Hey everyone! I just wanted to say thanks for everyone that has read and reviewed so far. You all have been extremely encouraging and I am so sorry for the lack of updates. I had a lot of computer issues and luckily I got a new one over Christmas and so I am now able to update more often! Here's the next chapter and Happy New Year everybody!
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"Director Dixon!" a security man ran across the Rotunda floor to the Director's office.
"What is it Agent Hund?" the director asked in an urgent manner. It was not an average day if the security head was running into his office asking to speak to him.
Agent Hund took a deep breath. "There is an unidentifiable vehicle in the parking lot."
"Get the guards down there. We need to figure out if this is a viable threat or not. I'll be on Communicator 4." The security head exited the director's office hastily to execute the order just given to him.
Marcus Dixon placed the headset on his head and pressed the four on a keypad on his desk. Since September 11th, security surrounding government buildings had to be heightened.
"Dixon I heard what's going on. What line are we on?" Jack Bristow stepped into his boss's office.
"Four," Dixon answered.
Jack took over the operation in a silent manner. Both of the experienced men in the room knew that Jack Bristow was better at handling these types of situations.
"What does the vehicle look like?" Bristow asked.
Agent Hund inspected the black car. "Sir it is a black Mercedes-Benz sedan."
"Is there anyone inside?"
The windows of the car were tinted completely black. "The windows are black, I need to open the door."
The director asked, "Does it look safe?" When Jack was concentrating on figuring out what was in the car, Dixon looked out for his agents' safety.
"There appear to be no alterations to the vehicle."
Dixon and Jack looked at each other. There was an understanding between the two of them. Dixon said, "Proceed."
The security head opened the black driver side door of the vehicle. There was no one seated in the driver's seat or the front passenger's seat. He noticed a body in the back seat. It was a young woman and she appeared to be sleeping.
"Sir, there is a young woman in the back seat," the security team reported.
Both men inside of the Rotunda looked at each other quizzically. They were shocked. "Is she armed?" Dixon asked.
"No sir, she appears to be sleeping."
Before Dixon and Jack were able to investigate any further, Marshall came into Director Dixon's office, "Sir I just received an encrypted email, but I was able to decipher it." Marshall didn't say what it said.
Jack gave him an irritated look and asked impatiently, "Well what did it say Marshall?"
"It said that a black Mercedes is in the parking lot and that the person inside is April Winthers," Marshall said with an apprehensive look on his face. Everyone at the Joint Task Force were aware of the Winthers case and how important it could possibly be in capturing Mr. Sark or any operatives of the Covenant.
"Agent Hund extract Miss Winthers," Jack ordered.
Within minutes April Winthers was in CIA custody.
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Wafts of hospital smell hit April's nose. Her eyes slowly opened and she took in her surroundings. She was in a hospital bed with wires attached to her. An IV, or what she thought was an IV, was connected to her bloodstream. She sat up in her hospital bed and saw her father sleeping in a chair to her right. For the first time in the past 54 hours, April took a deep breath.
She watched her dad for a few minutes. He looked, as much as she didn't want to say it, like hell. April had seen her father tired from work, but she had never seen him look like his whole world had fallen apart. If she was guessing, it had, just like hers. Harry had found out about Mom. April collapsed her head on the pillow. She didn't want her dad to find out about that. If she could have prevented it she would have. She did not know why, but she wanted to protect him from the spy world. Just like Julian wanted to protect me. But wait, he just wanted to protect me from the Covenant. Why did this all have to be so confusing?
Right now all April wanted was for her father to hold her, "Daddy…" she whispered.
He stirred a little bit, but then Harry thought that he heard his only daughter's voice and opened his eyes. "Sweetheart, April. Are you awake?"
"Yes I am," April had to fight back tears. Of course a little less than three days was not the longest time the father and daughter had been apart, but this was the most strenuous time that they had been apart.
"How are you?" Harry grabbed his daughter's hand and held it. He wanted to make sure that she was really here.
