TITLE: Departure
AUTHOR: Em Meredith (emily at healthyinterest dot net)
SUMMARY: "There is so much that I can't do." Sydney travels to Kazakhstan. Seventh in the Matrilineal series; follows Macha's "Indigo."
SPOILERS: General season 2.
DISCLAIMER: Alias and its characters belong to JJ Abrams, Touchstone, and ABC. I don't own them, I'm just borrowing them. The title and summary are copyright Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe.
DISTRIBUTION: Can be found on our Matrilineal page (healthyinterest.net). Cover Me is welcome to it.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks, as always, to Macha, who helps me be a better writer, both with her editing and her encouraging. Thanks to kate for the haikus and helping with the research, to our fabulous readers for all of their encouraging comments, and to my Boys from Athens, because without "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," this fic would be nowhere. Also, everything I learned about Kazakhstan is thanks to Sam Seaborn, kate, and Yahoo!Travel.
Departure
By Em Meredith
Before her daughter was born, Sydney worried that she might pass her own worst traits on to Jane. That, plus Jane's Vaughn and Derevko genes gave Sydney nightmares of having a toddler who was the best liar in the world. As soon as the nurse put Jane in Sydney's arms, however, she saw her daughter's dimples and tiny furrowed brow and knew that Jane would be the best of all of them.
Nearly seven months later, Sydney's not quite as idealistic as she was in that initial postpartum haze. For one thing, she's seen enough evidence of Jane's tiny temper already to make her wonder if Jane's going to be as stubborn as Jack. But Sydney has loved watching Jane grow into her fascinating personality, and she still stands by her prediction.
For the most part, Jane has been an easy baby. She's been moved around enough in her short life that she's not frightened by new situations -- instead she adapts to them with an ease that makes her mother proud.
Jane travels well, requiring minimal attention from Sydney while she's driving. Jane entertains herself by watching other cars out the window and by babbling happily to herself. Sydney figures that in a few years their car trips will be filled with sing-alongs -- a thought that both amuses and frightens her. She hopes, though, that they'll be driving to Disneyland and not to the next small town in Idaho.
In six months, Sydney and Jane have traveled through nineteen of the fifty states. Jane's ridden in cars, buses, and trains. Until now, though, Sydney hasn't been willing to risk the security and surveillance at an airport, and so Jane's never been on a plane.
Unfortunately, it seems that this is the one mode of transportation that Jane's decided she hates. She's foregone her usual glare in favor of fussing. Even that, it seems, isn't enough, as she's now screaming her little head off.
Sydney's tried everything that the baby books suggest, but twenty hours into the twenty-two hour flight to Kazakhstan, Jane has decided that she's fed up with the plane ride and is letting her mother (and the rest of the passengers) know exactly how angry she is.
Sydney hates seeing Jane so upset. She hates the helpless feeling she gets because can't make Jane feel better by feeding her or changing her -- there's nothing she can do to fix this until the plane lands. She hates that Jane doesn't like planes. She hates that she can't make the world perfect for Jane and she hates that it's really Sloane who's responsible for Jane being on a plane at all.
As she paces the narrow aisle, patting Jane's back and whispering soothing sounds in her daughter's ear, Sydney decides that she'll be damned if she spends the rest of her life like this. She plots Sloane's destruction, going over it again and again in her mind until she can visualize every detail of the plan. She hums lullabies while cataloguing possible escape routes from the hotel Sloane's staying at, mentally reviewing the floor plan. She closes her eyes and pictures the blurry blueprint her father faxed to her in San Diego, converting it to a three-dimensional model in her mind. She feels the plane bank to the left, and she begins to plot his imprisonment. Considering the glares Sydney's getting from her fellow passengers, not to mention the blossoming headache, Sydney decides that they should make him fly back to the US with a screaming baby on his plane.
After Jane spends an hour disturbing the sleep of her fellow passengers, she starts to quiet, slowly drifting into sleep until her screeching is replaced first with whimpering and then finally with only an occasional hiccup.
Sydney tries to sleep for the final hour of the flight, worried that exhaustion will make her sloppy, but every time she closes her eyes her mind is filled with images of all the ways that things could go wrong, all of the mistakes that she could make. She considers asking the flight attendant for some whisky, but decides that the last thing she needs right now is to dull her senses. She gives up on sleep completely as the plane begins its final descent into Almaty. She's learned more about conquering fatigue as a mother than she ever did as a spy.
