Thanks for all the feedback/suggestions. I'm definitely taking them into account. Please keep it coming!
-Breakthrough-
"I don't love her."
"Good morning to you too, Mike."
"I'm serious, Eric. I've got a major problem here."
Weiss looked up from the papers he was reading and saw Vaughn's disheveled form. It looked like he hadn't slept in days, and the last time he had slept he must have been wearing that suit. His shirt was rumpled, his tie was crooked, his face was scraggly and the look in his eyes was a jumble of sadness and pain. He looked like hell. Knowing a long conversation was in order, Weiss grabbed Vaughn's arm and led him to a quiet corner so that they could have the privacy that his desk did not allow.
Once they were securely out of earshot, Weiss turned to Vaughn, "I have a guess, but would you like to clarify exactly who you don't love?"
"Lauren. I don't love Lauren," Vaughn sighed as he raked his hands through his hair, leaving a spiky trail in its wake. "And what makes it worse, I don't know if I ever have." He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned his back against the wall. He immediately stood back up. "No, that's not true. I did love her. But I was never in love with her." Satisfied that he had sorted things out, Vaughn resumed his position against the wall. He looked at Weiss anxiously, "You know what I mean?"
"I guess…" Weiss mulled it over for a moment, "Like what you feel for your mother compared to how you feel about Donovan?"
"Exactly, its like..." Vaughn started and stopped abruptly, "No! Wait, no!" He groaned, "Eric, you're not helping. This is not a joking matter."
"No, my friend, this is not," Weiss agreed as he leaned a shoulder against the wall and sighed contemplatively. "This is a gigantic problem. Huge. Massive. Colossal, in fact. What you have here is a problem of epic proportions."
"That's not helping either," Vaughn choked out, his voice strained by desperation.
For once forgoing sarcasm in favor of sincerity, Weiss surrendered. "Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked honestly. "I can't really solve this thing for you. I mean, I can lay out your options, but you already know them."
"I know," Vaughn conceded, "I guess I'm just looking for a little support."
"And you've got it, buddy," Weiss assured him. "You know you can stay on my couch anytime."
"How about tonight?"
"I'll vacuum the Cheese Nips up when I get home."
Vaughn almost smiled. He reached out and gripped Weiss' shoulder as if it were his anchor, "Thanks, man. I really appreciate this."
Weiss stepped back and put his arms up in protest, "Whoa, whoa! No touching! None of that girly stuff! I don't get enough dates as it is. That kind of thing certainly won't help my record." He shot a furtive look in all directions, "This really is the 'flirting corner.' Must have some magical powers or something." He shivered. "I'm getting goosebumps."
Vaughn rolled his eyes as he adjusted his tie and straightened the front of his shirt. He inhaled slowly, attempting to suck a little control in with the oxygen. Relatively satisfied, he turned to walk away.
"Hey, Mike," Weiss called out to stop him, his tone uncharacteristically serious, "You know you have to consider the possibility that Sydney won't take you back."
Vaughn turned to look at him, a hint of sadness in his eyes. "I know," he breathed on a sigh. "But regardless of what happens with Sydney and I, this has to end. I'm not being fair to myself, and I'm certainly not being fair to Lauren."
The two men walked somberly out of the enclosure and made their way across the JTF. The day had only just begun, and already Vaughn felt like he had been hit by a Mack Truck. To make matters worse, as he looked across the room he saw the unmistakable form of Jack Bristow heading straight for them.
"Good morning, Jack," Vaughn offered hesitantly as the senior officer approached. He was rewarded with a curt nod.
"Meeting in five," Jack said as he turned on his heel, "There's been a development." And with that, he was gone.
Weiss and Vaughn headed straight for the conference room and took their seats, anxious to hear whether 'the development' would work for or against them. There was no way they could tell from Jack's typically expressionless face, so they would have to await the news from Dixon himself.
Slowly, the rest of their team filed into the room and sat down. Lauren was the last to enter and was forced to sit in the chair next to her husband. They had not spoken since their argument on the previous night, and the tension radiating between the two was palpable. Not one person was unaffected by the uncomfortable energy that bathed the room. Weiss shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Sydney looked at Weiss with a questioning expression. Lauren shot an evil glare in Sydney's direction. Vaughn did everything he could to keep from making eye contact with anyone in the room. Marshall was sweating profusely, though he couldn't for the life of him pinpoint why. Even Jack's lips were more pursed than usual. It wasn't until Dixon entered the room that some of the awkwardness seemed to lift slightly.