"I'm okay," she smiled weakly. She hated to admit it, but she was tired. She wanted to go home and curl up in her warm, plush bed.
"I was so worried about you. Your mother and I-" he caught himself. "I'm sorry April, but your mother-"
The pains on her father's face, at his own mention of his wife and her mother had resulted in April interrupting what he was going to say, "Dad, I know."
"You know about what she did?"
"Yes. Are you alright with everything?" April asked concerned. It was obvious to her that her mother's betrayal had more effect on her father than it had on her.
"I'm coming to terms with it. It's hard learning that your wife of over twenty years was a spy for Russian Intelligence. I guess it makes sense though." At the last part, Harry couldn't look at his daughter. He knew that part of the reason why Patricia, no Petra had betrayed all of them was because of his business.
"How does it make sense, Dad? I mean she lied to us, to all of us. She pretended to be someone that she wasn't. There is no way that that makes sense." April had trouble fathoming that her father was blaming this all on himself. "You can't blame this on yourself. It wasn't your fault."
Under his breath, he muttered, "Yes it is."
"What?"
Harry knew that he couldn't keep this from his daughter forever. "It is my fault."
"No." April in no way could understand how her father was pining this on himself.
"April, what I do for a living is not what one would call entirely legal," Harry stated bluntly.
"Dad, you make safes for a living. How is that not entirely legal?" April asked. There was no possible way that the man sitting in front of her was not honest. He always had been with her.
Being under the scrutiny of April Winthers, was extremely tough for the elder man, even if it was his own daughter. He couldn't look in her eyes anymore. His body rose out of the uncomfortable chair he had been sitting in for the past four hours and he walked towards the window of the hospital room. "Let's just say that some of the people I made security systems for did not make the most honest livings."
"But everything you did was legal, right?" April hoped to God that her father was not in the spy world, like he was implying to be.
He turned back to his daughter, "Of course it was. I never did anything that was not legal. It's just that in order to be at the top of my industry I needed to take on clients that may have been considered enemies of the state. And if they were, I only found out through back channels, because most of my clients used aliases. Probably most of them were so good that I had no idea that they were enemies." Harry was glad that he could be honest with his daughter. The worst thing would have been if his daughter had both parents that were criminals and he always made promised himself that in no way would he put his daughter in danger.
April sighed in relief. She didn't know what she would do if both of her parents were criminals. "Good. You have nothing to worry about. Dad I totally see that his whole thing was not your fault. Me, being kidnapped is just a small little bump in the road. I'm sure that this will all be over soon."
"I don't think that is entirely true.' April looked at her father in disbelief.
"What do you mean?"
"The CIA still thinks that the Covenant or this Sark guy is still after you. You are not out of the woods yet, April."
"Great. Just when I thought that this would be over because I see you sitting there and Irina said earlier that this would all be over soon I had my hopes."
Suddenly a woman that looked to be about five or eight years older than her walked through the door of April's room.
"Hi April. My name is Sydney Bristow and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."
This woman looked nice enough, but there was something vaguely familiar about her. April just nodded.
"Good. So how are you feeling?"
"I'm okay. There's no harm."
"Mr. Winthers, my father would like to speak to you," Sydney said. She never took her eyes off of April, while she was getting rid of the elder man. She wanted time alone with April. There was a very slim chance that Sydney would be able to get April's whole kidnapping story with her father in the room.
Harry opened the door and replied, "Okay. I'll go talk to him," and Harry left the hospital room. Frankly, he did not want to answer any more questions from his daughter. He wanted to get out of there. Plus, he knew that the nice young lady was trying to get rid of him.
Sydney took the chair that Mr. Winthers had previously occupied and sat down. "The doctor said that you are perfectly alright and that there was no physical damage done to you, except for the sedative that was injected into your bloodstream."
"Yeah," was all April responded with.
Sydney could tell that April might not be the most cooperative person, but then again Sydney realized that if she were in the same situation she would probably act like that too. She would be cooperative, but not perhaps to the fullest extent.
