Defying the Shadows APO is hit hard when three of their best agents wind up in the hospital, but the intrigue and deception is deepened when it is discovered one of them has dark secrets, and the only one that can discover the truth doesn't remember…
Chapter 3: A Good Mad
Disclaimer: I don't, nor did or will I ever, own any aspect of Alias. All recognizable characters and plot strands belong to JJ Abrams, not to me. But this plot in this particular fic is mine. And I have no characters to claim all for my own like in some of my other fics. Like Jeffrey…I love Jeffrey!
"I'm lowering the sedation dose," Sydney's nurse explained calmly. "When the doctor found out she woke up yesterday he decided she was ready to come around on her own," she added cheerfully.
"I can expect her to wake up soon, then?" Jack asked.
"Not fully, not for another day or so when most of the heavy sedation wears off. But she may have periods of consciousness lasting a few minutes."
Jack thought with a wry twist of his lips that this girl had the most chronically cheerful smile he'd ever encountered. He shifted slightly in his chair, then opted to stand.
"Thank you," he said briskly when the young blonde would have bounced her pony tail and asked if she could get him anything.
Jack paced the better part of an hour away before he heard Sydney stir. Her eyes were wide as he stood over her bed.
"Dad," she squeaked, seeming almost relieved to see someone there. "Someone tried to…kill us."
Confused, Jack placed a restraining hand on her shoulder as she tried to sit up.
"The jeep was found abandoned. The police in Santa Barbara are looking for the driver, but it was a car accident. A hit and run, but, nonetheless, they happen, Sydney. What makes you think they were trying to kill you?"
Jack watched her pause to gather her wits against the still-strong sedatives, and her eyes drift closed as she fought to answer him. Her words became a slur, but Jack distinctly heard something about Vaughn.
Marshal saw Weiss throw a nasty look toward Sloane's office, then head toward his own, but Marshal caught his sleeve.
"You've got to see this," Marshal hissed, glancing cautiously toward Sloane's office.
"Now's not really a good time," Weiss muttered, moving away. "I've got stuff to…"
"It's about Vaughn," Marshal cut in. "I found something."
Weiss rolled his eyes, but he leaned down eagerly a few minutes later as Marshal pulled up an old photo on his computer screen.
"What's this? A funeral?" Weiss asked, noting the black suits and dresses the people in the photo wore.
"A photo of Bill Vaughn's funeral, from his file. Look at this kid, here," Marshal said, touching the screen. "We assume this is Michael as a little kid, right? Well, on a whim I did a search using a face recognition program of the federal database of employee files, and guess what I found?"
Weiss frowned, but sniped, "The Easter bunny in the background?"
"No." Marshal frowned as he pulled up another photo.
"Is this the same funeral?" Weiss asked.
Marshal shook his head.
"That's the same kid, but at a funeral in late '78, four months before Bill Vaughn died. A fed by the name of Jacob Mosley. His son and wife disappeared immediately following the service and were presumed dead. I couldn't find a picture of the wife in either file, but it's the same kid."
Weiss took the mouse from Marshal and tiled the photos, staring at them side by side.
"Well, holy shit."
Her mind was wonderfully, gloriously, empty. For only too brief a moment, Sydney enjoyed the absolute silence of thought that only exposure to sedatives of the most powerful kind will bring.
Then, slowly, the beeping monitors crept in, then the sound of several pairs of feet shuffling past the doorway, the sound of a TV next door.
Opening her eyes hesitantly at first, Sydney was confused for a moment, unsure of her surroundings. The white walls, the IV tubes, the monitors…she was in a hospital.
She wondered vaguely how long she had been asleep, mindlessly moving her fingers and toes to appraise what damage might have been done. She moved a little more, realizing she was sore and a little stiff, but otherwise in pretty good shape.
More curiosity than anxiety made her close her eyes as she scooted carefully to a sitting position in the bed, trying to force her mind to grab onto the last thing she remembered.
Nadia. Images of that horrible, bleak night assaulted her, shattering the strange calm and catapulting her heart rate into a state sure to set off alarm bells. She glanced around and found the red call switch on the wall behind her.
A nurse in perhaps her early fifties came into the room, comfortingly cheerful though her demeanor did little to calm Sydney.
"Oh, honey, you're awake, that's good," the woman cooed, glancing at monitors. "Why don't you lie back down and let me take a look at you? No, no, questions can wait," she ordered when Sydney opened her mouth. "You just relax before the doctor decides you need some more time under sedation before you're good and steady."
Sydney lay back obediently, but continued her attempts to communicate. Her mouth was dry and felt cottony, and the sedatives apparently hadn't fully relinquished their hold, because even to her own ears her words slurred so badly as to be unintelligible.
"Waapenda Nada?" she demanded.
"Really, dear, I can't understand a word you're saying," Mary Poppins: The Nurse declared. "If you'll just let me get your vitals, I'll get you some water and…"
"Ma ister! Seekay?"
"Just one more minute, Ms. Bristow."
"Nuh! Te'may ef seeth uhkay!"
Sydney frowned as her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and her words became even harder to hear.
"Ms. Bristow, relax. I'll get you some water, then you can slowly tell me…"
Sydney pressed her lips together, not in defeat, but because she knew her irritation was only making things worse. The nurse, though annoying at the moment, was right. He'd just have to wait until she'd had some water, and may be even a few moments to clear her head.
Nearly ten unbearable minutes later Sydney eagerly accepted a plastic cup of water and gulped down most of it before slowly sipping the remainder.
The infuriating woman stood by with a knowing half smile.
"I'm glad you've decided to be more cooperative, Ms. Bristow. That should make your time with us much more pleasant."
While Sydney longed to tell the woman how wrong she was in exactly how many ways, that would have to wait until more pressing matters were out of the way.
"Where. Is. My. Sister?" Sydney asked slowly, enunciating carefully around the residual cottony effects of the sedatives. "Nadia. Santos. How. Is. She?"
"Ms. Santos is stable," the woman said diplomatically. "That's all I know. I don't work with her."
"Cured? Recovering?"
"Neither, I understand. Just stable." When she saw Sydney was satisfied for the time, eh sugary smile returned. "Funny. All of those people that came to see you seemed sure you'd ask after your fiancé first."
Sydney drew her eyebrows together and watched the smile fade from the nurse's face. "Fiancé?" she asked, a real anxiety cutting at her chest. The panic produced a chain reaction of questions that should have occurred to her to begin with.
"What am I doing here? What happened?"
Her voice rose and the words were hard to understand, but she didn't care. She stared hard at the woman now shifting nervously from foot to foot.
Weiss chose that exact moment to come charging in, clutching a manila folder that he waved excitedly.
"Great, you're awake! You won't believe what Marshal found! You may have been right about…"
"A-hem," the now Nazi Nurse said loudly, giving Weiss a disapproving glare as she stepped into his path and pulled him back into the hall, leaving Syd to work up a good mad.
And now we set the stage for the entire plot of this fic. What'd ya think of my nurse character? I love her. Anyway…I have a question. I'll have to completely rewrite about 8 chapters if yall give me the wrong answer, but would yall rather Nadia died, or should I use her to create Sloane/Weiss drama? Cause I have good ideas for both, one's just already written and all…tell me what you think! If I don't get at least five votes, I'm using the written version, FYI...