Author's Notes: I'd like to say thank you to my one reviewer. It really made my day when I got that review :)
I'm still looking for a beta. And, Enjoy the Story :)
Chapter One - The Mission
Inside one of the many conference rooms in the CIA Headquarters, located in Los Angeles, a small group of agents were meeting. Each of the six members were essential to the development, security, and effectiveness of the United States government.
To Sydney Bristow, four of the faces in the office were quite familiar to her. Her former partner, Marcus Dixon, was the person responsible for calling the team together at such short notice. It had been nearly midnight when each of them had received the call to meet in the room.
Obviously, the meeting required urgency and the utmost secrecy.
Dixon commanded the attention of the CIA agents, just by taking his place at the front of the room. All attention turned away from personal conversations, Marshall even stopped in the middle of his latest ramble. Once again he had been talking about his baby. The joke around the office was that it was harder to escape Marshall when he talked about his baby, then it had been to escape him when he was excited about a new gadget.
Dixon cleared his throat and began filling the team in on the recent events that had caused the need for such a late night meeting.
"Earlier this evening a warehouse in Cuba was infiltrated. Previously it was believed that the warehouse was abandoned. However, the leaders of the organization, under the threat of persecution, have admitted that experiments were taking place in the warehouse. Evidence obtained by the CIA supports this information." Dixon looked around the room as images flashed on the screen beside him.
The screen showed a layout of the warehouse, each member of the meeting had a copy of the same layout in the folder at his or her seat. Dixon flipped the picture on the screen to show the leaders of the experiment.
"These are our unwilling informers. They have found themselves with no place else to turn. But be warned, once this information is out, we can expect for many agencies to express an interest."
"But what group infiltrated the building?" asked Michael Vaughn, who was another familiar face to Sydney.
"The intruder has no known affiliation," replied Dixon. "But they did manage to escape with the results of the experiment. Something these scientists were calling the Agrippina Project.
"Wait -" Sydney interrupted, "-You said 'the'. You mean there was only one intruder?"
Dixon nodded, "Yes, at this time we believe that there was only one person involved in the infiltration. That is why we'll have agents watching the black market, for any movement in that area."
"So this one guy got past exactly how many guards?" questioned Vaughn.
"Not he." Stated Dixon. Surprised looks flashed across the faces of most of the men in the room. The one woman, Sydney, wore a look of what appeared to be smug satisfaction. Dixon added, "And she got around thirty guards surveying the outer perimeter. As well as twenty guard inside the building."
"Fifty guards! That's like a super spy. I don't think I've ever seen Sydney do that. Well there was that one time that she saved SD-6. But how many were there, Sydney? Not fifty..." Marshall trailed off as he was interrupted by the new face in the room.
The new guy looked fit, like an active field agent, but it was difficult to tell because he was sitting down. His neatly cut black hair provided a good contrast against his blue eyes. Besides this contrast the agent didn't really stand out in the room, he certainly wasn't any better dressed than anyone else in the room. Which, for the record, most were dressed pretty badly as they had been woken up at midnight to come in.
"What does all of this have to do with us?" asked the new comer.
"Yes, what does this have to do with us. And who the hell is this that you've brought in here?" Added Jack Bristow, the only one of the group who was sharply dressed. Sydney was slightly afraid to ask her father why he had such a nice suit on.
The new comer started to interject and introduce himself, but Dixon cut him off.
"This is agent Patrick Rouni. Proper introductions can be made later. For now all you need to know is he is working with us." Dixon stressed the 'with us' part of the statement. Gazing around the room, he settled a look on Jack. "And he will be treated and trusted like any other part of the team."
Jack nodded to Dixon. To most of the team it appeared to be a nod that was accepting what he was told. To Dixon, however, it was clear that Jack was acknowledging a different message that was being covertly sent.
Sydney looked questioningly at her father, but before she could dwell on the thoughts of what she thought had just occurred Dixon again interjected.
"The first phase of your mission is to analyze the testimonies and security footage from earlier this evening. I suggest you use it wisely, because we do not have much to go on. And folks, don't underestimate this woman." Dixon paused and hesitated before adding. "Sydney, Vaughn, and Patrick. The three of you will be responsible for heading up the field operations, when we are ready to proceed." Sydney smiled shyly at Patrick, pulling her hair out of her face with her one hand. Vaughn frowned, but had no other choice but to agree.
"You are dismissed. Jack, I'd like to see you in my office." Dixon said, before striding out of the room. Jack Bristow didn't look surprised, he merely got up and followed Dixon out.
The five remaining agents also took their cue, exiting the room with the tape and transcripts. They were prepared for a long night with a fine- tooth comb.
The team was sitting together, watching the surveillance footage from earlier in the evening. They had gathered in Marshall's office, though it was slightly uncomfortable, it did offer some privacy, in case anyone decided to make a late night - or early morning - visit to the office.
"That's some technique," commented Vaughn, watching the woman slide on the floor to avoid the gunfire.
"She definitely has some experience." said Sydney Bristow. "I mean, watch how confident she looks. We can't even see her face, but you can just read her feeling that this was too easy."
"What about this technology that she's using to get the crystal out?" asked Agent Rouni. "Does it tell you anything about who she might be working for, Marshall?"
"It's pretty much standard gear. I mean we even have one, right over here." Marshall reached over on his table, to pull out the equipment. "Strange," he muttered. "It was right here." Marshall got up and started sorting to shift the materials and equipment that he had on his table. "I know I brought it up here, because Chuck, you know Chuck from the first floor, well we were talking about our kids - Imagine me talking about kids" Marshall paused, and smiled, obviously thinking about his son again. "- Anyway he mentioned one of the toys he had. It got me thinking, and bam! I was going to make some modifications to our good old suction cup here."