"April I understand that you might not want to go through all of the questions that I am going to ask you, but your kidnapping was not typical and national security is at stake, so I need you to be honest with me."
The young woman in the hospital bed looked at Sydney and said, "I understand. Ask me anything."
"Okay. Surveillance that we recovered in Madrid identified the man that kidnapped you to be Julian Sark. Did you have any extensive contact with this man?"
"Yeah. I spent most of the last two days with him."
"What exactly happened? You can take your time, but if you can I would like you to start from the beginning." Sydney had a concerned look on her face. Most likely re-living two days with Julian Sark would not be a pleasant experience.
April took a deep breath, "Well, it all started at my dad's party. He asked me to dance and we did. Before I knew it, he asked if we could go outside and we did and then before I knew it I woke up in this bed in the morning and then I was told that I was in Madrid. Julian came in and talked to me and started talking about this organization called the Covenant-"
"What did he say about the Covenant?"
This Sydney person was obviously interested about the Covenant. April herself had hardly any idea what the Covenant wanted, but she figured that Sydney deserved the benefit of the doubt, so April said all she knew. "He said that they wanted me, but he didn't know why. All he said was that he didn't want to hand me over to them. I don't know," April shrugged.
"What happened after that?"
"Well he told that I had to get ready or something. I was pretty pissed off because I had no idea how I was going to get out of Madrid. I just wanted to go home. Anyway I had an opportunity, so I took it and I escaped. I went out of the window of the room and I somehow found the train station. So I found out when the next train left for Gibraltar and since I didn't have any money I thought that I could just sneak on. Well right before the train left Julian found me. I got out of his grasp, but he caught up with me."
"He didn't hurt you did he?"
"No, he just handcuffed me."
"Did he take you anywhere after that?"
"Well we were supposed to go to this club or something in Madrid. We were supposed to meet someone there. I don't know. On the way there some people in a black van followed us and there was a shooting. We got away, but Julian didn't want to leave any tracks or something. So we ended up in the shopping district in Madrid and he made me follow up a guise of being a married couple," that phrase sent shivers down Sydney's spine. She couldn't possibly fathom being married to Sark. She felt sorry for her cousin, but April for some reason it didn't seem to bother her that she had to pretend to be married to Sark. April seemed to be handling this a little too well. "After that we boarded a plane in bound to London. Once we arrived in London we ended up at his flat."
"Do you know where you were?"
"Yeah we were right outside of Trafalgar Square. I'm not sure of the exact street, but it was a stone building and there was welcome map on the front door step and there was a plant with a ceramic pot."
"Good. So what happened next?" Sydney continued questioning her. She disregarded that this might be too trying on the recent victim of Julian Sark.
"I was taken up to a room, but about a couple of hours later a woman came to meet to me. Her name was Irina Derevko. She claimed to be my aunt and told me that my mother was working for the KGB and that she was her sister. What? Did I say something?" April noticed Sydney shake a little bit at the mention of Irina.
"Irina Derevko is my mother," Sydney said plainly, but the way she said it was filled with emotion.
"So you're my cousin?" April said. Currently she was unraveling her family tree. She was discovering family members everyday that she never knew she had.
Sydney sighed, "Yes." Sydney smiled. "I'm so glad to finally meet you."
"I knew that there was something familiar about you. You look like her you know?"
"I get that a lot," Sydney said sarcastically.
"I'm sorry if that makes you mad or something. I didn't mean it in that way."
Sydney appreciated her cousin's sympathy. "What happened after you met Irina?"
"She told me that she didn't have anyway of getting me out of this mess. All she knew was that the Covenant had some type of purpose for me. Then I woke up on a plane. I was knocked out again, but Irina said that this would all be over soon. I suppose she meant that being with her and Julian that everything would be over soon. Then here I am. I don't remember anything from being on the plane to ending up here." April fully left out the semi-romantic relationship she had with Julian. She had a feeling that wouldn't go over very well with the CIA, especially since Julian was a well-known terrorist.
"Mom was wrong. I have a terrible feeling that this won't be over soon," Sydney said pessimistically.
