EPILOGUE - 8 YEARS LATER

Tony finished his two hundredth push-up and rolled over, wiping the beads of sweat off his forehead. He listened to his slight panting, barely audible over the ceaseless racket surrounding him from every side and echoing through the vast building. Narrowing his eyes he pulled himself up and crossed the floor in two short strides, pressing his face to the bars. The scene that met his eyes was identical to the one he saw every time he stared outside. A note sailed past him, somewhere a shriek ripped the air causing a shiver to run down his spine, and directly across the floor his new friend waved. His lips moved in greeting but his words merged into the general babble. A faint smile crossed his lips as he nodded back.

Tony moved to the back of his cell and turned the tap on, rinsing his face and teeth. He removed his orange jumpsuit and t-shirt and cupped his hands, washing as well as he was able, his threadbare blue towel tied round his waist. Dressing rapidly to avoid the slight chill endemic to prison existence he brushed his hair and returned to the corner he spent hours of his waking time sitting in, assuming his customary position with his back leaning against the wall and his legs stretched out, brushing the edge of the bed. He unfolded a worn letter unhurriedly and read it to himself, muttering the words aloud before he reached them. If he was lucky he would receive another that morning after breakfast. Of course his parents and Michelle had written the day before, but there was no harm in hoping. Or at least he was unwilling to prevent himself doing so. He wasn't perfect; he required some kindness to get through the long day that awaited him.

A siren wailed through the block and he folded the letter carefully and replaced it on the narrow shelf above his bed. By the time the doors slid open he had assumed the correct position, a foot from the bars with his hands clasped behind his back. He followed the queue along the tier and down the stairs, joining the winding queue outside the dining hall. They moved forward slowly and presently Tony collected a tray and stood before the serving hatch receiving his customary bowl of porridge, plate of slightly burned toast with a scraping of margarine and his cup of lukewarm tea. Taking care not to get jostled he worked his way over to the back of the hall where his group awaited him.

'Buenos dias,' greeted the leader of the gang of car thieves who had befriended him on his arrival, nodding his head in his direction.

'Buenos dias,' he replied to the entire table, taking his place beside the most colorful character, a man with a tattoo of a hawk in full flight across his arm. 'Hey Sanchez.'

'I saw you exercising, amigo,' the man replied, a bemused expression on his face. 'Why do you bother?'

Tony shrugged. Eight years with the Marines had drilled the importance of exercise too deeply into him for him to abandon the practice despite his imprisonment. 'Sure don't wanna get sick in this place,' he replied. 'So today's the big day.'

'About time too,' Sanchez grumbled. 'One week in the strip cell for a slight scuffle! It's not as though we go round looking for trouble. Those bikers are a curse! How's your eye, amigo?'

Tony ran a finger along his cheek and shrugged. 'You tell me. I haven't seen the bruise yet! I could sure use a shower.'

'We might get one today,' Rodriguez told them, finishing his porridge. 'Right now we should go outside before anyone changes their mind.'

'Yeah. It's time to return to the great outdoors,' Tony muttered sarcastically, swallowing a little of his porridge with his tea to disguise the taste. 'I didn't thank you guys for sticking up for me,' he added, watching their shrugs. 'I'd be in the morgue by now without you.'

'Amigo, no one can fight ten men alone, specially if they got shanks,' Sanchez assured him. 'They'll leave you alone in the end; you're just too tempting a target at the moment. You fight real well, you were a cop and the guards hate you.'

'I was never a cop,' Tony replied warily, having grown sick of arguing the point over the previous four months. 'I was a federal agent. I wish those bastards would understand that!'

'They will, once they get someone else to pick on,' Sanchez assured him, his eyes sparkling. 'You got to be patient, amigo.'

'And when is that likely to happen?' Tony inquired, stirring his now cold tea.

'In a year or so,' Rodriguez explained. 'Let's go.' They returned their dishes and trays and hurried outside into an overcast day. Tony's eyes moved upwards to search for the sun but the clouds were too thick to enable him to catch a glimpse of it. Instead he breathed the fresh air deep into his lungs, aware the slightest misdemeanor (make that a natural desire to defend himself) would result in yet another rules violation and would see him confined indoors for a further week. It was bound to happen again that week; he just prayed it would not be that day. Avoiding the benches he followed the Latino gang to their corner of the yard, settling down to game of basketball.

