Freaking out

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Chloe…

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Ok, so I'm freaking out a bit over this whole 'Nadia on the run' situation, even more so now I know that weirdo Harper managed to hack into our systems and began to track their phone-call. Luckily Doyle ended it before they got a trace on them and I managed to encrypt the signal, but the whole thing was kind of nerve-wracking for a while. It pissed me off because I was so sure I'd made it safe for them to ring here. I know Doyle's smart so he'll have lost the phone and probably picked up another one as a means of contacting here when he has to, but this whole thing is kind of scary.

Not that I'm going to let anyone at CTU know this whole thing bothers me, but I'm feeling a little afraid for Nadia, even though she's always so damn strong all the time.

As far as I'm concerned, the most reassuring thing about the whole scenario is that she's not on her own out there, because god knows her navigation skills are lousy. She's the only person I know who gets lost driving to the supermarket. No, she has Mike 'Iceman' Doyle with her, so I guess she'll be ok.

Aside from Jack (and I have to admit that I'm a teensy bit biased in favour of him), Doyle is the best Field Agent I've ever met, and I'm relatively sure he'll keep her safe. Unless they kill each other first.

They don't seem to get on too well. Guess it must be all that sexual tension getting in the way.

He'd been in the building for approximately ten minutes the other day and he'd already saved her life, and she just looked at him with that expression on her face that suggested she wanted more than anything to get him in the sack: 'thanks for saving me?''

Pur-lease! Go on and do it already! I know they both want to.

Despite the fact that she'd been all beaten up and had a busted lip, he was gazing at her like she was some piece of fragile china with this devastated expression on his face at what she'd been through.

They'd make a cute couple, better than her and Milo would have anyway, not to speak ill of the dead. Milo was too… 'pretty,' in a Backstreet Boys kind of way. Their kids would have probably been picked on at school for being too attractive. Doyle's more… rugged. Manly. The strong and deathly silent type. If you like that type of thing, which I'm guessing Nadia does.

I'm decrypting Fletcher's files whilst Morris works on Harper's and de-fragments that computer chip that Jack found in the warehouse. I didn't know Fletcher was actually so good at all this technical stuff, it's kind of surprising. I guess he totally played me and Morris for fools because the whole time he was here we thought he was computer illiterate.

Sheesh.

I run a hand over my eyes, tiredly, concentrating back on the monitor. I've been working on his system for the past three days, ever since he left and I'm no closer to finding anything new out.

I frustratedly click on a generic file labelled as 'Tranche 1A' and some kind of schematic comes up for a building duct. Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

Shit. I breathe out closing the file, and Morris stands over my shoulder as I get to work on the next file, and a whole bunch of random codes appears on my screen. "You ok, darling?" he asks tiredly, "have you eaten anything tonight?"

"I had some cheeto's earlier," I venture a little sheepishly. "Oh, and a Mr Goodbar."

"Chloe, you need to eat, especially now." He looks pointedly at my stomach bulge like I might be on the verge of collapse. Er, no. I'm the size of an ocean liner and I still have a little while to go before baby makes an appearance. "I'll go and get you a sandwich, ok? I'm waiting for some of those files to decode themselves so I have a little while."

"Thanks Morris."

As he heads off I survey the room. It's pretty quiet- skeleton staff as a matter of fact, which means I can look at my screen without too much concern of what anyone else knows I'm doing.

Only a handful of trusted staff knows that Nadia's on the run, and Field Ops is now under the command of Jack Bauer. He followed a tip-off to a warehouse two days ago and managed to get a couple of Harper's men, but in the process, several agents were killed and I know he's kind of pissed about it and blaming himself, the way he usually does.

He interrogated Fletcher, and the little weasel finally broke. Admitted that Harper hired him as a computer hacker and engineered it for him through Division to come to CTU purely to leak information to his terrorist cell.

The guy is completely crazy.

Jack was working on the other guys from that warehouse for hours, but none of them will divulge Harper's whereabouts, even with broken fingers, battered faces and in one case, a broken jaw. He went in to speak to Buchanan right after Doyle's aborted call, and I guess they're still in there.

Which means something's happening.

I'm used to Jack's heavy-handed interrogation techniques, and I know the urgency of the situation. We managed to uncover the subway bombings, but there's still people out there with the capability and means to hurt people and what if they're planning much worse?

Hundreds, if not thousands of people's lives could be at risk.