"It's alright Marshall, we don't need to see it," said Sydney. "Let's just see if we can see anything else on the tape." She added, trying to steer Marshall back to the matter at hand. "Can we rewind it a little. Wait. Stop there." Sydney suddenly demanded. She then moved closer to the screen, in fact if she was any closer she would've been inside the television. She was also squinting to try to make something out.
"I can enlarge that." Commented Marshall.
"Oh. Ok then. Yes, do that." replied Sydney, feeling slightly embarrassed. She looked over at Vaughn, who was avoiding her gaze and coughing in a suspicious manner. Patrick was openly grinning. Catching Sydney's gaze, he threw her a wink.
Marshall enlarged the screen, following Sydney's directions for what she wanted to see. The image popped up and it was exactly what Sydney had been hoping for.
"I see London, I see France..." started Patrick. But he stopped when he realized no one was really paying attention to him anyway.
It had previously appeared that the woman was wearing a one-piece bodysuit. However, when the woman had bent down to put the crystal in her ankle pouch, the suit had separated. Revealing it was a shirt and pants, and not really a body suit at all.
"So, now we know that we have a Caucasian, female suspect." Said Vaughn, stating the obvious.
"What's that on her back?" asked Patrick. "It looks like a scar, or maybe a tattoo."
"Well, I can run analyze from the information that we've gathered so far. The computer should narrow down our suspects and we can move from there." Said Marshall, already compiling the data on his computer.
"There's something else that's bothering me." Sydney said. She wasn't really talking to anyone, just rambling out loud. She pressed the play button and watched the fight sequence.
"She reminds me of you." Commented Vaughn. Moving closer to where Sydney was watching. She looked at him questioningly, but then refocused her attention on the tape.
"Marshall, what about here? What are they saying?" Sydney asked.
"If you give me some time, then I think I have a computer program that can tell us what they said, at least to an accuracy of about ninety percent," Marshall said.
"How much time?" questioned Vaughn.
'Well, once I program the video so that it can be accepted by the computer, and run the feed through..." Marshall started, before being interrupted.
"How long Marshall?" Vaughn again asked.
"Thirty minutes. Give or take a nano-second." Answered Marshall.
"You work on the program, I'll go get Dixon and my dad. And let them no we might be getting somewhere" said Sydney, moving towards the door.
Sydney was about to knock on the door to Dixon's office when she heard raised voices. She hesitated, and while stuck in a moment of indecision and accidentally overheard a very heated discussion.
"You know how I feel on this matter. He can not be trusted, and we can not afford to allow him to have access to such confidential material. You plan to send him into the field with Sydney! You know I won't accept that." Sydney recognized the voice of her father. It was also easy to recognize the angry tone in her father's voice.
"Jack, I am asking you to trust my judgement on this. I won't let any harm come to Sydney." Dixon was obviously struggling not to raise his voice back at Jack.
"His father -" Jack started before Dixon interrupted him.
"His father is regardless, we don't judge Sydney by her mother and we will not judge Patrick by his father. That is all. You will not bring your personal feelings into this case. Is that clear?"
Sydney decided not to wait any longer and knocked on the door. Dixon called for her to come in. Sydney entered and was greeted by the sight of two very flustered looking men.
Taking a calming breath Sydney said, "We think we've found some information about our suspect. Marshall's running a program now that may give us some more to go on. He said it would be ready in about twenty minutes." Sydney mentally readjusted the time, compensating for the time she had spent listening outside the door.
"We'll be right there." Dixon said shortly. Sydney nodded and exited the room.
Returning to Marshall's office Sydney once again found men in a heated discussion.
"No, that's not right." Vaughn was practically yelling.
Patrick was about to answer, but stopped as he noticed Sydney entering the room.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Vaughn and I were just having a little chat. Nothing serious." Answered Patrick.
Sydney gave him an odd look, but decided to let it go. She barely even heard Vaughn's answer that it was just a friendly discussion.
"How's it coming, Marshall?" Sydney asked him, hoping for some good news.
"We're just about done. Are Dixon and Jack coming to see it? Are they working on another lead?"
"They're on their way." Sydney said bluntly. She didn't want to talk about the argument she had over heard, especially not in front of the subject of the argument.
The group waited in an awkward silence. Even Marshall didn't seem to want to try to break the mood. It was very uncomfortable, but mercifully short. In a few minutes Dixon and Jack entered the room.
"Just in time." Said Marshall. "The computer is at 95%, any minute now we'll know what the two were talking about."
As usual, Marshall proved to be right, in the next minute a message popped up stating that the process was complete.
"Alright, and just press the play button, and we can go." Marshall pressed play and the group watched, eagerly anticipating some new information. Sydney had moved to the edge of her seat, hoping that this program of Marshall's was accurate.
"The program matches the mouth movements of the people with programmed sound bytes, luckily both the guard and intruder were facing a camera, so it should provide a fairly accurate reading." The group members, who were busy focusing on the tape, were ignoring Marshall. "Okay, well I'll just let the tape speak for itself."
Soon the tape was at the point of interest, playing through Marshall's computer.
The group heard the computerized version of the guard yell, "Who the hell are you?"
They were shocked by the answer of "The name is Sydney."
Sydney couldn't even think of a way to respond to the stunned reaction of her teammates.