'Bloody spics,' called the bikers, moving closer to the game. 'You're out again, are you? Morning, cop! Your eye's almost better. What do you think, boys, has he learned his lesson yet?'

'Nah,' another thug replied, spitting on Tony's left shoe. 'Don't look like he has.'

'What the hell's going on?' demanded a uniformed presence. They all fell silent, the bikers slinking away.

'Nothing sir,' Rodriguez was quick to assure him.

'Hm. I'm watching you. Convict Almeida, hands behind your back!' He withdrew a pair of cuffs and slid them round Tony's wrists.

'Why, sir? I haven't done anything,' Tony protested even as he complied with the order. The steel clicked shut round his wrists as he turned to argue his case.

'Forget it. You're off to admin. You got a visitor,' the guard snapped, removing his stun baton. 'Get over to that wall.'

Tony exchanged puzzled glances with the group and moved over to the wall where a second guard shackled his feet and attached a chain round his waist, fastening his hands and feet to it. The stun baton was placed at his neck and he was led out of B Block and across the courtyard to admin and over to the hall reserved for visitor contact. Tony went through the customary strip search and was dressed and shackled again before he was permitted to enter the hall. He followed his guards to the end of the row and sat in the chair they pointed him to, waiting patiently while they shackled his ankles to its legs and freed a wrist to enable him to access the phone. They left without a word and he rubbed his face, unable to guess who had come to speak to him. Michelle had visited him the previous week and was now back in Seattle and his parents were not due till the end of the following week. He had already used up his permitted visiting hours that month.

A shadow fell across his desk and he glanced up, shocked into silence. Speechless, he watched her settle across the glass barrier and raise her head to examine him, large brown eyes searching his own. Her hands reached for the phone and he grasped his own. 'Hello Tony.' She fell silent and he forced himself to speak.

'What are you doing here?' It sounded rude to him as the words left his mouth. 'I haven't heard from you for eight years.' You had to stop yourself from checking on her dozens of times for the first two years Almeida, aware of her right to privacy. You checked the mail daily in hopes of getting a letter, especially after she discovered your gift, all to no avail. It took three years before you were over her.

Clarissa shrugged. 'You told me I could come ask you for help anytime,' she reminded him. 'You wrote your address on that card you gave Blanca. I didn't have a chance to thank you for that five thousand dollars you gave us. As it happens, we needed it.'

'You're welcome,' he assured her, bewildered.

'Of course you no longer had the apartment, but I called the second number you gave. Your father told me you were here. He said you were married and someone kidnapped your wife and you let him go to save her life. I'm real sorry,' she added softly and her eyes filled with tears. 'You don't deserve this. How long have you got?'

'Life,' he told her, chewing his lower lip. Despite having endured four months of confinement, the reality of his sentence had only recently sunk in. The remainder of his life stretched ahead into dreary infinity, terrifying him whenever he considered it.

He saw shock register on her face. 'Oh no. That's terrible. They're going to keep you here until…' Her voice trailed off and he nodded.

'Sí, until I die.' The way you're going, Almeida, it shouldn't be too far away. The silence stretched between them. 'So how about you,' he asked, noting the sad look she cast him. 'How's life? How's Blanca?'

'She's fine. She's still got that house you bought her.' Clarissa smiled at him and he managed to smile back at her.

'That's good,' he said. 'It's been a while. What about you?' He used his interrogator's skills to study her, noting she appeared fine.

'I'm doing well too. I got married two years ago,' she told him quietly. 'He's a gringo.'

'How did that happen?' he asked amused. 'You learned English real fast.'

'I had to. I got a job in a café, and he just kept coming to order more coffees. He's an engineer, Tony, he works on oil wells. We got a baby girl.'

'Is he good to Blanca?' Tony asked, remembering the tiny hand grasping his own with complete trust at the airport.

'Sí, he's great. She likes him. Tony, he got a contract to work in Venezuela. We're going with him. It will be great, I'll get to see my family again, and we'll live in a good place too.'

He nodded, pleased for her. 'That's great. You deserve it, Clarissa. Have you forgiven me?'

