Chapter 18
The next day dawned and Vaughn reluctantly headed to work. Jack had gotten the day off, due to the fact that he was related to Sydney by blood, but Kendall hadn't let Vaughn off the hook.
As far as Vaughn was concerned, the CIA was doing well. Irina and Sark were in custody, Allison was dead, and Sloane had been pardoned, so if he was truly still evil, as both he and Sydney were sure he was, he had his work cut out for him trying to avoid getting caught. He knew that there were other threats out there, but as far as he was concerned, they had taken care of the most major ones.
Though The Covenant was a relatively new organization, they were leaps and bounds ahead of other recently created terrorist groups that often were brought down before they had even had time to generate problems. The Covenant had a mole on the inside of the NSC, and they also had several doctors around the world that were sympathetic to their cause. One of those doctors had been called into service for the Covenant, and was asked to examine Allison, and what damage the bullet had done.
He studied where the bullet had entered the brain, the angle at which it had entered, and the affected areas. Imputing this information into the computer, he showed Anna a computer display of the damage that had been done.
"As you can see," the doctor said pointing at a certain area, "this area was affected by the incident. It is responsible for the sense of hearing. She's deaf for good," The doctor said.
"Are there going to be any other side effects?"
"Unfortunately, yes. The bullet also damaged the area that allows short-term memory to be stored. She is, in a sense, not going to be able to move on mentally. She can learn through repetition, but she won't be able to remember things for long. Anna stared at her cousin, a thought that had lately been hard to grasp considering that Allison's skin color had changed in a matter of weeks, in pity.
"I'm sorry for the bad news, but that's the case." Anna nodded. This would usually be the point where she would pull out a gun and kill her contact and take her little momento, their finger, but since this doctor was willing to help her friends, she decided to spare his life.
She exited the room to see Allison looking at the same page she had been looking at when she had first picked up the magazine. Looking up and seeing Anna leave, Allison perked up. She had just been reading this interesting article about a plane that had gone down. On it had been a convicted murderer, a man who was under suspicion of killing a man, a doctor, and more. The plane had been on a course from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles when it had vanished. "Almost time?" Allison asked, unable to hear herself. Anna nodded. Looking down at the magazine in her hand, Allison saw an article that looked interesting about a plane that had gone missing.
Kendall had called a meeting a half an hour after lunch. Vaughn was the last to enter, and when he had, Kendall immediately started talking. "Yesterday we believed that Allison Doren, who now looks like Alice, Vaughn's ex-girlfriend, was dead. These pictures taken from a video camera at LAX prove otherwise. Tossing the files to everyone at the table, Vaughn immediately recognized his ex-girlfriend walking with another person, and as Vaughn studied the picture closely, he couldn't believe his eyes. "She's with Anna!"
Jack picked up his phone. "Bristow."
"Agent Bristow, it's Kendall. Put Sydney on."
Tossing the phone to his daughter, Jack listened as Sydney gave what history she knew about Anna Espinoza and Allison Doren. When it sounded like the conversation was winding down, Jack heard Sydney ask, "Why do you ask?"
Jack saw the color drain out of Sydney's face when she heard what Kendall had said. "Oh, my gosh," Sydney stated, enunciating each word.
"How is it possible that she's alive? I shot her in the head. I saw brain matter," Vaughn asked, stating the question that everyone wanted to know.
"Marshall?"
Standing up, Marshall began to speak.
"Okay. Good morning everyone. I trust that you all had a good night?"
"I didn't," Vaughn started, "my fiancé's in the hospital."
"Right, I didn't mean to imply…"
"Marshall…"
"Oh, yeah, um, how many of you know much about that whole stem cell controversy that's always in the news."
Every hand went up. Nodding, Marshall continued. "Does anyone recognize this?" The picture changed on the screen.
"It's a page from the Rambaldi journal," Dixon answered.
"Right. Guess which page."
"Rambaldi was obsessed with the number 47. Is it page 47?" Dixon asked
"Not exactly," Marshall answered. "But that's close. It's page 48."
"What's it say?" Vaughn asked.
"We tried to decipher the text, but to no avail. No avail, that is, until yesterday."
"What happened then?"
"Sloane gave us some intel that allowed us to decipher some of the text."
"How do you decipher it?"
"Good question," Marshall started. Changing the display on the screen to a double helix, Marshall asked the most obvious question in the world, "Who knows what this is?"
"It's a double helix," Vaughn answered.
"That's right. Do you see how it looks like a twisted ladder?"
"Yeah…" Vaughn said slowly.
"Well, on the double helix, each of the rung-type structures, which are called base pairs, are made up of a certain chemical. These chemicals are abbreviated with the letters that begin them; in this case G, A, T, and C."
"Right…"
"The page was encoded by a cipher using Sydney's genetic make-up. Once Sloane told us that, we were able to get it partially decoded. There are still people working on getting the rest of it decoded, but this is what we have so far."
The screen changed again. "It's a formula," Dixon stated.
"That's right. It's a formula, and from what the beginning of the text says, if you add the compound that this formula makes to a group of stem cells, then what it does is…well, basically it supercharges the stem cells. It allows them to specialize, divide, and regenerate and an unbelievably rapid rate. If this formula were to be used on an injury, or made into a daily vitamin, it would basically be a fountain of youth."
"We all know that Rambaldi was fascinated with immortality," Dixon stated.
"Right. It looks like he found a way to achieve that. If someone were to take a daily dose of this, they could, in theory live forever."
"Wow," Vaughn said quietly in amazement.
As he was sitting down, Marshall spoke up again. "I should also mention that this formula has a 24 hour time frame attached to it. For it to work successfully, it must be applied to the wound within the time frame of that injury, or if it's taken as a supplement, it's effects wear off in 24 hours."
The meeting broke up a few minutes later. Vaughn cut Marshall off before he reached his cubicle.
"Marshall, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Do you have a preliminary batch of that stuff?"
"What we're missing on the text is the chemical ratio. We have the list of all the chemicals we need, and yes, we have them all, but until we get the ratio, what we have is useless. Sorry."
"When you get the ratio, could you test it out real quickly. I'd like to give some to Sydney."
"Sure. And the ratio should only take a couple more hours."
"Great," Vaughn said nodding.
As Vaughn headed to his desk, Kendall cut him off. "All I wanted you here for today is the briefing. Now that it's over, you can go be with Sydney."
"Thank you," Vaughn said in a sigh of relief.
"Tell her to get well soon." With that Kendall walked away.
Vaughn was at the hospital when his phone rang. "Vaughn," he answered.
"Hey, Vaughn, it's me, Marshall. You wanted to know when we cracked the ratio. We just did a half hour ago. The test came up successful. I've made a pill for her to take. Could you make it here soon?"
"I'll be right there," Vaughn said, ending the call. Kissing Sydney on the head, Vaughn said, "I'll be right back."
"Okay. I'll be waiting."
Driving a bit recklessly, Vaughn arrived at the JTF building, took the pill, and left just as quickly. Driving a little bit safer to get back to the hospital, Vaughn handed the pill to Sydney who proceeded to swallow it. After explaining what it was and what it was meant to do, Sydney spoke again. "Now we wait."
…TBC…