Especially for my wonderful beta, Ele, who catches all my error when I don't see them and who is not afraid to tell me what she thinks of my little experiments. I am grateful for you, even if you try to push your car into my story. I wasn't going to put it in because I haven't done it before, but because it was a 147 Alfa Romeo… well I found it oddly fitting to our little Alias universe.
This chapter marks the end of part four. The conclusion, part five, is well on its way, but I must say I've been slacking on writing on the main story. I have this little pet project called Eya: Pandemonium, where I try to explain what exactly Pandemonium is and why it's such a big problem. It's set before part two and I would suggest you read it to learn about Quincy and why exactly she wants to see Sark dead so bad.
--
PART FOUR
Chapter D
-- A spy's life is always based on lies --
- Meanwhile -
Los Angeles
Day One
2300 hours
She was ignoring him, Simon, probably driving him crazy. He was a curious person and her sitting there very silent, only hours before having stood outside would soon drive him to speak. She didn't mind him, often finding his personality refreshing beside Sark's more morbid sarcasm, but after longer periods of time, he would drive her insane. His affection (love) for her was not something she knew what to do about.
Can you blame the poor lad, Eya? You have bewitched him.
The voice in her head kept talking to her the longer she was away from her drugs. It had been twelve hours already. In between coming in late from Lennox's place the night before, being captured by Kendell's men, the nerve-wrecking interrogation and sitting in the cell for eight hours she hadn't exactly had the time for Pandemonium.
She liked the voice, Sark's clipped and accented voice had stirred up feelings of safety, but she knew it was only the first stage. There were more to come, oh so many more to come.
You must stay calm, Eya. Wait for a way out.
She knew that, of course, and mentally slapped the voice for stating something she already knew.
They both looked up when they heard the bars open up out of sight. She smiled, wondering who of her so-called friends would show up, but was disappointed.
Lauren Reed stopped in front of the cell, head held high and hands clasped tightly behind her back. ,,When you were apprehended, I looked at the footage of Mr Walker's interrogation once again and found your hidden warning, 'Sydney','' she said, spitting out the name Sydney. ,,You're the leak. You're the one trying to frame me for it.''
The woman, who had once gone by the name of Sydney, stood up slowly from her sitting position on the cot. She remembered Mrs Vaughn's scared eyes in Norway, remembered the sick feeling of pleasure shooting through her veins. She had power in the real world, whereas here… well, she still had power, but it was different because she was behind glass walls and Lauren was not. Lauren was feeling secure with Marshall's cameras trained on them.
Mock her, Eya.
,,Was it working?'' she mocked Michael Vaughn's wife.
Lauren looked stunned. ,,That is entirely beside the point.''
,,Everyone has been preoccupied with Sydney Bristow's return, they forgot I might be a danger, a risk. But no one fools Nancy Drew, the NSC agent. Good thing you are here to save the day, Lauren. What would the CIA do without you?''
Lauren stepped towards the glass, anger blazing in her grey eyes. ,,I think you need to remind yourself who is standing outside the cell and who is inside.''
Brown eyes with insanity written all over them clashed with grey angry eyes. She didn't smile; no she smirked. ,,I have diplomatic immunity. Get over yourself. You're not that special.''
--
Los Angeles
Day One
2330 hours
Dixon stormed into Kendell's temporary office, closely followed by Jack and Kendell and Danes looked up at the sudden intrusion.
,,Gentlemen?'' Kendell said, eyebrows disappearing in his non-existing hairline.
,,When you asked us to help you, did it just slip your mind to tell us Sydney has diplomatic immunity?'' Dixon asked angrily.
,,How would you have come to that conclusion?''
,,She told Lauren with Walker right beside her.''
Kendell straightened up.
,,Phoenix has diplomatic immunity?'' Danes muttered in surprise.
,,Close the door,'' Kendell ordered. ,,Officially no.''
,,And unofficially?'' Jack asked.