There has to be something on his system. Something…

Ten minutes later I am staring at the same screen frustratedly, head in my hands and searching for answers that just aren't there, when Morris comes back, looks at his own system, shakes his head tiredly and then walks over to me.

He drops a ham sandwich on the desk. "You ok, darling?"

"Not really," I say angrily, pushing a stack of papers out of the way. "We have to find something!"

"These people have covered their tracks pretty well," Morris admits, rubbing my shoulder soothingly, "Harper's system was completely wiped and what wasn't deleted, was encrypted in a way I've never even seen before. It's taking me forever to de-code it and then when I do it's junk anyway. The guy's playing with us. The computer chip seems to have some kind of binary code in it but I can't get around it properly so that's stalling me." He studies me, "you worried about Nadia?"

I nod as I unwrap my sandwich, it's pretty hard to hide things from Morris. He knows me better than anyone.

"She'll be ok," he says simply, stroking my hair, "Mike Doyle will keep her safe- you know that, and I think something's going on upstairs."

"What? With Jack and Bill?" I question.

"They've been up there for hours," he says with a shrug, "don't tell me you didn't notice."

I shrug, "they'll tell us soon enough I guess."

As if on cue, Bill suddenly sticks his head out of his office door. "Morris! Chloe!" he barks, "come up here, now!"

I exchange a glance with my ex-husband-now-fiancée and regretfully abandon my lunch as we head up the metal staircase; "I guess now we're going to find out."

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Bill…

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I exchange glances with Jack as Chloe and Morris sit at the table, looking terse and like they suspect something is up. Figures, they are pretty perceptive. "We have a plan," I state simply. "Nothing is working, we can't find Harper, we know he wants Nadia so we're going to give him what he wants."

"What?" Chloe and Morris gasp at the same time.

"We're going to purposely put a plant in the system that lets Harper find out their location," I continue, a little perturbed by the angry look Chloe is shooting at me (pissed off Chloe is not good) "and hopefully it will lead us to more of his men and maybe even him."

"You can't!" Morris says bluntly, "that's going to endanger Nadia and Mike."

"We don't have any other choices," Jack interjects, his face tense and frustrated, "nothing else is working. Hell, I even broke one of these guys' jaws and they're still not talking…"

I sigh, "believe me, if I thought there was any other way we'd use it, but Wayne Palmer agrees that to try and track these guys, we have to go to extreme measures. The press have got wind that something's happened in conjunction with the transport system and that CTU has people in custody relating to the attempted subway bombing, its only a matter of time before they start putting things together. Once Harper's group is connected to this he'll go completely dark and we have no hope in hell of finding him…"

Chloe looks at me and then Jack, "how are you going to find Nadia and Doyle? They probably have a new encrypted phone by now and it'll be hard to trace it because you just know that Doyle did some kind of CIA gizmo thing to it that I can't get around really quickly. They only stay on the line two minutes when they call here and they're probably going to be even more cautious now."

"That's where you come in," Jack says simply. "I need you to stall them, keep them on the line longer, decrypt the signal fully and re-route it back through the system. Do not let them hang up until we've tracked it. Maybe we can even pick some kind of background noise up in their call. Anything. We're getting kind of desperate here. Chloe, how long will it take to trace their approximate location if we open the system up all the way?"

"Um, I honestly don't know," Chloe says, thinking hard, "but Mike's pretty rigid about sticking to the timings and it might take a little longer to pinpoint their exact location."

"Then we need to get around that," Jack says impatiently.

"Jack, if we totally open the system, then Harper will be able to put a trace on them as soon as we can," Morris says, looking worried.

"That's what I'm banking on," Jack replies, running a hand over the back of his neck grimly. "Only Chloe's a lot smarter than their guys are. We'll have a head start. Plus better technology."

"How are you going to get there before they do?" Chloe asks, worried. "They could be anywhere in the country."

"A helicopter," I say firmly, "Chloe, get me a chopper on standby for when Mike calls in. Jack needs to be in the air as soon as he can when we finally get a trace on them," I look down at my watch, "that gives us less than two hours to put this thing in motion."

Chloe nods obediently.

"Morris, any luck on de-fragmenting that chip?" I question.

"I pulled off some files from it," he replies, "I'm just trying to hack into them but they're password protected and probably scrambled too. A filter's coming down at the moment. I'm working on it. It should hopefully be unlocked in the next couple of hours."

I have every faith in them. "Get to work," I say simply.

And they do.

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