Sydney fiddled with a straw wrapper she had had in her hands for the majority of the flight. She couldn't believe she was actually returning to Los Angeles.
Sark reached across the aisle to grab her hand gently with his. "You don't have to be nervous, Sydney. The people we're going to love you just as much as they did before. Nothing has changed."
"Something has changed," she said, looking at him seriously. "You're a part of my life now. You're all of my life now. They've had time to adjust to that fact, but none of them, except my father, have actually seen the two of us together. They might decide it's better if we return to New York."
"The objective is bigger than any of their personal feelings, Sydney."
She jumped slightly as the landing gear hit runway cement. They were here.
After about ten minutes of taxiing, the plane came to a complete stop and its passengers stood up to exit the plane. Sark gave her one more smile before they walked out into the harsh, smoggy air of L.A. Vaughn was standing next to an SUV with his wife.
Sydney hesitantly held up her hand in a wave and was happy to see Vaughn smiling back at her. "Maybe we can return to normal," she let herself believe as she walked towards him.
"Vaughn. Lauren. I'm so sorry."
"We'll get through it," Lauren said. "Thank you so much for answering Michael's call. I had my doubts."
"Neither one of us were sure that you would give up your normal life to help two people who almost ruined your life."
"Number one, you did not ruin my life. In fact, what you did to me was more of a favor." She glanced at the man beside her, thinking of how happy she was that he was in her life. "And number two, I fully intend to return to that normal life when we're done here."
"Still as stubborn as ever," Vaughn said with a laugh.
"I like to think of it as determination," she replied.
Vaughn looked at Sark for the first time. After a minute of sizing up, he held out his hand. "Thank you for coming."
"Most of the world may think I'm a complete asshole, but I do have moments of emotional weakness."
Vaughn cracked a small smile as he heard Lauren and Sydney begin to giggle softly. "Get in, you two. We're meeting the others at the offices in about half an hour. Marshall has been driving us crazy since he found out that you were coming in."
"As long as he doesn't write me another poem…"
The drive to the CIA headquarters was filled with silence, but it was a surprisingly comfortable silence. As soon as they reached the parking garage, the severity of the situation hit Sydney, and she reached out for Sark's hand.
"It will be all right," he whispered in her ear.
She nodded and followed Vaughn and Lauren as they led the way into the complex. Nothing had changed all that much. There was a new paint color in the hallway, and lots of the people walking around weren't familiar faces. In general, it was the same, though.
Sydney caught sight of her father from across the room and dropped Sark's hand to go to him. "Daddy!" she cried as she rushed into his arms.
It had been a good six months since Sydney had last seen her father. Being on different halves of the country and the fact that Jack Bristow was still a CIA spy didn't make contact easy. However, a Bristow was never one to hide from a little glitch in the plan. She and her father kept in contact every day unless he was on a mission.
"Sydney. It's good to see you," Jack said as he released her from the hug.
"It's nice to see you, too." Sydney was about to fill him on what was new with her when she felt someone try to tackle her from behind. Laughing, she turned around. "It's nice to see you, too, Marshall."
"You were always my favorite agent," Marshall said, taking a step back. "If there were Sydney Bristow action figures and Pez dispensers, I would have them all. I would be a Sydney Bristow paraphernalia conisuer."
"Thank you, Marshall." Sydney looked around at the mass of people staring at her. "Why is everyone staring at me?"
"Because you're a bit of a legend around these parts," said a deep voice behind her.
"Dixon!" she cried as she went for her third hug of the hour.
"Hi, Syd."
She looked up at him and smiled. "Don't you dare even try to start apologizing for what happened between us."
"I never got to explain why I let you go. Syd, I thought it was what you wanted. For so many years that we worked together, all you talked about was having a normal life. I never realized that that had changed."
"Not too much," she said, looking over at where Sark was standing talking to Marshall. Marshall looked so nervous she wanted to go over there and assure him that Sark would not be killing anyone that day.
"The Agency misses you."
"I'm not coming back to this life. It's taken too much time away from me already." Sydney stepped back and her face visibly paled.
"What's wrong?" Sark asked, shifting into his concerned mode.
"I think that the airplane ride upset the Poptart I had for breakfast." Sydney put her hand over her mouth and rushed away, presumably to the bathroom.
