Disclaimer: You know the drill.
Note: This title and the title of the first chapter are from the show, except this one I kind of changed a bit to fit the story and it's kind of dumb, but.........okay I know I'm babbling, like Marshall.
Ch. 3 "Truth Be Told To Jack"
Sydney awoke to the smell of eggs. She hurriedly got dressed and ran downstairs. Expecting to find her nanny, Linda, she called out as she turned the corner.
"Smells good Lin..."
She was cut short with the surprise of learning it was not Linda, but her father, making breakfast.
"Good morning."
"Good morning," Sydney replied a little uneasily. She wondered if this was one of his reverse psychology bits. It had to be because he never was in a good mood. Of course to any other person who didn't know him, Jack would appear to be in a indifferent mood, but for him, this was as good as it got.
"The eggs smell good."
"I'm making them the way you like them. Sunny side up."
Later Sydney realized she should have kept her mouth shut, but she hadn't realized that yet so she went ahead and said it.
"I like them scrambled. Mom was the one who liked the sunny-side up."
Almost instantaneously Jack's mood turned sour.
"Oh. I forgot," he said, thinking out loud.
"I don't mind," Sydney lied. "I'll still eat them," she offered, trying to salvage what was left of his favorable mood.
"Doesn't matter," he said as he dumped the eggs in the trash. Sydney watched as the eggs fell. The first kind thing her father had done in forever and she had ruined it. No wonder he didn't like her.
Jack, too preoccupied with something, left the room. Sydney got out some cereal and cursed herself in English, Spanish, and pig latin, the three languages she knew, as she munched her cereal.
Just as she was finishing up and had used every form of stupid she knew, her father walked back into the room and looked at the calendar. Suddenly Syd remembered something. She had been planning on waiting until after the party to tell him and since this was after the party it was as good as any time to ask him.
"Dad, the debate team is going on an over night miss...I mean match and Principal Sloane wants our parents to sign...."
Jack had been zoning out while Syd had been talking, but snapped to attention when he heard her mention Sloane.
"Did you say Sloane?" he interrupted.
"Yeah, Mr. Sloane, our principal wants.."
"Never mind what he wants, is this Arvin Sloane you're talking about?"
"I think that's his first name, but I'm not...."
"Get your bag. I'm driving you to school."
Sydney almost jumped at this announcement, but didn't want to appear excited.
"Linda usually takes me so you don't have to if you don't want...."
"Just get your coat."
Syd was ready in record breaking time. She hopped in the car with her dad and he drove off. And he was going over the speed limit.
She looked over at him. He didn't look like he was enjoying this. She thought he had wanted to see her school or something, but as she thought about it that seemed less and less likely. "Probably wants to ask my teacher's if they want to buy airplane parts."
Another record was broken that day. They got to her school in 15 minutes less than it took her nanny. She barely got out of the car before Jack pushed the lock button and raced to catch up with him.
"Where's Sloane's office?' he snapped.
"Down the hall. Why do you want to talk to my principal? I didn't do anything," Sydney said taking offense.
"Oh believe me," Jack replied. "It's not what you've done."
Jack stormed into Sloane's office, past a secretary who was about to stop him and then remembered who he was and an old lady who kept her head down low enough that it almost touched the ground, thinking that if she didn't breathe, he might not even notice her. If Jack had been his regular self he might have noticed something odd, but right now he was ready to pummel Sloane into a bloody pulp. He burst into the office. Sloane looked up from his desk smiling. No one else stomped as well as Jack did.
"Jack, I was wondering when you would come. It took longer than I expected, but...."
"You son of a bi...."
"Jack," Sloane said cutting him off. "Please refrain from using that type of language here. There are young children around who are very impressionable."
Jack leaned across the desk and thought for a moment about throttling Sloane.
"Don't tell me about influencing children. You brought Sydney in after I told you, in no uncertain terms, that she was have nothing to do with this."
"Come on Jack, surely you knew it was inevitable. She was born into this life."
"And I don't want her to go out of this world because of it," Jack replied firmly.
"If I hadn't someone else might have. I was only protecting her, Jack."
Jack was getting more steamed with each word that came out of Sloane's mouth.
"You leave that job to me. I'm her father."
"Well, you're not doing a very good job."
Jack, not being able to restrain himself any longer, reached across the table and grabbed Sloane by the shirt and then bringing Sloane up to his own face replied angrily, "You send me around the world on numerous missions every month, you burden me with mountains of paper work and make me oversee other operations, all while I continue to maintain a cover at Jenning's Aerospace and now you have the nerve to tell me that I'm not a good enough father?"
Sloane loosened himself from Jack's death grip and sat back down in his chair. Calmly, he replied, "I'm the principal of a high school. I run SD-6. I'm a member of the Alliance. Yet, even with all those responsibilities I make time to watch over Sydney, go to her activities, look over her work. I do all that and still spend every night home with my wife. What's your excuse Jack?"
Syd saw her father leave Sloane's office. She wondered what had gone on in there. For some reason, she didn't believe it had anything to do with airplane parts anymore.
A few hours later, during a painfully long lecture by their French teacher, John Breo, Syd was called to the office. "Now I'll finally know what happened," she thought.
