The nurse finished re-bandaging the electrical burns on Jack's left leg and moved on to his right.
"It's fine!" he barked. He levered himself upright and started to swing his legs off the bed when Sydney caught him by the ankles and firmly held him down.
"Sydney!" he hissed.
"Dad!" she retorted, her intonation exactly the same.
"Jack?"
Jack glanced up as Kendall came into the infirmary room.
"Am I interrupting something?" Kendall asked as his gaze skipped back and forth between Jack and Sydney's identically stubborn expressions.
"No," they both answered simultaneously.
"Are you done here?" Kendall asked, directing his comment at Jack. "There's something you should see."
"Yes!" Jack said.
"No!" Sydney insisted, planting herself between him and the door.
A pained look flitted briefly across Jack's face.
"Give me 10 minutes."
Nine minutes later, Jack was following Kendall down to the warehouse cum detention center that housed the hundreds of employees that had been captured during the raid on SD-6. They had limited manpower to devote to the task, and so far debriefing all those individuals had been slow going.
Jack's eyes scanned the teeming warehouse. People, their hands and feet ziptied together, lay on the makeshift cots looking miserable. More of them probably recognized him than vice versa, he thought with a touch of guilt.
Kendall led them past the main area and into a small room, where only one agent was standing guard.
"There she is," he said, pointing to a cot containing a huddled figure with a mass of blonde hair. "We found her locked in the basement of SD-6. I guess Geiger was trying to get something out of her."
Jack stepped closer, and woken by the peripheral movement, the cot's occupant sat up.
"Ariana?"
"Jack Bristow," Ariana Kane said with a slightly befuddled frown. "You look as bad as I feel."
Jack glanced at Kendall, who handed him a file.
"You're debriefing her. Don't say I never did anything for you." And with that, Kendall and the other agent left them alone.
Jack pulled up a chair and sat down across from her. She combed at her hair with her fingers and sat up a bit straighter. Her once white blouse was dirty and stained with blood. Even disheveled and with deep circles under her eyes, she was a striking woman, a long neglected part of Jack's brain noted.
"I was just doing my job, you know," she said defensively. "And obviously I was right to suspect you."
Jack cocked his head.
"Yes, I know. Despite what you, or even Kendall, may think, I have no personal grievance against you. You did your job, and I did mine."
"Sloane set us both up," she said, her tone bitter. "I never blackmailed the Alliance."
"I know," Jack said. "Would you like some water?" He poured some into a plastic cup from a pitcher on the desk behind him.
She took the proffered cup. After she had drunk nearly half the pitcher, she leaned back against the wall, refreshed. A coy smile spread slowly across her lips.
"So…you have me now," she said, holding up her ziptied wrists. "What do you intend to do with me?"
"Ask you questions," Jack responded dispassionately as he opened her file and made a few notes.
She leaned forward. Her hand over his stilled the scribbling pen.
"Like…who have I been intimate with in the last few months?"
Jack glanced up to find her inches from him. Her eyes danced in the ambient light of the incandescent desk lamp. The corner of Jack's lip twitched up in the barest hint of a smile.
"Something like that."