7.00pm, CTU Los Angeles

The conversation in the break room between Tru and Chappelle was still going, and as Chappelle learnt more about the rewind days, and of Tru's experience, he began to believe more and more that it really existed, that there really were people alive at that moment in time who were reliving a day in order to save lives, even if those lives belonged to murderous terrorists. He was curious about what had happened on the first day, and had asked Tru to give him some details. Shaking her head, she replied.

"Sorry, but only Alex knows what happened on the original day. As someone who wasn't asked, but is reliving, I only saw a flash of events in a dream last night," she explained, and Chappelle made a mental note to talk to Alex when he could.

"So, if the event happened at three in the morning, what about the rest of that day, didn't it happen?," Chappelle asked. To be rather pedantic, the day that they were reliving was really most of Thursday with a little splash of Friday, rather than one whole 24 hour day, and if that consisted of a day, where did the rest of that Friday go?

"It never happened, because the events leading up to Nina's death were mostly on Thursday. It's like still being up at three in the morning and going to bed thinking of nine in the morning as tomorrow rather than later today. The timeline is moving along as normal, it's just that we rewinded and recorded something new over the original," Tru replied, and she began to get the impression that even she was learning something about the rewind days. This was certainly a first, in that she wasn't the one who had been asked.

"Has Alex commented on how different it's been today compared to the original day?," Chappelle said, wondering just what CTU had evaded by rewinding. He wondered if the cup of coffee he was holding in his hand, the way his day had been, of the music on the radio station that he listened to as he drove to work. Were all these little details the exact same?

"Yeah, and he thinks that it's a great improvement. A lot less bloodshed and drama is going to be avoided, and has been, and CTU know a lot more much earlier than they did on Original Thursday. You guys didn't even know Nina was involved until around nine or ten in the evening," Tru responded.

7.10pm, helicopter heading for Mexico

Two other people with very different reasons for being involved were also thinking about the rewind day, although Amador was sceptical of the idea and believed Alex to be bluffing or even just outright lying. Chase was glad to have avoided the original day, and he was personally benefiting from the rewind, now that he knew to wait a few days before he and Kim would announce their relationship to Jack. Turning his attention to Amador, he looked at the arms dealer, and wondered what would have happened to him. According to Alex, CTU lost track of him and they had tried to get his possible location out of Nina originally, and they had no idea of where he was other than that he was somewhere in the Los Angeles region – not exactly a small place, and not exactly a quiet one either.

"You ever worked with Nina Myers before, Michael?," Chase asked. Neither of the men were in the mood for an interrogation, but Chase didn't intend to interrogate, but to have some of his own questions answered.

"Yes, although worked may not be the right word. Dealt with would be more accurate," Amador replied. There had been a few instances where he and Nina had made business transactions, especially back in the months after her escape from North Africa. In fact, he had helped her immensely by selling weapons to her that some of his men had stolen from some army base in deepest Russia. Then there had been the time where he had sold her some explosives that he later learned were used to kill some federal agent in New Orleans. Not that he was in any way concerned about what his customers did with their purchases, but he still liked to have some closure on the transaction, find out what that gun, that bomb or that knife did to someone or something. It was becoming more difficult to do so as his business grew, but now it was all over.

"What about Jack Bauer? Ever met him before?," Chase asked. He didn't know how well known Jack was amongst the criminals and terrorists of the world, but he imagined that Jack probably would be high up on the list of famous agents for such groups.

"I've heard of him, and I've heard of things he's done. Bit too patriotic for my liking, but I guess that's due to our careers," Amador replied. He had never been a patriot, and had never wanted to be. His only real loyalties were to himself and his family, both equally important to him.

"So, who's your real buyer, Michael?," Chase asked, and the audible scoff from Amador told him that Amador didn't realise that torture methods were likely to be used if they had to get the information out of him later that night, and that revealing the buyer now would help both himself and CTU. Chase, however, wasn't going to encourage Amador into answering the question – it seemed as if CTU could do fine without knowing the buyer until they really needed to. Besides, they already had the virus in their control, and with the auctioneer now a simple puppet, it seemed as if everything was going right.

