MIRROR IMAGE
Rating: R.
Timeline: Mid-season 3, at least after "Blowback."
A/N: Sark is not Sydney's brother. Total sarcasm on his part; just trying to irk her. No ew-ing necessary. :) I'll have to make that more clear when I revise. . . .
Part III, Act 2
Sark untied her—still doing her mother's dirty work—and Sydney rubbed the soreness from her wrists as she unsteadily stood.
"Sydney," Irina said, and looked as if she wanted to embrace her—but Sydney couldn't, not yet, maybe not ever again. "I need to oversee Reed's care. Sark will take you somewhere you can change and get some rest."
"I've been knocked out for the last twelve hours," Sydney said. At least. She couldn't tell the time of day, or even if they were still in Alaska. She'd be willing to bet that they were not.
Irina regarded her with affectionate amusement. "It will give you a chance to adjust to situation, then. I'll have some food sent up."
Sweet of her.
Irina smiled once more and Sydney watched her warily as she left,
"Where are we?" she asked after the door had closed, turning to Sark.
"Tokyo," he said. He was probably lying. Didn't really matter, anyway; she'd asked more to establish some sort of amity between them than to get an answer. He'd always before encouraged any brief overture she'd made (few as they had, appropriately, been), but not this time, apparently. He glanced at his watch; waiting the appropriate amount of time for Irina to vacate the hall, she imagined. Nice to know she was trusted.
The watch's answer must have been acceptable, because he opened the door and motioned for her to precede him. Fine. She could handle that. As far as kidnapping situations went, this was turning out to be easy.
The hall was sterile, devoid of markings. A far cry from the CIA safe house, that was for sure.
"To the right, Ms. Bristow," Sark said, and Sydney wondered how he decided which name to call her, because as far as she could tell, he used them entirely at random. If she was going to be working with him—again—it was in her best interest to try and understand the dynamics at work between them, and between him and her mother. She wished she'd paid more attention to his goads about their relationship three years before; something was off there. She'd never seen them in the same room together before, she realized—only imagined them, imagined what Irina treating him like a son would entail, since Sydney herself had never had to chance to be treated like a daughter—so she had nothing to compare it to. She wasn't sure what it was, but something wasn't right.
"The door to your left."
The door opened into a stairwell. She employed her common sense and started climbing it.
"You know," Sydney said, "you could just go first."
"I prefer the view from back here, thanks," he said, and Sydney thought, Ew. Sark may have been far from the most repulsive person to have ever checked out her ass—either physically or morally, sad to say—but it just made her skin crawl. It wasn't even her ass he was looking at; it was Lauren's. But if he was trying to get under her skin, it was working.
Didn't mean she had to show it, though.
"Great place," she commented at the fourth floor landing. Her voice echoed almost painfully. "Very homey. But you couldn't have added an elevator?"
"Don't tell me the famous Agent Bristow is getting tired."
Sydney flexed her jaw. "Your girlfriend must be out of shape."
Silence from behind her. Good. They might not be on equal footing here, but they needed her—he needed her—and she wasn't going to let them forget that.
At the seventh floor, he stopped her with a hand on her arm, and reached passed her to swipe a badge past the sensor. The door clicked subtly and he caught the handle and pulled.
"Do I get a badge?" she asked.
He didn't dignify her with an answer, just said, "End of the hall."
Dutifully, she went through the door he held open for her.
One of the last doors on the left—labeled, she noticed with a mixture of irritation and resigned amusement, with the number 747—Sark unlocked with an old fashioned key (quaint, in a building full of spies).
"Your accommodations," he introduced them, swinging the door inwards and open.
The space was elegant and somewhat spare: bed with a clean white cotton bedspread, dresser, armoire, a few books laid out on a bedside table. A bathroom, she assumed, through a closed door.
"Should I be tipping you?" she asked him absently, scanning the room for weaknesses, surveillance equipment, possible escape. At first glance it was empty of all three. She'd check more thoroughly later.
