Chapter 10

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 4:00 P.M. AND 5:00 P.M.

CTU NY

It was a good thing that Kirkland was being held in the conference room. Interrogation would have been jam-packed with the folks in the room. Sydney Bristow leaned against the wall immediately behind Kirkland, ready to slam his head into the table if he should need it. Nadia was in the corner of the room to her left, and her husband was on her right. She liked having the air of menace right behind Kirkland. Audrey Heller and Bill Buchanan sat across from Kirkland, pretending to be the more civilized forces in the room. Well, Audrey was, at least. Buchanan looked too much like a suit to come off as threatening as Bauer or a Bristow, but Sydney suspected he would be happy to plug Kirkland into a car battery if the situation required it.

Kirkland, for all that, didn't look impressed. "I need to disappear," he insisted. "My former employers need to think I'm deader than Jacob Marley, and they need evidence. I don't care if you bring in someone from makeup to make it look like my throat has been slashed, but my death is the only way I'll be safe."

Sydney smirked, and she knew Kirkland could see it in the reflection of the windows. "That could be arranged," she said.

Kirkland shook his head. "Can we at least act like professionals?"

Vaughn scoffed. "You think we're bad, we should leave you in a room with Bauer for a while."

"Which one?" Nadia asked from the other corner.

Vaughn paused, thought about it, and said, "Either one, really."

Sydney took two steps, coming up right to Kirkland's ear. "We need a name," Sydney told him. "I refuse to refer to this asshole as 'Command.' "

"I don't know it. Nobody in the organization does."

"Rowan Pope," Audrey said.

Sydney looked up from Kirkland and glared at her. Even Bill's attention snapped to her.

Once again, everybody's attention was drawn to the White House Chief of Staff. "Although he'll never acknowledge it. As far as anybody in D.C. knows, his own position is curator of the archeological wing of the Smithsonian."

Vaughn's eyebrows shot up. "How can you know that, and not shut him down?"

Audrey shook her head. "If it were that easy, Pope would be dead by now. B613 has been around for nearly thirty years. It's never that simple."

Sydney rolled her eyes, threw her hands up into the air and said, "Of course not! When is it ever?"

Audrey told the assemblage. "The man has forces on the ground in Europe and Asia. Covert ops within every major intelligence branch, including Secret Service. If any politician even makes a reference to B613, they die in their sleep within 24 hours. Those are the kind of people you work with, Mr. Kirkland. Why did it take you so long to have an attack of conscience?"

"They don't allow for conscience in my job, Miss Heller," Kirkland told them. "There's not much of a retirement package, either. "

Sydney's frustration had grown to the point where she growled. "We can deal later. You either give us everything on Pope's plans, and maybe I won't lock you and Will in a room, and let him finish what he started."

"Does any other agency than this one know I'm here?" Kirkland finally responded.

"We've kept this in-house so far," Buchanan told him. "That, and your own people."

"Which brings up another question," Nadia asked. "Why haven't they killed you already?"

"I can only assume that they're biding their time so that they can get us all in one bunch," Kirkland told them slowly "That's the one thing I know for certain. Command usually believes in swift actions. But this one, he's been planning for awhile. And any loose ends- like me- should've been polished off awhile ago."

Khan's little hideout was a warzone. Sark's men shot at Khan's men. Jack provided cover. Kim was up close and impersonal from within a B&B armored car. Then there were the Newcomers in a black car of their own, who shot at all of them

Kim was driving away from the hideout and the gunfire as soon as the newcomers had shown themselves. A good thing, too, because Jack had seen the inside of Khan's warehouse – filled with oil drums.

Jack was about to dial CTU when the lastest problem arrived – CTU. A tactical van approached the fracas, bristling with men and guns – men in the car and on the running boards, guns there and poking out the window.

Jack saw them and cried out, "Stooopppp!"

And then the the hideout exploded, consuming Sark's men, and what was left of Khan's, and the newly arrived CTU agents.

Kim didn't slow down for anything, and her car skidded to a stop at her father's sniper's nest.

Jack threw himself into the backseat, and Kim took off like a bat out of hell.

"B613?" she asked.