When the plane lands at last, Sydney straps Jane to her chest and gathers her diaper bag and carry-on. Jane's a bit too large and a little too wiggly for the Snuggli, but Sydney can't risk a stroller in case they need to run.
As soon as she's off the plane, Sydney scans the terminal for security cameras, letting her dirty blonde hair fall forward to obscure her features. She counts just three cameras and thanks God that post-Soviet Union security is so lax. Jane's more impressed by the hair dangling within reach, yanking on it and laughing in delight while her mother navigates the airport crowds.
Sydney hails a taxi and directs the driver to take a scenic route so that she can check for tails. As they drive past the Svyato-Voznesensky Cathedral, she pulls out her compact. While she powders her nose and fixes her hair, she uses the mirror to check for tails. She checks into the Otrar Hotel as Liesl Krause and settles in to wait for her father.
She's changing Jane's diaper with her back to the door when she hears her father's familiar quiet knock. He's precisely on time, of course, and lets himself in. Sydney hears a second set of footsteps and reacts instantly, whipping around with her gun drawn.
"Whoa!" Weiss cries, backing up slowly and putting his hands in the air. "It's nice to see you haven't lost your touch."
Sydney tilts the muzzle up and re-engages the safety, blowing out a frustrated breath as she lays the gun on the dresser. "Dad, what's he doing here?"
Jack pulls his attention from away from Jane, who has taken off a small pink sock and is gleefully waving it in the air, with a suppressed smile.
"We need an ally."
"Dad, I thought I made myself *very* clear that I didn't want the CIA involved!"
"Sydney, relax. We need Agent Weiss--"
"'We?' *You* made this decision without me and you expect me to just--"
"You were on a *plane,*" Jack interrupted loudly. "There have been some developments --"
"Uh, guys?" interrupts Weiss.
Sydney hears the apprehension in his tone and stops shouting long enough to look at him.
Weiss nods to indicate the bed, where Jane's reacting to the sound of raised voices. Her sock lies next to her, forgotten, and her green eyes are filling with tears. Her chin is starting to quiver and she's about three seconds from wailing when Sydney gathers her up and holds her close, murmuring comforting things to her while Jane sniffles sadly.
"Wow," Weiss says, sounding relieved. "That was close."
Sydney smiles at that and starts rocking Jane back and forth. When she finally speaks, she makes sure her voice is softer, but she can't quite keep the frustration out of it.
"So the CIA still doesn't know where I am?"
"No," Weiss assures her. "We'll keep them out of this until we bring Sloane down."
"Okay," Sydney relents.
"'Okay'?" he teases. "I don't get any more enthusiasm than that?" Weiss adopts a long-suffering look. "I've promised to keep your secrets, I've been threatened with a gun-- I deserve at least a hug."
He sounds almost like the Weiss she remembers, but there's an undercurrent to his jokes that he can't quite hide. Sydney knows he has questions for her, but this isn't the time or place. As a peace offering, she walks over to him and nudges Jane. "Sweetie? Give Eric a hug."
"Uncle Eric."
"No," she laughs.
Jane peers shyly at Weiss, who is holding his hands out gamely, despite the look of trepidation he can't quite conceal. But instead of going into his arms, she turns and burrows her head into her mother's shoulder, gripping Sydney's shirt tightly.
"Ouch," Weiss announces. "Usually it takes a little longer before they shoot me down."
"I'm sure you've noticed, Agent Weiss, that Jane is very advanced," Jack offers snidely, but when he speaks again he is looking at Sydney and his voice is surprisingly gentle. "But we need to get started. Sydney, there have been some new developments."
She jerks her head up and looks at her father, concerned by the hesitancy she hears in his voice.
"What is it?"
"It's Agent Vaughn," Jack sighs. "He's missing."
"Missing? What do you--"
"He's missing," Jack repeats. "And we believe he may be working with your mother."
------------
Sydney's not sure what Vaughn's disappearance means, other than they need to revise their plan. She's sure his apparent choice to team up with the woman who killed his father doesn't bode well for his state of mind, but she can't think about that now. Now she has to concentrate on Sloane; she'll figure the rest out later.
