Sydney turned over lightly to stare at the man sleeping next to her. The only thing she could think of was how happy she was that she had been incredibly aloof yet still conversational at work during the week. It pretty much secured the fact that no one would feel up to checking on her. Which allowed her to experience probably one of the greatest nights of her life.

"Good morning," Sark said, squinting at her. "How'd you sleep?"

"A lot better than I would have if you hadn't acted on your weakness."

"I don't consider you a weakness," he said, sitting up and scratching his head still half asleep. "You're a strength."

"God you've gotten sappy," she said, punching him lightly in the arm. "Where the hell is the complete bastard I fell in love with?"

"Oh, he's in here somewhere," Sark said smiling at her. "Do you want me to find him?"

"Don't bother. I don't have the time to deal with his cockiness at the moment." She got up off the bed and grabbed her robe off the ground. "I've got to get ready for a mission."

"Where is the Central Intelligence Agency sending you this time?"

She popped her head out from the bathroom. "I can't tell you that. National security and all that."

"Right. Are you going to miss me?"

"Not as much as you'll miss me apparently."

Sark stood up and slipped on the clothes he had worn the day before. "It's okay. I have some business to attend to anyway. Not having you around to distract me should be a good thing." He paused as he noticed something hanging in her closet. "Is that my blue shirt?"

"Yeah, I stole it," Sydney called from behind the bathroom door.

"You admit to thievery rather easily, Bristow."

"I'm proud of my conquests." She opened up the door and wiggled her eyebrows at him. "I bet you can relate to that, Lazarey."

"What do you take me as? A common whore who delights in creating notches on my bedpost?"

"If the label fits, wear it." She turned to bathroom light off and walked back into the room. "Now get out. I have to prep for my mission. I was supposed to do it last night, but you distracted me."

"You're kicking me out. Now I really do feel like a whore." Sark began to make his way to the front door. "Will I see you when you get back?"

"Of course. Now go."

He gave her a quick peck on the lips and shut the door behind himself. Sydney sighed and just stood still for a moment before going about her morning routine.


Two hours stuck on a small airplane in silence was becoming just too much for her. "Vaughn, we need to talk."

Vaughn looked up from the novel he had been reading. "You're ready to talk to me now? Because I thought we might still be going through the ignoring stage. Sometimes these fights progress so quickly I can't keep track of them."

"I deserved that," she admitted. "But you and I are partners, and we need to do something if we don't want that to change."

"You know what I want, Syd."

"I do. But that's not what I want anymore." She took a deep breath and moved to still in the seat beside Vaughn. "I just want you to know that I've thought it over, and I want to apologize. I don't think any of this was your fault."

"You don't?" His surprise didn't throw her. She knew he hadn't been expecting her to admit that she was wrong. That could be used to her advantage.

"No. I was mad at the way you kicked me out of your home, and I think that was justified. But I really think that the downfall of our relationship can be attributed to both your ex-wife and to me. Lauren was the person who kept me from accepting that my missing two years had changed me. I wanted to come back to my life and just be the same person. But I couldn't."

"What went on during your two years to change you so much? I mean, you've had to do tough things in the line of duty with the CIA before. What was so different this time?"

She bit her bottom lip in a display of nerves. "There was someone I was with during my missing time, and he was the one that changed me. In retrospect, I should have known it was coming. He was the one real thing I had during those two years."

"Simon Walker?" he asked. It threw her off. He wasn't connecting the words she was saying with her previous mention of her feelings for Sark.

"No. Simon Walker was just a momentary distraction to me. Someone I could use to prove that I was still good at deceiving people. He was expendable."

Vaughn rubbed his face. "When you talk like it, it's obvious you've changed a lot."

"I have. I know you want to give us a second chance." She paused. "Or are we on our third chance?"

"I think it might be four, but yeah, that's what I want. But like you said, it's not what you want."

She nodded, glad that he was rational enough to understand what she had been trying to tell him. "I can't have a relationship with you right now because I still have feelings for the man I was talking about. I fell in love with him when I was missing, and I still do love him."

"Who is he? You owe me that much, Syd."

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You're acting strange.

"I already know him, don't I?"

Sydney didn't answer. She just stared at him in shock. "I told you I loved Sark. We had this conversation the night you kicked me out of your home."

His face went white. "I… why didn't I remember that?"

"I don't know." She placed her hand on top of his. "Did something happen to you?"

"It must be the stress. I have no idea why I blocked that out."

"I wouldn't attribute it all to stress. I speak from experience when I saw memory loss is not just black and white. You should have it checked out when we get back from our mission. It could be that something happened to you on a mission."

He nodded and withdrew his hand from below hers. "So, it's Sark you love, huh?"