"No question. They'll be after us in a matter of minutes."

"Should we call in?"

Jack looked behind him, and drew his sidearm as his daughter drove. "Not to CTU They're going to be as skilled as any CTU tech. They might track our transmissions. Get in touch with Edgar and tell him to get a secure line. A shitstorm's about to hit, and we need better intel now."

4:07:21/4:07:22/4:07:23

CTU NY

Edgar was responding quickly, and within half a minutes, he had created a line based on a shifting algorithm that would take the most gifted of hackers several minutes to get through. Then he got in touch with Syd's personal cell which wasn't on any known service.

By the time Jack and Kim were fully briefed on what they had learned from Kirkland, he didn't think he needed Kirkland to tell him what was going to happen "What is the current circle of people who know about Pope?"

"Aside from the people in this room, no one," Buchanan assured him. "My people know we have a hostile in custody, but beyond that I put up a level 5 clearance around it. Said that this was a direct order coming from the White House"

Buchanan had truly gone above and beyond the call for them, which was going to make this next part really hard. "Bill, we appreciate everything you've done for us, but I think from this point on, you'd be better served if you distance yourself from everything that's going to happen next." Jack told him.

"I'm not afraid of what Division or District is going to do to me," he told them.

"This isn't about your career any more," Vaughn had a pretty good idea of what was going to come next as well. "This is about whether or not you die trying to escape."

Buchanan had worked with the Bauer family before, and he knew from personal experience the kind of horrible threats they had managed to put down. He was also more than willing to believe Audrey about what she knew about B613. Nevertheless, he was having a hard time accepting that someone in his own government would cold-bloodedly put a bullet in his brain. He needed to hear it for himself. "What exactly are they planning?" he demanded of their prisoner.

"When JFK was President, even though he had run as a Cold War liberal, many prominent military heads- the Joint Chiefs among them- thought that he was soft on Communism, a thought that didn't go away after the Cuban Missile Crisis," Kirkland told him. "Right up until the final days of '63, Kennedy thought that it was very likely that the military might make some move against him."

Audrey, who was the most directly effected by these actions, asked the question she'd been afraid that they were going to put into words. "Command is going to lead a coup against my father," she stated.

"Not going to, Miss Heller. Is." Kirkland told them. "And depending on how long it takes to resolve the current crisis, he's going to put the opening moves on any minute now."

"The location has been sanitized, but there's no sign of either Khan or the man he was negotiating with," the head of the operation was telling Command. "What are our orders?"

"How many confirmed attacks have there been so far?" Command asked instead.

"Fifteen. Casualty rate is over fifteen hundred now."

There was a pause. "Tell our people to initiate Phase Two."

Now there was a pause on the end. "Do we have the support to carry it out?"

"We will, Charlie," Command said. "We will."

4:13:38/4:13:39/4:13:40/4:13:41

"I don't care how large B613 is or how insane Rowan is," Audrey Heller was demanding of Kirkland. "No one can just can arrange a government take over, and not have the military notice."

"Command's seen a lot of Presidents rise and fall over his lifetime," Kirkland reminded her. "And after some of the things that have happened to this country in the last few years, I think that he's come to think that the republic's safety is beyond the control of the electorate. And he's never been too crazy about the electorate's intelligence either."

"How it's going to happen?" Vaughn demanded.

Kirkland laughed unpleasantly. "You think I'd still be alive if I knew anything more than the broad scope of his plans? He doesn't trust anyone- especially not the people he's conspiring with."

"Which includes the Vice President," Nadia guessed.

"Every puppet state needs a figurehead," Kirkland said almost casually. "That prick's so tired of attending ambassador's funerals, he'll do anything to get a taste of real power. Even if it is treason."

Sydney had been involved in intelligence for such a long time, she had begun to think she had grown numb to all of the plotting and planning that the figures of power seem to go through. But hearing words like 'coup d'etat' and 'treason' being thrown around so casually was enough to unsettle her. However, as gifted as she was at her job, not even she could quite connect the dots between what was going on today, and the terrorist attacks that were still going on as they spoke. "How did B613 get a hold of the Rimbaldi Virus?" she demanded of Kirkland. "We made goddamn sure that every last ounce of it was destroyed."

