Sark came rushing into the hospital the first second he could tear himself away from his briefing with Anna Espinosa. His wife needed him. He could just feel it. Which is why he didn't waste time calling in to their communication dispatcher to hear about the situation more than the bare bones. Will Tippin might be hurt, but it was actually his wife he worried about most.
"Syd!" he yelled as he saw her sitting on one of the couches in the lounge. "How is Will doing?"
"He hasn't woken up yet. The doctors gave him some kind of drug to keep him in a coma. They think that it will reduce the trauma to his brain he sustaining during the… the… beating." Sydney's throat closed sharply as she thought of the way Will had looked when she found him.
"I know what you're thinking," Sark said, sitting down next to her and placing his hand on her thigh in a show of comfort. "You think that if it had been another agent meeting him, this wouldn't have happened."
"How was I supposed to help him in any way? I'm nine months pregnant! It shouldn't have been me on this assignment. I shouldn't have agreed to go out into the field."
"You may have saved his life, Syd. You were there when he needed someone to find him. You got him medical attention, and you were there to hear what he wanted to report back to us."
"It made no sense. He was mumbling about the children of the prophecy. Have we ever heard about any children being spoken of in Rambaldi's works?"
"No, I don't recall anything either. There has to be something, though. I mean, Rambaldi had all these premonitions centuries ago. If the prophecy is out there, we'll find it." Sark drew his cell phone out of his coat pocket. "I'll call Noah. I think he's back at base ops. He can get a jump-start on the research. If there is an undiscovered prophecy, we'll find it."
Sydney smiled at him. She always felt more reassured when Sark was there beside her. Whatever came up, he always had a plan. "I guess it's something that comes naturally when you get married to a man," she thought to herself as she watched him bark orders to Noah. He never really got on too well with the rest of the male agents in her mother's organization, but that was nothing new. Sark was a "ladies man" through and through.
"What do we do while we're waiting?" she asked him once he had gotten off the phone.
"I don't know." He smirked at her. "Wait, I guess." He touched her stomach lightly. "Maybe hope the kid holds herself in there for a few more days until we get this mess straightened out a little more."
"If she's as stubborn as her parents, she'll probably want to come out at the most inopportune time."
"So you admit that it's a girl?"
"I'm leaning that way," Sydney said, smiling.
Sark grabbed her hand and drew her to her feet. "We can't just sit around here, doing nothing, though. Let's go over what Will managed to tell you before he passed out."
"He said something about the children of the prophecy. Someone is after these children."
"Children plural?"
"Yeah. I have a bad feeling that one of them is our baby, but I can't imagine who else Rambaldi would have drawn into this mess." She saw a light bulb go off in Sark's face. "What?"
"Maybe Rambaldi isn't pulling in new players. Maybe he's referring to old ones."
"I don't understand."
"Maybe it's another prophecy about you and your sister." Sydney stiffened slightly. She had just found out a few months earlier that her mother had had another child with that monster, Arvin Sloane. They still hadn't located Nadia Santos, but everyone agreed they were getting closer to finding her. "You could be the children of the prophecy."
"I don't think so. In the government's opinion, I'm already classified as the woman in the prophecy. I doubt that Rambaldi would start throwing around double classifications."
He nodded in agreement. "And there's already a prophecy about you two fighting to the death or something."
"I know. That's a whole other issue, Julian. I mean, why can't we seem to find my sister? It's incredibly important so where is she?"
Sark grasped her hand as they walked out of the automatic doors in the hospital entrance and out into the sunlight. "I know that you really want to meet Nadia, and we're trying."
"It's not just that. If I don't know what she looks like, if I don't know who she is, how can I keep myself from killing her?" Sydney paused and looked over at him. "I refuse to believe that I will end up killing my own flesh and blood just to further Rambaldi's plan."
"He's never been wrong. And Nadia's father is Arvin Sloane. She might not be like you, Syd. You might be forced to kill her in the line of duty."
"I don't know if I can."
"Let's not worry about that now. We haven't even narrowed our search down to one continent. It's not the time to be working through these issues. Let's just go for a walk and then we'll return to help Noah in his search for more information."
The baby kicked hard, jolting Sydney awake. She had fallen asleep researching for the fourth day in a row. No one had made any sort of measurable headway into figuring out whether there was an undiscovered prophecy. There was no reference to it in any of the Rambaldi texts her mother had accumulated over the years, and the Internet wasn't that much help. All Noah could find on it were a few vague references to a conspiracy theory involving a group of children raised to be spies since they were little.
Sark had joked about Project Christmas finally getting some PR.
Her mother had also agreed with her that this prophecy probably had nothing to do with Sydney and Nadia themselves, but it definitely might be a reference to Sydney and Sark's unborn child.
They were waiting for Will to wake up so he can confirm or deny their suspicions. The only problem was the doctors were still hesitant to pull him out of the coma, fearing that he might not be able to pull himself the little bit of the way to consciousness that he had to.
"How are you holding up?" Noah asked as he entered the room.
"I'm okay," she said with a half-hearted smile. "When did you get back?"
"I've been on base for an hour or so debriefing Irina on the newest developments with Will. Which are none."
"How's Amy holding up?" she said, referring to Noah's girlfriend and Will's sister.
"Not so good. She's a little pissed off at her brother for getting himself in this situation. I don't think she's ever been comfortable with the idea that her brother is an agent, too." Noah sighed and took a seat next to Sydney. "So, tell me the truth. What's really bugging you?"
"It's something Will said to me before he passed out. He mentioned the children of the prophecy. But then he said we had to protect them. It was almost as if he was inferring that we already knew them and protecting them wouldn't be such a hard thing to do."
"So, if we know them, why can't we figure out who they are?" he said, voicing the question Sydney had been dancing around.
"I know it's my child," she said abruptly. "The way things go, it had to be my baby."
"I wish I could reassure you that it wasn't. But I think all signs point to yes on this one, Syd. Things just don't run smoothly for you, do they?"
"If they did, I'd probably be lounging with you on some deserted island right now raising our brood of children and hating you for making me give up this exciting life."
Noah laughed. "It's good to hear that you're still mad at me."
"Oh come on! Who hides secret messages in junk e-mail? That was the most ridiculous plan I've ever heard of, and I've heard of quite a few, Noah Hicks."
He patted her lightly on the head and got up to grab a book off the shelf. "Have you tried speaking with our contact in the Italian government about whether they know of a Rambaldi prophecy like the one we're searching for?"
"First off, they did not want to speak with me at all. It was quite rude." Sydney sighed. "But after a few negotiations they admitted to having no clue about a children of the prophecy type document coming out of Rambaldi's life."
"Figures." Noah's cell phone rang, interrupting what he was about to say. "Two here. What's the news?" After a few seconds, he flipped his phone shut. "Will's waking up."