Gasping for breath, he sat straight up and quickly looked around him. He could feel his heart wanting to tear out of his chest as he tried to catch his breath. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he threw the covers off his overheated body. Darkness surrounded him and it took him a few moments to realize that he was in Sydney's apartment. The only light that filled the room was from the half moon sitting in the far left corner of the double windows.
A body shifted beside him and a hand gently rubbed his arm. Looking down at the person beside of him, his heart slowed and his breathing began to normalize. She was okay. It was all just a dream... A nightmare…
"You okay?" Sydney asked in a whisper, her eyes filled with concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine." He replied with a lie. Kissing her on the forehead, he swung his legs out of bed and rested his elbows onto his knees. The bed creaked underneath him as she moved towards him.
Looking over, he saw her sitting next to him. Her dark brown bangs hung slightly in her honey brown eyes and her hair was slightly mussed from sleep. She leaned against him and took his hands into hers. Her fingers started to trace around his and she flipped his hand over to trace the creases in his palm.
"Vaughn…" She said, but didn't continue.
He looked up to see how the light from the moon lit her face and reflected in her eyes. Swallowing, he smiled a bit. He loved just how her eyes conveyed so much intelligence and a certain trust. Loved how when she smiled her two dimples would appeared and her eyes would light up. There was an old soul in her, he was sure of it. Growing up on your own did that to you. He knew just how it felt to take of himself without the help of parents.
Just as her finger hit the middle of his palm, he closed his hand over hers and squeezed lightly. Then he put his arm around her and held her against his chest not wanting to ever let go.
The scene of her there on the ground with two holes in her chest haunted him and reminded him of three years ago, sitting in the charred house. It squeezed his lungs shut and made his heart skip a beat. His eyes began to sting, but he ignored the pain and kept staring down at the small body that lay against him.
"I can't lose you Syd." He said quietly, but her steady breathing told him that she hadn't heard him. This time his lips formed a full smile. Moving her back onto the bed, he lay next to her and stared at the ceiling. He didn't remember when he fell asleep. All he knew was that morning came way too soon.
"You're telling us that there's a mole inside the CIA?" Sydney held her warm cup of tea between both her hands.
Around her sat everyone she knew within the black ops division of the Central Intelligence Agency. They were an underground operation that received money from the CIA in order to gather intelligence on different high ranking organizations around the world. The CIA picked the best from their agency and put them under one ex-terrorist cell leader, Arvin Sloane. He was a man that she had no tolerance for. After seeing many of her friends killed under this man's direction, including her fiancé, she could only despise him. There was only one reason she stayed. She could not bare to see what he did earlier at SD-6 happen again.
Others within the agency were people she trusted her life with and in many ways, had already done so. Michael Vaughn, with which she had a very confusing and rocky relationship, was a talented agent and was known for his fluency in many languages. He had been her CIA handler through her first two years of being a double agent with SD-6 and the CIA. Eric Weiss, Vaughn's best friend and once partner, was a kind hearted man. Then there were people who belonged to her family. Nadia, her half-sister, and her father, Jack, who both worked along side her on many missions. Her father was a senior in the CIA department and headed up many of the mission specs while doing his own undercover missions. Nadia worked along side her after quitting the Argentinean Intelligence agency and was currently dating Weiss. Then there was Marshall who was head of the op-tech division. After working under a terrorist SD-6 group thinking that he was working for the right side, he came to work under the CIA. He had more inventions then the world would ever know. He had pulled through for all of them on many occasions. Last was Dixon, a man she had worked with for as many years as she had worked as an undercover agent. He was her partner under SD-6, he was her director at the CIA, and now under the black-ops division, he was her partner again.
"CIA believes that there is a terrorist agent who seeks to burrow inside Langley by portraying themselves as a new recruit. They've been following this for some time and now they want us to send in an agent to investigate. This will involve having one of our agents to become a new recruit in order to get closer to this mole and find out just who this mole is working for." Sloane replied.
"Then why not take this mole into questioning?" Nadia asked, thinking on the same lines as Sydney.
Sloane nodded and sat down in his chair. Resting his chin onto the back of his clasped hands as his elbows sat on top of the table, he looked around the room and then at Nadia. "I asked them that myself and they told me that they didn't want to blow this mole out of cover. They thought that, if done right, she could become an asset. It may also be a way of blindsiding whom ever she's working for."
"Then why us? This is under FBI jurisdiction." Vaughn straightened in his chair and caught Sydney's eye across the table. They kept eye contact with each other for a moment and then both looked back at Sloane who was scratching his gray stubbled chin.
