Chapter Two
Camp Liberty, a place to make friends, have fun, and go on adventures!
Sydney lay on her bed reading the Camp Liberty brochure. The cover had been decorated with the camp logo and a couple pictures of the staff from the previous year. She studied the faces on the folded pamphlet, trying to determine which of the staff members would look more like a terrorist. She sighed and rolled over onto her stomach. Looks can be deceiving. She only needed to look in the mirror to remember that.
She let out a yawn and stretched out her aching arms. She scooted over a bit and placed her head on the fluffy pillow. Her eyes gradually slipped shut, leaving the world and all her worries behind. Like any other plans she had in life, her nap was short-lived, when Francie burst through her bedroom door.
"Syd!"
"Huh?" she asked, prying her eyes open. "What?"
"I just found out; my restaurant is making profits!" she cried out with a giddy smile. "Now I'm really glad I didn't fire my chef." she laughed.
Sydney smiled, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up. "That's great, Fran," she said, leaning over to give Francie a hug. She lay back again, watching Francie glow with happiness.
"After only a couple months, too!" Francie added.
"Yeah, you're right!" Sydney said once she realized it had only been a few short months ago when Francie had come to her, explaining her new idea to open a restaurant.
"What's this?" Francie asked curiously, picking up the Camp Liberty information sheet.
"What's what?" Sydney feigned innocence.
"This," she said, waving the piece of paper in front of Sydney's face.
"Oh, nothing..." Sydney mumbled, swiping it out of Francie's hands and throwing it on the pile of papers she had carelessly left sitting out.
Francie gave her a skeptical look. Oh great, Sydney thought to herself.
"Were you planning on going there or something?" she asked.
Sydney sat up again, throwing her blanket over the paperwork and files she had lying at the foot of her bed. "My boss handed those out to everyone today at work... I guess they need some help this summer with counselors." she shrugged. "But I'm not sure if he meant--"
As soon as Francie heard the words 'help, summer, and counselors' her eyes lit up. "Syd!" she squealed. "This could be the chance we've been waiting for!"
"For... What?" Sydney asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Well, you know how you've been busy with the bank for the past few months and all that..." she said, rolling her eyes as she jabbered on. "I just thought it's that big chance to make up for lost time."
"What do you mean?" Sydney asked.
Francie threw her hair back with a flick of her hand and scoffed. "I just meant that we haven't been as close as we were back in college... I mean, back then we did this kind of thing! Remember Camp Challenge?"
"You mean, 'do I remember you making out with one of the other counselors?'" Sydney laughed.
"That only happened once," Francie said, holding up her hands in defense. "And you know you wanted to kiss him too, I just took action."
Sydney scoffed as a response, and stood up. "Francie, this is the whole entire summer; what about your restaurant?"
"Pshaw," she waved her hand. "I don't do much there anyway...at least not anything that my assistant manager can't do. Plus, Will can always take care of stuff."
"Whatever," Sydney laughed.
Beep beep beep...
"The bank?" Francie asked when Sydney found her beeper buried underneath her fluffy comforter.
She gave an apologetic nod. "Sorry,"
"Think about it, Syd..."
"Fran..."
Francie waggled her index finger in front of Sydney's face. "Don't 'Fran' me," she chided. "We're going. End of story."
"Francie, I really gotta go..." Sydney mumbled, successfully avoiding further discussion about Camp Liberty. "I need to take a shower."
---
Why me? Sydney asked herself. She knew she would have had to talk to Francie about the camp eventually, but she was planning to have some sort of speech figured out so somehow Francie wouldn't want to go with her. What is Kendall going to say about this? It wasn't as if she could just go tell Francie about the CIA. Will already knew about her true occupation, so he wouldn't make as big of an issue about the mission as Francie had.
After successfully passing the CIA's security, Sydney sauntered into the rotunda, plopping down in a vacant chair next to Vaughn's desk. "So?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest. She decided that she would discuss the Francie situation with Vaughn before she did with Kendall.
Vaughn grinned and leaned back in his leather chair. "I just called you in so we could ...discuss the mission."
"Wow, good thing." Sydney laughed, letting out a little breath of relief. "Francie discovered this," she said, holding up the camp brochure.
Vaughn cringed. "And... Now, she wants to go?" he predicted with a sardonic half smile.
"Yeah," Sydney scoffed. "I love her to pieces but I don't want her to be dragged into this... Not like Will was."
"I know," Vaughn sympathized. "But you never know, we would have just as many other people paying attention to us as much as she would, so what difference would it make?"
"Are you actually encouraging me to bring Francie into this mission?" Sydney asked, her voice rising along with her temper.
Vaughn raised his eyebrows. "Well, it's my opinion." he shrugged. "We would just have to be a little bit more careful - and considering the situation we're already in, I don't think she'd be too much of a risk. Plus, we're going to be doing most of our 'spy' stuff at night."
