Chapter 11: Finale, Part II
A/n:At last, the much awaited for Part II. Enjoy!
When Sydney came to, she felt restrained in a sitting position. Her eyes were trapped on her lap for a few moments before she regained the strength to lift her neck. Her ankles were trussed to the chair legs, her wrists to the sides, and her torso around the back. Not a problem, she thought, I've done this before. Then she noticed the chair was bolted to the floor.
The room was cold; her fingertips felt numb against her palms. Her feet froze to the icy floor, Desmond had apparently removed her shoes. He must have known about her killer roundhouse kick. Ten times more painful with shoes. Forty-seven times more painful with heels.
She looked up around the room. Pipes ran every which way through the ceilings and walls, yet no water dripped. No air blew through the vents, and it felt eerily quiet. Her ears rang in the deafening silence, and she cleared her throat to create noise. She assumed they were in the basement of a building, but where? She couldn't read her watch from the angle, but she felt sure only a few hours could have passed.
A door in the left corner of the room was the only possible exit. There were no windows, and no likely hidden passageways behind the pipes. In fact, the room was mostly empty. Sydney took up its center, and in front of her was another chair (not bolted to the floor) and a small table.
Suddenly the door swung open and Sydney felt her body alert to the sound. In swaggered Desmond Tamas, the smirk still not wiped from his face. Sydney planned to wipe it off; wipe it, throw it on the ground, stamp on it, smash it into tiny pieces, bury it, then spit on the ground where she buried it. He didn't bother to close the door, and he grabbed the free chair, swinging it casually in front of him. He finally acquiesced into it, heaving a sarcastic sigh.
"Glad to see you're awake," he said.
"Where the hell are we?"
"We're here to meet the boss."
"Don't play games. I asked you a question."
"And I gave you an answer: you're meeting our boss."
"'Our' boss?"
High heels clicked in the distance, nearing the door. And now here would come the whorey bitch who thought being evil was cool, and Sydney would kick her ass and that would be the end of it. But when the heels clicked their way through the door, all normalcy was crushed under her black stilettos. "K-Kerri?"
She walked up to Desmond and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her hands massaged his chest, leaving Sydney speechless. "What, surprised to see me, Sydney?"
Sydney watched in utter disbelief as the girl she thought was her good friend straddle Desmond's lap. "How do you know my name?" she hissed back, her fists in tight balls at her side.
"There's a lot of things I know," she replied, staring devilishly into Desmond's eyes. "Many of which I discovered a few weeks ago. You see, while you were busy with my dear Desmond," her face lurched forward and she licked his cheek, "I was breaking into your apartment."
"You bitch…"
"And I didn't appreciate the tracker you put on my laptop," Desmond snapped, glaring at her before closing his eyes under Kerri's pleasuring activities. "It was too late before I noticed it, I had downloaded all the documents."
Sydney breathed heavily, her hatred for this man growing by the instant as she was forced to watch Kerri trail kisses up his neck. She hated Kerri even more, oh, God, did this suck. She wriggled her wrists against the ropes, yet they were too tight. This could not be happening. How could Kerri be evil? How could Desmond have kidnapped her? And why the hell had no one found her yet?
Vaughn. He would notice first, since she and Desmond would never walk out into the parking lot as planned. And he would notify Dixon and Jack, and a search would commence. But they should be here by now, right? How much time passed? Damn it.
Kerri swung her legs off of Desmond and rose to her feet. Her red, slinky dress clung to her legs as she prowled, encircling Sydney's chair. The chair had to be bolted to the ground, didn't it? Sydney had no options, incapable of freeing herself from the ropes, the chair, or the room. Helpless was something she rarely felt, and she despised feeling it now. She gulped down her doubt solemnly and held her head high, her eyes focusing on the wall behind Desmond. "All right, you got me. You've tied me up and you got me. What do you want with me?"
Kerri paused directly in her line of vision, leaning over to make sure Sydney could see her. In return, Kerri received a stern glare from Sydney as the former exhaled slowly into the latter's face, her breath smelling faintly of wine. "If we didn't take you now, you'd know too much about your missing years."
Sydney's expression did not falter. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Well," Desmond took over, "we just didn't want you reading misinformation."
"Then tell me what happened."