While Jack stays back at his hotel, ostensibly manning communications, but also keeping an eye on Jane, Sydney will go in first to find Sloane. They plan for her to take him down and bring him in, but if she doesn't succeed, Weiss has assembled a team of local CIA agents, and they will have the perimeter surrounded.
Sydney makes the last adjustments to her long black wig. She tries not to think about what will happen if she doesn't come back. She's no longer just an agent taking her life into her hands on every mission-- now she has a daughter depending on her to come home. With Vaughn missing, Jane might only have Jack to raise her, and while he'd keep her safe, Sydney doesn't want her to grow up feeling unloved or neglected. Sydney can't dwell on that, though, and so she plants a kiss on Jane's small nose and concentrates on the mundane details, reminding Jack about the bottles one last time before she and Weiss head out.
As the door closes, she hears Jack call out softly, telling her to be careful, and she thinks that Jane could do worse than Jack Bristow as her guardian.
Weiss drives her down to Zheltoksan Street, but pulls over three blocks from the Regent Almaty Hotel. He hands her a comm link. "You'll be able to hear the team, but only Jack and I will be able to hear you."
Sydney nods and starts to get out of the car, but Weiss' hand on her shoulder stops her. When she turns to look at him, she's surprised to see the empathy in his expression.
"He must be desperate."
She swallows hard and nods. "I don't blame him. I just wish he'd waited. Just 24 more hours and..." She ducks her head so that she doesn't have to meet Weiss's eyes. "Well, it's probably pointless to talk about what either of us *should* have done."
She's glad that Weiss doesn't agree with her -- out loud, anyway -- but she can't quite bring herself to ask him about Vaughn, about all the things that she can't find out from her father. So she smiles and gets out of the car. She's adjusted to walking like a soccer mom while she's been in hiding, but she feels herself slipping back into the easy, self-assured strides she'd used as an agent, stalking confidently toward Sloane's hotel.
Sydney enters the hotel through the front lobby, but quickly slips behind one of the doors marked for employees. She locates the security room easily and tags the guards with tranquilizer darts before they can hit their panic alarms. Two minutes later she's looped the security system's feed of the hallway outside Sloane's suite and is headed up the thirty flights of stairs. After creeping around the corner on the thirtieth floor, she takes one guard out with her tranq gun. The second guard is more of a challenge, and she takes a fierce elbow to the jaw before she can kick his legs out from under him and bring the butt of her gun down on his head.
Sydney pulls a small electronic device out of her pocket and tries desperately to catch her breath while it deactivates the card-key lock. She wonders if she's winded because of her nerves, of if she's just *that* out of shape. The green light flashes and she inhales one slow breath before she cracks open the door.
Gun drawn, Sydney creeps into the apartment, straining to hear the rustle of fabric or movement. The penthouse is large and opulent, just to Sloane's liking.
She rounds the corner and the familiar scent of his cologne hits her, triggering a thousand memories of Sloane. She grits her teeth and presses on, clearing the large living room and moving along the wall towards the three doors.
The first is a large bathroom with an Italian marble bathtub. Sydney sees his razor and a bottle of that infernal cologne, but no toothbrush. Her hope starts to fade. It's too quiet in the penthouse.
Still, she presses on. The second room is the master bedroom and the bedclothes are rumpled, but the closet is empty. There are no carefully pressed suits hanging there, waiting to be worn, no luggage pushed into the corner.
With a sinking heart, she creeps into the last room, the study. There's a poorly folded newspaper lying on the coffee table and an Ethernet cable draped across the desk, but there's no laptop.
Sloane was definitely here at some point. He was here and now he's gone and she takes her anger out on the wall, punching a hole the drywall. She takes a deep breath and activates her comm link. "He's gone."
"Are you sure?" Jack demands.
"I'm sure," Sydney answers grimly. "And it doesn't look like he's coming back," she says. "We missed our chance."
------------
Back at the Otrar, Sydney sits in the corner rocking Jane to sleep and trying her level best to ignore the argument between Jack and Weiss. They're both bitterly disappointed -- though Sydney thinks she probably has the market cornered on that -- and Jack is threatening to use some of his unofficial contacts. Weiss sounds a lot like Vaughn when he says the CIA operates by certain principles, none of which include working with terrorists.
