Alex absolutely hated what was happening. Although Nikita went to question Naomi about the guy she saw, and although the team was working on every possible way to help Sean, he was ready to give in. He didn't see any other solution besides turning himself in to the FBI. He could help dispel the situation by taking the heat off Division and trying to prove his innocence. With how hard the team was working, it should work out okay. Well, Sean and the others thought so. Alex had serious doubts. As did Nikita once she stormed back into the bunker, "How could you do this? This is exactly what Amanda wants."
"We didn't have a choice," Taking the brunt of Nikita's frustrations, Ryan replied. Sean's decision to turn himself in to the FBI was the right one. Danforth had called, angrily demanding to know how Division was handling the containment breach. Although Sean wasn't technically one of their agents, he had been working for them. Him being named as a suspect in an assassination reflected very poorly on the black ops group. They needed to resolve the issue immediately. By turning himself in, Sean gave Division the time to do that. They'd get him out soon. He wouldn't be in danger for long.
"Of course you did," Nikita didn't believe that, though. Neither did Alex. But she didn't think she could say anything without spiraling into an anxiety attack. So, she silently supported Nikita by standing behind her and scowling. Maybe in the moment, Sean going to the FBI was a good idea. Yet it wouldn't last long. That wasn't just the anxiety talking; though, Alex was so full of panic that she couldn't think straight. The team should know Amanda enough to know that they couldn't give in in the slightest. They had to fight until the bitter end.
"Nikita, Alex, they have no motive," Michael attempted to reason with the women. He was anxious as well; Sean shouldn't be punished for trying to help Division. However, the FBI didn't have a case. Sure, they could put him at the scene of the crime with a phone call. But that didn't mean anything in the long run. It wouldn't hold up in court, nor would it hold up in a thorough investigation. Once the FBI found the real evidence, or as real as Division could supply, they'd let Sean go. He'd be safe with the feds- safer than hiding.
"Amanda's planning something, trust me," Nikita didn't care what the FBI had or didn't have. The feds didn't matter in that situation. They were just Amanda's pawns. They accepted the information she fed them and did her unspoken bidding. The team only needed to focus on the bitch. Once they stopped her, the FBI would be stopped too. Hell, maybe it would all stop. First, Sean would be free. Then, everyone else. Unfortunately, in order to stop Amanda, they had to know her plans. The team had no idea what she was up to. Why frame Kendrick's assassination on Sean. What was she getting at. What was her endgame.
Although Alex remained silent, she sided with Nikita. Sean shouldn't have turned himself in. Even if he was innocent, even if the FBI had no real evidence to hold him, Sean shouldn't have gone to the wolves. He needed to stay in Division where it was safe. Who cared that Ryan had a plan, "Look, it's not like we're sitting on our hands. We're actively building the cover story to frame Amanda's accomplice. We're building a cover story that paints the accomplice as a lone nutjob obsessed with Madeline Pierce conspiracies. Once we find him, we plant it in his residence. It'll explain why he went to such great lengths to frame the senator's son."
"Bam. That's what I'm talking about. It's not exactly retina display, but I got a long lens shot from a liquor store. It looks like he tossed his phone. Somebody screwed the pooch," Birkhoff instantly shot up in his desk chair. While the others were discussing the pros and cons of Sean waltzing into the FBI, the hacker had been pouring over street cams, determined to catch at least one angle of the digital mask's real face. He finally found one by searching through security cameras of local businesses. It wasn't the clearest possible shot, yet it was the best they had- especially since they caught him dropping evidence.
"Without gloves on. Let's get a team down there, see if we can lift prints. Fastest way to convince the Feds they got the wrong guy- give them the right one," Noticing the damning fact, Michael put a solid plan into action. As soon as they had an ID of the accomplice, the rest of their idea could fall into place. They'd present their cover story and evidence to the feds, and they'd accept it without question. After all, Sean was a decorated soldier. He was a war hero. No one could believe that he'd kill the director of the CIA. It was far too obscure.
The team Michael sent out quickly returned with the discarded burner phone. Despite how dirty it was from the trash, they were able to pull usable prints. Birkhoff immediately ran it through different databases, hoping for a match. He got one almost instantly. That surprised him, even with his talents. But he wasn't going to question it. He'd just call the others over and give them their next mission, "Fresh from the trash. Let's see what we got here. Ellis Toyon, convicted of… grand theft auto? Just out on parole. Not exactly top rung talent."
"That's not like Amanda," Michael didn't question the speedy results; a recent parolee was bound to pop up on a fingerprint or DNA search. He did question Amanda's choice in accomplice, though. She had former Gogol agents at her disposal. She probably had the money to hire mercenaries or even a Dirty Thirty. So why would she use a random guy she got off the street. What was the purpose of working with a common criminal. What exactly was she getting out of the relationship. Because if he tossed such important evidence so carelessly, he wasn't someone worth working with. He could've just blown her entire plan.
"Take your breaks where you get 'em," Birkhoff simply shrugged. Maybe Amanda couldn't find a Gogol agent that matched Sean's height or weight. Or maybe she didn't have enough money to hire any more mercenaries. A random criminal off the street was probably the perfect person for her plan. The team shouldn't think about it too much. They had the name of the accomplice. They could put their plan into motion. And they could save Sean. Getting hung up on the small stuff would only slow them down.