Kerri leaned back and glanced at Desmond. "I think we should give someone else that opportunity." Desmond stood up, wrapping his arms around her body and inhaling her scent. "Let's go, Desmond."
Sydney bit her tongue as they traipsed away, she felt sick to her stomach. How could this have happened? How could she not known her "best friend" was a traitor? She wanted to cry, but held in it, knowing she could not show weakness.
There had to be a way out. First, she needed to distinguish the time. If she could alter the angle of her watch… She jammed her wrist into her hip and twisted, glad her band was loosely clasped. Her watch rotated slowly as she twisted her wrist, and soon it rested sideways. Using the rope to push it up, she craned her neck forward and read: 12:47. Early morning, she presumed. It had only been about two hours.
How long would they leave her? When would she learn the truth about her missing years? What exactly did Omega do to her…?
No, this couldn't be it. Her questions would be answered. But not before she busted loose from the chair. But how? There really was no way without a knife, or some fire, or a rapid animals that likes to chew on things… Damn. There was no way out. And Desmond was a cheating, lying son of a bitch, and Kerri was an evil traitor bitch whore slut, and she wanted Vaughn so badly.
Of course, that was the story of her life. The very moment when she could have her love back, she was taken away. And Omega would go and pull a Shakespeare and kill her or something, then she would never have him back. Let them find me soon, she prayed.
She hesitated abruptly. What was she thinking? She was still Sydney Bristow: Super-Spy. Eventually, she would get out of that chair, and Omega would not kill her. And then, she'd find Desmond and kick his ass. And then she'd move on to Kerri, and she would beat her until she begged for mercy, and then she would return to Vaughn and… Oooh. Those were inspiring thoughts.
She soon lapsed into a restless sleep. She awoke feeling no more rested than before, but there was something new in the room now. Someone new…
When her eyes focused again, she saw Sark standing before her. He poured orange juice into a glass, which sat next to a plate piled with eggs and toast. She raised her eyebrows at him, though he had yet to acknowledge her conscious state. "What the hell?"
"Good morning." He picked up the glass and stepped towards her, pressing the glass to her lips.
Poison. That was how Sark would do it, poisoned orange juice. As he tilted the opening towards her, her initial reaction was to let the liquid spill down her front. However, she noticed the dryness in her throat and felt it best to drink. Screw the poison. It tasted… Like orange juice. Okay, Mr. Sark, you win this time.
He set the orange juice glass back on the table and proceeded to lift the plate, as well as a fork. Sydney gave him a look that said, "Oh no," and he replied with one of, "Oh yes" quality. He scooped up some scrambled egg on the fork and held it in front of her mouth. She glared up at him, a four-year-old rejecting mom's broccoli. She was hungry, though.
"So where are the minions? Shouldn't they be doing the dirty work for you?"
He forced the fork through her mouth anyway. She reluctantly chewed. "They were much too busy last night to be awake– or clothed –at this time."
That stung. Had her arms not been tied down, she would have flipped the plate into his lap. But as much as she hated it, she felt starved, not having eaten dinner last night. She managed to allow Sark to feed her, and she perhaps despised him more now that she ever did. Sydney Bristow was no baby, and he knew that.
Finally she couldn't stand his guiding the fork back and forth from the plate to her mouth. "I'm full," she croaked. Hunger still pained her, yet Sark feeding her made her feel sick. He cocked his head at her but set the plate back on the table.
"Fair enough," he muttered, taking a seat across from her instead of leaving.
This frustrated her further. "Are you here to tell me about what happened during those years?"
He did not react to her question; he studied her feet. "You remember Rambaldi's Prophecy?" he retorted with a question, looking back to her eyes.
She recited, "The woman here depicted will possess unseen marks. Signs that she will be the one to bring forth my works...bind them with fury; a burning anger. Unless prevented, at vulgar cost, this woman will render the greatest power unto utter desolation. This woman, without pretense, will have had her effect, never having seen the beauty of my sky, behind Mount Subasio. Perhaps a single glance would have quelled her fire."
"Your mother wasn't lying to you about it, Sydney. It is you in the picture."
"What did you do to me?" she asked through gritted teeth, desperate for an answer.
He remained calm. "Not I, Sydney. My boss."
"You aren't the Black Russian, then?"