"We've worked with terrorists before." Jack answers, each word enunciated clearly in his exasperation. "Espionage necessarily involves deals with unsavory people."
"Well, yeah, but in this day and age Washington's going to be a *little* more hesitant about giving you approval."
"I'd think that *especially* in this day and age, our line of work requires getting your hands dirty. Our informants aren't mid-level government workers looking for cash to finance their summer homes, they're disillusioned ideologues who need the money to get out of incredibly dangerous situations, in return for which they'll alert *us* before someone blows up the Golden Gate Bridge."
"And sure, if we were trying to stop terrorism on American soil, they'd agree with you, but the government's not going to authorize that kind of activity in your vendetta against Arvin Sloane."
The mention of Sloane's name draws Sydney's attention and she looks over at them reflexively. Weiss looks as if he regrets his last remark, especially since Jack's giving Weiss his best icy glare.
"Agent Weiss," Jack says, his words clipped, "may I remind you that I'm in charge here? And if this is the only way to keep my family safe, then I'm damn well going to do it, whether or not some bureaucrat in Washington agrees with my decision!"
"Dad," interrupts Sydney softly. "We're not going to do that. I spent eight years working for SD-6-- cooperating with them when they were working *against* our government. I can't go back. I can't do that again."
"This may be our best chance to get Sloane. His trail is fresh, we can--"
"No."
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life running?" Jack asks, frustrated.
"No."
"Then this is our--"
"No," she repeats. "I don't want to run, but right now, it's our best option. Next time we need a better plan and better intell. But for now, you're going to fly back to LA, and Jane and I are going to take a flight with a lot of connections so that she doesn't permanently deafen me."
"This may be a stupid question," Weiss says, "but why are we going back to LA?"
"For Vaughn. We need to find him and keep him from doing something stupid -- that's more important than looking for Sloane right now. Someone-- " Sydney clears her throat. "Someone needs to take care of Jane. She can't lose us both because we were working at cross-purposes."
"Sydney--"
"No, Dad. I need to find him."
------------
Feedback merrily received at emily at healthyinterest dotnet.
Stay tuned to our webpage (healthyinterest.net) for Macha's sequel.
AUTHOR: Em Meredith (emily at healthyinterest dot net)
SUMMARY: "There is so much that I can't do." Sydney travels to Kazakhstan. Seventh in the Matrilineal series; follows Macha's "Indigo."
SPOILERS: General season 2.
DISCLAIMER: Alias and its characters belong to JJ Abrams, Touchstone, and ABC. I don't own them, I'm just borrowing them. The title and summary are copyright Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe.
DISTRIBUTION: Can be found on our Matrilineal page (healthyinterest.net). Cover Me is welcome to it.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks, as always, to Macha, who helps me be a better writer, both with her editing and her encouraging. Thanks to kate for the haikus and helping with the research, to our fabulous readers for all of their encouraging comments, and to my Boys from Athens, because without "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," this fic would be nowhere. Also, everything I learned about Kazakhstan is thanks to Sam Seaborn, kate, and Yahoo!Travel.
Departure
By Em Meredith
Before her daughter was born, Sydney worried that she might pass her own worst traits on to Jane. That, plus Jane's Vaughn and Derevko genes gave Sydney nightmares of having a toddler who was the best liar in the world. As soon as the nurse put Jane in Sydney's arms, however, she saw her daughter's dimples and tiny furrowed brow and knew that Jane would be the best of all of them.
Nearly seven months later, Sydney's not quite as idealistic as she was in that initial postpartum haze. For one thing, she's seen enough evidence of Jane's tiny temper already to make her wonder if Jane's going to be as stubborn as Jack. But Sydney has loved watching Jane grow into her fascinating personality, and she still stands by her prediction.
For the most part, Jane has been an easy baby. She's been moved around enough in her short life that she's not frightened by new situations -- instead she adapts to them with an ease that makes her mother proud.
Jane travels well, requiring minimal attention from Sydney while she's driving. Jane entertains herself by watching other cars out the window and by babbling happily to herself. Sydney figures that in a few years their car trips will be filled with sing-alongs -- a thought that both amuses and frightens her. She hopes, though, that they'll be driving to Disneyland and not to the next small town in Idaho.