"Good morning, everyone," he began, "Let's get straight to it. We've intercepted a communiqué from Mr. Sark to an unknown second party. We were able to trace it back to its origin and have determined that it came from Denmark, at a warehouse in Aalborg. We have confirmed that Sark himself is on the premises and the artifact is with him. Bristow and Vaughn," he tossed a folder in each of their directions, "you'll be on point." He tossed a third folder across the table, "Agent Weiss, you will be on comms." Dixon looked to Sydney's father, "Jack?"
Jack stood up and began his presentation, "We've long known that something was going on at this particular site. The security is much too high for a typical storage unit. There are over 200 cameras scattered throughout the building, as well as laser grid motion sensors, thermal sensors, biometric scanners, security guards and even dogs."
"Wieners or pugs?" Weiss quipped.
Jack refused to acknowledge the comment as he continued his exposition, "The guards are divided into three shifts, the smallest being the evening shift. That's when you'll be going in."
Jack took his seat and Dixon nodded, "Thank you Jack. Marshall?"
On cue, Marshall stood up and began to speak, "Okay, well… first off – wow, huh? Yeah, that is what they call a boatload of security. It would take, like, forever to get through all that stuff. Technology aplenty. I mean, at the very least you'd need a scrambler for the surveillance system, jamming units or decoders for the laser sensors, body heat modifiers for the thermal sensors…"
"Marshall…" Dixon interrupted.
"Yeah, right… sorry. Well, anyway, it would take a lot to get through all that – unless … you could take them all out at once. This little guy," he held up a small black plastic box, "I have been working on for quite some time. You see what I had to do was create a pulse with…" Marshall looked over at the stern expression on Dixon's face. He laughed uncomfortably, "Right, well, you don't need to know that. All you need to know is that you have to press this red button." He indicated a button on the underside of the box as the room looked on intently.
"What's the blue one for?" Sydney asked.
"Oh, that," Marshall smiled, "Well, I couldn't decide what color to use so I was trying them out. The blue one will be gone on the final model that I'll give to you." He thought for a moment, "Or the red one. Which one do you want? I also have a purple…"
"Red's fine," Sydney insisted.
"Okay, great, red it is. So you just press this red button and bingo. Power's out."
Vaughn was hesitant, "Won't they have a back up power source?"
Marshall grinned, "You see, that's the beauty of this guy. It'll take out that too. Most back up generators are on a three second delay. So this device is programmed to send a second pulse three seconds after the first, and another after that, just in case. Within ten seconds it'll have taken out everything within ten blocks. Except these," he held up an earpiece and a transmitter, "These were created specifically to resist the effects of the black box. Or, as I like to call it, Marshall's Midnight. The blackout will last twelve minutes, and you'll be able to communicate with each other the entire time."
"What good will it do to communicate with Weiss if he's just as blind as we are?" Sydney wanted to know.
Jack fielded this one, "By the time you arrive at the location a satellite with heat sensing capabilities will have been tasked."
"And," Marshall chimed in, "Agent Weiss will be able to monitor that by using this laptop, which is also immune to Marshall's Midnight." He proudly displayed the laptop and then took his seat.
"Your flight is not until tomorrow," Dixon announced, "That's all."
"I wonder what effect Marshall's Midnight has on the dogs?" Weiss queried to no one in particular as he headed for the door. "Hey, Marshall, how about adding a feature that makes dogs get constipated so they can't do that jump-attack intruder thing…" Weiss' voice trailed off as he caught a stern eye from Jack. "What? A device like that could be a great addition to our arsenal. You shouldn't stifle ingenuity like mine. It's innovators like me that make the world a better place."
As the room emptied Vaughn hung back to help Lauren with her things. Stuffing her notes busily into her bag, Vaughn noticed that she pointedly ignored his presence.
"Lauren," Vaughn began tentatively, "we need to talk."
"Not now, Michael," she snapped, still fussing with the papers.
"Yes, now," he insisted, "We can't put this off."
Lauren turned sharply and looked him straight in the eye as she spoke forcefully, "Not now, Michael. I have to be at Il Faro in five minutes. I have a lunch date."
She stormed out of the room without so much as a 'goodbye.'
Weiss peeked his head in about ten seconds later. "Yikes. That must have been a hoot. Remind me never to get married. You know, someone once told me that 'a wife always gets the last word in every argument. Anything a husband says after that is just the first word in the next argument.' Sage advice, my friend… hey, why aren't you taking notes? Oh, nevermind. You wanna go get some pizza or something?"
"Yeah," Vaughn looked up, "How about Il Faro?"