or who the Covenant was. Then it was just because… well, I wasn’t going to blow your cover. Not after the trouble you went through to be someone else.”
She didn’t have to ask him why he was telling her now. They had connected last night. But now she was compromised, and no connection was going to save her. Her responsibility to Kendall and the CIA had to come before anything else. Especially now.
“I have to go.” She didn’t stop to pack her things, grateful she was still wearing her jeans and sweatshirt from the day before. Sark just watched her; he didn’t try to stop her as she ran out of the room without giving him a last glance.

Outside the hotel, the rained drenched Sydney’s sweatshirt as she stood waiting for a cab to take her somewhere else – anywhere else. She knew of a CIA safehouse in Kaluga, not too far from Tula. A taxi pulled up and she hopped in, giving the driver a destination about a mile from the safehouse. She dialed Kendall.
“Sydney.” He answered briskly.
“Sark knows. He knows I’m me. We have to get the Cube now. Lazarey gave us both the location. I need an extraction team. I’ll spring Lazarey and meet you somewhere.”
“I’ll have a team assembled in an hour. Wait for us at the Kaluga safehouse.”
“Thanks.”
“What we’re here for, Agent Bristow.”
She tapped the cab driver on the back. “Change in plans…”

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Sydney figured they had about a twenty minute head start. Having knocked out the surveillance monitors in the control room at the Covenant holding facility, she had had ample time to rescue Lazarey and commandeer a vehicle before her actions were discovered. Half an hour later, she drove onto a street in Kaluga about a block from the safehouse. She and Lazarey ducked between buildings and jumped from shadow to shadow until they reached the nondescript, short gray building.
They had sat inside in silence for almost half an hour when they heard the helicopter on the roof. Sydney got up and grabbed Lazarey’s hand, pulling him outside with her. A long rope hung from the side of the chopper, and a few men had descended to the ground to meet her. Kendall was there, bedecked in standard issue military fatigues and hat, and carrying a Colt .45. Behind him, Sydney made out the figure of Dixon, dressed and armed with a larger automatic, a huge smile on his face.
“Dixon!”
“Sydney!” She ran to him, gave him a huge hug.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to know you’re alive, and safe.”
“I missed you, too, Dixon.” They grinned at each other.
Kendall was shaking Lazarey’s hand and Dixon and Sydney were playing a quick game of catch up when an all too familiar Ford coupe pulled up to the side of the building. Sydney’s breath caught in her throat, as she saw the blond figure slam the door behind him and march up to them, armed this time with a Glock, pointing it directly at Lazarey.
“Nobody move!” He yelled above the din of the chopper’s propellers. But they already had their weapons trained on him. He looked at Sydney, anguish lining his features. Her face asked him how he could have found them.
“You’re cellphone.” She had her hands up but she realized what he meant without having to pull it off her belt. He had tapped her cellphone. She should have checked it. She should have known, should have realized that he was first and foremost an operative.
Suddenly, a shot rang out. Sark’s gun flew from his hand and he gripped his arm, wincing in pain. He dropped to the ground. Sydney lurched forward. Kendall’s pistol smoked in the windy, rain-drenched air. Sark cast him a malicious look, as Sydney reached him. She bent over him, her face contorted with worry.
“If you’re OK, say something.”
He smirked, taking in her entire face with his glassy gray-blue eyes. “Something.” She smiled wanly, relief washing over her. He was in rare form, all right.
Dixon moved forward, a puzzled and angry expression on his face. Sydney put up her hand.
“No.” She loved Dixon, but she and Sark shared a bond that she never wanted broken now. She moved to pick up the Glock that Sark had dropped, and stood up. She trained the gun on Dixon, fighting back tears. For minutes that seemed like hours, nobody moved. The men who had come to extract her were taken aback by her seemingly treasonous actions. What they didn’t understand, she thought to herself, was that he was her only real ally in this game of thieves and murderers. God knows she had killed men in the past, just as he had. She wasn’t going to let anyone kill him, whether that was the CIA or anyone else.
Kendall made a movement toward her. She retrained the Glock in his direction.
“You touch him, you die.”
“Well, that seems to be the situation.” He glared at her, his brow furrowing in frustration.
Just then, a swarm of unmarked black Cadillacs flooded the area. Everyone was distracted. Sydney saw McKenas Cole step out of one of them, still impeccable in his black suit and tie. Like a Reservoir Dog, Sydney thought. He was holding a handgun, but the other Covenant agents who jumped out of the cars and took positions opposite the CIA crew were armed with larger automatics and rifles. Sydney looked down at Sark, a pained expression on her face.
Sark looked away. “I couldn’t just keep mum. I had a responsibility…” His voice trailed off. Then he turned to look into her eyes again, those cool blue pools of his making her own eyes become like liquid. “I’m sorry.” His voice was husky, his expression genuine.
Then the armed men came and poked her with their weapons. She stood up slowly, but as she did, she heard a shout from Kendall. All of a sudden, the air was thick with bullets flying every which way around her. She was pulled toward the throng of Cadillacs, ducking her head as best she could to avoid being hit. She tried to look back at Sark, but then the butt of a gun smashed into her forehead, and the world went black.