'Of course. You have your job Tony, I understand.'

Tony lowered his eyes, rubbing his cheek again. 'I'm not a federal agent anymore, as you can see,' he said ruefully, nodding his head at the chains. Another silence stretched between them. 'I don't understand how they let you in,' he said, frowning mildly. 'Visiting privileges extend to family members only.'

'They wanted to deny my visit, but I showed them a paper,' Clarissa told him, her eyes darting uneasily round the room. 'Then they said its okay this once.'

'What paper?' he asked, noting her unease with apprehension. 'Are you sure you're okay, Clarissa?'

'Sí,' she assured him, taking a deep breath. 'I was going to bring him to visit you, but I won't bring him here, of course.'

'Who?' Tony asked, a strange unease rising from the pit of his stomach. 'What paper, Clarissa?'

She opened her bag and produced a stiff white envelope, laying it on her side of the counter. "Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages" it said in bold type. His unease increased as she pulled the document from it. Slowly she pressed it against the glass and he leant closer to read the small script. He read it several times while his thoughts whirled through his head.

'Is he mine?' he questioned, feeling the need to make certain despite his own name written on the form.

Clarissa nodded. 'I was going to tell you something that last day only we didn't have time,' she reminded him. 'He's yours alright, Tony. He looks exactly like you and he even rubs his face.' She looked at him gently, reading the shock in his eyes. 'It's okay; you don't have to do anything. Stephen earns well, we can afford to send them all to good schools. He just wanted to know who was his father, some kids gave him a hard time at school and I thought if you didn't mind you could talk to him once before…' She shrugged in apology. 'I'll think of something to tell him.'

'Wait,' Tony begged, his fingers brushing against the glass in his impatience to question her. 'I can write to him.'

He watched her shake her head. 'It wouldn't be such a great idea. He's only seven years old, he wouldn't understand. I'll tell him I couldn't find you.'

Tony hung his head, his momentary excitement quelled. 'You're probably right. I'm not exactly a desirable father.' Again the silence stretched between them while she pulled another paper from her bag.

'Stephen wants to adopt him,' she said hurriedly. 'He already adopted Blanca – Miguel signed happily enough after he received 10 000 dollars. I need your signature on this document, to give up all rights to Tony. That soldier over there said he'd pass it to you,' she added in a hurry, nodding her head at the guard.

Tony stared at her shocked into silence for the third time in twenty minutes. Her arrival, her news, and now her request were a lot to handle in such short time. 'You named him after me,' he began. 'Why?'

'He's so like you it seemed right,' she told him, her fingers over the documents. 'Blanca started calling him that when I took him home from the hospital and I guess it just stuck with him. I never planned for you to know about him. You had your own life, Tony. We got ours now. Sign the papers.' Intense brown eyes met his. 'Do it for him, please. He needs a father.'

'If I do that I'll never get to hear about him again,' he protested, his heart aching. 'It won't work, Clarissa. He'll know this Stephen isn't his father.'

'He already knows,' she assured him. 'They call him by his first name but they get on really well. Tony, he was just crawling when he first met Stephen. Stephen's been his father all his life. It would just help with foreign travel and things if he'd be his legal guardian too, in case he wants to take the kids somewhere for a weekend and I don't wish to go. Look, it's not like you can do anything with a child in here. You never met him, you're not gonna miss him.'

Tony chewed his lip in silence, understanding her logic but rebelling against it. 'Have you got a picture of him? I'd love to see what he's like,' he begged, willing her to produce one.

Clarissa nodded after a few seconds. 'Sí. I'll give it to you after you sign.'

'At least show me,' he insisted. 'I need to know what I'm giving up.' She nodded and held up a small photo of a wavy brown haired child grinning mischievously at the camera. He stared at it in silence. You couldn't deny him if you tried, Almeida. He's exactly like you. Even the eyes that grinned at him reminded him of his own carefree childhood, his thoughts occupied with planning the next mischief. A lump rose into his throat. His fingers reached forward to brush against the glass directly parallel with the photo. 'I can't do it,' he told her softly, aware of her righteous indignation. He was letting her down a second time, equally unintentionally, but he couldn't expect her to see that.