,,Julia Thorne is many things unofficially. When she showed up at my house seven months after having died, we discussed her options as a covert operative. Her morality hadn't been screwed up as bad as it is now and we both knew she would never be able to return to being Sydney Bristow without some sort of immunity. I used to be Secret Service, meaning I have contacts in the White House. The President agreed to meet me in person. I told him her story, all the terrible details, and her demands. She'd been tainted enough to see money in every situation. Julia Thorne was granted diplomatic immunity as she was supposedly born in Russia. She's still here because she hasn't demanded to get out. You think about that,'' Kendell finished and went back to his and Danes' work, leaving the two men, father and brother-in-combat to look stupidly at him.
--
Los Angeles
Day Two
0415 hours
Wake up, Eya.
She looked through the keyhole in the old oak tree door, towering over her with decorations from the time of the Anglo-Saxons.
She saw a woman, head held high, walking slowly across the stone floor, her heels making a periodic rhythm, tip tap tip tap… Blonde hair flowing in the non-existing wind, but it seemed to be carried by the Holy Psalms of the Catholic Church, written by believers for other believers. She was like an angel. But she knew better than anyone who the woman was. Herself…
No time for sleeping today, Eya.
The woman sat down beside Jane and she tore her eyes away, stumbling away from the door, because she remembered what had happened after the 'meeting', the one last piece of innocence destroyed because of… of… money?
It is your own fault, Eya.
She gasped, feeling stabs of pain in her lower abdomen. She clutched the sheets in her hands and gritted her teeth. It was too much. The pain was too much!
Do you not understand that you will hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt, Eya?
,,No,'' she whispered. ,,Don't hurt me.''
--
Los Angeles
Day Two
0415 hours
The first indication of something being wrong was Sydney's restless sleep. Marshall, who had been dozing on his nightshift, jolted awake, finally seeing something interesting. After the very confusing debrief from Dixon, telling them Sydney had diplomatic immunity, she had become this new person. She was no longer Sydney, she was simply too… too cruel to be Sydney.
Marshall didn't know what to think of anything anymore. If she had been destroyed, if her mind had been destroyed, what hope of survival did anyone have anymore? He was loath to admit it, but he was a Rambaldi believer. Yes, he was a scientist, but he had simply seen too much not to think something was right about what the crazy prophet was talking about. If Sydney was the Chosen One, the one to bring the world into hell, well… Rambaldi had been known to be right before.
,,Lennox?'' he said tentatively.
The dark-haired agent was sleeping peacefully but awkwardly in a chair in Marshall's office and had been at the exact same thing for many hours. At Marshall's words he jolted awake and nearly feel from the chair. ,,Yeah?'' he replied groggily.
,,Something is wrong,'' Marshall said and pointed at the TV-monitor, showing the inside of Walker and Sydney's glass cell.
Lennox looked over and his brows furrowed. Walker was standing over Sydney, face contorted into a concerned look. She was twisting and turning on the cot, going between muttering under her breathe and cry out in pain. ,,She's never done that before'' Lennox muttered.
Marshall looked at him. Did Lennox know how she slept? ,,Oh…'' he said instead of asking the question.
Lennox looked at the technician helplessly and shrugged. ,,Mr Bristow had me following her,'' he said. ,,She was with hopelessly flattered men every other night until she figured out I'd been tailing her. Since then, she preferred me.''
,,Didn't need to know that,'' Marshall muttered and flickered his eyes back to the screen worriedly.
--
Somewhere deep inside her, she knew she couldn't let the nightmares take over what was left of her rational mind, but it seemed near impossible with Sark's familiar and soothing voice telling her she would hurt and she knew she would be, because that was what happened every time she tried to get out, it kept drawing her back in, every time and she couldn't do anything and her daddy couldn't do anything and no one could do anything and she needed peace and quiet and someone to hold her or maybe to knock her unconscious so she could have a little peace of mind for just a little while, because that was all she really craved and then more Pandemonium for it kept the horrible pain and the horrible pictures at bay and oh God…
--
Jack was sitting calmly by his desk when Marshall frantically ran through the room and into the place Kendell and his merry wagon of annoyingly secretive men held office. Since he knew what exactly Marshall had been assigned to do since Sydney had been put into the place that had held her mother and later Sark, he frowned, knowing something was up. Lennox had disappeared the other way out of Marshall's office, so Jack had no way of knowing what he was doing. But it didn't matter. Marshall's office was not occupied by anything but his computer and that strange beanbag he seemed to love so much.