"How do you think?" Kirkland told them. "He cut a deal with the Alliance years ago. Sloane didn't know about it. Neither did you." He paused. "But guess who was in charge of the House Intelligence Committee when it was still in storage."

Suddenly, things made the slightest bit more sense.

"Fucking Rimbaldi," Jack muttered. "Miss Heller, I think we've fucked around with this long enough," Jack told them. "I think it's time you got your father on the phone."

"I'll do it, but he can't act without proof." Audrey told them. "He hates B613 as much as I do, but he knows Rowan well enough to know that he doesn't make a move without covering his trail, and right now, we don't have any evidence."

"That's not why I want to talk to him," Sydney replied. "I think I know what charges they're going to use to pry your father from office."

Nadia was worried about a more pressing concern. "Jack, make contact with Marshall. I think we're going to need to consider some kind of off-site base of operations. I don't think CTU's going to be secure for much longer."

Buchanan really didn't need to hear this right now. "There's got to be someone in the government who this man doesn't have his hooks in."

"You'd better have as much confidence in your wife, as I do in mine," Jack responded.

WASHINGTON D.C.

DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY

4:18:09/4:18:10/4:18:11

Karen Hayes had upped the intervals in which she had been monitoring the situation in New York to every ten minutes. Given how much things were continuing to escalate, she knew that she was going to have make a recommendation to the Cabinet within the next hour at the absolute latest, and none of the ones they were considering were very good.

Effectively, the federal governments resources in New York were stretched to their breaking point. They were important units from within the tri-state area, but at some point, the casualty rate was going to get high enough that the President was going to have to consider three options- to effectively declare the State of New York a disaster area and try and quarantine it, declare a limited form of martial law, and isolate the damage to that area, or evacuate the state of as many civilians as possible, and then try and close it off. None of the options were palatable, all were expensive and very dangerous, and all would effectively render New York unmanageable for months, if not years to come. But with thousands of civilians already dead, with perhaps hundreds of thousands to follow, and CTU no closer to capturing the terrorist mastermind, she was going to have to present this to President Heller, and force him to make some kind of Hobson's choice.

The worst part of it was going to be when the President asks her the simple question: how did this happen? It was going to sound as racist as Hell, but there was no way around it. In a city of over eight million people and thirty thousand police officers, how could it be taken over by what appeared to be simple gangs? That would require an entire army and a crap ton of resources, neither of which seemed capable of the bloods and the crips.

Just then, her phone rang.

"Director Hayes, this is Walt Cummings."

There were about a hundred people Karen didn't want to talk with right now, but Vice President Daniels' chief of staff was in the top three. The makeshift government that had been patched together had more than it's fair share of problems, and apparently Daniel's thought that because he had pushed for her at Homeland, he was owed more of her time than the President. Which made even more headaches than a normal Cabinet Secretary had to deal with.

"I've got a lot on my plate, Mr. Cummings," she told him. "Besides, there's nothing that can't wait until your hourly briefing."

"This situation in New York is evolving, Miss Hayes. Every minute we waste, another hundred people get infected. Or am I reading the latest mass casualty reports wrong?" Cummings told her.

The fact that Cummings had gotten his hands on his report that was at least one level above his security clearance was yet another reason for Karen to put another pin into her imaginary voodoo doll of him. "I've got a lot on my plate, sir," she told him. "So do a lot of people who are trying to handle this crisis rather than pick it apart."

"I'd watch my tone, Miss Hayes. A lot of people's asses are on the line right now. Yours. And your husband, you'd do well to remember. So if you want to make sure they keep theirs, while all around people are losing theirs, you'd do well to tell me what's going on."

Cummings was a gadfly that she was more than used to dealing with by now. But there was something in his tone that seemed more than his usual prickishness. "Has campaign season begun? Because believe me, I'm not an undecided voter."

'I wouldn't be concerned with elections, Miss Hayes. There are more immediate threats to deal with. Just have a listing of our course within the next twenty minutes. Understand?"

