Title: Day 5, Hour 16: 10 PM to 11 PM
Author: thecrystalkey
Summary: What I think should happen in hour 16
Spoilers: Season 5 of 24, up to episode 15 including the preview for hour 16.

Disclaimer: Nothing in '24' is mine, especially not the characters that appear or are mentioned here or any of the Day 5 plot lines mentioned. It all belongs to Twentieth Century Fox, Real Time Productions and its creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran.

Author's note: Just my version of what might happen after Homeland Security gets all obnoxious about taking over CTU. Truncated because I could care less about three quarters of the NotCampDavid plots (Disclaimer: NotCampDavid is from the Television Without Pity website, not mine).

I still maintain that Chloe's going to get fired in the near future and then go rogue with Jack. This one's for Abs, who thinks a lot like me and agrees that the Caltech lab mentioned in Hour 1 should make a re-appearance in the remaining seven hours.

Also, for those following it, the NCIS thing trucks along (title suggestions would be appreciated, as the original title no longer fits) and the third chapter should be up by the end of this weekend. Along with the corrections for chapter 2. Yes, I did mean unscrupulous; it's not that I didn't know what the word meant, but the 'u' and the 'n' on my keyboard are sticky and don't always work and spellcheck doesn't catch things like that.

"I'd help you if I could, Jack, but I can't even do my job anymore." The frustration that that caused her was clear in Chloe O'Brian's voice.

Jack had walked her to one of the empty offices so that they could talk in private. Bierko had given them information that Karen Hayes, now in charge of CTU, was refusing to act on. Jack had asked Chloe to see what she could do about it.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She began to pace as she spoke. "I had to give the Homeland people all my access codes, Miles still has my keycard and isn't letting it out of his sight anymore. And if that wasn't bad enough, they've got someone monitoring all the activity on my screen and if I try to use another terminal, one of them hovers until I'm done."

Jack watched her trying to pace off her agitation and tried to come up with alternative solutions. Something she'd said that morning, though it seemed now like years ago, gave him an idea.

"Could you still get into CTU's systems from that loft at Caltech?" he asked.

She stilled as she ran the idea through her head. "I think so. They've changed some of the protocols but Miles isn't as good as I am. Or as he thinks he is. It'll take a little longer than it would have this morning, but I should be able to get around them. Does this mean I get to quit?"

Her apparent joy at the thought of leaving CTU was a little startling.

"I thought you liked working for CTU?" he asked, bemused.

She shrugged. "It was fine under Buchanan, but under Homeland…Miles is unbearable, Karen Hayes is worse, and I'm pretty sure they're planning to fire me soon anyway. Getting to quit first would be really good."

He couldn't help smiling a little. "Glad to help." He sobered as he deliberately caught her eyes. "Before you do, though, I want to make sure you know what you're getting into. You know what I plan to do to Christopher Henderson when we catch him?"

"I don't think you know," she answered bluntly. "But I know enough about you to know that it won't be pretty. Or pleasant. But it will get answers."

He blinked. She could still startle him with her straightforwardness. "Then you know you probably won't be able to come back once we're done. You'll be an accessory to anything I do."

"Accomplice, actually," she corrected him. "Because I already know what you're planning to do with the information I get for you. I know what I'm doing, Jack. I wasn't planning to come back anyway. I already spent two more years working here than I intended to."

"Two years?"

"I was going to quit because of Driscoll, before everything happened with Marwan and the Chinese and that. And then, when Driscoll fired me, I never intended to come back. I only did because Michelle – convinced me."

Jack noted to himself to ask her, later, when this was all over, just how Michelle had convinced her. That hesitation meant Chloe had held something back. But now wasn't the time to press the issue.

"Okay. Get your things together. I'll get a car and meet you out front."

She didn't bother to ask where he was going to get a car from, just nodded and headed back out into Comms. There was actually a bit of a spring to her step as she walked away. Jack briefly wished for the ability to be in two places at once so that he could be around to watch her giving notice.

--

Chloe logged out of everything and started her laptop shutting down while she grabbed her bag from the locked desk drawer where she kept it during the day. A quick check to make sure that she had everything she couldn't do without and she grabbed her now-off laptop to stow in her bag. And she knew for sure that they'd been watching her when Miles showed up before she had the bag zipped up.

"What are you doing, O'Brian?"

"What does it look like, Miles? I'm leaving." Chloe couldn't help but smile at the thought. She didn't regret working for CTU, but she wouldn't regret leaving it to Homeland, either.

"You can't leave. We're in the middle of an investigation that you've been running all day."

"Well, gee, maybe you should have thought of that before you yanked my access card and codes and left me unable to do my job. Since I can't do my job, and nobody seems to want to me to, I thought I'd go home. I quit."

"You can't just quit," he objected. "There's a process. You need to hand in a letter of resignation-"

He stopped abruptly when she handed him a sheet of printer paper with a resignation memo typed on it. She'd already had it on her hard drive from the Driscoll fiasco. She'd changed a couple of words and printed some copies before starting to pack up her workstation.

"There's a copy in your email inbox, as well. You'll notice that it's effective immediately."

