Breakdown
Set during "Reunion".
Sydney sat on the plane to Zurich after Lauren left, steaming. How dare that b**ch pretend to be nice to her? Sydney could tell that Lauren hated her. And the blond witch was turning Vaughn against her. And there wasn't a d*** thing she could do about it.
Sydney sighed and looked at her book. She'd grabbed it from a bookstore at the airport upon realizing that she had nothing to read; it was only after she got on the plane that she realized it was poetry. Sydney hated poetry. The book was called 100 Great Poems by 100 Great Poets. How cheesy. She flipped through it absently. Suddenly, the word "rage" caught her eye. She stopped at looked more closely, then whispered aloud, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." She wondered if Dylan Thomas' life had been anything like her own. Suddenly, she understood. She had been "going gentle" for far too long as her life kept getting worse and worse. It was time for rage. Yes, rage, she thought. And she was a CIA agent with a gun. Sydney smiled.
***
Sydney couldn't keep a smile off her lips as she thought that it was the last time she would ever had to sit across a table from Arvin Sloane. She waited for the right moment, for Sloane to start baiting her.
Sloane looked at her with that unbearable smirk that was his attempt at a paternal expression. "I've missed you, Sydney. I really have."
Without the slightest flutter of her eyelashes, Sydney pulled her gun and shot him right in the center of his forehead. He didn't even have time to look shocked. Sydney didn't take the time to gloat, though; she turned immediately to Vaughn and Lauren, who were still too shocked to reach for their guns. She pulled the trigger once, then again, and they fell to the floor, screaming in agony from the shots she had placed in their stomachs. "Consider yourselves lucky," she said. "I thought about killing you, but you weren't worth it." She walked out.
***
A day later, Sydney was in the control room for Medusa at the Russian Science Embassy. When Sark and Oransky walked in, she shot them both in the head. Then she destroyed Medusa—her very last action for the CIA, she thought with satisfaction.
***
It took her nearly two days to get to Washington, as people all over the world were now searching for the rogue CIA agent. She only had one more thing to do, and then they could have her. She walked into NSC headquarters and barely had time to put a bullet in Robert Lindsey's brain before she was hit with three tranquilizer darts and a bullet. Fortunately, whoever had shot her wasn't as good a shot as she was; it was just a shoulder shot.
***
"Sydney? Sydney, wake up."
Sydney opened her eyes to find that she was in a hospital room, strapped securely to a bed. But there were armed guards lying dead or unconscious on the floor, and the straps were being removed by a…cat?
The cat finished and turned to her, and Sydney gasped in recognition. "Mom?" Her mother was wearing a skintight black leotard and tights, a headband with cat ears, and a long black tail, and her face was painted with whiskers.
Irina smiled and hugged her daughter. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so proud of you. You went out and dealt with your problems instead of just taking all that crap. Four dead and two seriously wounded in three days—I'm impressed. Now come on, we've got to get out of here." She grabbed a nearby bag and pulled out a voluminous red cloak and a basket. "Here's your costume. You're Little Red Riding Hood."
"Why do I need a costume? And why are you dressed like a cat?"
"It's Halloween, dear."
"Oh, okay." Sydney let her mother help her into the cloak; the hood was huge and half-covered her face, making it hard for anyone to identify her.
The hospital corridors were eerie…darkened and completely deserted. "Mom, how many people did you kill to get me out?" Sydney asked curiously.
"Oh, I didn't. I used tranq darts. You should only kill the people that really deserve it…but I guess you knew that."
"Yeah."
The cat put her arm around Little Red Riding Hood's shoulders, and the two left the hospital and disappeared into the night.
finis