Karen didn't, but she decided that it was better to humor this man. She managed to buy him off by saying she'd have something for him in the next fifteen minutes, knowing well enough he'd be on her ass within the next ten.

Then her husband called. She'd been hoping to avoid this conversation, because there was a very good chance his head was going to be the first on the chopping block for what was happening today. None of today's events were his fault, but people above and below him wanted somebody to be labeled a scapegoat, and since the Bauers and the Bristows no longer worked for the government.

Then he told her that what was happening with Khan and the search for the virus was the good news. She had to hear it from Jack and Sydney's mouths. Even then she was having trouble comprehending the vastness of this. She'd heard rumors of B613 or an organization like it while she'd been in Domestic Security, of course, but she'd seen nothing in the way of proof. And what they were talking about- it wasn't possible, in this day and age.

Wasn't it? Cummings hadn't insinuated that their was something deeper going on; he'd all but spelled it out to her. And if the Vice President could be manipulated that way...

"In order to do what Command is considering, he'd need the back up of the military, and right now half the country is being put on high alert." Jack told her. "Check and see if there are any movements that wouldn't quite fall under that construct."

"What about the President?" Hayes told them. "Someone needs to warn him."

"We're in the process of trying to get a secure line," Sydney told her.

"You think they're monitoring communication from the White House?" Not even Nixon at his most insane had considered using intelligence this way.

"I think Rowan Pope is crazy enough to consider it," Audrey Heller told her. "And you need to get as many people as you could trust to move in on the White House."

"They're not going to shoot it with a death ray, are they?" Hayes replied.

"Of course not. They want witnesses to their alibis," Jack told her. "They've probably got a cover story already in place."

As if the shit wasn't already piled up high enough, they had saved the worst news for last. Admittedly, at this stage, it was rumor, not fact, but Karen had been in D.C. long enough to know that this was all most people would need to tear Heller down. "How long until you think they'll move on it?" she asked.

"A couple of hours at most," her husband told her. "Right now, we need to get the President out of the frying pan. Unfortunately, that means putting him into the fire."

4:24:49/4:24:50/4:24:51/4:24:52

Audrey Heller wanted to keep the President safe, not only as his Chief of Staff, but as his daughter. So her reaction when Jack and Sydney told her that they wanted to bring him to New York was perfectly understandable. "Right now, you're sounding even crazier than Rowan Pope is," she told them bluntly

"We need to put a flag on whatever plays B613 has in mind. Technically speaking, the safest place for him to be is in the eye of the storm," Jack told her.

There was a bizarre logic to this, though you had to be a Bauer to see it. A President visiting a federal disaster area was certainly something within the scope to do. Just going through the bureaucracy of it would probably push Command's playbook back a couple of hours at least And given what Kirkland had told them about where B613 had planted some of its manpower, the White House could no longer be considered a secure location. Of course, they would be sending the President right into the middle of a biological hot zone, but right now, the Rimbaldi virus was the least dangerous of the threats facing him.

"Air Force can get here in less than an hour," Vaughn finished by telling Audrey. "If you want to keep your father alive and in power, it's time to call in as many chits as you can."

Audrey looked at her colleagues. "Pope may want my head and my father's, but until he can do something, my title still counts for something." She started making the calls.

"What are we supposed to do about Khan and his people?" Buchanan asked. "I know what we're going to be up against, but we can't just let the state of New York be served as a sacrificial lamb."

"We're not," Sydney assured them. "Khan is our best way to bring B613 down. We find a way to stop the attacks, Command has no leverage."

"But he knows that. His people just blew up your only lead." Kirkland reminded them

"Not our only lead," Jack finally spoke up. "Unless I'm mistaken, we have one of the key people in their operation."

It dawned on Kirkland. "What do you mean? I had nothing to do with the sale of the virus."

"You told us how Khan got it, and how the people in power are going to use it to remove a President from office," Nadia got it nearly as fast as her husband. "That's enough for us to hang this on you. "

Kirkland showed no sign of panic - it was clear he considered Khan's group no more dangerous than mosquitoes- but he did seem concerned. "I mean, I don't have anything practical that will lead you to him. The scope of my operations were solely counterintelligence."

