There was a soft knock on the front door of the Vaughns' house. "I'll get it!" Five-year-old Tyler Vaughn screamed, racing through the halls. It seemed like they never got any visitors, so answering the door was an incredibly exciting thing for him
His father's voice bellowed down the hall. "Don't you dare answer that door without knowing who it is!"
The young boy skidded to a stop and peeked out the side curtains. "It's Aunt Syd," he screamed back, waiting for approval.
His mother stepped out of the kitchen, crossing her arms over her chest and looking down at her son seriously. "What did we tell you about answering the door when it's your Aunt Syd?"
"That I can say hello to her through the door but I'm not allowed to open it until one of you is here."
"And why is that?" Vaughn asked, joining his wife and son in the front hallway.
"Because nothing is what it seems when it comes to Aunt Syd," he recited. He really had no idea what that meant, but he had learned that it was something really important to his Mom and Dad. So he followed the rule.
"Good." Lauren smiled. "Now let her in."
"Hey, Ty!" Sydney said as the door opened. "I brought you a new friend to play with." She set the child carrier down inside the front door so Tyler could get a look at the new baby. "This is Hope."
"That's a funny name for a boy," he pointed out.
Vaughn tried to hold back his laugh as he explained. "I told you before, buddy. Aunt Sydney had a little girl."
"That's sad," Tyler said, looking back at Sydney with a frown on his face.
"Why?" she asked, trying to hold back her laughter.
"Because girls are icky."
Lauren wasn't as strong as Sydney. She laughed loudly and picked up her son into her arms, tickling him. "Do you think I'm icky, little man?"
When she set him down after a moment, he explained, "No. Moms aren't icky."
Vaughn patted his son on the head. "Why don't you go in the other room and play for a bit while your Mom and I talk to Aunt Syd?"
Tyler was more than happy to comply. Soon, Sydney was sitting down in the living room with two people she hadn't spoken to in six months. They had parted ways in mutual agreeance that they wouldn't contact each other until there was a good reason. There were too many unanswered questions and risks.
"What brings you to our doorstep unannounced, Sydney?" Lauren asked.
"It's your son again."
"I thought the risk to him was over," Vaughn said. It didn't surprise him that Sydney's visit was connected to his son somehow.
"We all know that we never really got to the bottom of why your son was kidnapped and why the Covenant felt it necessary to combine your DNA with Emma Wallace's in the first place. There are a lot of unanswered questions." She took a deep breath. "But I think that I can answer a few of them now."
"What happened?" Lauren asked.
"I can't tell you a whole lot of the details officially, seeing as how my job is once again a complete secret. I thought I was over that whole phase in my life, but it turns out I'm not." She smiled, realizing she was going off on a tangent. "Listen. I need you guys to not speak a word of the sensitive aspects of my explanation to anyone outside this room. I trust you."
"With good reason," Vaughn said.
"We would never do anything to compromise you or your family," Lauren added.
"I know. Which is why I'm going to tell you that Will was on a mission a week ago, and he ran into some new intel on a Rambaldi prophecy no one had been aware of."
"The one that Sark thought Tyler was involved in?" Vaughn guessed.
"Exactly. It mentioned children of the prophecy, and we're fairly certain that Tyler is one of them."
"How many are there?"
"We think only two. Which would explain why Tyler managed to get away from the people who were holding him."
Vaughn held up his hand. "I don't understand."
"They weren't concerned about keeping Tyler in custody because they started their plans a little ahead of schedule. Six months to be exact." Sydney couldn't help but smile down at her daughter. This whole mom thing was still new to her. It almost made her forget about the impending problems looming over her head and the heads of all the people she trusted.
"You mean your daughter?" Lauren asked, noticing the destination of Sydney's glance. "She's the other child in the prophecy?"
"She was actually the only one we managed to confirm. Rambaldi's prophecy detailed the first child as being the offspring of the women from the prophecy and her greatest adversary. So, that basically means Hope. For anyone with access to Rambaldi's work, Tyler was the one in question the whole time. The prophecy is vague at a lot of points." Sydney looked at Vaughn. "I came here to let you know Tyler might be in danger again."
"They're going to try to take him," he said, nodding his head in understanding. "I won't let that happen."
"I figured as much." Sydney reached into her purse and withdrew a slip of paper. "I talked to my father. He's arranged some time away from the CIA and NSC for you two. This is an address to a safehouse if you feel you need to move."
"Wait," Lauren said, holding up her hand. Vaughn grabbed the paper and leaned back in his chair, not opening it up to look inside. "There has to be more to the prophecy if things are already this serious."