"One tips their bellboy, Ms. Bristow." He sounded insulted. "Not their host."
So this was his building. Interesting. She didn't even know he had buildings. Neither, she suspected, did the CIA.
"Good," she said, "because I left my wallet on my other body."
"There are quite a few of Lauren's things here," Sark said as he turned on the bedside light and surveyed the room with a critical eye. He moved to the armoire. "But since I suspected you might prefer not to the don the clothing of your romantic and professional rival, I took the liberty of procuring a few items you might be more comfortable in."
"Tactical gear," Sydney observed as she caught the item he tossed to her. Black vest.
"I don't see you that often, Sydney. Forgive my ignorance of your wardrobe preferences. It was that or a charming chartreuse rubber dress I spotted in a store window down the street."
"You know," Sydney said, "sometimes it really creeps me out that you've seen me naked."
He smiled faintly at that, but didn't rise to the bait. "Surely you'll be able to find something suitable among Lauren's undergarments. If there's anything else you need, just call down." He gestured to the phone.
"You're leaving."
"Astute of you to notice," he commented, hand already on the doorknob.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
"I neither know nor particularly care. There are a number of things that need to be set in motion before we leave for Covenant headquarters."
Which of course she couldn't help with. She hated feeling useless. She was kidnapped, and she still hated feeling useless.
"I believe Irina promised she would send up something to eat. I suggest you make yourself comfortable until we contact you."
And then he was gone. Though she was obviously a prisoner here, at least in part, he didn't bother with the lock. They both knew it wouldn't hold her. Locks and security weren't what ultimately held her anyway.
She found the first device, a camera, in the television. She thought, Francie, and waved and smiled sweetly into the lens before cutting off the feed with a solid crunch of her right boot heel. She found one listening device in the bedside lamp, and another in the bathroom nestled among the guest soap and towels. Good choice, she allowed. People rarely disturbed guest luxuries; no one, she supposed, really liked to think of themselves as guests.
Once she knew where they were, she let them be; no point, really, to dismantling them. She'd give Sark free access to visual of her changing habits over her dead body (though Lauren's would do), but the microphones didn't offend her. Of course they had to keep tabs on her. It would have been irrational of them not to.
The food arrived fairly soon after Sark's departure, and she picked at the fruit salad and slices of bread with some expensive cheese she didn't recognize, still a bit queasy from whatever Sark had used to knock her out.
Both she and her father had been over confident, thinking this would be easy, but the worst fault was hers. The moment she received Vaughn's phone call, she should have aborted. Instead, she'd thought, Maybe Sark knows where they took my body. Not, notably, Maybe Sark is responsible for taking my body. She had only herself to blame. And Sark, of course. Perhaps her mother as well, though he wasn't clear how much she had been involved—other than using Sydney's father to lure Sydney here.
For an op. When both Irina and Sark had networks of operatives at least as qualified as she was. That rang remarkably false, but she wasn't sure why they'd go through such trouble to get her otherwise. Sipping the tea that had accompanied the food, the sat on the bed and considered. Irina might—though it was doubtful—simply be looking to reconnect with her. But Sark? She still wasn't convinced he was doing this for the reasons Irina said he was. The only thing she was fairly sure of was that he wasn't working for the Covenant in this—if he was, he could have just handed her over with Lauren as planned.
Sydney felt far more relaxed than she should be, she knew. She may not be in any immediate danger—she accepted that her mother, while willing to put her in any number of difficult and dangerous situations, loved her, and was just a protective in her way as her father was in his—but she was far from safe, and still had Sark to contend with. He was loyal to Irina, but that loyalty extended to Sydney only on Irina's behalf, and even then, Sydney suspected, only partially.
Then she realized.
She placed the cup back on the tray. She only had the chance to think, Son of a bitch, before she sank unconscious to the pillow.