A few moments of silence passed, before Amador spoke up.

"Did you not find my buyer in the first day?," he asked, and it took Chase a minute or two to realise what Amador was asking.

"We didn't get to the end of the day before it restarted, so I don't know," Chase replied.

"Why not?," Amador asked. It seemed strange that they could apparently remember much of their first day, but not all of it. Did something block their memories of it, or did it never even happen?

"Because the rewinding of time relies on someone who just died. Sounds crazy, but they ask for help and the day suddenly rewinds for the people who can sense it," Chase spoke, and he knew that his words would indeed sound crazy to anyone who hadn't seen proof after proof in the last few hours of the rewind day. Looking pensive, Amador remained quiet for a few minutes, before speaking again.

"Nina or Jack?," he asked, and Chase gave him credit for being somewhat accurate. After all, both Nina and Jack were involved in the auction, and the fact that Alex had been the one to tell Amador of the rewind day would have told him that it was likely to be one of the two.

"Nina, but not because of your bomb. I destroyed that a few hours ago, remember?," Chase responded.

"And Alex was the person she asked, I presume?," Amador enquired. Chase was unsure of where this conversation was going – it didn't seem very clever to give Amador too much information, but what could he do with it? There was no chance of him being able to use it against CTU, and it wasn't as if he could push Jack over the edge with the information in order to kill Nina, and if he did he could forget any deal.

"Yes, he was, after Jack shot her. There'll be no such event tonight, though," Chase replied, and Amador nodded, before turning to gaze out of the window at the darkened borderlands just south of San Diego. It seemed that his curiosity had been sated, at least for now.

7.25pm, Nina's convoy, Mexico

The convoy were now no more than two hours away from Las Nieves, and Nina could feel the tension begin to rise in her mind and body. She had been anxious all day, and it didn't help that Amador was seemingly out of reach. Even her CTU informants didn't have much more to give her, and she was seriously contemplating ending her contract with her employer, even if it meant having no stability or security for a while. She didn't have a lot of money, and relied on a steady income, but a normal job was never going to suit her. Working at CTU had been exciting at times, but it was never enough, and she wondered if it had been this fact that had finally pushed her into terrorism. After all, it wasn't as if she was that far removed from the world of terrorism when she had been working at CTU, although in the early days of her career as a terrorist she had wondered if it was the right decision to make, and at one point was just minutes away from confessing all to Jack, and hoping that he could help her get out of this mess. Now, of course, the only way he would help her would be to guide her to an eternal rest six feet underground.

"Cale? Did the money go into the account ready for tonight?," Nina asked, more out of a need to get away from her thoughts than a need to know.

"Yeah, it's in there. 240 million, should be more than enough for this virus. Hey, any ideas what the boss wants it for?," Cale responded, his eyes firmly on the dark road ahead.

"Good, good. As for his intentions, I guess he'll probably have some target in mind. He doesn't exactly brief me on his plans," Nina replied. It wasn't strictly true, as she did have access to his office at the compound, located in deepest Brazil, from where her boss ran his global terrorist business. As it was a virus, she guessed that he had a large target in site, with the aim of killing as many people as possible. Chances were it was either an army base, a government building or even just a civilian apartment block. Nina could never decipher the reasons for why he chose his targets sometimes, and his irrational nature did not sit well with her. The truth was, he was simply the person willing to pay her the most for her services, and thus became her boss. The prospect of potentially working for the most fanatical groups did not faze her – in fact, she had always wanted to work with fundamentalists or hardliners – a group she could study, could analyse as she worked for them. It would be an interesting prospect, but for now she was content with her far more mundane boss. After all, she planned to be in the terrorist business until she was dead, and planned not to die for a very long time.