Sydney nodded. She wasn't sure why, but when Vaughn said that they would be spying mostly at night, the hairs on her skin stood up. She rubbed her bare arms and looked around the rotunda. Suddenly, the whole mission was starting to sound a lot more appealing. "Anything else?" she asked.
"Yeah, actually." he said, "We're going in under aliases. Lucky for you, your alias is Sydney Parker, and I'm Vaughn Bennett."
"Vaughn," she laughed.
"Yeah, I thought that it'd be smart since it would be rather difficult to explain to a bunch of children why you call me 'Vaughn'. Plus, if we messed up even once, we'd most likely be under suspicion."
"Logical..." Sydney nodded. "What about Francie?"
"What about her?" he asked.
"Won't she be suspicious that my last name is different?"
"They'll only use our first names there, won't they?"
Sydney chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "I guess so," she decided. "And we could always just joke around with it and pretend that they made a mistake with my name or something..."
Vaughn nodded in agreement. "Oh yeah," he said, handing her another stack of forms. "Here is the staff registration form. They still need more counselors for this summer, so we're in luck. You need to fill it in by tomorrow, and then we will go to the camp office and turn them in ourselves. We will have to submit to a drug test, and be interviewed... I hope that's not a problem?"
"No," Sydney said. "Just give me a call tomorrow."
Vaughn nodded and watched as Sydney looked over the registration form. Her brown eyes were darting over the page as she quickly scanned over it. She took a deep breath and tucked a couple stray hairs behind her ear - something he learned that she did when she was nervous. She looked up and saw that he was staring at her. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and glanced around. "What?" she asked, her cheeks turning a light shade of red.
"Nothing," Vaughn said quickly. He smiled and pulled himself closer to his desk so that he could begin to look over the form too.
"Oh, Vaughn?" Sydney asked, glancing up from the papers. When Vaughn nodded as a gesture that he was listening, she went on. "Do I tell Kendall about Francie?"
Vaughn thought for a second, and then shook his head a little bit. "Actually, I wouldn't tell Kendall if I were you-"
Sydney nodded and started to stand up, right when another voice interrupted Vaughn, "Don't tell me what, Agent Vaughn?" Kendall asked, placing a hand on Vaughn's shoulder.
"Uh-" he stuttered. "It's-"
"Well?" Kendall said, tapping his foot impatiently.
Sydney and Vaughn looked at each other nervously. She decided that it was probably best that Kendall would hear about Francie tagging along in their mission from her, rather than the off chance that she'd screw up the mission. Then if that happened, I'd be in even more trouble...
"Kendall?" Sydney interjected. "It has to do with my friend Francie.
"We live together... and she found the Camp Liberty brochure and now she wants to go with me. Mr. Vaughn was just telling me--"
"Absolutely not." Kendall said firmly, folding his arms across his chest, trying to give an air of intimidation to the two agents.
"But Sir," Vaughn started to say, before being shut up by Kendall's glare.
"Do I need to remind you how dangerous this mission already is?"
"No Sir," Vaughn said obediently, bowing his head slightly.
Coward. Sydney laughed at Vaughn. He was so devoted to the CIA that it was almost sickening; it was the one thing she loathed about him.
Sydney cleared her throat a little bit and continued to tell Kendall what she was trying to say before. "I was trying to tell you a moment ago," she paused, "that it wouldn't be too much of a risk as it is already. I mean, we're already surrounded by a camp full of kids, and who knows how many staff members... What would one more be? And plus, she could help me with my alias; I could say that I was going to be a counselor for the summer with my best friend Francie."
Sydney bit her bottom lip between her teeth, eagerly waiting for his response. Kendall was a lot like Jack in many ways; the expression on his face was one that no one could understand. You couldn't tell whether he was angry, happy, sad, or thinking about something.
"That would be very dangerous." Kendall said uneasily, his resolve slowly deteriorating.
Sydney looked down at her feet for a moment before responding. "I know,"
"If you do this, you need to make sure you two don't do anything that would compromise the mission, near her." he said, "And, if she gets in the way, you will need to contact us so we can extract her.
"Other than that," he sighed, "Unfortunately, I can only agree. I'd rather take the chances, compared to tell her about your real occupation."
"I suppose..." Sydney sighed, getting up from the chair she'd been sitting on.
Kendall sighed and nodded at the two. "Oh... and Marshall is waiting to show you the devices you will need on the mission."
Sydney and Vaughn nodded simultaneously and Kendall left. Vaughn looked around and grinned. "So, what do you think?" he asked with a lighthearted smile.
"About what?" Sydney asked.
"This mission," he said nonchalantly.
"I think that this mission is insane!" she laughed. "But it will be my first 'vacation' in about eight years, and I always liked summer camp when I was a kid, so I think it'll be fun."
"Wow," he blinked. "Wait, how are you going to explain to Francie that you just magically got three and a half months off of work?"
Sydney thought for a moment. She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. "I don't know. I'll probably just say that I'm using my vacation days that I've had saved up for the past eight years." she said sarcastically.
"That would work," he laughed. "Well, we had better go talk to Marshall."