He shook his head, chuckling slightly. "It's just like history is repeating itself…" Confusion settled in. What was he talking about, history? She eyed a presence in the doorway and glanced over: Irina.
Taipei. Strapped to a chair. Damn Sark. Damn Irina. Damn them all.
It came as no shock to Sydney. After all that had happened and what she had seen, Irina was no surprise, because all along Sydney knew. She knew. Somehow, she just did. And she should have known her mother was the only one evil enough.
Sark picked up the half empty plate and glass, his blue eyes twinkling like icicles glistening under the powerful sun. Irina stepped aside, allowing her partner in crime to leave. She closed the door, like it made a difference.
Sydney refused to look at her; the thousands of brass pipes were much more interesting, kind, motherly. The pipes wouldn't break into your apartment and slam your head into hard wood. And the wouldn't have betrayed you years and more years ago.
"We found you unconscious," Irina began, edging closer, "smashed against the wall. Allison had far too much blood loss to revive her. So we took you, and set fire to your apartment." Sydney pressed her feet hard into the ground, an attempt in vain to back away from her nearing mother. "Nursing you back to health wasn't hard, you always were strong. But truly, the reason you survived was because Rambaldi had not intended for you to die yet."
"Stop," she threatened. She'd heard enough.
Irina persevered. "When Arvin traveled to the Himalayas, he received an encoded manuscript. The decoding phase was difficult, Rambaldi used several codes on the single scroll. It took us two and half years to decode those messages properly. And two years ago we discovered we needed your blood.
"Look in my eyes!" she demanded, startling Sydney. She stared wide-eyed at her mother for a moment as Irina continued. "We performed our procedures, hoping to decipher the remaining text quickly, and we erased your memory and dumped you in Taipei." Sydney took in her words, but remained focused on Irina's eyes. Morse. She was blinking in Morse. Short short, short long long, short long, long short, long, long, long long long. "However, there were a few places we translated incorrectly." Short short short short, short, short long short short, short long long short. "And we don't need your blood…" long short long long, long long long, short short long. "But your body." I-W-A-N-T-T-O-H-E-L-P-Y-O-U. I want to help you.
"What does that mean?" Short short short short, long long long, short long long. How?
"It means the Di Regno heart will be arriving today." Short long short short, short long, long, short, short long short. Later.
Wait. The Di Regno heart? As in the heart of Protero Di Regno, whose DNA matched that of a Rambaldi sketch? As in the heart stolen by Sloane shortly before Sydney's disappearance?
Irina's expression remained stoic as she promptly turned and left. Sydney did not bother to stop her. She couldn't believe her, could she? Everything told Sydney not to, but what could she do? She wasn't in any position where Irina could betray her– not yet anyway. But she felt mostly concerned about the heart. And how they needed more than her blood, her body… Oh shit. She could only hope that her coworkers arrived before the heart did.
They left her alone the remainder of the day. The silence nearly drove her crazy. She slept on and off, and when not sleeping, she attempted wriggling free of the binding ropes at her wrists. However, she succeeded in only rope burns.
Where was the CIA? She heard no outside noises of guns or fighting throughout the day. She glanced impatiently at her watch, it was late afternoon. Her stomach growled of hunger, yet nothing existed to satisfy her.
The door slammed open, and a dark, evil man stepped into the room smiling at Sydney. She snarled at him. "Sloane," she muttered.
He rubbed his uneven, over-grown stubble and stopped in front of her. She noticed that he held in his left hand two things: a vial, and a syringe… Irina followed him into the room closely, looking equally as villainous. And Sydney knew, Irina had played her once again.
Sydney bit her tongue as she watched him set the objects onto the table. The taste of blood was eminent in her mouth. She couldn't look at her mother, she couldn't look at the bastard himself, she could only stare at the vial on the table. A small, circular bottle filled with a mysterious liquid; a deep purple fluid they would soon inject into her.
She just wanted to laugh. After everything she had been through– the loss of two years of her life, the torture of watching Vaughn with another woman, the betrayal of several people during her life– this is how it would end. "So where's the heart?" she asked, her blood suddenly tasting refreshing.
"Sark just made contact minutes ago. He told us to make our preparations."