Miles didn't move, still staring in confusion at the piece of paper in his hand. She would have walked away but he was between her and the rest of the room.

"Get out of my way, Miles."

He looked up when she took a step forward as she spoke.

"You can't just quit," he repeated. "Why are you doing this? You're a professional, O'Brian. You wouldn't just quit."

"And yet, witness me, quitting," she said impatiently. "Now, get out of my way or I will get you out of my way."

Miles held her eyes for a long minute but when she moved forward again, he backed away quickly. Unfortunately, Bill Buchanan and Karen Hayes turned up before she got more than halfway to the door.

"Chloe, what's going on?" Buchanan asked.

"Ask Miles," she said, still walking.

"Chloe, stop," he ordered. She'd stopped before she remembered that he wasn't actually her boss anymore.

"I just handed in my letter of resignation. Effective immediately. And now I'm leaving. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand?"

"Because you don't quit."

"Well, obviously I do, because I just did. I sent you email copies of the letter if you don't believe me."

"Why, Chloe?"

"Because they've taken away my ability to do my job effectively, Mr. Buchanan. I'm not actually doing anything and haven't been since Homeland officially took over. They're going to fire me anyway," she said, looking over at Hayes, "I thought I'd make it easier on everyone."

Buchanan's eyes narrowed, but Chloe kept her attention on Karen Hayes.

"I accept your resignation, Agent O'Brian. I'd say it's been a pleasure working with you but I'd be lying."

"Same here." Chloe turned back to Buchanan. "Goodbye, Mr. Buchanan. You...were a good boss. I'll miss working with you."

His eyes were still narrowed suspiciously as he looked at Chloe. "I'll walk you to the door," he said finally. Before he did anything else, though, he turned to Karen. "I just want to state for the record that I think your acceptance of Chloe O'Brian's resignation is a grave mistake."

"You're entitled to your opinion," Hayes said serenely. "When you're done walking Ms. O'Brian to the door, we do still have terrorists to find."

"I'll keep that in mind, Karen," Buchanan said coolly before turning and gesturing for Chloe to walk with him. He waited until they were alone in the corridor to the front door before speaking again.

"What's really going on, Chloe?"

"Nobody was letting me do my job, so I resigned. Why is that so hard to understand?"

"Because it's not like you. Does Jack know you're quitting?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Chloe." They'd reached the front doors and he stopped and turned to face her. Chloe glanced out the doors once, wishing she could just keep walking. She sighed.

"Yes, he knows, okay?"

"When did you tell him?"

"Just before I resigned."

"And he was okay with it?"

"Yeah. I'm not any use to him now, anyway. Why would he care?"

"Because you're his friend. And, more importantly, the only person he really trusts right now."

"No, I'm not. I mean, yeah, we're friends but he trusts you. He trusts Audrey."

"Not as much as he trusts you. He has presidential authority; all he'd need to do is make a phone call to get you re-instated as head of Comms. Why wouldn't he do that, Chloe?"

She could see in his eyes that he already knew the answer.

"I don't know," she lied, holding his eyes. It turned out to be easier to keep a straight face when you didn't care if the person believed you or not. "I have to go. My ride is waiting."

Buchanan glanced out the clear glass of the front doors and lowered his voice so the guard at the front desk couldn't hear. "You're really going to do this?"

"Yeah."

"He doesn't love you, Chloe."

Her heart just about stopped. She definitely stopped breathing for a second. She dropped her eyes and had to take a deep breath and swallow before speaking. How had he known? Was she that obvious? It didn't matter now.

"I know." It was barely loud enough to quality as a whisper. She cleared her throat again as she looked up at Buchanan. "But he needs me."

"And that's enough?"

She shrugged, looking away again. "It's all I'm ever going to get. It doesn't matter, anyway. That's not why I'm doing this."

"Then why?"

She looked around, and then lowered her voice a little more. "Karen's ignoring obvious leads because she doesn't like where they point. You're never going to find Henderson, or any of the others, with her charge. These people assassinated a President, killed Michelle and Tony, tried to kill me. Not to mention used nerve gas that killed Edgar and 55 other people that I knew and worked with. And those people at the mall. And all those people that would have died if they'd succeeded at the gas distribution centre. That's what this is about; stopping the people who could plan something like this, against their own citizens, and still claim to be patriots."

Buchanan was smiling, just a little, when she finished. "I knew there was a better explanation," he said. "I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I say I hope you're wrong."

"I wish I was," she said without thinking.

Buchanan just shook his head at her. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

He started to walk away. She bit her lip for a moment in hesitation before calling out,

"Mr. Buchanan."

He turned around with one eyebrow raised.

"Is it…that obvious?"

She was glad when he seemed to know what she talking about. "Not unless you're looking for it. I didn't even suspect it until that situation with Theo Stoller."

She sighed with relief and nodded, then turned around. Without looking back, she pushed the door open and headed out into the night.

--

There was a black car, one of the SUVs field agents drove, idling at the far edge of the parking lot. Jack was at the wheel, looking slightly impatient.

"Sorry," she apologized as she got the passenger door open. "Buchanan just wouldn't leave it alone."