"Well, let's try and confirm," Hastily grabbing a burner cell, Nikita called Naomi. The CIA analyst hadn't been able to describe the man who had given her the intel. But she did claim that she could possibly pick him out of a lineup. Nikita hoped that was true. The team could be so close to clearing Sean's name. Though, the pessimistic side of her doubted it. Naomi was able to identify the man based on the picture she sent (then annoyingly asked too many questions), yet Nikita didn't feel like it was a success. The team was missing something. There was a reason Amanda was doing all of that. They just couldn't understand it. And that might get them killed.
Even before Naomi confirmed the man had been the one to drop off the black box intel, Birkhoff was on the hunt for Ellis Toyon. He wasn't going to wait. The sooner they could clear Sean's name and stop Amanda's plans, the safer everybody would be. It already took them almost too long to find the bitch's accomplice. They couldn't waste anymore. The team had to take whatever clue they could and run with it, "Our good friend Ellis may not have a reliable address, but he does have a new credit card with a charge for Chinese takeout one hour ago. I got the delivery address. Let's see if he wants dessert."
Nikita and Alex raced out of Division that time. An Alpha team was more than capable of handling the accomplice, but the women wanted to deal with things themselves. Considering no one matched Nikita's intensity to kill Amanda and Alex's intensity to free Sean, the two were allowed to go off on their own. They didn't hesitate to break into Ellis's apartment once they arrived. Regret washed over them as soon as they did, however. The two were met with an absolutely rank smell, one that Nikita recognized all too well. It wasn't confirmed until she opened the door to the bathroom and saw the liquid in the tub, "Amanda. She cleaned him."
While Alex gagged at the horrific sight and smell she was met with, Nikita closed the door and prepared to update the team. She barely pulled her cell from her pocket before a phone rang in the apartment. After a quick glance to one another, the women hurriedly searched for it. Nikita found it first among the couch cushions, but she held the phone between them and put it on speaker. Both needed to hear what Amanda had to say, "Just one question, Nikita. Do you really think I'd have my operative drop his phone in the trash for you to find?"
"Oh, this is what we're calling an operative nowadays?" Whereas Alex's hands balled into fists and she began to shake, Nikita taunted the bitch. She wouldn't let Amanda's mind games affect her. She was going to keep her head and maybe gain vital information. Surely Amanda might drop some information if she was taunted. She always wanted to prove something to Nikita, teach her some sort of lesson. The bitch might hint at something the team could use to save Sean. Alex desperately wanted there to be. She was tired of just grasping at straws. She needed something solid to pull Sean out of that horrible situation.
"Well, when you don't have the best, you take what's available. I taught you that, remember?" Amanda only shrugged off her dead accomplice. He was only a means to an end. She utilized her resources to get exactly what she wanted. Nikita didn't like the sound of that. She still had no clue what Amanda's endgame was. It couldn't have been only to expose Division and kill their only ally in the government. If so, the torment would've stopped by then. It just kept going. And it just kept getting worse.
"What are you trying to teach us now? That every operative is disposable?" Alex screeched into the phone. Her anxiety had reached its breaking point. She needed to scream, to break something, to chase down Amanda and kill her for Sean. But there was nothing she could do while she and Nikita were in a dead man's apartment- their dead-one-chance-to-free-Sean's apartment. Nikita texted Birkhoff to trace the call coming in on the burner, yet Alex doubted that it would be that easy. Amanda was too smart to be tracked; after all, she knew when to call them. She knew the team's next move before they did.
"Alex, how nice to hear your voice. I think you're beginning to see that running Division is difficult work, work that requires hard choices, hard sacrifice. First the baby, now Sean's life," At the mention of the miscarriage, Nikita fell silent; she also somehow turned paler. Amanda knew. How did Amanda know. Alex assumed that she had heard Michael question the miscarriage after the car crash. But she didn't say anything. She couldn't answer Nikita's questions then. They needed to focus on Sean and what the bitch was trying to do to him.
However, Nikita wasn't able to focus anymore. She was the one in shock while Alex needed to be rational. After being frozen in silence all day, it only seemed right that pure rage snapped the young woman out of it. She could finally be the furious one. She could finally rally the team to fight the bitch to the death. She could save her boyfriend and end all that pain. She had to. Otherwise, what was left for her, "Sean is a decorated soldier, and he's innocent. Without motive, they can't charge him."
"Very good. So the problem is how we establish motive. Turns out Sean was ordered to see a Navy psychiatrist after his mother's death. The loss, combined with latent PTSD, caused increasing levels of paranoia. The doctor was meticulous. He took copious notes on his digital recorder. The notes prove Sean believed his mother was assassinated by the CIA in retaliation for reducing their funding. So he plotted his revenge- a car bomb for the director of the CIA, the same way they killed his mother. Poetic justice," Amanda taunted over the phone. She had everything planned out. She was several steps ahead, and they couldn't stop her.
Knees weak, ears ringing, head spinning, Alex nearly collapsed. She looked to Nikita for any way to escape the inevitable, but the former rogue was at a loss. She just hopelessly stared at the burner phone. Amanda had them. She won. The team couldn't fight her fake evidence when she had destroyed the truth so thoroughly. She was so many steps ahead of them, they weren't even on the same map. The bitch had actually won, "So, Nikita, you did the right thing by throwing Sean to the FBI. These are the sacrifices we make to protect Division."
"Oh, and yes, Alex, the lesson is that every operative is disposable."