Sark bit his lip and looked around as everyone shuffled back and forth nervously. "So, this is what this place looks like on the other half of the prison cell. I always wondered when I was here."
Lauren cracked a little smile at that comment. Vaughn let out a small laugh. "I honestly never thought you'd have the opportunity to see this," he said.
"Me, either," Sark agreed. He looked around again and nodded. "It's nice. Kind of homey compared to the other organization headquarters I've seen."
"We just got them to repaint the walls a more soothing color," Marshall said. "The old maroon-brown color was making everyone a little angry. Or so say the psychological tests. You see, colors can influence people's feelings unintentionally. It's all about subtlety."
"Interesting," Sark said. "I'll have to look into that."
"Sorry about that," Sydney said as she returned to the group.
"Are you all right?" Sark asked. The second she had reappeared, he was at her side and holding her arm for support.
"I'm fine. I just got a little sick from all this anxiety and stress." Sark nodded. "Okay, we should get down to business before I get sick again."
Dixon nodded and motioned for the group huddled around Vaughn and Lauren to make their way to his office. "Tyler has been kidnapped by ex-Agents Weiss and Conway, you know that much. It's imperative that we get him back."
"I know that we're all practically a family here, Dixon. But what makes Vaughn's son so important?"
"To start, Tyler was adopted him when he was one year old. He is a product of a program set up by the Covenant to create future agents much in the way that Project Christmas was intended."
"The child was one year old," Sydney said as she sat down in one of the briefing room chairs. "How could he possibly have been programmed that early on?"
"The Covenant harvested genetic material from many of the top agents around the world in multiple organizations. They actually manufactured children."
"Is that possible?" she asked.
"It is now," Marshall said as he took a seat across from her. "You know that there have been large leaps of progress made in the area of cloning. The Covenant stole some classified technology from a base in Switzerland. It seems like they figured out how to splice DNA to create children who have the potential to grow up to be super weapons."
"Our son is one of those super weapons, Sydney," Lauren said.
Sydney nodded as she saw Sark take a seat next to her out of the corner of her eye. "Do you know who his biological parents are?"
"We believe that Tyler's mother was Emma Wallace," Vaughn said.
"The woman that the Jim Lennox double murdered in Berlin three years ago? How is that possible if she died?"
"It seems that this cloning operation has been the main goal of the Covenant since their forming. Emma Wallace died around the time that the Covenant was being formed," Lauren supplied. "Enzo Markovic would have been one of the leaders of the Covenant as we know it today if Agent Lennox hadn't shot him in Poland."
"So, Emma Wallace lives on in our son," Vaughn said. "We don't know who his father is, but in all honesty, I think it's me. DNA tests are inconclusive because of the nature of his conception."
"Wouldn't you have known if the Covenant got samples from you, Agent Vaughn?" Sark asked, speaking for the first time since they sat down in the briefing room.
"The Covenant could have gotten a hold of my DNA at any point in any mission I went on. They figured out a way to extract and manufacture full, live DNA from dead epidermal cells. Because we can't tell for sure, I don't want Tyler to treat me any differently than he would Lauren."
Sydney nodded in understanding. "So, Weiss chose to kidnap your son because he has the potential to become a super weapon?"
"That's how it appears, Sydney," Jack said. "We've tracked Weiss and Conway to Miami. It appears that is where they are holding your son. The specific location he has been at is either a large hotel in the Biscayne Bay area or an abandoned warehouse a few miles off."
"What do you suggest?" Sydney asked him.
"I suggest that we raid the hotel as soon as possible. If he's not there, we can easily shift to the
warehouse. The longer we wait to act on
intel we receive, the less of chance we have of finding them before they move
on to a new location. So speed is of the
utmost importance."
"Sydney, we want you to go in alone to the hotel. Weiss will not be expecting you so the guards won't be familiar with your face." Dixon slid a file folder over to Sydney.
"Unacceptable," Sark said as he put his hand on the folder to prevent Sydney from picking it up.
"And why is that, Mr. Sark?" Dixon asked.
"She's not going in to Miami alone. I'm going with her, and there's no discussion about that."
Sydney put her hand on Sark's. "There shouldn't be a problem with that. You said you wanted to send me in because no one will be expecting me. I'm sure they don't expect Sark to show up."