As Sloane sat down, Irina moved towards her daughter and pulled up her sleeve; Sydney's body pulled away from her as far as possible. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked Sloane, then turned to her mother. "And how can you be in charge of all this?"
Sloane shoved the needle into the vial; a purple line slowly rose into the glass cylinder. "Because, Sydney," he said, "you can render greater power than imaginable. This liquid… Poison to anyone who merely touches it. Except you. Fatal to all but the Prophecy.
"Imagine being immortal. Living through anything, everything. Resistant to bullets, knife wounds, nuclear weapons. Can you fathom the strength of this all? The domination we'll suddenly have over the world?"
"We?"
"Yes, we."
Irina's cell phone rang, and she lifted it to her ear. "Yes?" Pause. "Excellent." She glanced at Sloane and told him the heart had arrived; Sark was making the transfer now. She proceeded to instruct Sark further, but a roar of gunshots interrupted her and she pulled the phone away from her ear.
Sark's voice rang loudly in the room, "Get out of there now!" And then the phone went dead.
Sloane darted for Sydney, pulling the vial off the syringe. "Quick, hold her arm down." Sydney writhed as hard as she could, yet Irina's grip on her was firm as Sloane's steady hand neared. Irina's arm flew off Sydney, taking her by surprise as she ripped the mysterious Rambaldi liquid from Sloane and stabbed him hard in the chest.
He gasped sharply, clutching his heart, and fell to his knees. Sydney gaped at her mother as Sloane collapsed dead on the ground. "Dammit, I told you not to pursue this!" Irina shouted.
"Mom, what's going on?"
Sydney's palms were moist with sweat as Irina raced around the room. She searched hastily through the pipes. "The heart transplant procedure would have killed you." Irina returned before Sydney, dropping her shoes at her feet. "Sloane was too blinded by the potential to see the truth. He would have performed this procedure regardless of my presence… Which is why I killed Viktor Yudin and took over Omega."
"You killed Viktor Yudin?"
"And I even warned you to stay away, I tried to protect you. But I knew you were too stubborn." Irina promptly lifted the vial from the table, ripping off the cap and pouring its remnants onto Sloane's body; his flesh fizzled away. "He shall never more bring forth the works of Rambaldi."
Sydney's eyes wandered rapidly from Sloane to her mother. "I… I don't understand."
Footsteps tromped overhead, and both women's eyes traveled to the ceiling above them. Irina leaned down to kiss Sydney's cheek. "I do hope we meet again," she whispered before turning and escaping from the room.
Sydney sat in disbelief, panting heavily, her head utterly jumbled with newly transplanted information. Then she did only what initially came to mind: she screamed. "Vaughn! Dad! Dixon!"
Her eyes slipped closed as her cries reverberated through the halls. The next thing she knew, a heavy gun clattered to the floor, and she opened her eyes to find Vaughn racing towards her, his fingers fumbling to find a knife in his pocket to cut the ropes binding her to the chair. "Jack, she's in here!" he hollered behind him, cutting so vehemently he sliced the tips of his own fingers. Severing the last rope, he pulled Sydney to his chest. "Oh thank God," he sighed into her neck.
He pulled away, his palms finding their rightful places against her jaw, and he stared with concern into her eyes. Sydney noticed Jack enter the room, looming in the corner. She saw his eyes wander to the floor where Sloane lay, and Vaughn's eyes soon followed.
They asked no questions immediately. Jack slipped Sydney's shoes back onto her feet, and Vaughn helped her into a standing position, aiding her weak muscles as he walked her through the corridors. Sydney's senses returned to her, as well as her strength despite dehydration, and she questioned, "Where are we?"
"Upstate New York," Vaughn answered, taking extra caution as they ascended two flights of stairs. Jack held open the door for them, and they emerged onto the building's rooftop. Helicopters roared through the air, wind blowing Sydney's hair in every which direction. They rushed towards the nearest one and Jack helped Sydney inside. Vaughn closed the door and turned to Sydney as the helicopter rose. "We're going to the airport. A plane will take us home, LA home, and we'll get you checked out. Are you hurt?"
She shook her head, silently laying it atop Vaughn's shoulder. Home. They were finally going home.
A/n: Aww, one chapter left, guys! It's so sad. That it's ending, I mean, not the chapter. Good chapter. Yes yes, good chapter. Please review!