(21 months post-The Telling)
Jack eyes jerked open. Someone was waving ammonia under his nose. Ineffectually he tried to swat the hand away as his focus returned.
"Jack, are you okay?" asked Sloane, once Jack had been revived. "There were gun shots."
"Il Dire?" asked Jack frantically.
"Damaged, but not irreparably. Three weeks to rewire. What the hell happened?"
"Irina happened," said Jack bitterly.
"Irina? Here? But how did she – oh, never mind. You wouldn't know, would you?" Sloane finished acidly. He turned and rapidly began issuing orders for evacuation.
**
It started on the plane, winging Sloane's management team to its new ops base in Egypt. Jack was sitting by himself, restless. Three weeks. 21 days. 504 hours. No, make that 494 hours. It had been 10 hours since Irina had destroyed Il Dire's control panel. He took a deep breath. No problem.
Goddamn Irina. Addicted to a machine, indeed. All she'd done was set him back 3 weeks on his work. She had no grasp of the complexity of what he was doing, the need for precision down to the minutest detail. He couldn't afford that much time away from Il Dire. He couldn't afford *any* time away from Il Dire. He shivered, then glared at the cockpit, annoyed. Great. The pilot must be trying to save money on the heat.
He looked sideways to see Sloane watching him thoughtfully. "Okay, Jack?"
"Fine," he said irritably, reaching overhead for a blanket. And for Irina to suggest that Sloane would knowingly do that – and that Jack wouldn't be aware of it – well, she was clearly just frustrated at her own failure to stop them both. Jack's hand shook slightly as he pulled down the blanket, accidentally dislodging several others. Aggravated, he stuffed them back in and sat down. He wrapped the blanket around himself and closed his eyes. He just needed some rest.
"Gentlemen, if you look over to your left, you'll see the Nile," intoned the pilot over the loudspeaker. Jack's stomach dropped as the plane banked sharply to the left to give them a better view. Idiot, he thought savagely to himself. This wasn't a tourist flight. He ran a hand over his face and looked at it in surprise. He was perspiring, even though he was freezing.
"Are you sure you're okay, Jack?" asked Sloane a short time later, as Jack shivered again.
Jack swallowed, trying to control of wave of nausea. "No," he admitted. "Feels like a touch of the fl-" Jack stopped mid-sentence. "Of the flu," he finished slowly, heart sinking.
"Let me get you another blanket," said Sloane, standing up. "And I'll check to see if the doctor has anything that might help."
Numbly Jack took the proffered blanket from Sloane and did an inventory. Nausea. Chills. Tremors. Sweating. He closed his eyes. Oh god. Irina had been right. If he was going into withdrawal, this was going to get a lot worse before it got better. He opened his eyes and frantically scanned the airplane, needing to get out, away from all these people.
"How much longer?" he muttered anxiously to the man sitting in the seat in front of him.
"20 minutes," came the reply.
20 minutes to land, 20 minutes to deplane, 30 minutes to the hotel. That was…that was…1 hour 10 minutes. How long would it be before he couldn't hide the reaction? Before he…lost control? Heart thudding, he scanned the airplane again, and caught sight of Sloane and his head medical officer conferring in the back of the plane, heads down. Their discussion had apparently just ended abruptly. The doctor's face was white.
"The doctor says there's a bad case of flu going around," said Sloane smoothly, moving back forward as he spied Jack. "He thinks these will help." Sloane pressed an envelope of pills into Jack's hand. "He says to take one of these each day for a couple of weeks and the symptoms won't be so bad."
Jack stared at the packet in his hand. "Thanks," he said, carefully, cramming the envelope into his pocket. "I'll take one as soon as I get to the hotel."
It was with relief that Jack felt the plane finally touch down. Sloane himself escorted Jack to the hotel room he would be using while the ops base was being set up. It was seedy but serviceable, consistent with Jack's cover. "OK, Jack, you're all set. Carlos," Sloane jerked his head at the Security minder "will be outside. Get better. Oh, and Jack," Sloane squeezed Jack's arm, "you know you can call me if you need anything."
**
Jack leaned against the door as it closed behind Sloane and threw the double bolt. Thank god he was finally alone. He felt like sh*t. Staggering over to the windows, whose glare was blindingly painful, Jack yanked the curtains closed. Every fiber of his being wanted to collapse on the bed, curl up, and die.
But there was one more thing he had to do.
Tremors shook him as he set up his computer, fumbling with the connections. With painful slowness he signed on through the secure connection, struggling to remember his passwords. Finally he was able to pull up the database he had been looking for. Pharmacology. Numbly he compared the pills in his hand to the picture on the screen.
Methadone. Sloane had given him methadone.
Jack lurched to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom, falling to his knees in front of the toilet, and vomited. Methadone. Used worldwide to suppress the symptoms of heroin withdrawal.
Sloane had known.