But Sloane had only called her into to compliment her on her last mission. "I'm very proud of the work you do, Sydney. I hope you know that."
Syd had patiently listened to Sloane, but couldn't wait any longer.
"What did you and my father talk about?" she burst out.
Sloane gave her the smile grown ups give children when children ask questions beyond their comprehension or in this case, business.
"Your father hadn't known about my taking over here as principal and wanted to meet me," Sloane answered in a well rehearsed manner. "Now why don't you go back to class and then meet in the debate room after school."
Sydney nodded as she got up to leave. Something about this wasn't right. If her father had just wanted to meet her principal, why had he been acting so strange? She wanted to ask Sloane, but thought it better not to. Something was going on, and she was going to find out what it was.
Sloane watched Sydney leave his office. She was getting too suspicious. He had taught all his agents to observe what was going on around them, to question everything. Now that training could very well bite him in the butt.
After school, Sydney went to the debate room as Sloane had ordered. She saw that he was already there, along with Marshall and Dixon. Marshall was their gadget person. Otherwise know through out the school as Marshall, Electronic Geek. Some people just skipped Marshall and Electronic all together. Dixon was her partner. He was one of the popular kids. He was on the football team and would probably be the quarter back next year when he was a senior. He was a couple of years older than her, but she still considered him one of her closest friends, almost like a big brother. And if anyone ever picked on Sydney Bristow they would have Marcus Dixon and his entire posse to answer to. "He takes better care of me than my father does," Sydney thought bitterly as she sat down at her regular seat.
Sloane, who sat at the head of the table, motioned for them all to observe the monitor behind him.
"This is Li Chang. He directs the private school in Fuzhou, China where you two will be going on Wednesday. He is also the owner of about a quarter billion dollars worth of drugs that he sells over a vast area. Fuzhou, is a major exporter of lacquerware. We're convinced that Chang is sending his products to his clients, passing the drugs off as lacquer and is using the school to store them until he can get them to his clients . You'll go in as rich Americans who are interested in becoming foreign exchange students and are looking for a school to attend next year. All the information on your aliases are in the folders. Marshall?"
Marshall, who had been fiddling with his tie during the entire discussion, got up and began what Sydney knew was going to be a long, yet comical presentation.
"Okay. You're going in as potential students, right, so you're probably gonnna take down a lot of notes or at least look like you're taking notes. I don't know if you like to doodle or what, but these notebooks aren't ordinary notebooks that you'd buy at the store before school starts when they have those sales and you can get like 10 notebooks for like under five dollars or something, hey do you guys ever do that? Anyway, the paper part of it is normal, but the spiral wires, they're actually electronic wires. These puppies can be unwound and hooked up to any electronic machine and transmit files straight to you computer. And of course you really don't want to lug a computer around, besides that'd look a little suspicious and if you had a computer you wouldn't need notebooks and then I would have to redo everything for you gadgets so here's your computer," he said holding up a fat green neon pen. "This one's for Dixon. I made a pink one for you Sydney because pink's more girlish and well you're a girl and so...."
"Marshall," Sloane said trying to stop the teenager from embarrassing himself.
"Yeah, okay," Marshall started again. "You push the top once for the pen to come out so you can write and you push it again for the pen to go back, you know so it doesn't dry out. Sounds like a normal pen right? Here's where its a little different. You twist here," he said holding the pen for all to see. "And then connect the wire to the bottom of the pen, you wanna make sure the pen is inside at this time, and the wire uses the pen to transmit info to the chip inside the pen. Cool isn't it?" Marshal finished. Not getting a reply he continued, "Then I have here a lip gloss. Sorry Dixon, not for you." Dixon and Syd exchanged amused glances and Marshall, content that one of his jokes had been funny, moved on. "Of course this isn't a lip gloss you'd put on when your lip are dry or you want to impress a guy....hey that rhymes. Did you guys hear that....dry and guy they rhyme...... anyway the lip gloss in here is lethal. One sniff and you're out like a light. So whatever you do don't smell it. I had my pet mouse, Obiwon, hey you know about him... I told you that story about how he got loose in the house and my mother was like aaahhh! and screaming and...." Marshal, seeing that his principal was about to yell at him got back on the subject. "I had Obiwon smell it and he was asleep for hours, but since he's a mouse it worked different, a human would only be asleep for 10 to 15 minutes, so just don't sniff it."
Syd left the debate room with a headache and a stomachache. The headache was because of Marshal and the stomachache was from worrying about the mission. Although, Syd had gone on many missions before, she had never gone overseas. The only time she had been out of the country was when her father and mother had taken her to Europe and she hardly remembered that. She looked at her passport that had she had found in her folder. "Kate Jones," she mumbled. That was a new one.
I just want to thank all my reviewers. You guys are what makes this worthwhile.
To Erin: Thanks for being my first reviewer ever!! And as long as long as someone wants to read it I'll keep posting it.
To Scary-Girly: I will love you forever too, for giving me a review like that! It makes me feel all warm and mushy inside.
To Starry: I know how you feel! I wanted to give Syd a hug all through the 3rd Season, so I thought I'd go back a few years and try to give her a better life. (Spoiler: And more family that loves her.)
To thehoodedsweatshirt: I'm glad you think the story is believable and don't worry Irina will be back. Love the name by the way.