"Did you tell him?" Jack didn't sound very concerned about the possibility as put the car into drive and headed out onto the still-empty streets of LA.

"He guessed. I denied it, but I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me. Give me your phone."

Jack pulled his phone and handed it to her. "Why? Do you think he'll tell Karen?"

"Not unless she asks," Chloe assured him as she pulled the back off his phone and did something to its insides. "But odds are pretty good she's going to ask at some point. I don't see him lying. Especially not if he doesn't think she'll find us."

Jack smiled for a moment. Us, he thought. It felt good to be part of a team. He'd spent too much of the last eighteen months, and too many months before that, feeling alone.

A partner he could trust absolutely was a new experience; or it seemed like it, at least. There might have been days when he was in Delta Force that he'd had people he trusted that much at his back, but it seemed like another lifetime ago. Now, even though Jack would have preferred for Chloe to be back at the relative safety of CTU, he was glad she'd chosen to back him up on this.

When she handed him back his phone, he'd put it back in his pocket before he thought to ask what she'd done to it. She was messing with her own phone as she answered.

"You remember Andrew Paige, my friend who called in about the internet attack eighteen months ago?" She didn't wait for an answer. "When he got out of hospital, he decided to change jobs and went into research engineering. He developed these things that will prevent a phone's GPS chip from transmitting and scramble any calls from that phone so that no one can listen in. A few days ago, he gave me some for CTU to try out. Between the preparations for the summit and the rest of what's happened today, I never got a chance to pass them on to Buchanan."

"But you know they work?"

"They work."

--

"Where's Bauer?" Karen Hayes finally asked. It had been close to half an hour since Chloe had walked out.

"I don't know," Bill said. "I haven't seen him since we questioned Bierko. He could be working at one of the terminals downstairs."

Karen hit a button on the phone.

"Papazian," her ferret answered.

"Find Bauer. Send him up here."

"Right away."

Bill tried not to sigh. He'd known this was coming. It was only a matter of time until she noticed that Jack had disappeared. It would become obvious in a second. Until it did, Bill intended to keep the bad news to himself. If nothing else, it would give Jack and Chloe that much more time to get underground.

The phone rang and Karen answered it on speakerphone. Papazian didn't waste any time. "He's gone."

"What do you mean, he's gone?"

"He's not answering his phone, he doesn't seem to be anywhere in the building and one of the field vehicles is missing. I've tried tracking it, but its GPS must have been disabled. I tried tracking Bauer's phone, but he's dropped off the grid."

Bill tried to project concern even though wanted to smile. It was hard not to want to smile, when the people sent in to replace you because you couldn't control Jack Bauer or Chloe O'Brian had managed to lose track of both of them in the space of less than half an hour. "Do we know about when Jack disappeared?" he asked.

"Just after questioning Bierko," Papazian answered. "He was seen talking to Chloe O'Brian and then he appears to have left in one CTU's vehicles."

"I think I may know what happened," Bill said, managing to sound as though he'd just thought of it. "I told you that allowing Chloe to resign was a mistake."

"What do you mean, Bill?" Karen asked.

"I suspect that Jack has taken Chloe O'Brian and gone dark. In fact, I'm almost sure of it. After you summarily dismissed the information he brought you, I'm not even all that surprised. It's just like the man."

"Find her," Karen snapped to Miles.

It didn't take Papazian long to get back on the line with the news that Chloe wasn't at home or answering her cell. She, too, had dropped off the grid.

"How did you know?" Karen asked when she'd hung up with Miles.

"I didn't notice until I was looking for it," Bill explained. "So I doubt if you did, but since President Logan recruited him this morning, Jack has called Chloe when he needed something probably 90 of the time. Not CTU, Chloe directly."

"You're saying the only reason Jack Bauer was working with CTU was because O'Brian was here?"

"And he needed access to Tac Teams to take down Bierko. It's a different game now. He's only hunting one man. You completely dismissed the direction he wanted to take the investigation. Of course he was going to keep going in that direction on his own. It was only a matter of time until he recruited Chloe, whether or not she was here. He doesn't need a team to handle this; all he needs is decent intel. If he's got Chloe, then he's got that. Or he will have it."

"You think he abducted her?"

"No," Bill shook his head. "She's helping him willingly."

"Where would they go?" Karen asked.

"I don't know. I don't know either of them that well. I've only met Jack a handful of times under high stress situations. And Chloe…is a private person. I can guess what they'll do. They'll be going after Henderson. Jack will get the information he wants by any means necessary and, tomorrow morning, a number of government officials and civil servants will probably be discovered dead or missing. And all of them will turn out to have some connection to the nerve gas or the attacks today."

"And you don't think there's anything we can do about it." Karen made it a statement instead of a question.

"Not anymore. If Chloe was at CTU, we might still stand a chance of finding Jack; maybe even controlling his actions. Now…" Bill shook his head. "This is about revenge, now, for both of them, as much as it's about justice."

"And when they're done?"

Bill shrugged. "They could turn themselves in; they could decide to just disappear. I really don't know. I suppose it depends on what they discover."

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