"Fine," Dixon said. "Sydney and Sark, you'll go in. Vaughn and Lauren will run the op from Miami, and be there in case you need backup. The rest of us will monitor you from here."
They all nodded in agreement and stood up to leave.
"That wasn't so bad," Sark said to Sydney quietly.
"Can I speak to you, Mr. Sark?" Jack asked.
Sydney smiled at him weakly and left him alone with her father in the briefing room.
"Say whatever you need to, Jack."
"I just want to remind you that I'm watching you and my daughter. I've come to respect you, but your former employee has made it extremely hard for me to trust anyone. So I don't quite trust you with my daughter yet."
Sark almost wanted to laugh at Jack's subtle reference to the connection between Irina and him. "Understood."
"But what you did, insisting that Sydney not be alone, that wins you a few extra points with me. Take care of my daughter when you're in Miami."
"I will," Sark promised and turned to leave.
"Wait. Sydney told me about your proposal."
Sark stopped dead in his tracks. He thought they had agreed that they weren't going to keep secrets from one another, and here she went and told Jack about their engagement without informing him. It would have been so much easier if he had time to prepare for this conversation. He turned to look at Jack. "I love your daughter, sir. That's never going to change."
"That's a start. I just want you to know that all those threats I've made to you over the past two years about the consequences of hurting my daughter just became twice as harsh. I don't really believe in the sanctity of marriage anymore since Irina. So, I'm not going to ease off just because you put a ring on her finger."
"Understood," Sark said for a second time.
"Good." Jack walked past Sark on his way out of the room. At the door, he turned around and said somberly, "Welcome to the family."
Sark let out a big breath as the door shut behind Jack. "That could have gone a lot worse," he muttered. He looked through the glass window at where Sydney was talking to Marshall. "But for her, it's worth it."
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
While Sark was inside the briefing room trying to keep Jack from killing him, Sydney found herself outside with her ex-lover and his wife. The tension between the three of them when they were in the same room was a little toned done but still present.
"So," Sydney said, turning to face Lauren, "I think I need to know a little more about what the CIA has on Weiss. Why would he do something like this?"
"For starters, you should probably know just how bad Weiss infiltrated this organization. He had been reporting to the Covenant for months before you received that intel on him."
"From Sark," Sydney pointed out. She didn't want anyone to forget his part in pointing out the mole. It would be good if she could get everyone to focus on the things he's done to help them succeed rather than his past indiscretions.
Lauren nodded. "Eric had tried on numerous occasions to get some of our best agents killed, including you, Sydney."
"I interrogated him a little when we first brought him into custody. All he would say to me was to tell you that he was sorry and you were the only one he had problems betraying," Vaughn said.
"How convenient. He had troubling betraying me, and look. Here I am, the one who's going to take him done. That's irony."
"What we didn't realize at the time," Lauren said continuing her explanation, "was that Weiss wasn't just your ordinary mole for an enemy organization. The intel he fed them was so good that he started moving on up on the chain of command. He began to go on missions for them when the Agency thought he had a day off or was researching a future mission for us."
"He was a full-on double agent," Vaughn added. "Now Eric's one of the top men in the Covenant."
"Okay. I've got enough of the back story. But how could he kidnap your son, Vaughn? I didn't think he was faking your whole friendship. You two used to be so close."
"We started drifting apart, Sydney. About the time that you came into my life. You took over all my thoughts and actions. There just wasn't any room to make sure that Eric was content with his life. I partially blame myself for his defection. I shouldn't have ignored him so much." Lauren put her hand on her husband's shoulder to calm him. It was an unconscious gesture, but Sydney noticed it at once. Vaughn really was happy in his marriage. That was plain for anyone to see.
She turned as she heard her father coming out of the debriefing room and saw the determined look on his face. "Uh oh," she murmured to Lauren and Vaughn. "I think I need to go check on Sark. My father looks like he gave him 'the talk'".
Sydney walked over just as Sark was emerging from the debriefing room. "So, how did that go? Still alive?"
He gave her a reassuring smirk. "I think you were right. Your father likes me. You know how I know that?"
"How?" she said with a smile, settling herself into his arms.
"Because I'm still alive."
She smiled into his chest and just sat for a moment in silence. In the coming days, she knew there probably wouldn't be much time of this. Her normal life was on hold for a few days and moments with Sark would be few and far between.