CHAPTER SEVEN: START-UP

New York CTU Branch: 5:41pm

"So let me get this straight." Elizabeth was saying as she stood behind Kim and Greg, hands on hips as she watched them clicking away at the computers in front of them. Kim rolled her eyes. With everything that was going on, she really didn't need Elizabeth stood over her shoulder offering up her own particular brand of 'constructive criticism'.

"It's the eve of one of the most significant disarmament treaties in the last century, we've got an assassination threat against one of the delegates, and now our computer network, the network you assured me was finally bedded in and bug free, is falling down around our ears."

"I don't know what to say." Kim said, leaning back in her seat and scrubbing a hand through her short-cropped bob of blonde hair. "This shouldn't be happening. We had the whole thing nailed down…"

"Except you obviously didn't!" Elizabeth snapped in frustration. "Christ Kim! This is exactly the worst possible thing that could happen to us right now. It cripples our ability to send and receive any data, not only from the outside, but internally as well!"

"You don't need to remind me Liz." Kim said, trying to keep the frustration out of her own voice and failing miserably. "I know exactly what this means for us, and we're doing our best to fix it." Elizabeth knuckled at her forehead, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Okay then." She said from between gritted teeth. "How long?"

"Until what?"

"YOU FIX THE FUCKING THING!" Elizabeth practically screamed at her.

"LOOK LIZ!" Kim snapped back, her anger at Elizabeth finally boiling over. She was sick and tired of Elizabeth treating her like some kind of second-rate secretary whose only purpose around the office was to swan around looking pretty and actually achieving sweet FA.

"I'm doing the best I can," She continued, her tone no less furious but at least a little quieter now, "but I can't just snap my fingers and have the whole thing working again like nothing was ever wrong! Even if I knew what was causing this I couldn't get it back in any kind of working shape for a good few hours, and I certainly couldn't get it back to within Divisions operating specs for at least a week!"

"Ahem…" the cough had come from just behind Elizabeth, the owner clearly not approving of what he saw. Kim span from the computer screen to face whoever it was and immediately wished she hadn't. It was Heller. Tony and Cohen stood nearby only a couple of yards behind him.

"What is it?" Elizabeth said, her voice seething with irritation as she gave Kim one of her patented 'I'll deal with you later' glares.

"I was about to tell you that your man Cohen here seems to have come across a promising lead."

"Why didn't he come to me himself?" Said Elizabeth, her gaze travelling straight through Heller and fixing laser like onto Cohen. The man didn't so much as twitch.

"I think he would've done." Heller replied icily. "But it seemed you two were having a rather heated discussion and I didn't think you should be interrupted." The look of derision in his eyes was enough to wither both Kim and Elizabeth at a glance. Elizabeth fixed him with a somewhat deflated stance of defiance.

"What was the lead?" she said, her voice a touch too controlled now. Kim sank a little lower into her seat suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. Elizabeth had lost this round to Heller, and it didn't take a genius to work out just who would be taking the blame for it when things calmed down.

"It would seem our Mr Kadeem might have inadvertently given away his location." Heller gave Cohen a slight nod.

"About ten minutes ago I got call from a source inside the NYPD. After the briefing I called him and asked him to give me a heads up if anything unusual happened. Turns out something did. Some girl called in a sighting of a homeless man wandering through the Upper East Side with blood all over his face. Two officers actually managed to find the guy a couple of minutes later and brought him in. He's being held on suspicion of murder."

"What's any of this got to do with Kadeem?" Elizabeth said, her limited patience already seeming to wear thin.

"I'm getting to that." Said Cohen, a little put out by her interruption. "Apparently, the guy, called Womack incidentally, claims the blood belongs to friend of his. He says the two of them had a disagreement with some Asian men about a squat they normally use. The men pulled guns on Womack's friend, Womack barely got out alive."

Kim couldn't believe how excited Elizabeth looked. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates.

"Where?" she said hurriedly. "Where did he see these men?" Cohen shook his head.

"He's not saying. Keeps ranting on about needing to be safe apparently. Refuses to say anything else until he's talked to a lawyer and has guaranteed police protection. I was gonna head on over to the precinct though. See if I could get any more out of him."

"Right." Elizabeth nodded. "Sounds good. Get right..."

"I do have a problem though." Cohen butted in. This time it was Elizabeth's turn to look annoyed by the interruption.

"Which is?" she said.

"The network. If I'm heading out into the field, I'll probably need to be sending information back for analysis."

"And you can't use a phone for that?"

"Not if it's something like a thumbprint or a photo for ID." Cohen replied. "I need a secure connection to CTU and right now that's something we don't have."

"I could do it." Said Kim. She nearly laughed out loud at the look of outright alarm on Elizabeth's face when she said that. Maybe this would show her she could be more than just the girl who put together mission briefings and stood around offering advice to the other people who were actually doing some work.

"What do you mean?" said Cohen with a frown.

"It's easy." She said. "Me and Greg set up a clean system here and set up a secure line between the two. I can maintain the line integrity and transfer the data from my end. Greg can transfer the data to the other systems down here. It'll be slow on the analysis front since we'll be USB memory sticks to shunt stuff around but it's better than nothing right?" Elizabeth was shaking her head.

"Not a chance in hell." She said. "Ignoring for the moment your lack of any real field training, I just can't spare you. I need you here to try and get the network back online."

"Greg can do it." Kim said, batting Elizabeth's argument aside without even pausing for thought. "We all know he's the real whiz with the network anyway, and I'm not completely inexperienced in the field." She tried not to look at Tony as he raised an eyebrow at her. Even she had to admit that she wasn't exactly on stable ground here. A couple of incredibly unlucky days and one miserable attempt at body doubling hardly constituted an experienced field agent. Elizabeth however, was still shaking her head.

"We don't have time to waste debating this." Kim pressed. "We need to get some kind of lead going here, and I can help. C'mon Liz, you know it's the right decision."

"Agreed." Heller said. "Miss Bauer, I want you with Cohen on this one." Elizabeth whirled around to face him.

"What did you just say?" she demanded.

"I said I agree with Miss Bauer's proposal. She'll be going with Cohen, as will Agent Almeida here."

"Now wait a minute!" Said Cohen, also whipping around to face Heller. "I never agreed to anything like…"

"A CIA presence on this operation is non negotiable Cohen." Heller said imperiously. "Get used to it, or you can go back to chasing those rinky-dink white trash nationalists you were deeming so important earlier today." With that he turned and strode off between the ranked computers, his passage marked by slack jawed stares from goggle eyed techs.

Tony gave a sheepish shrug before setting off after him.

"You see what I mean." Said Elizabeth, her shoulders practically quaking with fury as she and Cohen exchanged unhappy looks. "Liaison my ass!"