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The first thing she was aware of was her head. She moaned. It hurt. A lot. She opened her eyes slowly, at once grateful that it was so dark. Her eyes slowly refocused and she realized that she was sitting up against the gritty wall of a small chamber, and Lazarey was sitting opposite her, looking at her. She groaned, leaning her head back against the wall.
“The Covenant is going to recover the Cube, just as I had feared.” There was not a small amount of condemnation in his tone. She glared at him in the darkness.
“I did everything I could do. You know that.” She was angry. None of this would have happened if not for Lazarey and his stupid Cube… Then she realized with a sigh that the Covenant had broached the subject of the artifact, and that Lazarey, like she, had been caught in the crossfire.
“I don’t think you understand the true importance of the Cube, Miss Thorne.” He was looking intently at her. “If you are the woman in the prophecy, which I believe you are, the exposure of the Cube has the potential to be disastrous to your well-being.”
She didn’t fully believe him, and she couldn’t see his face to tell if he was lying or not, but she wanted to hear what he had to say. Rambaldi’s mysterious creations had in the past proved more relevant to real life and current events than mere toys. Who knew the true purpose of the Cube? “Go on.”
“According to various Rambaldi documents that we – the Followers of Rambaldi – have managed to decipher, the Cube contains DNA.” There was a pause. “Rambaldi’s DNA.”
Sydney snorted. Right, she thought. Rambaldi’s DNA. The man was, what, over 300 years in the grave? She sighed. Well, she had seen some crazy things before…
“Just listen to me. The Covenant holds a radical belief, the belief that like the Christian Jesus, Rambaldi would come again into this world by way of a child. A child borne by the Chosen One. You.”
Sydney looked at him in horror.
“My colleagues, the Followers of Rambaldi with whom I associate, are of the belief that the Chosen One is meant for something much different… Something far greater in significance and magnitude. And we believe that Rambaldi’s DNA must be saved, preserved for a purpose yet to be discovered. That is why I have implored you to hide the Cube from everybody – even the CIA. You yourself are in grave danger if it falls in anyone’s hands.”
Sydney did not yet fully believe Rambaldi’s prophecies when it came to herself. But she was loath to contradict Lazarey, because she had seen her life torn apart by events and people Rambaldi had foreseen. She willed herself up on her haunches. “We have to get out of here.”
Lazarey sat motionless, resigned, while she stumbled around the dank room, feeling the walls for any sign of hollowness or cracks big enough to open. Nothing. She checked the steel door. Rusty with age, it seemed their best bet, but it was no use. There would be no leaving this place. Then she saw the grate.
Just like in Lazarey’s old cell, on the left wall of this room was a grate, high up near the ceiling, which led outside. She could tell because bits of sunlight streamed in through its chinks. It was big enough for her to crawl through, though barely. She checked the room for surveillance cameras, and seeing none, made a decision.
“I need to stand on your back.” She addressed Lazarey. He eyed her suspiciously at first, then acquiesced, kneeling on all fours. She climbed on top of him. On her tiptoes, she could reach the grate. She began prying it off, digging her fingernails into the screws that held it in place. Her fingers bled and she could hear Lazarey groaning under her weight, but in a matter of minutes, she had pried it loose. Now for the problem of getting out…
Since she was taller, Sydney decided to life Lazarey out first, on her shoulders, and have him pull her up afterward. She wasn’t sure how high they were off the ground, but this was their only chance, so she didn’t dwell on that.
Eventually, they both made it through the hole in the wall, the ground being only as far down as the floor of their cell had been. But they still had the guards to contend with. They crouched against the outside wall of the sand-colored cement building and waited. Sydney watched one guard pace up and down the perimeter just across from where they crouched. She peeked around the wall. The next guard was meters away. If they were quick, they could do this. She told Lazarey to follow her closely. He nodded.
She lunged, snapping the guard’s neck. He fell to the ground. She grabbed a pistol from his boot and fled into the brush beyond, looking backward to make sure Lazarey was behind her. Almost thirty seconds went by before she heard a shout, and the thunder of boots running toward where the fallen guard lay. But by then, she and Lazarey were well out of sight.
 