In six months, Sydney and Jane have traveled through nineteen of the fifty states. Jane's ridden in cars, buses, and trains. Until now, though, Sydney hasn't been willing to risk the security and surveillance at an airport, and so Jane's never been on a plane.
Unfortunately, it seems that this is the one mode of transportation that Jane's decided she hates. She's foregone her usual glare in favor of fussing. Even that, it seems, isn't enough, as she's now screaming her little head off.
Sydney's tried everything that the baby books suggest, but twenty hours into the twenty-two hour flight to Kazakhstan, Jane has decided that she's fed up with the plane ride and is letting her mother (and the rest of the passengers) know exactly how angry she is.
Sydney hates seeing Jane so upset. She hates the helpless feeling she gets because can't make Jane feel better by feeding her or changing her -- there's nothing she can do to fix this until the plane lands. She hates that Jane doesn't like planes. She hates that she can't make the world perfect for Jane and she hates that it's really Sloane who's responsible for Jane being on a plane at all.
As she paces the narrow aisle, patting Jane's back and whispering soothing sounds in her daughter's ear, Sydney decides that she'll be damned if she spends the rest of her life like this. She plots Sloane's destruction, going over it again and again in her mind until she can visualize every detail of the plan. She hums lullabies while cataloguing possible escape routes from the hotel Sloane's staying at, mentally reviewing the floor plan. She closes her eyes and pictures the blurry blueprint her father faxed to her in San Diego, converting it to a three-dimensional model in her mind. She feels the plane bank to the left, and she begins to plot his imprisonment. Considering the glares Sydney's getting from her fellow passengers, not to mention the blossoming headache, Sydney decides that they should make him fly back to the US with a screaming baby on his plane.
After Jane spends an hour disturbing the sleep of her fellow passengers, she starts to quiet, slowly drifting into sleep until her screeching is replaced first with whimpering and then finally with only an occasional hiccup.
Sydney tries to sleep for the final hour of the flight, worried that exhaustion will make her sloppy, but every time she closes her eyes her mind is filled with images of all the ways that things could go wrong, all of the mistakes that she could make. She considers asking the flight attendant for some whisky, but decides that the last thing she needs right now is to dull her senses. She gives up on sleep completely as the plane begins its final descent into Almaty. She's learned more about conquering fatigue as a mother than she ever did as a spy.
When the plane lands at last, Sydney straps Jane to her chest and gathers her diaper bag and carry-on. Jane's a bit too large and a little too wiggly for the Snuggli, but Sydney can't risk a stroller in case they need to run.
As soon as she's off the plane, Sydney scans the terminal for security cameras, letting her dirty blonde hair fall forward to obscure her features. She counts just three cameras and thanks God that post-Soviet Union security is so lax. Jane's more impressed by the hair dangling within reach, yanking on it and laughing in delight while her mother navigates the airport crowds.
Sydney hails a taxi and directs the driver to take a scenic route so that she can check for tails. As they drive past the Svyato-Voznesensky Cathedral, she pulls out her compact. While she powders her nose and fixes her hair, she uses the mirror to check for tails. She checks into the Otrar Hotel as Liesl Krause and settles in to wait for her father.
She's changing Jane's diaper with her back to the door when she hears her father's familiar quiet knock. He's precisely on time, of course, and lets himself in. Sydney hears a second set of footsteps and reacts instantly, whipping around with her gun drawn.
"Whoa!" Weiss cries, backing up slowly and putting his hands in the air. "It's nice to see you haven't lost your touch."
Sydney tilts the muzzle up and re-engages the safety, blowing out a frustrated breath as she lays the gun on the dresser. "Dad, what's he doing here?"
Jack pulls his attention from away from Jane, who has taken off a small pink sock and is gleefully waving it in the air, with a suppressed smile.
"We need an ally."
"Dad, I thought I made myself *very* clear that I didn't want the CIA involved!"
"Sydney, relax. We need Agent Weiss--"
"'We?' *You* made this decision without me and you expect me to just--"
"You were on a *plane,*" Jack interrupted loudly. "There have been some developments --"
"Uh, guys?" interrupts Weiss.
Sydney hears the apprehension in his tone and stops shouting long enough to look at him.