'Tony, you're an intelligent man. Look around you. What could you offer him, now or ever? Only the shame of having a convict for a father. You want him to grow up knowing that?' She pushed the paper against the counter a little more impatiently.

'You're right,' he told her, chewing his lip. 'Clarissa, everything you said is perfectly logical, but… I can't do it.' You're unlikely to have kids again, Almeida, stuck in here. 'I can't just sign him over and never hear about him again. He's mine, dammit.'

'No he's not,' she told him, beginning to grow annoyed. 'You were unaware of his existence until a few minutes ago. He was never yours. Sign the papers, Tony.'

'I need to know how he is,' Tony protested. 'I need to know that, Clarissa. Sure I didn't know about him before - you never told me anything, but I do now. I can't just tell you I don't care about him, coz I do. Even if I got nothing to offer I still care.'

Their eyes met and she sighed aloud. 'I'll let you know how he is,' she promised. 'Tony, he'll look at his birth certificate when he grows up, everybody always does. If he wants to find you, I won't stop him. Right now he's a little kid who has the chance to get a great father. You gotta sign that form.'

Tony stared at her through the glass in silent misery. I only just found out about him. I don't even know what he likes to eat, what his favorite toys are. He shook his head at her.

'Tony, I'll take the matter to court if I must,' she told him, her tone threatening. 'I won't have you ruin his chances. You really want that? He's my son; I'll do anything to make his life easy. Understand me, Tony; I don't want to hurt you, just to assure him a better future. Don't challenge me on this. You wouldn't have a hope,' she assured him with total conviction and he knew she was right. Legally he lacked a leg to stand on. He was a convicted traitor serving a life sentence in a maximum security penitentiary who had been unaware of the existence of the child. Assigning custody to Stephen would be a mere formality for any judge.

'You promise you'll let me know how he is?' he asked, his impassive mask back on his face. She nodded agreement. 'I wanna write him a letter for when he grows up. I want him to know I didn't sign away all my paternity rights because I didn't care about him. Will you give it to him?'

She nodded again. 'I will. I'll go hand those forms over to that soldier now.'

Tony nodded, forcing the tears to the back of his eyes. 'Yeah. And the photo,' he insisted, watching her nod. 'If by some miracle I get outa here, I want to meet him,' he said, watching her reaction with the same attention he had reserved for terrorists under interrogation back at CTU. 'I won't interfere in your lives; I just want to say hi.'

'If they let you out, you'd be welcome,' she assured him. She collected the documents and handed them to the guard in the booth who examined them in detail before handing them over to a second guard. All too soon they were set before him together with a pen. God help me. Protect my child as I can't. Watch over him for me, keep him safe, let him be happy. Trembling fingers picked up the pen. 'You'll hand him my letter when he turns 18?' he begged.

'I promise I will.'

Tony nodded, unable to delay the inevitable. He signed her document in all the places her lawyer had marked with an X and handed them back to the guard before he composed himself enough to glance at her. She remained on her seat watching him, pity in her face. 'I'll pray for you, Tony. You're too good for your job. You protected Blanca and me and now you're here for saving your wife. You shouldn't worry about others, look where it got you.'

He stared in mute silence at her, watching her place the documents into the envelopes. 'Tell him, tell him…' He fell silent, his mind surging with thousands of things he wished to say to his son. 'Tell him I'll always think about him,' he concluded lamely.

Clarissa nodded, standing up to leave. 'You know I will. Write the letter and I'll put it aside for him. Goodbye, Tony.' She replaced her phone before he could reply and walked away rapidly without glancing back at him.

'Goodbye,' he whispered into the air, replacing his phone and lifting the photo to examine it. Warm brown eyes smiled up at him warming his heart. I'm going back to my cell now, m'ijo. Your mom said she would pass you one letter when you're a little older. I'm gonna explain my actions to you so you won't feel so ashamed of me. I'll start right at the beginning and tell you all about my family, my schools, the marines, CTU, everything up until that fateful day when I allowed a terrorist to escape. Maybe you will find it possible to forgive me and come visit me. He swallowed. He had something to look forward to for the next eleven years, a reason to struggle through each succeeding day. He had a child, and if nothing else, he was determined to be kept appraised of his well-being, resolved to call the few remaining friends who owed him favors to pull strings to ease his life.

THE END

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