"There is more. We're not sure how to interpret it quite yet, but I can assure you that there is no one better in the world to be doing this job."
Vaughn asked an obvious question, "You keep referring to we, but you haven't told us who we is. Obviously, Will is involved, but there's more, isn't there?"Sydney sighed. Vaughn had always had the uncanny ability to tell when she was holding something back. Figuring it was best to answer Lauren's question first, she took a deep breath and dove in. "The Rambaldi document prophesized that there would be a confrontation between the children of the prophecy. It didn't give a specific time or date that this would happen. We don't even know what Rambaldi meant by confrontation."
"There's that we again," Vaughn said, rolling his eyes.
Sydney realized there was no way to dance around the subject. She would have to tell Vaughn and Lauren about what she had been involved in the past six months. "You know that I'm working in the spy world again."
"Correct. I just don't know who you're working for or what you've been doing." He shrugged. "It's a new thing for me not to know what's going on with you.""He hasn't adjusted well," Lauren said with a laugh."Well, I've been working for a new US government agency. Basically, it's a legitimate SD-6."
"Black ops?"
"Yeah. It's fairly small comparatively. Intimate, I guess you could say. There are only five agents."
"You, Sark, Will," Vaughn listed.
"Anna Espinosa and Noah Hicks," she said, filling in the gaps
"All the old gang," Lauren said with another laugh. It was a nervous habit of hers, and she really hated it.
"Yeah, my mother used the little situation with Sark from six months ago to further her agenda."
"What does your mother have to do with this?" Vaughn asked.
Sydney braced herself. "She's running the organization."
"No way!" he screamed. "There is no way the United States government would give any sort of power to Irina Derevko. She was on the most wanted list not even seven months ago."
"But she's not anymore," Sydney pointed out. "Did you ever wonder why?" That shut him up rather quickly. "Believe me, I was skeptical of her intentions at first. But I truly believe my mother is doing what she wants to be doing. There isn't anything brewing under the surface of her motives."
"That you know of."
"That I know of." She looked at Vaughn intently. "Think of it in a positive way. Because of my mother, you have five of the best agents out there today working on keeping Tyler from harm."
"She has a point," Lauren said, resting her hand on Vaughn's knee in support. "This is probably the best situation we could have hoped for."
"If you call our son being hunted down a good situation." Vaughn looked down at the piece of paper Sydney had handed him. "How far away is this safehouse?"
"Not even half an hour out of the city. It wouldn't be that much of a shift for Tyler. And it's only temporary. Once we figure out more about the prophecy, we can all return to our normal lives."
"What's a prophecy?" Tyler asked from where he was standing in the doorway.
Sydney seized the opportunity to sneak out on this parent to son explanation session. She stood up, grabbing Hope's carrier where she was sleeping soundly. "I should be going. There's research to be done." She paused when she was next to Tyler. "It was nice to see you again, Ty."
"When are you going to come back, Aunt Syd?"
"I think you and I will be seeing each other soon." She looked back at Lauren and Vaughn. "Please trust me."
"I do," Vaughn said, smiling weakly. "I'll call you when we're at the location."
"You probably won't need to," she said, cryptically, before leaving their home. It was a habit she had picked up gradually from her mother.
A few minutes later, she had placed her daughter into the backseat of her car, which was parked by the curb at the end of the driveway. She slid into the front seat and turned to her husband. "That went well."
"I still don't see why you wouldn't let me come in with you." Sark turned the key in the ignition.
"Did you want to get shot on the spot?"
"Michael Vaughn does not still hate me."
Sydney snorted. "He doesn't like you." She looked over her shoulder one last time to make sure Hope was secured in the back seat. "They're going to the address I gave them."
"Good," he said shortly, signaling a left-hand turn.
To a normal person, it would have appeared like he was just concentration on driving. But Sydney knew him a little better than that. "What's bothering you?"
"I'm still not sure if involving Lauren and Vaughn in this was the best decision."
"It's their son's life that's in question," Sydney pointed out. "As parents, they have a right to voice their opinion in all of this."
"But it's also our daughter mixed up in all this. We have to look out for what's best for her, too." He glanced over at his wife. "If the confrontation Rambaldi prophesized is to be taken in its more literal, violent sense, then letting Hope spend any time around Tyler Vaughn might be a mistake. I don't want our daughter to be hurt."
"She won't be," Sydney insisted. "I'm worried, too, Julian. But I don't think this prophecy is as straightforward as you're afraid it might be."
"Nothing ever is." Sark took a right, and they were on their way to the safehouse Jack had acquired for the children of the prophecy.