Earthly Posessions: The Mission
Five Hours EarlierSydney walked into the conference room, her father right behind her. Dixon was reading from a file, his wrinkles exaggerated from worry. Marshall was fiddling with his watch and muttering under his breath something about the equator and day light savings.
Sydney sat down next to her father, who took her hand in his and squeezed it lightly. She heard something behind her and turned to see Weiss and Vaughn walk in together, their faces red from laughing so hard at what she assumed was a joke. She looked up at Weiss, as if to say 'what's so funny?' but before she had a chance to find out he looked down, as if he was a five-year-old caught red-handed stealing from a cookie jar.
Sydney's hands circled the coffee cup in front of her. They had all been contacted half an hour earlier, at four in the morning, and told that they had an urgent meeting. Although Sydney was a patriot she couldn't think of anything that could be so important so as to wake her up at that hour.
She picked up a spoon that was lying on a serviette and slowly circled it around the frothing of her coffee, watching the liquid consume the milk. She often felt like that, her job, slowly driving her crazy, depriving her of all that she loved – her friends, her family, whatever shreds of normality she had displayed before. Pretty soon, she figured, there wouldn't be any more Sydney left, just the job.
Dixon stood up from his chair and addressed them.
"I'm assuming you all know why you're here. The CIA has just gotten a lead that could possibly bring us one of the front-runners of the Association."
Sydney sat up in her chair. The Association was an organisation that the CIA had only recently learned about. It consisted of rogue agents from a number of different groups not unlike the Covenant or the Alliance. The problem with the Association though was its fluidity – it appeared that rogue agents were only loyal to the Association until their endgame was achieved.
The one thing that made the Association stand out from all the other organisations was the fact that it didn't appear to have a head. It was this monster with long extending arms that could be interchanged at any given moment; you could cut off one arm only to discover ten more in its place, and there was no head to cut off to prevent those arms from coming back.
Dixon cleared his throat. "It has come to our attention that the Association has one small group in charge of recruiting rogue agents. Our analysts have concluded that we have to bring the Association down from the outside, by stopping recruitment."
"Who's this frontrunner?" Jack looked at Dixon intently, measuring every word.
Dixon handed out copies of a file around the room. "Stanley Babcock."
"Who? Sir, in all the intel we've come across… we've never heard that name before." Weiss looked up from the file. "Do you have any pictures?"
Dixon looked down at his desk. "No, we haven't been able to receive visual intel–"
A choking noise resonated across the room. Dixon instantly stopped talking and turned to Marshall, who was attempting to swallow a large bite of his doughnut. Weiss leaped out of his chair and tapped on Marshall's back. The offending doughnut flew out of Marshall's mouth, making a perfect arc as it landed in front of Jack, thudding softly.
Jack pushed his chair back and looked angrily at the doughnut. Marshall smiled at Jack and mouthed the word 'sorry'. Jack nodded but continued to look at the doughnut, as if wanting to assassinate it.
Dixon spoke. "As I was saying, we haven't received much intel on him. We do know, however, that he goes by the alias Jamal Yassin."
Sydney stopped taking notes. "What's the mission?"
"One of the rogue agents close to Yassin is ready for extraction. Your mission is to go with Agents Vaughn and Weiss to extract Agent Maddox. The CIA also needs you to plant a bug in one of their offices." Dixon handed out the file of Agent Maddox and motioned for Marshall to brief Sydney on op-tech.
Marshall stepped up, straightened his tie and handed out a box of doughnuts across the room. "First off, I, uh, wanted to apo-apologise to you, Ja-ack, for the Krispy Kreme, it's, uh, too early, in the mo-morning." The box of doughnuts made its way to Jack. "Uh, want a do-doughnut? Peace?"
Taking his index finger, Jack pushed the box of doughnuts in one smooth, quick motion towards Dixon. "No thank you, Marshall."
Marshall looked temporarily disappointed. "oh, that's o-okay, then, all the mo-ore for me."
"Marshall!" Dixon was beginning to get annoyed.