For a second there, she had felt the tone of the conversation go to a familiar level. Now it was back to the strained tone at which it started. "The man is not important. What is important is me."

"I understand what you're saying, but it's not going to make me stop loving you. You criticized me for giving up on your love too fast once. I won't make that mistake again."

"That's your choice. I'm sorry to be putting through the same emotions that your marriage to Lauren caused in me."

"It's all right. Just like then, you and I will just work through it. We're partners, Sydney. That will never change. We work well together."

She smiled at him and moved back into her first seat on the plane. "So, what do you think about this mission?"

"I'm just happy that it's in Canada, and we don't have to fly halfway across the world."

The CIA had received intel that there was a corporation specializing in cryogenic technologies in Quebec who happened to be working on a project involving the "borrowing" of the DNA of certain important political leaders. The frozen genetic material could potentially be formed together to provide an answer to the Rambaldi prophecy Sydney had thought she thwarted one year previously.

Dixon had assigned her and Vaughn to pose as college professors interested in studying the CyroTech facilities for their thesis research on new developments in the cryogenic field. While in the facility, they would hack into the mainframe network to get a list of the potential "donors" of genetic material.

Sydney turned back to Vaughn. "Do you think CyroTech has their hand in Rambaldi?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if someone they managed to get a sample of the genetic material you hit in Gratz."

"The only problem to that is they can't do anything with it unless they have my genetic material, too. There's no way they could do that without me knowing."

"They would have to send someone to infiltrate your life so that you would let your guard down. Has anyone knew come into your life recently?"

She knew that he was hinting at Sark, even though he didn't know the man she loved was the CIA's number one adversary. For a moment, she let herself contemplate the possibility that getting on her good side might be the one reason Sark had reentered her life so suddenly. She quickly dismissed that option. There was no way, with all the memories she was recalling, that he would have an ulterior motive as sick and twisted as that. When he told her he loved her, she believed him.

"No," she said, answering Vaughn's question. "And I don't think any of the people I trust would be betraying me."

"I wasn't insinuating that."

"I know. I was just saying." Sydney felt a shift in altitude. "We're landing."

Vaughn grabbed a pair of glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. "We should get ready to go."


Vaughn and Sydney strolled into the front library of CyroTech Incorporated, pausing for a moment to tell the receptionist that they had been authorized to have a look around the facilities. She offered to find them a guide, but Sydney quickly refused, saying that it would interfere with their impartial and objective methods.

As soon as she and Vaughn were positive that no one was paying much attention, they slipped into the first office they could find.

"Marshall," Sydney said into her comm. "We're connected to the system."

"Hold on," Marshall said on the other half of the line. "Okay, Mountaineer, I'm ready to download."

Sydney pulled a small metal box out of her purse and placed it on top of the computer's hard drive. She clicked a button, and a green light turned on. "The device is on. How long should this take?"

Marshall didn't answer her at first. When he did, she wished he had stayed silent. "A lot longer than we planned. It's not working."

"What do you mean it's not working?" Vaughn demanded.

"There must be a short in the downloader or the system might have protected firewalls I didn't foresee. For whatever reason, I'm not receiving the list."

"What do we do?" Sydney asked, cutting to the chase.

"You're going to have to download it completely into the device I gave you and physically bring it back to base, Mountaineer."

"Have an officially sanctioned plane meet us at the airport, then. We're going to need a little more security." Vaughn clicked on a few items on the monitor, and the download began. "This is not going to be easy on us."

When the device beeped to signal their work was complete, Sydney heard a commotion in the hall. "I think we might have taken too long," she said, drawing her gun out of her purse. She peeked into the hallway and saw a crowd of people shuffling their way in the opposite direction of the office she was currently standing in. "They're trying to evacuate people away from our location. Something tells me that we're not dealing with the normal Covenant or K Directorate operatives."

"K Directorate has been dissolved for years," Vaughn pointed out. He handed the box containing the downloaded material to Sydney.

"I know. But there must be an awfully large number of agents looking for employment because of it." Sydney checked the hallway again. "It's clear. Let's go."

She and Vaughn made it halfway down the hall before encountering any opposition. The pair of men they did encounter found themselves face down on the ground in lots of pain within seconds, thanks to Sydney.

"We should split up," she suggested. "CyroTech won't expect to have to search for two people separately, and they still probably have no idea why we infiltrated them."

Vaughn nodded. "I'll see you at the airport. Don't be too long."

"I won't," she said with a smile before running off in the opposite direction. She was so caught up in the wonderful feeling of finally being on the same level of understanding as Vaughn that she didn't know the man standing in front of her until she had run into him headfirst.

She looked up at him from her position on the floor. "What the hell are you doing here, Sark?"