"Let us be the judge of what's practical," Nadia told him. "Get his phone."

INSIDE CTU

"Have you had any luck listening to their conversation?"

"The second they walked into Buchanan's office, they activated some kind of transponder to block communications in and out of the office. I've been trying to hack in ever since, but I'm getting nowhere."

"Huck, need I emphasize how much our boss doesn't like it when CTU starts having conversations without us being able to listen in?

Huck tried to take a deep breath. "Has he never taken into account the abilities of Chloe O'Brian? Whenever I get past one part of the algorithm it shifts to a different frequency. It's like trying to solve a Rubik's cube that's fighting back."

"Is Ballard still in with them?"

"Came in five minutes ago. Still in handcuffs."

Another pause. "We don't have time to fuck around anymore. Wait 'til Ballard comes out and execute him."

"And secondary protocol?"

Another pause. "Begin countdown from fifteen minutes."

4:29:24/4:29:25/4:29:26

Kim Bauer's phone rang while her father was on the phone She answered via her bluetooth and said, "Yes?"

"I know you both hate me," came the voice of Julian Stark, "but you usually don't just leave me behind in the middle of an operation."

Kim let out a breath and even smiled. "Sark, am I glad to hear your voice. I was worried we lost you."

That stopped him. The line was silent for so long, Kim asked, "Sark?"

"I'm here," came his cultured voice. "I just worry when one of you start being nice or concerned. Both is too much. What fresh hell has come down upon us while I was running for my life?"

Kim paused, thought it over, and said, "Okay, I see your point."

"By the way, I lost half of my men thanks to your little operation back there."

Kim blinked. "I'm … sorry for your loss?" she said, confused. "Were they your friends, or are good men just hard to find?"

"One, I generally don't have friends. Two, They are hard to find. You don't have to pay death benefits and break the news to their families."

The car swerved as Kim lost control for a second. Thankfully, New York traffic was so bad that no one had noticed. "Working for you comes with life insurance?"

At this point, Sark's voice went cold and angry for maybe the first time that Kim could recall. "I keep telling you all that I am a man of my word. One day, you'll all believe me. Now tell me what I've missed."

After Kim explained the current FUBAR level, Sark sighed. "Eh. Okay."

Kim shook her head. Things were back to normal. Apparently, political coups that Sark wasn't responsible for fell under the category of "your problem."

Kim looked to her father, and raised her phone, showing him the caller ID.

Jack hung up his phone, and tapped her speakerphone button. "Sark, do you still have the virus?" Jack asked Sark bluntly.

"I do, but I'm running out of people who can handle it."

"Do you have Van Dyke's cell? I saw you take it from him after he called Khan."

"I do, and I've already texted you the last ten numbers Van Dyke called before he was intercepted. Anything else you want from me in my declining years?" he asked with a bit of sarcasm.

Jack merely rolled his eyes. He was getting too used to this sort of banter. "I need you to go dark for the next couple of hours. Things are about to go to hell, and while they're normally a situation in which you thrive, knowing us may get you killed?"

"And what makes you so sure I won't take this opportunity to disappear again?" Sark asked.

The two Bauer's exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. "Because," Jack answered, "you're a man of your word."

There was a very long pause, and then Sark let out a bark of laughter. "Now you believe me." Then Sark disconnected.

"We've probably made a huge mistake," Kim told her father.

"We've definitely made one," Jack corrected her. "But right now, we do have to consider Sark the lesser of two evils."

"Unless the other person is Sloane, we're still getting the shitty end of the bargain." Kim reminded him.

None of them yet had any idea as to just how wrong Kim was on this.

CTU NY

Huck knew better than to disobey orders, no matter how illogical they seemed to be at times. When the White House Chief of staff left CTU with Sydney Bristow and her husband five minutes ago, every instinct in his body told him that they were the ones who were important, not some piece-of-shit turncoat that couldn't tell them anything vital about B613.

But there were protocols that had to be followed, a chain of command that had to be respected. If you ignored that, the entire structure you were trying to follow would collapse, and for Huck, who had nothing but this job, that was essential. So he waited for the moment of clarity that only came when the target was in his sight. He didn't do much sniper work- his specialty was extracting information- but he had enough practice in Afghanistan to know the peace that flowed through you when you were approaching the target.