Jack rose and looked around subtlety to see if anyone noticed him, but everyone seemed to be caught up in their work or whatever mess they were trying to straighten out. He quickly entered the office and looked for the screens showing the cell. She was in pain, thrashing around and whimpering under her breath, and it made his heart hurt.
She had turned away from him, had trusted Kendell to help her with bringing the Covenant down, not him, her own father. She had betrayed everyone and she was favouring, helping, saving, protecting Sark from her own government and even though the CIA never actually gave her Sydney's identity back after having appeared in Argentina, it was the principle of things. She was born American, Sydney Bristow was born American and she should have her identity back. But Sydney was declared dead on paper and no government agent could resurrect her before going through a lot of channels. She was Julia Thorne on paper and apparently in her mind too.
He needed to help her, he just didn't know how. Irina was out of the picture from what Kendell had said. Whatever shady business Kendell was doing with Sydney and Sark, he was obviously more informed than Jack and if Kendell was trying to track down Sark because he'd been talking to Irina, then Jack had to assume he had Intel Jack was not aware of.
He could only step back and watch his daughter self-destruct for no reason he knew.
--
It had taken hours before the cries from Sydney disappeared. She had not let any doctor come near her. Kendell had come closest to touch her, but also he was flung across the cell with a vicious fresh scar on his cheek from where her fingernails had scratched him in her pain-inflicted mind. It all meant she had to deal with the pain by herself and as Kendell explained his theory of how Pandemonium withdrawal went along, he said that pain in her body was a symptom most likely to show up, but since he had never actually seen Sydney in withdrawal before, his theory could be shot to pieces. He had taken pity on Walker and locked him into an interrogation room far away from her.
Vaughn watched her stare, eyes far away and lips pressed hard together every time a violent tremor went through her body unmercifully. She was not so very different from when she worked after having been found in Argentina, but this time he knew all those looks of sadness had all been a play to get them off her trail. Behind the exterior was a traitorous woman who refused to hand over Sark because he would be able to bring her a lot of power.
He was standing outside the cell, but she didn't seem to notice him; and even if she did, she didn't show it. He could no longer stand by. He wanted answers!
,,I don't like your wife,'' she stated calmly, still staring at the opposite wall. ,,She annoys me.''
,,So…?'' he asked frowning.
She shrugged.
,,And what am I supposed to do with that?''
,,Whatever you want, I guess,'' she said, finally looking directly at him, piercing him with tormented eyes, tortured eyes. ,,I don't want you. I stopped pining for you when Sark fucked me in that inn in Nice where we had our first date.''
His brows furrowed at her sharp tongue and the harsh reality in her words stung. ,,That was uncalled for.''
She smirked. ,,No, it wasn't. I do whatever the hell I want to.''
,,You're sitting in the same cell your mother was in!'' he suddenly shouted and she started. ,,Why are you working with Sark? What is Pandemonium and why do you need it? Why did you come back if everyone is looking for you? Don't you think we deserve some answers? Jack, Weiss, Dixon… me?''
,,Don't you understand I don't fucking care!'' she said, features indifferent and eyes as cold as stone. She'd steeled herself up again. It was like looking at a blank wall.
,,No, I don't understand, Sydney! How can I understand you wanting to destroy yourself and ally yourself with that cocky sociopath son of a bitch? You screamed the night away! Something is obviously wrong with you. Why don't you let us help you? Please let us help you!''
She wasted no time in responding. ,,Because Sydney Bristow is dead.'' She looked at the hidden camera she knew was there. ,,Kendell, I want out!''
--
Kendell looked sadly at the screen. ,,Two days. We held her in two days. Release her.''
Dixon stared at the former Assistant Director with disdain.
,,My hands are tied, Dixon,'' Kendell went on. ,,She wants out, she's out.''
,,There must be something…'' Dixon began.
,,You go ahead and go against the President's orders, please. I wont stop you.''
--
Simon hadn't thought they would take him back to the cell and truthfully he didn't want to go back there either. Julia's pained screaming was still ringing in his ears and there was no way he could stand another night with her, but when he could see into the cell, it was empty. Julia was nowhere to be seen.
