Alternate Termination
Sequel to Alternate Existence and Alternate Infatuation. Sydney and Michael finally had a perfect life. A real family with no lies. Friends who knew the truth. And then they lost it all.
Chapter 12: Failsafe
Disclaimer: No, Alias is not mine. Nor is Sydney, nor Vaughn, nor Irina, nor Jack, nor Khasinou, nor Kendall. But Jeffrey is! He's all mine! No touchy!
Jeff held Emily against his shoulder in the huge master suit upstairs that they'd decided would be safest because of its lack of windows. There were also two full sized couches in the room, which both Jeff and Weiss were content to occupy while Emily and Alex slept in the bed.
"I can't believe Michael let Irina Derevko go with him…" Jeff murmured worriedly. "Syd and Miss…they can't be dead, can they?"
"Shh!" Weiss hissed, gesturing toward where Alex appeared to sleep. But you never knew. "Syd's amazing," he replied softly. "Have you ever seen her in action? They'll be okay."
Weiss looked more closely at Jeff, and his tone change to one containing a little more empathy.
"Man, Syd's the best. And Vaughn's a genius at this sort of thing. And, while it may be unsettling, Derevko duped a CIA agent for eight years then disappeared with his kid without a trace. If anyone can get Sloane, it's those three. Syd and Vaughn won't let Misty get hurt in the crossfire, either."
Sydney stared down at Sloane's lifeless body and at the rose colored circle still spreading on his chest.
"You shot him," she said, a surprised tone there. "And you contacted him.. When?" She tore her eyes away from the sight on the floor to search her mother's face.
Irina hesitated, then opted for the truth. No more secrets, she thought.
"Shortly after you rescued Jeffrey from him right after you left the CIA," she admitted. "I didn't tell him you were my daughter, or course. I warned him that pursuing you at that point would prove deadly. I assume he believed me, because he hasn't made a move in your direction until he made a play for Alex."
Sydney started to speak, then stopped. A noise in the hall drew her attention.
"We should go," she said quickly, retrieving her gun and following at a trot as her mother led them out of the building.
"Syd…" Misty moaned groggily, rousing from a fitful sleep. She struggled to sit up and look around, but the room spun and her eyes felt heavy.
Vaughn moved to the side of the cheap motel bed and put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her back down.
"Easy. Be still, Miss. You're okay. Remember?"
"Um-hmm," she mumbled.
"You should sleep. You've probably got a hell of a concussion."
"Bu…Syd," she managed, slurring a little and getting frustrated with herself.
"It's okay, I gave you something to help you sleep," he said, reading the impatience. "And Syd knows how to contact me here. Relax, okay? Jeff will never forgive me if anything happens to you." He grinned at her comfortingly, but his voice betrayed his worry.
Misty wanted to stay awake, to worry with her friend, but the sedative Vaughn had given her was way too strong to fight. She slipped back into sleep, into the warm darkness where her head didn't hurt quite so bad.
Misty was in a deep sleep a gain when the knock sounded, a dull thud through the thick door.
Vaughn quickly glanced through the peep hole and opened the door only enough for the new arrival to slip in.
"How's she doing?" Sydney asked, glancing at Misty. She had an ugly bruise on the side of her head, but seemed to be resting comfortably.
Vaughn shrugged.
"She shows all the signs of a concussion, and whatever drugs those bastards gave her have had some side effects, but she'll be okay."
Sydney nodded, moving restlessly around the room.
"We can't stay here long," she said. "My mother is going back to take care of Sloane's men. Nobody will ever know we had anything to do with this."
"What about your mother?"
Sydney sighed.
"She'll disappear."
"For how long?" Vaughn asked after a moment, voicing both of their concerns.
Silence met his question, but he hadn't expected and answer anyway.
Weiss wasn't sure how he'd become the leader of their rogue strategy meeting. Perhaps because he'd been the only one in contact with Jack since he'd returned to LA.
"He still doesn't know about Derevko," Weiss commented, looking around the large kitchen table in Derevko's house at Sydney and Vaughn, then Jeff and Misty. "Or exactly what happed to Sloane. He suspects, but…"
"He knows I had something to do with his death," Sydney broke in. "And he'll probably hear rumors enough to connect Miss, but he won't take anything to the agency."
"So we still can't go back," Jeff said sadly. "Even though the bastard is dead." He looked at Sydney. "If your dad can hear things, so can Kendall. He knows you just as well."
"We cooperated…conspired…with a woman on both the CIA's and the FBI's most wanted lists," Vaughn pointed out. "It's too big a risk for any of us to return to LA."
"We have to do something," Misty argued. "We can't stay here."
Weiss spoke after a long moment of silence.
"Jack has proposed a way for us…all of us…to just…disappear," he said hesitantly.
"What?" Vaughn asked quickly.
Weiss shrugged.
"Information, essentially," he began. "So much of a paper trail that the people at the end of the trail become almost insignificant."
"Like a tree…" Sydney said thoughtfully. "The branches lead off in so many different directions that it's impossible to follow them all."
"So we could still be ourselves, and live normally?" Misty asked.
"Exactly," Vaughn said. "But we don't have the resources for a project like that. Nor would the entire LA field office."
"But one agent does," Weiss said, grinning a little, then sobering. "Jack told me he can gain access to a program capable of generating random information…credit card purchases, bank accounts, plane tickets, surveillance feed, passports, you name it…and planting it on an appropriate server when installed on a server with active hacking tools. Basically, every time anyone logs onto the server, the program generates bogus data, uses the system's own program's, and plants the data in appropriate locations, faster and more efficiently than a team of trained hackers could ever do. Apparently, the program can even create a failsafe in the data that deletes is after it's been accessed once, making it near impossible for a hacker to trace the data."
"And my father thinks is works?" Sydney asked slowly.
Weiss nodded.
"I'm game." Sydney looked to Vaughn, the Jeff and Misty, and finally back to Weiss, her eyes asking them all the same.
"I'm in."
"Me too."
"It's worth a shot."
"I'm up for it if you guys are."
And that's that. Now the epilogue…I love the epilogue! I had so much fun with it!