Weiss nods to indicate the bed, where Jane's reacting to the sound of raised voices. Her sock lies next to her, forgotten, and her green eyes are filling with tears. Her chin is starting to quiver and she's about three seconds from wailing when Sydney gathers her up and holds her close, murmuring comforting things to her while Jane sniffles sadly.
"Wow," Weiss says, sounding relieved. "That was close."
Sydney smiles at that and starts rocking Jane back and forth. When she finally speaks, she makes sure her voice is softer, but she can't quite keep the frustration out of it.
"So the CIA still doesn't know where I am?"
"No," Weiss assures her. "We'll keep them out of this until we bring Sloane down."
"Okay," Sydney relents.
"'Okay'?" he teases. "I don't get any more enthusiasm than that?" Weiss adopts a long-suffering look. "I've promised to keep your secrets, I've been threatened with a gun-- I deserve at least a hug."
He sounds almost like the Weiss she remembers, but there's an undercurrent to his jokes that he can't quite hide. Sydney knows he has questions for her, but this isn't the time or place. As a peace offering, she walks over to him and nudges Jane. "Sweetie? Give Eric a hug."
"Uncle Eric."
"No," she laughs.
Jane peers shyly at Weiss, who is holding his hands out gamely, despite the look of trepidation he can't quite conceal. But instead of going into his arms, she turns and burrows her head into her mother's shoulder, gripping Sydney's shirt tightly.
"Ouch," Weiss announces. "Usually it takes a little longer before they shoot me down."
"I'm sure you've noticed, Agent Weiss, that Jane is very advanced," Jack offers snidely, but when he speaks again he is looking at Sydney and his voice is surprisingly gentle. "But we need to get started. Sydney, there have been some new developments."
She jerks her head up and looks at her father, concerned by the hesitancy she hears in his voice.
"What is it?"
"It's Agent Vaughn," Jack sighs. "He's missing."
"Missing? What do you--"
"He's missing," Jack repeats. "And we believe he may be working with your mother."
------------
Sydney's not sure what Vaughn's disappearance means, other than they need to revise their plan. She's sure his apparent choice to team up with the woman who killed his father doesn't bode well for his state of mind, but she can't think about that now. Now she has to concentrate on Sloane; she'll figure the rest out later.
While Jack stays back at his hotel, ostensibly manning communications, but also keeping an eye on Jane, Sydney will go in first to find Sloane. They plan for her to take him down and bring him in, but if she doesn't succeed, Weiss has assembled a team of local CIA agents, and they will have the perimeter surrounded.
Sydney makes the last adjustments to her long black wig. She tries not to think about what will happen if she doesn't come back. She's no longer just an agent taking her life into her hands on every mission-- now she has a daughter depending on her to come home. With Vaughn missing, Jane might only have Jack to raise her, and while he'd keep her safe, Sydney doesn't want her to grow up feeling unloved or neglected. Sydney can't dwell on that, though, and so she plants a kiss on Jane's small nose and concentrates on the mundane details, reminding Jack about the bottles one last time before she and Weiss head out.
As the door closes, she hears Jack call out softly, telling her to be careful, and she thinks that Jane could do worse than Jack Bristow as her guardian.
Weiss drives her down to Zheltoksan Street, but pulls over three blocks from the Regent Almaty Hotel. He hands her a comm link. "You'll be able to hear the team, but only Jack and I will be able to hear you."
Sydney nods and starts to get out of the car, but Weiss' hand on her shoulder stops her. When she turns to look at him, she's surprised to see the empathy in his expression.
"He must be desperate."
She swallows hard and nods. "I don't blame him. I just wish he'd waited. Just 24 more hours and..." She ducks her head so that she doesn't have to meet Weiss's eyes. "Well, it's probably pointless to talk about what either of us *should* have done."
She's glad that Weiss doesn't agree with her -- out loud, anyway -- but she can't quite bring herself to ask him about Vaughn, about all the things that she can't find out from her father. So she smiles and gets out of the car. She's adjusted to walking like a soccer mom while she's been in hiding, but she feels herself slipping back into the easy, self-assured strides she'd used as an agent, stalking confidently toward Sloane's hotel.
