COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Eyghon

Author's notes: It's my first Alias fic, and I'm French, so I'm sorry if I messed up somewhere. This is a prologue so it's kind of short, but I do hope that you'll still read and review it. Also, I'm a big fan of Irina and I wish there have been more Syd/Irina's moments in the show, so my fic will be like half about that. It's obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway, I don't speak Russian but Irina and her SVR buddies do, so you just have to pretend that they are talking in Russian.

Summary: It's hard to make one which sounds appealing without giving too much away. It's kind of an Alternate Universe, but still, it sticks to the show for some major details.
OK, here it comes: After leaving America when Sydney was 6 years old, Irina was "re-educated" in Kashmir and sent back in the field to work for the KGB. When the USSR collapsed, she joined its replacement, the SVR, and has worked for them ever since. There is no SD-6, no "The Man", but Jack does works for the CIA, without Sydney's knowledge, who is now a regular soon-to-be adult.

Prologue

Fyodor Chevchenko held a meeting in his office with his top agents, two men and a woman. All three were listening to him with rapt attention.

"Jack Bristow managed to escape Taipei with our disk. It contained important intel on both the SVR and the CIA, gathered by the Japanese intelligence. Needless to say, as soon as they decipher it, we will be vulnerable. It should have been them in this position! We had this disk, we could have had some of the names of their agents, some of their knowledge, some of the locations of their agencies and safe houses… but no! Bristow had to steal it from our agent, killing him in the process! He's always getting in our way, making us look like fools!" The man burning with rage, ranting, but quietly concluded: "It would do some good damage to the CIA if they were to lose him."

"What do you suggest we do, Sir?" Asked the youngest, Nikolai Valenkov, not sure what his boss was asking him to do.

"He must be terminated immediately."

The woman flinched, but quickly covered it. "Isn't it a little extreme, Sir?"

"Why do you think that, Agent Derevko?" He smirked at her, his contempt clearly showing.

Irina had to act carefully, as Chevchenko was well aware of who Jack was, or rather, has been, to her: her husband, and the father of her child, back in America, so many years ago.

"Well, as you said, he would be an important loss for his agency, as he is very skilled…"

"Are you praising an enemy agent, Miss Derevko?" growled her boss. He voluntarily called her Miss instead of Agent. It was well known here in Moscow SVR's Headquarters that Fyodor Chevchenko was against the employ of women in the SVR's ranks, and that he despised those whom he was forced to mix with.

"No Sir! I am merely saying that instead of terminating him, we should use him to our advantage." Being called "Miss" was not pleasant as it was meant disrespectfully here.

"And how do you suggest we do that, of what use could it be to us?" He didn't see the point of her request and was intent on showing her. "He was captured several times by different agencies over the world and never gave away anything. Capturing him ourselves and torturing him would only be a waste of our time."

Irina had come up with a plan a few hours ago, actually, she had started plotting different courses of action when rumours about an American agent about to be terminated had spread throughout the office.

Before, she wasn't yet aware of the identity of said agent, but had assumed the worst, and planned ahead. Jack was an excellent agent, probably the best, and had been causing trouble to the SVR, among others, for some time now. She knew that it was only a matter of time before her superiors decided to get rid of him, even if it meant unleashing the wrath of the "o so powerful" CIA on Russia.

She couldn't warn Jack that there was going to be a contract on his head, because he believed her to be dead, plus, it would be the death of her. She could not let him be killed either because of what it would do to their daughter. She couldn't imagine her little girl, though now past the teenager stage, lose another parent. Still, she was not sure that she was making the right decision by exposing her plan to her superior, because if she was given the go ahead, it would jeopardize Sydney's life forever.

"I'm aware of that Sir, but Jack Bristow has his weakness, as does every American man."

Chevchenko, Valenkov and Probulov were watching her intently, waiting for her to carry on, but she remained silent.

She could see a spark of interest – or was it an evil glint- in Fyodor's eyes, as he prompted her: "And what would that be, my dear?"

The woman plastered one of her trademark smirk on her lips, interiorly swallowing the bile rising up her throat, before exposing her scheme to blackmail the infamous Agent Jonathan Donahue Bristow into giving them back the precious disk.

TBC