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Part 3 : Firewall
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White hot and something like pain, the images flashed through his mind. Lazarey, Irina,
Allison, Sydney. Four people: his father, his mother, his lover and his
enemy. Each had betrayed him but the last.
Ockley pressed the syringe through the
blistered skin at his wrist, and he lost his train of thought.
The ceiling was white; the floor, the
walls, the furniture was white. The only color was grey, the smooth metal of
the operating table and the precise tray of instruments.
He looked over the doctor's shoulder,
straining against the straps that
held him down, and he saw on
the wall the picture, the curious black-and-white photo of a church.
The church. France. His Mercedes. Sydney. Ah, yes. The enigmatic Miss Bristow.
Surely she was still ever the compatriot, her memory butchered, lost and alone, but Cowboy Up, Sydney, your country
needs you. Revolutionary, really, that all this time she'd been working her own
game.
She'd told him they were even now, and
he had little choice but to believe her. Until he gained the upper, or merely the level hand in their little tug-of-war, he wouldn't dare oppose her. Not since the peak of
Irina's power had he seen anyone so poised, so untouched. The difference
between mother and daughter, he realized, was that Irina had broken. Inside,
Sydney was already ash.
How many days had it been? Weeks,
months, years? Time became filtered in this room, in this wretched little tomb
with the ocean breathing against the window. Sark had no way of telling how
long Ockley had had him strapped to the cool steel operating table, invading
his head with images and sounds; Sights, smells, blood.
Pain, pleasure, and the color red.
Beating against his mind, sizzling in his veins, a taste and smell, no light in
the blackness for sight.
The doctor
spoke quietly in his ear.
"You are a servant, Mr.
Sark," Ockley grated. "You are powerful and you are weak. You are
only what we make you."
23 feet high, 9 inches, he would guess,
judging by the shadows sweeping across the ancient archway. Sydney had shown him - Sydney.
Ignore Ockley. Ignore the outside
world. His went through the mental catalogue again. The four main players in his life: his father, his mother, his lover and his
enemy.
His father had abandoned him, Sark
couldn't even remember his face.
His mother had died when he was a
toddler, but Irina had filled that role to her own ends. She'd betrayed him
when she left him to rot in CIA custody while she cavorted off on a fool's errand with her former husband.
His lover,
Allison, she was using him for whatever she could get.
How sad, he thought. Only his enemy had
yet to betray him.
Now that was a comforting thought.
Sydney Bristow, ass-kicking CIA champion, was the only person who had ever helped
him for anything but her own gain. Well, not entirely true: doubtless the Covenant would use him to hunt her down once programmed,
so there was some profit, at
least. But she'd seemingly
given up another chance at life in L.A., risked death by catching him alone,
revealed secrets that were no doubt dangerous to her well-being, and all for
his benefit. So that he could look across the room at that
damned picture and have some defence from the sickening whispers assaulting
his consciousness.
It was remarkable, really. The only person who'd ever shown him compassion was a
woman who would put a bullet between his eyes and then go out for sushi. How...
quaint.
He settled onto the operating table,
closing his eyes with his customary smirk returning full-force. Ockley pressed
a second needle into the inside of his elbow. Let them come, Sark thought of
the savage voices. If his enemy wouldn't hurt him, certainly he was safe from
his own mind.
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"Find Sydney Bristow."
Fools. Of course he would bloody find
her. Just not to kill her.
"Kill her."
So damned predictable.
It was odd, to be sure. A faint voice
in his ears telling him to agree with this monkey seated before him. Easily
ignored, of course, but some nerve therapy would be required after this was
resolved. He forced himself to nod briskly.
Allison was in the corner, watching.
Amused. She'd get the treatment next week, he guessed. Damned if he told her
the trick to eluding the procedure.
"She disappeared from the Los
Angeles 4 months ago. The CIA is currently investigating, with little success.
No one has seen her since."
Callaghan watched the blond man, who
stared at him with blank blue eyes and almost smirked. So like Sydney Bristow,
he thought. Weaker, perhaps, but not by much. He would have to be terminated
quickly. Used and discarded like the dozens of agents Ockley had tested his work
on.
Mr. Sark, it seemed, would not stay under their control for long.
But for now. . .
"We've discovered a safehouse in
Greece, under the ownership of Julia Thorne. Go there. She may have left clues,
or she may return there at some point. Check it out and report to me when you
know anything," Callaghan ordered dismissively.
"He's smiling," Allison told him after Sark closed the
door behind him.
"By report, he always is," Callaghan
answered without concern.
She slid from her seat and followed the
assassin out. Callaghan caught her before she could leave.
"I'd like you to check in with Dr.
Ockley tomorrow. You need to be re-evaluated after your little spat with Agent
Bristow. Three months ago, wasn't it?" he said, glancing up at her from
the file scattered on his desk.
"Four," she corrected.
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Four months. Four freaking months he'd
spent in the Covenant's cage. Blood pounded in his ears, and that horrid little
hissing voice tore at his concentration. Sark's
eyes watered as his fingers flew over the keyboard.
Free, for the moment. Four months of
attempted brainwashing had done nothing other than almightily piss him off. For
four months holding the mask in place, pretending to submit helplessly to the
drivel Ockley pledged his life to. Tonight was his test mission, his first
errand for the Covenant under the alias of their new pet zombie.
He'd kill them all.
It'd be suicide to go in blindly. No,
he needed to know what Sydney knew. He'd disassemble the puzzle that was the
Covenant, and, unlike Sydney, he would use it to destroy them, instead of
hiding behind a mask of amnesia.
Ingenious, really. How better to keep
your knowledge hidden than feigning ignorance? His plan was far more simple: find the head honcho, track him down, and leave an
early Christmas present placed beneath his car.
Smash and grab wasn't his style, truth
be told, but the pain throbbing through his veins didn't give a shit.
And where better to look than the public library.
He sat in a darkened corner; it was late, and deserted. He was posted at a battered
computer station, typing on a sticky keyboard while listening with one ear for a sign of attack.
Firewall after firewall. The disk he'd
swiped almost by habit from the modem of Joshua Callaghan had numerous
safeties, none of which accounted for much when Sark had resolve.
Finally, a contained file. Once decoded, translated roughly from German, and placed in correct order, a list. Dated January
9th, 2001, four months before Sydney's disappearance.
Gregory Alden, Joshua Callaghan, Arvin
Sloane, Samantha Laroche, Andrian Lazarey, Finn Ryden, Irina Derevko.
Sark leaned back, considering. Gregory
Alden, he knew, was dead. Eating dinner with his girlfriend on Friday evening
and he fell from his chair in convulsions. Police had found arsenic in his
wineglass. He'd been an arms dealer, prominent in the Czech Republic, a
defector from the United States.
Samantha Laroche, the turn-coat
scientist. She'd worked with The Man on occasion, a mastermind on contagious
diseases. Found dead at the bottom of a park fountain, a hypodermic dart still
lodged in her kneecap.
Andrian Lazarey, a well-known
businessman moonlighting as a crime boss, found dead in his office, his throat
sliced with a letter-opener.
Pressing the release, Sark pocketed the
disk and closed out the window. He erased the cache and set a time-release
firewall on the software. Sydney, it seemed, had been hunting.