"Because they don't trust the FBI. After the incident in Texas, they are afraid of any intel leaking out into public which could indeed blow the cover of whom ever tracks this mole." Jack said straight faced as he looked at Vaughn.
"So we're sending in Sydney. You are going to become Sarah Haskins, a girl straight out of the Chicago suburbs who just graduated from MIT." Sloane slid the file down across the table. "Here's the literature on her. You need to convince the CIA Farm trainers into believing that you are Sarah. They wont know you're going undercover. Since you have not officially gone through the CIA training, I think it best for you to do this operation. They wont recognize you. Plus, if I remember correctly, you have some skill in tricking lie detectors. So I trust you can do this."
"Wait, the trainers wont know about me?" Sydney scanned through the paperwork on Sarah Haskins. It was the same kind of paperwork the government provided for people who wanted to officially change their identity. Passports, diplomas, birth certificates, everything that a twenty-nine-year old trainee would need in order to enter the CIA.
Sloane shook his head. "No. Again, the director at Langley does not want any chance of leaks. Having already had several problems with this in the past, they do not want it to happen again. They can't afford it."
"Vaughn, you're going to be Sydney's handler again. The CIA is setting up a temporary job for you in the recruitment office. You'll be the new trainer at the Farm. We want you to keep in constant contact with Sydney. Do not blow your cover." Jack warned sliding another docket to Vaughn. "Marshall will provide the op-tech. Your plane leaves at thirteen hundred hours."
"This is our main objective folks." Sloane reminded them. "You're dismissed."
Sydney got up and shut her folder. Looking over across the table, she saw Sloane speaking into her father's ear. Two months into becoming a black-ops agent, she noticed how the two seemed to reattach to each other. Although she wanted to ignore her instincts, she was worried of what her father was doing. He had done many things that were very questionable, ethically and morally. She had a feeling that something under the table was happening between her father and Sloane. Swallowing, she followed Vaughn out of the conference room.
"Sometimes I feeling like they're scamming against us." Vaughn said echoing her own uneasiness.
She nodded and looked down at her folder. "CIA trainee?"
"Guess you get to go through what you skipped when becoming a double." Vaughn grinned.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
"I get to become your handler again. What's not to enjoy?" Vaughn replied. "Plus you might get to work with the same trainer I did. He's a real drill sergeant."
Pushing him forward towards Marshall's office, she shook her head. "You never know, he might have become a softy in his old age."
"Sergeant 'better be ready for everything'? That type only gets grouchier." He replied and opened Marshall's door.
Marshall stood in front of them with two watches in hand.
"What do these do?" Sydney took one of the watches and looked at them carefully. They appeared to be almost normal. The only thing that made them look slightly odd was the back and the latch that kept them on their wrist.
"Other than tell time?" Marshall asked with a big grin. He was a man who looked and acted in a very boyish manner. Rarely could one find him without a smile and he talked so fast that he stumbled over his own words. "It's the next generation of agent tracking devices. See, to the normal eye it looks like a regular watch, not very fancy or shiny so there will be a less of a temptation to steal them. However, this is worth oh so much more. It gives your coordinates within a ten meter approximation. It also has a health status report that tells us your condition. If something's wrong, we'll know it immediately. Also, it has a special bug inside of it."
He scrambled over to his desk and picked up a Petri dish. In it was a small dot. He pointed to it eagerly. "See this? It's the smallest communication chip in the world. I've been working on it since I started getting funding from SD-6. It basically can dodge any scanner that's in production to date. It's undetectable because it shuts down whenever any scanner gets within a one foot radius of it. Unfortunately it also turns off when microwaves come near it too. But when it senses these waves are gone, it turns back on, allowing us to hear you and to locate you."
"So that's inserted into us?" Vaughn asked.
"Well sort of." Marshall put the dish down. Taking the watch that Sydney had in her hand, he turned it over to show the back. "See this? If the watch is ever taken off without your permission, it immediately inserts this device into your skin. It looks like a mere insect bite. So in order to keep this device out of your skin you have to take it off with a special code. Each code is made specifically for you. It's like a fail safe device for whenever you're in a tight situation. It can go in water and can withstand very hot and very cold temperatures and even electrical shock."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Sydney shivered remembering the last time she went through electric shock.
Marshall nodded. "So each has its own tracking frequency that can only be read by a scanner that only we have. It's basically a backup device for a spy and this will be the first mission that it will be tried on."
"So we're the guinea pigs? That's a comforting thought." Vaughn smirked. "Thanks Marshall. Do you have anything else?"
"Nothing that wont go undetected by the CIA. They told me I can't give you anything else Sydney, I'm sorry."
"Thanks Marshall." Sydney put on the watch. "So can you teach us how to take this off?"