,,Where's Thorne?'' he asked the agent escorting him, one of the agents that had captured him in the first place.
,,Worried about the boss, huh,'' the agent said. He was a little on the chummy side, but Simon knew he was extremely intelligent and he had been taken down by the bloke anyway no matter how humiliating it was.
He shrugged at the agent's remark as the door to the cell shut behind him. ,,Is she a double agent?'' he asked when the agent had turned his back on him. ,,Julia?''
The other man froze. ,,I don't even think she knows if she is.''
,,Sounds like her,'' Simon amended. ,,You're Weiss, yes? You and Lennox caught me?''
The agent nodded. ,,Yeah, I'm Weiss. What do you mean… about Sydney?''
Simon frowned, recalling the name Sydney as the alias she had been using before she had been captured in the cell. ,,She's begun acting bloody strange over the last year, I'll tell you. I've never seen her not killing a witness and I've known her for about four years now, before Sark ever came along.''
Weiss came forward again, staring at him through the glass. ,,Walker, Sydney knew Sark when she was working for SD-6. Get over yourself. You didn't know her first, he did.''
--
France
Volver woke up with a start and scrambled to get the ringing cell phone on the night desk by the bed. He groaned in annoyance, but he knew that not answering phone calls could be disastrous.
,,Yes?'' he barked into the phone.
,,Volver, it's… me,'' a tentative voice said and he sat up surprised.
,,Miss Thorne?''
,,Rules are meant to be broken-'' she began.
,,And bend to further the goals of anarchy,'' he finished. ,,Where are you?''
She hesitated. ,,I went back to… the CIA. I'm with Fixer.''
He rubbed his head, feeling the thousands of assignments piling up mentally. ,,Jesus Christ.''
,,I made a mistake. Could you please come and get me and… not tell Sark?''
He was already out of the bed, pulling on discarded pants from the day before and making his way to his always lit-up computer, mentally calculating how long it would take to get out of France. ,,Where are you exactly?''
,,Los Angeles, Fisherman's Logistics' storage room 47.''
,,Fifteen hours, miss Thorne.''
,,Yeah.''
--
Dixon had let her out of the cell with a grim look that she had returned blankly. He had no other choice and even though Jack and Vaughn had looked at him with disgust, a call from Matthew Wayne was not to be ignored.
Kendell had given her a phone and had ordered her to get the help from someone outside. She had accepted it with a curt nod and had even sounded hesitant when she had said Volver's name into the speaker.
Dixon sat in the solitude of his office, trying to make sense of what was happening around him. He didn't know how to handle it, because like Jack and Vaughn, he had grieved for a beloved one and now she was back, relatively speaking anyway, and how do you make sense of a friend you thought you knew, but who had gone completely insane over a distance of time where she had been declared dead and gone.
He was startled out of his thoughts by a knock on his door and he looked up to see the woman in question walking inside with the man he had identified as Tim Danes behind her.
,,I told you to stay in the conference room,'' he said bitterly.
She shrugged and sat down in the chair opposite him. ,,I'm here for a reason, Dixon.''
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, furrowing his eyebrows, telling her to talk if she absolutely needed to.
,,I think you should come and work for APO,'' she told him.
,,APO?''
,,Authorised Personal Only, Kendell's black-ops division. The division supporting me, that is using me as a sleeper,'' she replied. ,,Of everyone here, you are the only one I can stand to be around…''
,,No,'' he said forcefully, leaning forward. ,,Why are you asking me this?''
,,I realise you have family…'' she began.
,,That's not it, Sydney, and you know it!''
,,I just alienated the people that made Sydney who she was, sweet, gentle, loving. I don't care anymore… for them or for anyone else. I just don't care. But for some strange reason my feeling for you are unchanged. I still trust you with my life. You are smart and capable and the perfect agent. I would have tried to recruit you into the Paciscor, but Sark stopped me before I had a chance to seek you out.''
He was both shocked and… well, shocked of what she had said. It was kind of flattering to be told you were special by her, because of what he had seen her become, because of the suffering of Sark's betrayal, the hellish nightmares and whatever un-Godly stuff life had thrown her way. ,,What is Paciscor?'' he said, the one word ringing in his years.