"Yes sir… now, what you see here…" Marshall picked up a pen. "Is a bug. If you can, Syd, just place it anywhere in the office. The bug is built into the biro so we can tell exactly what's being written with it and…" Marshall picked up a piece of paper and began to draw a picture of a duck. "It's a lovely shade of blue. I was going to put in black ink, but, you know, standard-issue CIA pens are black ink and it just seems a bit too… stern for me, if you know what I mean."
Marshall looked around the room, waiting for his colleagues to nod in agreement. No one said anything. "Okay, well, the other nifty thing here is that this pen takes pictures every five seconds and transmits them to this office without needing upload through the Association's networks."
Dixon turned to look at Sydney. "We don't know how much cooperation you'll have with Agent Maddox, Syd, so Marshall has arranged for some non-lethal weapons."
Sydney nodded. Weiss and Vaughn left the room first. Marshall grabbed the last doughnut before Dixon had a chance. Jack, still staring at the piece of doughnut on his desk, got up and walked out with Sydney. As soon as they got out of the room he took her aside and turned on his pen, which was an anti-eavesdropping device.
"Sydney, I don't know if you know about Agent Maddox, Dixon hasn't received all the intel… your mother thinks it could be dangerous."
Sydney stared at him in disbelief. "Dad? What are you talking about? It's just an extraction."
Jack put took his daughter's hand in his and held it close. "Sydney, I know you haven't been on speaking terms with your mother but it's important that you stay focused on this job, okay? Don't let the details get in the way of your endgame."
Sydney smiled. "I won't Dad. You know how important it is to me…" Then, realising that Jack was trying to say something important, she looked up at him. "What details exactly? Dad? Who is Agent Maddox?"
Sydney's father was about to speak when his pen began to beep. He smiled at her. "Yes well, I'll have a look at those files for you," he said in his CIA-tone.
- - -
Sydney looked grumpily at Vaughn, still dreaming of their kiss. She got up from her seat on the plane and made her way to the bathroom, where she put on long skin-tone pantyhose, followed by a short leopard-print miniskirt. She grabbed a black fitted top and put it on. As she was placing her short red wig in place Vaughn walked in.
She winked at him and massaged her long lean legs, slowly dipping them into big black boots. Vaughn watched her, enraptured.
"See something you like?"
Vaughn was about to walk towards Sydney when Weiss walked in on them.
"We've landed."
- - -
Sydney walked into a huge building bustling with people dressed in business suits. She made her way to an empty elevator. As the elevator doors were closing she noticed an old man winking at her. Shuddering and muttering to herself about perverts she pressed the number "13".
"Everything okay freelancer?" She heard Vaughn say.
"I'm fine."
"You're going to room 95. You'll tell Agent Maddox that you're from accounting. He'll say ask if you are here to clear up the anomaly."
"Copy that," Sydney said, making her way to room 95.
She opened the door but she wasn't prepared for what was inside. It was a beautiful decorated room, with a sprawling wooden desk and bookcases filled with books. The marble flooring looked spectacular against a plush Persian rug. Typing furiously behind a computer was a blonde man.
"Mr Maddox? I'm from accounting," Sydney said in her British accent.
The man peeked out from behind the computer and stared into Sydney's eyes.
"I've been expecting you, Sydney. Here to clear up the anomaly?"
"Boy scout I'm gonna have to go on radio silent," Sydney spoke into her transmitter. She didn't move from her place. Instead, she watched as the man got up from behind the computer and walk up to her with open arms.
"Sark."
"Come on Sydney, you shouldn't look so surprised. You know it's always such a pleasure to see you." Sark planted a soft peck on her cheek.
"I have to take you back. For my superiors," she said, extracting from her pocket a small lipstick.
Sark quickly unbuttoned his shirt and looked at Sydney as she pushed against the base of the lipstick. A tranquillizer dart shot out and landed squarely on Sark's shoulder.
"I'm going to enjoy being tortured by you," she heard Sark say as he lost consciousness.
She blew him a kiss.