“Before you say anything, let me talk. I know what I did at the safehouse was pretty damn stupid, but I cannot go back and erase what happened. Lazarey and I are safe now. We managed to escape the Covenant detention facility where we were being held. I’m ready to get that Cube for you, Kendall, if you still want me to do it.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. She wasn’t sure if he was thinking, or if he was ignoring her, or if he was considering bringing her in to be tried for treason.
“Dixon got shot, you know. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
The tears flowed down her face in silent grief. “I-I’m sorry. Is he going to be alright?”
“Yes.”
The silence enveloped her. She wanted to dash the phone against the rock she was standing next to, and disappear somewhere where she couldn’t touch anyone and no one could touch her. Finally, he spoke again.
“Go get it. Bring it to an extraction point in Kalahari, Namibia. I’ll phone you the details later.” He hung up. She breathed shakily for a moment, then looked up at Lazarey, who was sitting beside her. “We’re on.”

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The bent man was bleeding profusely from his wrist, even through the piece of t-shirt Sydney had managed to wrap as tightly as she could around the raw area. But Lazarey was beaming, his wizened face taut and glowing in the scorching African sun. Sydney held the sought after masterpiece in her hand, the metal still cool for having been hidden in such a dark place for so many years. It was so small, so ugly, so lacking in the usual characteristics of a “treasure,” she thought. She felt an urge to hurl it through the air as far as she could, let it sink into the deep desert sand and be lost to civilization forever, but she knew she couldn’t.
They had needed twelve keys to open the vault within the cave where the Cube had been hidden for so long. Lazarey and his fellow Followers had managed to collect them all in the past years, but did not know the Cube’s location, so were unable to uncover it. But the vault, too far aged with the passage of time, had stuck, the gears grinding too close to Lazarey’s hand, which held in place the last key. At that moment, the cave had begun to collapse around them, probably a result of their disturbance of its equilibrium after so long being untouched. A quick decision later, Lazarey’s hand had been amputated, and they were running as fast as they could toward the cave’s fast-closing mouth.
Now, back in the blinding sunlight of the saffron desert – even the sky burned yellow, reflecting the sand – both figures trudged wearily to their awaiting Jeep.
Funny how sometimes the very thing you are thinking about often materializes before your very eyes, she would think later. Before they could return to the relative safety of their vehicle, there he was. His eyes were so bright and cool, she hardly noticed the machine gun hanging under his left arm, the other tied up in a sling.
“I think you know what I’m here for.” He pursed his lips together, his face a mask of indifference. “The Cube, if you please.”
“Sark, don’t do this.” Her weary eyes pleaded with him. The tears that had refused to come in the earlier moments of agony and frustration threatened to pour down now.
“You more than anyone know that I have no choice.” His eyes bored into hers. “This is my occupation. This is where my loyalties lie, even if I had no say in their placement. Do you think this is who I am? I am a professional thief. I don’t run around killing people I don’t have to. I don’t make my life’s work making other people miserable.” He was looking intently at her; she could see the sadness his face tried to mask. “I am the property of the Covenant, and as such, I carry out the missions they set forth for me to complete.”
Lazarey stepped forward. He was getting weak with loss of blood, but his eyes were still fully of energy. He looked at his son. “They are evil, Julian.”
“Hah! And who are you to tell me who is evil and who is good? Or how to run my life? You were never a father to me!” Sark was enraged now. “You threw me away! Just like my mother, you forgot I even existed. You chose to pursue your ‘religion’ instead. What a waste.” He spit on the sand.
“I told you before, I had a duty—“
“You abused me, you sick f***. And my mother…” He looked away, furious, unable to look at Lazarey any more.
The bleeding man was silent. He could say nothing, Sydney knew, because it was true. She decided to take charge of the situation.
“Sark, you have the power to outwit the Covenant. I’m going to put this where no one can find it – not even myself. I’m going to… I’m going to make sure no one ever gets their hands on it. I know you don’t really want to help them. You don’t want them to get this. They’re evil people, Julian…” He looked at her. “You’re not like them.”
Tears were streaming down his face in silence. “You and I were never given choices, Sydney. You and I—“
He stepped so close to her, she could feel his breath on her face. He used his free hand to pull her face to his and pressed his mouth to her lips in a warm kiss. Time stopped.
Then Sydney heard the shot. He pulled away, looking at her strangely. She was sobbing. He put his hand to his side, then pulled it away.
It was red with blood.
Her heart shattered. “I’m so sorry. Julian, oh my God. I’m sorry. I had to. I couldn’t—“ She wept it. She whispered it. He just looked at her in amazement, then fell with a thump in the sand.
Lazarey snapped her back to reality. They climbed into the Jeep. She kept looking back down at her bloodied ally of the previous days, unable to stop the tears from flowing. “Oh Julian.” Her hand went to her mouth. Lazarey had to bodily pull her into the vehicle with his good hand.
She forced herself to stop crying and called Kendall. She had the Cube. Sark was here. He needed immediate medical attention. Kendall told her that there were operatives in Namibia standing by who would pick up the blond she had gotten to know so well over the past weeks. She ended the call. His voice, shaking a bit, floated through the air to her ears.
“Sydney.” Pause. “I forgive you.” He choked. Her sobbing started again in earnest. “Godspeed.” Then she could no longer take it, and slammed on the accelerator, sending the Jeep hurtling into the dusty horizon.