Of course, when you were with B613, you also developed a sharp sense when things were about to go horribly wrong. If your senses weren't operating perfectly, you didn't live very long. So he was aware that someone was on his three o'clock a full fifteen seconds before the attack came. His intention was to wait until the target was within striking distance and turn and blow a hole in their gut.

He never even managed to move an inch before Nadia kicked him in the scrotum twice, then got him in a sleeper hold. Before he lost consciousness, he heard her whisper: "That's two for our side. You should be deeply ashamed."

4:36:16/4:36:17/4:36:18/4:36:19

CTU Interrogation Room

"Huck Finn? Seriously? "

Chloe was surprised that Nadia was the one taking the snarky tone, but having asked Kirkland the name of the B613 operative he'd identified, and that Nadia had detained, it was kind of hard not to have the reaction.

"When you join B613, you leave your old life behind," Kirkland told them. "If you manage to survive the training, you get to make a name for yourself. Literally, sometimes."

"I really hate to say this, but I'm seriously beginning to miss your parent's particular villainy." Chloe told the Bristow sisters. "They were megalomaniacal subhumans obsessed with 16th century mystics, but at least they didn't sound like they operated out of a bad Ludlum novel."

This was such an appalling thing to say, even for Chloe, that Bill expected there to be some kind of reaction from Nadia. She hadn't lifted her eyes from the room. "Tell me again why he's here," she demanded of Kirkland, "Or you go back on the table."

"B613 has intelligence operatives in every government organizations-"

"I heard your spiel," Buchanan interrupted. "What I want to know is why he's in my house. Tell me it's just a coincidence that you recognized him.""

"You may not believe me sir," Kirkland replied. "but there are such things. I could only identify a couple dozen operatives by sight alone. He's one of them."

"And what does he do when he's not planning to shoot traitors?" Nadia asked.

"He's our communications expert. He does what is necessary to make people talk." Kirkland told them. "So believe me when I tell you, traditional and extreme methods of extractions won't play if you want to learn who he really is."

"Are there any more operatives in this unit?" Buchanan was like a dog with a bone, but it was becoming increasingly clear to Nadia that they had to make this a secondary concern.

"I know how omnipresent our organization may seem, but our ranks are not bottomless," Kirkland tried to reassure them. It was not very comforting. "It's just their bad luck that I happened to recognize him from the security footage."

"We don't have time to fuck around with them anymore," Nadia told them. "Send Richardson back in there, and tell him not to stop until he begs for release."

"You're not going to even watch this guy?" Buchanan seemed a little surprised.

"The rank-and-file are irrelevant right now," Nadia reminded him. "Which is why we're going to go for the big fish. And I think it's in your best interest if you don't know the details."

She wasn't kidding. What they were planning was far more dangerous than trying to play chess with Command. Even trying to suggest this could earn all of them a bullet in the brain, even if their cause was righteous. This was an action of desperation, but right now, nobody in the family could come up with anything resembling another way to bring both the targets out.

She just hoped Audrey Heller took it well.

"Are you trying to piss me off or do you just hate my father?"

Sydney was surprised Audrey hadn't tried to push her out of a moving vehicle. Even by the standards of their insanity, this was fairly crazy. At least she hadn't accused them of treason, which had definitely been a possibility.

"You know how B613 works better than we do," Vaughn pointed out. "After they force your father out- which is still a real possibility- how long do you think they'll let him live?"

"Pope probably has a line on every major communications grid we use. You do this, all you may end up doing is making his life a lot easier." Audrey reminded them.

"May I remind how limited our options are?" Sydney asked them. "Getting the President only buys us a little time. Our only chance to force them out into the open is to present them with a target that they can't resist."

Audrey considered this for all of five seconds. "That's if we're operating under the idea that you can stop Khan and Command. May I remind you they've been running rings around us all day."

It was a very valid defense. Jack had reminded them how carefully the Drazen family had planned out the assassination of President Palmer nearly seven years earlier, and they'd only had two moles in CTU. With the resources Command had at his disposal, he could have this President met at a traffic stop with an Uzi.