7.35pm, CTU Los Angeles

Alex had given up trying to find the buyer in the huge pile of terrorists who were either known to be in Los Angeles, or had links to the city. It seemed that the buyer was either elusive, or wasn't a terrorist at all – Alex had no idea which of the possibilities he liked most. If the former was true, then they knew next to nothing about the buyer and that would put them at a severe disadvantage. If the latter, then CTU had a lot of work on their hands to figure out who would buy the virus and why if they didn't want it for terrorism. From the events of Original Thursday, Alex knew that Nina didn't know who the real buyer was, that was obvious from the fact that Amador was using the auction as a scam before taking the virus to the real buyer. Plus she had pleaded for her life by saying that she could find Amador, not the buyer, and if she knew who the real buyer was – or even had a slight idea of their identity – she would have used that information to her advantage.

Having decided that they weren't intended to know the buyer already – it was probably unfair to Fate for CTU to have all the cards – Alex told himself that the buyer was most likely not connected to Nina, and probably not connected to Amador. The buyer was probably in Los Angeles, or nearby, and the buyer either wanted to create a death toll in the hundreds or thousands, or wanted to destroy the virus and prevent it being used. The fact that Amador had tried to scam Nina and the Salazars in Mexico before selling the virus to the real buyer told Alex that the buyer probably wasn't keeping a close eye on Amador, nor did the buyer seem concerned about the fact that Amador was a scheming weasel. This told Alex that whoever the buyer was, they probably weren't exactly veterans of terrorism.

Alex had seen how the media had, since the 9/11 attacks, often portrayed terrorists as exclusively Muslim, as if Islam was the only ideology that had terrorism as a weapon. The truth was that most of the terrorists that he had seen dealt with at CTU, even after 9/11, were not Muslims at all. Sure, there were some, but their numbers were no greater than the Christian fundamentalists, the Neo-Nazis, the far left and right, the lone wolves or even the obscure groups whose goals were somewhat esoteric. As for the terrorists he was searching through, they too were a diverse group and Alex knew that terrorists of any ideology would not be against using viruses to cause terror, death and mayhem.

One face caught his attention, that of a young woman. She had long black hair, blue eyes and couldn't have been more than 25. There was only one known alias, "Mandy", and she was believed to be the person who infected President Palmer a few years before. Thinking, he doubted that this Mandy was planning anything too big, and the Cordilla virus was probably not something a less experienced terrorist would dare use. Then again, she might be buying the virus for someone else, like Nina. Deciding to consider her one of the main potential buyers, he moved on to the next person in the list, but his concentration was interrupted by his phone ringing.

"Alex, it's Tony. I need you to come to my office for a moment?," Tony asked.

"Sure," Alex replied. As he walked towards the office, he continued thinking of the mysterious buyer. He had made up his mind that there could only be two reasons why someone would want to buy the virus – either to use it to attack multiple people, or to destroy it once and for all, but he knew that they wouldn't know for sure for hours, and he had to put thoughts like that to one side. Knocking once on the office door before entering, he saw Tony sat at his desk.

"Sit down, Alex. I need to talk to you about something," Tony started, and he waited until Alex had indeed sat down on a chair near the desk before continuing.

"Chloe tells me that you saw someone she believes is an informant working for Nina in one of the tech rooms earlier but declined to do anything about it. Is that correct?," Tony asked, and Alex could tell that he had made a mistake in not stopping the infiltrator. Nodding, he waited to hear what Tony had to say next.

"She also told me why you left the informant alone, and at first I was in agreement. That was, until I found out what the informant last accessed before they left the building," Tony continued, and he passed a file over the desk to Alex. Opening the file, he saw a list of addresses. Agent's addresses. Alex looked at the list for a moment, before looking back at Tony.

"They knew Kim was at home, but she managed to get to my apartment," Alex spoke, before standing up.

"Where are you going? They'll not go to every house on the list," Tony asked, but Alex was already leaving the room.

"No, but they'll start with the addresses of her friends, Tony. They could already have got to her!," Alex explained quickly, before rushing out of the office and running towards the parking lot. Annoyed at overlooking the little details, he realised that it hadn't been an informant for Nina in the tech room, it had been a friend of Jack Harper. Alex concluded that Harper must have used his phone call at the precinct to get someone inside CTU and get information on Kim, and Alex realised that Fate had more than just Jack Harper on its side.

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