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Little cloud droplets were scattered on the small oval window. The magazine she was holding fell into her lap, and she gazed out at the blue expanse beyond the reinforced glass. The flight attendant asked her if she wanted a drink. She smiled and shook her head, a short red hair flipping across her face. She adjusted her black thick-rimmed glasses and laid her head back on the seat. She tried to think about what it was going to be like, not knowing anything about the last two years. But she couldn’t fathom it, so she stopped trying and her mind wandered to the events of the past day.
Instead of traveling to the extraction point in Kalahari, she and Lazarey had gone to a local emergency room to get his arm disinfected and sewn up. They had stayed in a motel overnight and traveled first thing in the morning to Lazarey’s upscale vacation home on the Channel Islands. This is where they would stage his death. They were setting up the area to make it look as real as possible. Sydney was wearing a long black wig so that she would be unrecognizable. The camera was being positioned just so.
“I hope someday you and Sark are able to come to terms with the past, Lazarey. The tension between you… it’s terrible. I’ve seen the same kind of thing in my own—“
“I will never be able to understand or reconcile with my son if he continues down the path he has decided to take.” He was brusque and dismissive. She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Perhaps he would never have ended up on this ‘path’ if his childhood had been different.” Lazarey still ignored her. “Maybe he would never have gotten mixed up with the Covenant and none of this would ever have happened.” She stopped herself, suddenly thinking about what she had just said. Lazarey looked at her then. But she couldn’t read his expression. Guilt? Confusion? She could not tell.

It ended with a bang. He lay on the ground, looking very dead. She held up the pistol, still smoking, and with a puff of air from her lipsticked mouth, the smoke floated away into the island air.

So now, Julia Thorne was on her way to Prague to become Sydney Bristow once again, except without the last two years of her life. She had sent a disc to Kendall, explaining what she was doing and why she had to do it. Was she scared? Sure. But the real consequences of her actions, only time would tell.
She thought about Sark a lot. She realized their bond would be lost forever, thrown into oblivion along with Julia, Cole, Jansen, and even Lazarey.
But he would be the one she’d miss most of all.

Fin.
 
Great job!

My favorite part had to be the corn on the cob line!! "so don't try and butter me up" :lol:

Anyway - nice job with the OCs and bringing Cole into the story.

I liked that she broke Sark out of jail and that he knew it was her the whole time....and he forgave her for hurting him...how generous!

Again, good job!
 
wow great job, really good.
Loved it. this would have been way better then Alias itself.
well maybe JJ will get ideas if he reads fics like these.
 
Sabs and Aims -- thanks so much! :smiley: It's good to know I'm not totally off when it comes to writing fanfic...

I was thinking about it last night and I dunno if I wrote the characters accurately enough -- spec. Sydney, I can never GET her. But thanks for commenting, and for the encouragement! :D Maybe I won't abandon fic writing forever after all... :lol:

Les
 
Great job!!! my fav part:

That’s when she realized that she wasn’t in her bed. Her head rested on something that felt harder than a pillow. It was… a ribcage. Sark’s. She sat up abruptly, looking down at his sleeping form. An arm stretched out languidly above where she had been lying. He stirred, recognizing the missing warmth of her body. He opened his eyes.
She stood up, not meeting his gaze, grabbed shampoo out of the bag sitting on her unused bed, and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door with a click.

:D

Lissa
 
Hey there... Great job on your fanfic! :D My favorite line, by far:

But he would be the one she’d miss most of all.

So bittersweet and...sweet.

And then, this line:

“Sydney.” Pause. “I forgive you.” He choked. Her sobbing started again in earnest. “Godspeed.” Then she could no longer take it, and slammed on the accelerator, sending the Jeep hurtling into the dusty horizon.

Awww... He forgave her. But still :depressed:

Excellent job, hon! I liked your OCs and the fact that you brought Lazarey into the mix. Intriguing.

Again, great job. (y) (y) Good luck with the contest!
 
Thanks soooo much Sweetness, Lissa, and Dita!!! You guys are so nice. :D I am in love with the idea that you guys have fave parts, even! ^_^ So cool! :D

Les
 
But he would be the one she’d miss most of all.

That is hands down my favorite line. I love it.

That was a great story! I love that you had Sid and Sark devolp a connection there. I think that it made the story fantastic. You did a really good job!

:smiley: I really enjoyed reading it!
 
That was so great..I loved how he told her about what his father did to him and his mother..Love how they connected.

~Rach~
 
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