"We're not asking you to do anything illegal. Just let some of the normal chatter go out into the world," Vaughn tried again. "That's going to happen regardless."

"I understand the problems we're facing very well," Audrey told them. "I'll take it to my father, but I'm going on the record that I am unalterably opposed to it. God help us if he actually has enough faith in you to not dismiss it outright."

Privately, Syd was hoping her sister or someone else in the family had a better idea soon, because she didn't like the think as to how badly things would go if this was their Plan B.

4:43:59/4:44:00/4:44:01

CTU NY

They had no intention of going light on Finn- Nadia still couldn't get used to calling him that- two members of B613 was at least one too many to have in CTU right about now. And the time for using drugs was clearly over; Richardson was moving towards his tool kit to operate from. So Nadia was a little disappointed when Finn started making noise just a few seconds after he regained consciousness.

"You're the second man from your organization that we've had on that table today," Nadia told him. "I have to tell you; I'm starting to think the people Command hires are real pussies."

Finn had no intention of playing coy. "What time is it?" he demanded.

Nadia froze. There were only two potential reasons to ask that question. The simpler one was that B613 had wheels within wheels and hitters to take out hitters.. She prayed that was the reason. "It's a quarter to five," she told him.

"You have to evacuate the building. Right now."

That was the other reason. "What did you do?" Nadia demanded.

"Secondary protocol authorizes elimination of all personnel within the building." Finn told her.

"How?" When Finn seemed like he was about to resist, she grabbed his left thumb and twisted it ten degrees to the right. "Tell me or I'll leave you here to die."

"Command doesn't want to destroy infrastructure he can use again if possible. It's probably some kind of chemical weapon." Finn told her.

"You don't know?" Nadia had heard of Chinese walls going up for organizations like this- her family had even used a couple on occasion- but for this specific purpose seemed to indicate that B613 had a distinct disregard for human life that even she found appalling. "How long do we have?"

"Five, ten minutes max."

She got on to horn with Buchanan. "Bill, you need to order a Code Six right now!"

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

"Agent Finn hasn't responded to any of our communications. We have to assume that he's been compromised."

"What about the device?" Command asked.

"We're still getting a signal from it, but we have to assume that Ballard told them all about it."

"Have we still got security feeds up?"

Charlie's answer was to send the footage to Command. "Go to Delta," Command told him.

"Sir, if we do this, and someone in their tech staff figures it out-"

"Go to Delta." Command's tone brooked no argument.

"Yes sir. Accessing CTU's internal controls."

4:50:16/4:50:17/4:50:18/4:50:19

They had managed to get about a fifth of the staff out of the building when things started happening that, even by their standards of batshit, were fucking odd.

Much as Chloe and Nadia wanted to get everybody out of the building ASAP, there were too many active parts of CTU for everybody to leave at once- if something critical was going to happen to the building they needed to pass all of their teams information to the NSA and other agencies. This couldn't be done in a minute, even with Chloe; if they got it done in five they would be doing well. So some people had to stay behind longer than others.

It was while the decisions were being made that Chloe noticed that someone was trying to hack into CTU's servers, and that they were doing a credible job at it. Someone was pulling data on all the teams out in the field, and right now, there were a lot of them. Nadia didn't even have to think for a second as to who might be doing it.

They had just started to deal with that when another problem came up. Entrances and exits of CTU were refusing to let people out of the building. The digital locks, which could only be manipulated by people with a level 7 clearance or higher, were being bypassed.

Just once could someone with this kind of digital fuckery use it to do something useful? Nadia thought.

There was one option they had left, one that she really wouldn't have considered even if things were this dire. Afterward, it could lead to a shitstorm that could end with a man who was practically family going to jail, because there was no way even Marshall could do this without there being some kind of consequence. Of course, that was assuming that any government would be friendly to someone connected with them; she hadn't really understood what the term Pyrrhic victory meant before meeting her husband.

She got on the phone with Marshall., who'd been monitoring this. "Is the app you designed when we were at CTU still in effect?"

