Chapter 1: A New Alliance
Disclaimer: Alias isn't mine. The only characters that are mine I can't mention yet.
A/N: I promise the style will get a little less…Poe-ish, later on, but it's just appropriate for Jack, ya know? I didn't intentionally write the stuff from Jack's POV to sound like Poe wrote it, but when I reread it I realized it was startlingly appropriate!
Jack never really got over his obsession with Rambaldi that drove his best friend from the CIA to the other side, he just pushed it aside, swept it under the rug. He had seen a Rambaldi prophecy no other living soul had laid eyes upon. It had not only revealed the traitorous status of his beloved wife, but had decreed that the child she had, at the time, carried in her womb was the sole source of an ultimate power, when matched with another prophesied one. For years, this Great One had remained only a picture to him, a grainy sketch that had existed only in his memory. Then Julian Sark had attracted the attention of the CIA.
The documents of the prophecy had been destroyed, of course. She was, after all, his only child, and she must be protected from the rest until the prophecy was fulfilled, at any cost. He didn't wish to harm his own flesh and blood, only do his part to see the prophecy come to life.
He'd begun contacting Sark immediately, never face-to-face, always by way of nameless proxies. Little by little, Jack had begun to believe he controlled the Great One, that he could, with little effort of risk, fully control his actions.
The deal had been made long before the Covenant had come into the picture. Jack, about whom Sark knew truthfully nothing, would deliver the woman all close followers of Rambaldi--himself excluded, of course, having that secret knowledge of a lost prophecy--believed to be the Chosen One. He would tell Sark that Sydney's legacy was to be the wielder of "ultimate power unto utter desolation," not Sydney herself, and that, unbeknownst to the CIA--or anyone for that matter--there was a final page missing from the Prophecy, citing Sark to be the one who must befriend himself to Sydney and create a child. That their child alone would fulfill Rambaldi's prophecy.
Most of which was true, or had origin's in the truth. Sydney may have been the real Chosen One, but how to say that without revealing too much of the hidden prophecy? The union of Jack's only daughter and the one Rambaldi called the Great One would produce a powerful child, whose destiny would be great.
The Covenant's arrival, however, threw a considerable wrench in Jack's foolproof plan. They had managed to kidnap Sydney, and convince even Jack that she was dead, because Sark had gone along with their plan. Sark had not waited to have her given to him, he'd simply taken her. And that meant Jack had no control over or chance to stop--especially after imprisonment for collating with Irina Derevko--the horrible torture she underwent at the hands of the Covenant.
Jack had been infuriated be what they'd done to her, and the inhuman way in which they'd taken what they needed, but the prospect of fulfilling the prophecy alone kept him in touch with Sark after Sydney's return.
When Sydney and Dixon and the rest had managed to destroy Sark's lab, despite his own attempts to sabotage the mission, he'd been sure all hope of ever fulfilling the prophecy had been lost forever.
FOUR YEARS LATER
"The Covenant," Dixon said pointedly. "Seems to have gotten their hands on an important Rambaldi artifact." He looked around at the people in the conference room. Sydney, Vaughn, Weiss, Marshal, Jack. Few others would be trusted with this intel.
"But we brought down the Covenant," Sydney protested warily.
"We did," Dixon said. "But there was still a small sector that remained, despite our best efforts. At the time, this sector consisted of only about five people, Sark included. For a long time, we lost track of them, and have only recently managed to catch up with them again. Under a new name--they're operating under the name the Calling now--they've gained momentum. The Calling currently consists of at least over a hundred agents and management."
"Do we know what that name refers to?" Jack asked.
"Rambaldi, of course," Dixon muttered. "They seem to believe they possess a phenomenal Rambaldi artifact, but the security on their headquarters is amazing. Lots of solid concrete walls, even a thermal layer that maintains body temperature around the clock so that we can't trace movement within the building, or tell exactly how many agents are there at any given time. We can't even get a read on their wiring system from our birds."
"If security is that tight, how do we even know the have an artifact?" Weiss asked.
"Well, um see," Marshal spoke up. "We've traced Mr. Sark quite effectively, monitored his phone calls, um, et cetra. All of his calls have been encrypted and behind the type of security I've never seen before--and hey, that's sayin' something--uh, right…We were able to decrypt some recurring words in his conversations. Rambaldi, prophecy, and Chosen One are a few of the words that stand out.
"Thank you, Marshal," Dixon said, effectively silencing him before he could continue on to pointless rambling. "A tech team managed to put a tracer on one of the agents confirmed to be a caretaker of the artifact. Because of that, we have a sketchy layout of the building and a probable location of the artifact."
Two identical files slid across the table to rest in front of Sydney and Vaughn.
"Let me guess," Vaughn said. "You want us to steal the artifact."
"And acquire any intel you can regarding it," Dixon added. "Communications devices would be futile, so you'll be going in deaf, and partially blind," he warned.
"The, uh, concrete walls pretty much mean you'd have to be in an open space to use any equipment we have," Marshal assured. "And then you could just be, like, I'm over here…"
Sydney couldn't help but grin. Marshal would never change, even with a two-year-old keeping him awake at all hours.
"You leave tonight," Dixon said, not noticing the speculative look on Jack's face that was just tinged with worry.
Hehe! I just love this story…It just seems so right for Jack to be kinda evil…yet in his own twisted way still express concern for his baby girl. Now, what could they possibly find waiting for them in the Calling HQ?