She smiled at him slightly and Dixon was shocked to see how genuine it was. ,,It means 'covenant' in Latin. When I got together with Sark, we were entirely funded by the Covenant, so we saw it fitting to show who had allowed us an existence as a crime syndicate,'' she explained.
,,What we call Julia Thorne's network?''
She nodded. ,,Yes.''
,,You actually have a name for it?'' he said shocked.
,,A not very known name, but yes, we do.''
There was a big thick silence, where Dixon studied her with his dark eyes and a slight frown. ,,You know it's not possible.''
She nodded in return, not even looking resigned. He figured she had probably figured out he wouldn't do it. She stood up, turned her back to him and walked towards the door before she stopped with her hand on the doorknob. ,,I really do miss you, Marcus,'' she told him silently and disappeared again with the agent following her steps.
--
Fisherman's Logistics' storage room #47
She trusted Volver to come and get her, trusted him to not tell Sark about her, but she still doubted just a little. What if Volver's loyalties had shifted while she had been away, while she had mysteriously disappeared, leaving him with no instructions? He might have been working with Sark to take her away…
She shifted in her seat, trying not to stare nervously at her hands. She couldn't afford her father to be a father right now, not the way he was staring at her from across the van, Vaughn on one side and Weiss on the other. They were there to make sure she left Los Angeles and ultimately the United States and went back to wherever she hid out.
Kendell and the other APO agents were in a van before the one she was currently sitting in and she would have preferred the other one over this one any day, but Dixon had been determined. She was to be there with her pissed off old friend, former boyfriend and storm-cloud father.
,,What?'' she said, quirking her eyebrow. They looked away guiltily and she suppressed a smirk.
The vans arrived at the storage room late in the cold, but not quite cold, February night. East Los Angeles buzzed with the energy of the six o'clock rush, which would make it harder for cameras to track the movements of two vans. They could blend in easily and that was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be able to move around freely without having to concern herself with too much thinking about the risks of driving around in Los Angeles without Volver. When she had been on her own, she could pretend to be one of her numerous aliases and she needn't concern herself about detection at all, but as a large group with well-known agents such as her father and Vaughn who were known to be affiliated with Sydney Bristow, the risk of detection was just that much bigger.
She looked at her digital watch and calculated Volver could arrive anytime and just as the thought passed in her mind, a dark blue 147 Alfa Romeo rolled into the storage room and she quickly recognised Radcliffe behind the wheel and Volver in the passenger's seat. She smiled.
Kendell walked to a standstill beside her and looked at the parked car. ,,I don't think Sark is healthy for you,'' he admitted, seeing her eyes clouding with badly hidden anger. ,,Whether you protest or not, I'm going to start working on revoking his pardon agreement to keep him out of prison.''
,,I'll hide him,'' she retorted angrily.
,,I will find him,'' he said, calmly.
,,I wont let him be found.''
,,I found you, didn't I?''
Volver stepped out of the car, flanked by Radcliffe, Raiver and another one of his loyal employees who all looked suspiciously at the crowd surrounding her and she knew she had to get away from them. As to not arouse suspicion to their affiliation, her returning to Volver was done as an exchange of money. Her men believed the CIA agents were freelancers who had been lucky to catch her on a bad day. It was bad enough her father and the rest of them knew about how deep Paciscor actually was affiliated with the American Government, she could not afford more possible leaks.
,,Do you have the money?'' Danes asked Volver and the Frenchman nodded, signalling Radcliffe to get the money out off the back of the car.
Radcliffe opened the black case and showed hundreds of bills. Danes studied them with morbid fascination and nodded in Kendell's direction. ,,They're legit.''
,,Miss Thorne… Mr Volver,'' Kendell said. ,,Pleasure doing business with you.''
She snorted in his general direction and made her way to protection and safety, well as much safety as Volver could give her by deleting all trails she made doing business all over the world. Without looking back, she settled into the car and left behind her old life for good this time.
--
Once again, short reminder.
READ EYA: PANDEMONIUM.
It's on my profile!