"Not unless someone like me removed it."

Until a few minutes ago that would've been reassuring. "Activate the override."

Marshall was clearly concerned because he did it without any discussion at all. For all of ten seconds. "There's someone else using the system. It's being transmitted from a cell tower, but that's clearly not the source. Whoever's doing it is using some high level security, and they're nearly as good as me."

"Can you outmaneuver them?"

"I said nearly as good. And have you really lost faith in me? 'Cause if you have, um, maybe this would be a good time to renegotiate my contract?"

Marshall was developing acuity since going into the private sector. "Get the locks working first," Buchanan was telling her. "We don't know when this bomb is going to go off."

"We don't even know what kind of bomb it is," Chloe added. "I'm sorry, this is just me wanting to get out of here as fast as possible."

Marshall was unusually quiet which would seem to indicate that this particular operation wasn't going as smoothly as it could. And if he was having problems...

Nadia went over to Finn, who she had handcuffed to the control desk at CTU the second the evacuation order had gotten out. "I've got one of you around," she had told him. "That makes you a spare part. And our family doesn't have much use for those,"

"I'm willing to die for my cause," Finn was saying now. "But as best as I can tell, you don't work for the government anymore. Pretty much makes you a spare part, too."

Nadia ignored him, until he added: "That why you're taking the highway to the danger zone?"

"Where did you put the bomb?" Finn was unresponsive. Nadia backhanded him.

"Say pretty please," was all she got. "You're not the first person to torture me, and much as you might insist otherwise, you won't be the last."

Nadia had brought Richardson's tool hit, and had she enough time, she would've begun demonstrating her efficiency with them. But she had neither right now, and she was beginning to wonder if she would.

"I didn't place the device," Finn told her suddenly. "It's been here for awhile. All I did was make sure that no one in CTU could ever find it."

This didn't add up. CTU ran self-diagnostic tests as a matter of course every shift change. No one could hide something like this. Unless-

She told Chloe to check the ventilation system. After thirty seconds, she found what she was looking for- a very small canister hidden right under an air duct.

"What's in there?" she demanded.

"All I can promise is that it isn't painless," Finn was being almost casual about it now. "Oh, and you have less than a minute left."

"Chloe, get out of here. Now." For once, the tech did not argue with her. Nadia then decided that one turncoat agent was enough, and left Finn behind.

She sprinted towards the exit. Ten second later, the canister activated.

Nadia and Chloe managed to make it out of the building in time. Nearly a quarter of the staff of CTU were not nearly as fortunate. Marshall had managed to get the majority of the locks open remotely, but a lot of the people who'd been in the back of the building had gotten a taste of what B613 had left behind for its fellow agents. It wasn't yet clear what they had used, beyond it being some kind of nerve agent, and a lot of those left behind were still dying from it by the time they were trying to make an accounting of what had happened.

It was when they were starting to run disaster protocols for CTU when Nadia got her next piece of horrible news. Marshall had activated the organizations cameras remotely. They were checking the control room- and it was empty. Nadia refused to believe it, until both the thermal scans and wide scope revealed nothing was in the room but one handcuff and a trail of blood leading from the room.

"How could this happen? How is this possible?" Buchanan demanded.

"Maybe the people in B613 have more on the ball then we give them credit for," Chloe told them.

"Where's Kirkland?" They didn't have to look very far- Will hadn't left his side since Sydney had pulled him from interrogation, and there were still four or five bodyguards around him. "Keep him secure. Don't move."

"We need to find this guy. We have to set up a perimeter now," Nadia demanded.

"We can't. We don't have enough personnel still alive." Buchanan gently reminded her. "Besides, in case you've forgotten, we've got a shitload more to worry about right now."

One of the task you learned in B613 was to hold your breath for a long time. For Finn, he managed to hold it for three minutes, and escaping from CTU amidst the trauma that was going around outside was far easier than he thought it would be.

Of course, B613 didn't tolerate failure, so there was a good chance that when he contacted them, they'd send out a tracker and kill him, but Huck put the chances of that at no worse than fifty-fifty. After all, despite their interference the task had been completed.

And they were going to need his help soon.

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