**
Jack had lost all track of time. Sleep was impossible; every time he closed his eyes he was assaulted with a kaleidoscope of images. Bullets raking Irina's and Sydney's bodies. Sydney in a hospital ward. Blood spurting from his chest. 'Best of Il Dire' he thought bitterly to himself.
Sitting on the bed in his darkened room he rocked back and forth, unable to control the muscles spasming painfully in his legs and back. He stared at the packet of pills, sitting on the sink across the room. One pill a day, and this would all stop. He shivered. God, he was so cold. What did it matter, anyway? In 5 months it would all be over. Nausea surged through him and helplessly he emptied himself by the side of the bed. One. pill. Slowly he swung his legs over the side of the bed and staggered across to the sink.
He turned on the water and picked up the packet. One. f*cking. pill. With trembling hands he turned the packet upside down and watched as the pills swirled down the drain.
He wouldn't give Sloane the satisfaction.
His legs spasmed again, and he collapsed moaning to the floor, passing out as his head hit the ground.
**
Consciousness slowly returned. He woke in a pool of vomit, but was too weak to move. He shivered violently and passed out again.
The visions were mercifully different now. Gentle hands. Soothing tones. A rough washcloth wiping him down. A warm blanket. A steaming mug of soup, which he promptly threw up. Russian curses. And the cycle started all over again.
He dozed in snatches, drifting between a sleepy wakefulness and a wakeful sleep. The two states merged so that he lost track of which was real, which was dream. He was freezing cold. He was boiling hot. He was wrapped in a warm blanket. He was in Irina's arms. There was a loud banging on the door. There was a painful throbbing in his head. He was telling Carlos to go to hell. He was telling Sloane to go to hell. After 72 hours, he finally fell into a dreamless sleep.
Jack awoke the next morning, nauseated and weak, to a deafening pounding on the door. He quickly scanned the room. His dreams – but he was alone.
The pounding continued; Jack covered his head, cursing. He had a throbbing headache. "Mr. Bristow, this is the last time," he heard Carlos shout. "If you don't answer Sloane's ordered me to knock down the door."
Carefully he extricated himself from bed and made his way to the door. "If you make one more sound," he said in a low, lethal voice, "I. will. shoot. you. Do you understand?" He heard an anxious affirmative through the door. "Tell Sloane I've got the flu. I'll be in in a couple of days."
**
Jack straightened his tie and looked in the mirror. Still pale, but not the haggard shell that had looked back at him several days ago. The worst was clearly over. Well, with the exception that he had to look Sloane in the eye as if nothing had happened. B*stard.
Only two more weeks until Il Dire would be repaired. 336 hours. He'd be more careful this time, limit his exposure. In the past couple of days he'd come up with a couple of ideas he wanted to test out. He was impatient to see the results.
Jack opened the door to his hotel room for the first time in a week and stepped out. Pausing, he looked over his shoulder. Housekeeping would need a *big* tip, he thought.
**
"Feeling better, Jack?" asked Sloane, examining him closely. How much had Jack guessed?
"The doctor was right. Just a bad case of the flu," Jack responded, his voice casual.
Sloane relaxed. "It'll be another couple of weeks before Il Dire is repaired, but we have a couple of brushfires. Now that you're back, could you take a look at them?" He slid the files across the desk.
"Sure," Jack said evenly, and headed back to his office. He poured himself a cup of coffee, opened the first file, and began reading. And quickly set down the coffee before he spilled it as a wave of panic rolled over him. Il Dire wouldn't be available for another couple of weeks. This had been a complicated op, he couldn't fix it on his own. Who knew what might happen? He might make a mistake. People died from his mistakes.
He tried to take several breaths to calm himself, but only ended up hyperventilating. He stood up abruptly from his desk to look out the window.
When Sloane poked his head in several hours later, Jack was still looking out the window, eyes unfocused. "Any progress yet, Jack?"
"No," said Jack numbly. "No progress."
**
It had taken another week for Jack to develop enough confidence to take the first tentative steps towards operating autonomously again. Shaken by how much he had lost, how deep his dependence on Il Dire had become, he refused to use the device at all the first month it was operational.
And if he found his path inexplicably taking him by the room where Il Dire was housed, as it often did, he would force himself to stand by the door for several minutes and not reach for the knob. Through that door lay omnipotence. Escape. And dependence.
It was only after he had personally conceived and executed several ops successfully that he began to enter the room again.
**
Obsession. Addiction. Jack stood by Sydney's bed for the first time in 3 months, holding her hand. Pleased to note the steadiness of his own. Irina had been right about the addiction. But wrong about his need to control "You're not God." No, he wasn't. But only one thing would make a difference for Sydney – Jack's ability to strategize, to control events. With or without Il Dire. It was the only thing that gave him purpose now.
Please, God, let my life not be a total waste, he thought to himself.