Sydney enters the hotel through the front lobby, but quickly slips behind one of the doors marked for employees. She locates the security room easily and tags the guards with tranquilizer darts before they can hit their panic alarms. Two minutes later she's looped the security system's feed of the hallway outside Sloane's suite and is headed up the thirty flights of stairs. After creeping around the corner on the thirtieth floor, she takes one guard out with her tranq gun. The second guard is more of a challenge, and she takes a fierce elbow to the jaw before she can kick his legs out from under him and bring the butt of her gun down on his head.
Sydney pulls a small electronic device out of her pocket and tries desperately to catch her breath while it deactivates the card-key lock. She wonders if she's winded because of her nerves, of if she's just *that* out of shape. The green light flashes and she inhales one slow breath before she cracks open the door.
Gun drawn, Sydney creeps into the apartment, straining to hear the rustle of fabric or movement. The penthouse is large and opulent, just to Sloane's liking.
She rounds the corner and the familiar scent of his cologne hits her, triggering a thousand memories of Sloane. She grits her teeth and presses on, clearing the large living room and moving along the wall towards the three doors.
The first is a large bathroom with an Italian marble bathtub. Sydney sees his razor and a bottle of that infernal cologne, but no toothbrush. Her hope starts to fade. It's too quiet in the penthouse.
Still, she presses on. The second room is the master bedroom and the bedclothes are rumpled, but the closet is empty. There are no carefully pressed suits hanging there, waiting to be worn, no luggage pushed into the corner.
With a sinking heart, she creeps into the last room, the study. There's a poorly folded newspaper lying on the coffee table and an Ethernet cable draped across the desk, but there's no laptop.
Sloane was definitely here at some point. He was here and now he's gone and she takes her anger out on the wall, punching a hole the drywall. She takes a deep breath and activates her comm link. "He's gone."
"Are you sure?" Jack demands.
"I'm sure," Sydney answers grimly. "And it doesn't look like he's coming back," she says. "We missed our chance."
------------
Back at the Otrar, Sydney sits in the corner rocking Jane to sleep and trying her level best to ignore the argument between Jack and Weiss. They're both bitterly disappointed -- though Sydney thinks she probably has the market cornered on that -- and Jack is threatening to use some of his unofficial contacts. Weiss sounds a lot like Vaughn when he says the CIA operates by certain principles, none of which include working with terrorists.
"We've worked with terrorists before." Jack answers, each word enunciated clearly in his exasperation. "Espionage necessarily involves deals with unsavory people."
"Well, yeah, but in this day and age Washington's going to be a *little* more hesitant about giving you approval."
"I'd think that *especially* in this day and age, our line of work requires getting your hands dirty. Our informants aren't mid-level government workers looking for cash to finance their summer homes, they're disillusioned ideologues who need the money to get out of incredibly dangerous situations, in return for which they'll alert *us* before someone blows up the Golden Gate Bridge."
"And sure, if we were trying to stop terrorism on American soil, they'd agree with you, but the government's not going to authorize that kind of activity in your vendetta against Arvin Sloane."
The mention of Sloane's name draws Sydney's attention and she looks over at them reflexively. Weiss looks as if he regrets his last remark, especially since Jack's giving Weiss his best icy glare.
"Agent Weiss," Jack says, his words clipped, "may I remind you that I'm in charge here? And if this is the only way to keep my family safe, then I'm damn well going to do it, whether or not some bureaucrat in Washington agrees with my decision!"
"Dad," interrupts Sydney softly. "We're not going to do that. I spent eight years working for SD-6-- cooperating with them when they were working *against* our government. I can't go back. I can't do that again."
"This may be our best chance to get Sloane. His trail is fresh, we can--"
"No."
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life running?" Jack asks, frustrated.
"No."
"Then this is our--"
"No," she repeats. "I don't want to run, but right now, it's our best option. Next time we need a better plan and better intell. But for now, you're going to fly back to LA, and Jane and I are going to take a flight with a lot of connections so that she doesn't permanently deafen me."
"This may be a stupid question," Weiss says, "but why are we going back to LA?"
"For Vaughn. We need to find him and keep him from doing something stupid -- that's more important than looking for Sloane right now. Someone-- " Sydney clears her throat. "Someone needs to take care of Jane. She can't lose us both because we were working at cross-purposes."
"Sydney--"
"No, Dad. I need to find him."
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