Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams does. Please don't sue me.

Author's Note: takes place mid season four

Chapter Summary: Due to an impromptu mission with gory results, the spies were not in the office on the day Nadia was supposed to brief them on her secrets.


Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi

By: Kityye

Chapter Three: Nadia

Directly after Marshall's presentation, Sloane received a call that Sark had been spotted in Honduras boarding a plane for Britain. Immediately, the office deployed – Jack to find out what reason Sark had for traveling, Marshall to set up surveillance, and everyone else to board a plane to Britain so they could try again to defeat the blonde man.

London:

Nadia went into the club with Dixon as her backup, while Carrie and Weiss ran the machinery in the truck and Vaughn and Syd waited with them as outside assistance. Back at APO, Jack hovered over Marshall's satellite surveillance set-up and Sloane was in his office, doing whatever he did while the team was away.

Sark never felt the need for physical disguise, so he was easily located once he entered the club. Nadia pointed the super-spy-x-ray-camera-in-a-gaudy-necklace at the Goons (1, 2, and 3) that Sark was meeting with so Carrie (monitoring the camera from the van) could tell her which one carried the targeted device. Unfortunately for the team, a strobe light was turned on at that point, which screwed up the super-spy-x-ray-camera-in-a-gaudy-necklace and left Nadia relying on her instincts and backup.

Nadia followed Sark out a side door and into a wide warehouse area but Dixon got stuck in the press of frantically writhing dancers before he could follow her. Sydney and Vaughn were sprinting around the building to head off Sark if he came out the back door (Weiss had parked on the other side, by the entrance) when Goon 2 spotted Nadia and gave a shout of warning.

Sark's flair for the dramatic made him turn and wait for the Goons to dispatch the confused-looking woman in high heels and a short, sparkly red dress. Because she didn't seem to be anything other than a confused club-goer looking for the loo, Goon 2 tried to escort her back into the club. Nadia's body became a blur for the thirty seconds it took to knock him out of the fight before he knew there was a fight.

Sydney and Vaughn raced down the second side of the building; they still hadn't found a door yet. Their boots splashed through oily puddles as they turned the final corner.

Goon 3 tried to grab Nadia from behind. He received an elbow to the nose and a kick to the gut, and then slouched unconscious to the ground.

Sark looked apprehensive and Nadia felt a thrill of glee. Only Goon 1 stood between them, and she was sure that the Rambaldi device was still on the Goon, not Sark. She hadn't witnessed the exchange inside the club; presumably the four had retreated to this area for privacy during the trade.

Goon 1 pulled a knife from his boot and approached Nadia warily. He feinted to the right, but swung to the left. Nadia jumped backwards and tried to grab his wrist, but missed. Goon 1 tried again and she blocked his arm with hers. The force of his blow bruised her forearm and drove it lower than she'd expected; the knife bit shallowly into her shoulder. However, now her hands were close enough to the weapon to get one of them on the handle, above Goon 1's. She found that she couldn't counter his force, so she decided to twist her body away and redirect it – into his own gut.

He paused in shock as the knife slid all the way into his belly, and she twisted it for good measure. With a pained gasp, Goon 1 toppled backwards.

Syd and Vaughn were having no luck finding an alternate entrance into the club. There really were no other doors on any of the other three sides, and the front of the building was well-lit and busy with club-goers. They returned to the van to re-think the plan and confer with Jack and Marshall.

Sark was always more of a manager than a grunt. He watched as Nadia knelt and pulled the little leather Rambaldi box out of Goon 1's vest and placed it in her purse. Instead of rushing the wounded APO agent and trying to best her in hand-to-hand combat, he indulged in polite clapping.

"Very nice," he said, "However, there is no exit that isn't under complete surveillance. I suggest you save yourself some pain and give the Rambaldi box to me now."

Nadia shook her head.

Sark sighed. "Very well. We do it the fun way." He turned on his heel and disappeared behind a stack of crates, presumably to get his backup.

Now that she wasn't in mortal danger, Nadia called to Syd using her earpiece. Sydney confirmed that there were no easy exits to the building that they were working on an extraction plan.

There was a thudding of heavy booted feet in the distance, and Nadia began to look for a place to hide. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness high above her, but she didn't see a way to get up there. To her left, a line of grates covered a narrow channel that was currently dry… she lifted one up and dropped into the hole. If she crawled on her hands and knees, and kept her head down, she's just fit. She pulled the grating back into place over her head and began moving foreword.

In the van, Syd is frantic with worry for her sister. Dixon, who was pretending to dance in the strobe light, couldn't be dispatched to look for Nadia until they had a viable rescue plan. Jack, through Marshall, identified the twenty men surveilling the front entrance, and the spies desperately needed another way to get Nadia out.

Nadia's wounded arm burned and her knees were sore from the concrete ground. She paused and held her breath as sharp orders were issued from above. If they looked down, they were guaranteed to see her flashy dress, even in the dim light… but they didn't, and the next time the voice spoke, it said "Clear!" and she felt safe to continue her slow progress. She thought that the tunnel had to be connected to something else, that it was some sort of run-off drain.

Weiss was trying to convince Jack that he, Syd, and Vaughn could easily take out the guards and thus retrieve Nadia, when the woman in question radioed in. Nadia indicated that she had found a human-sized sewage tunnel. It was hard for the spies in the van to hear her over the watery echo that came through their earpieces.

Carrie redirected Marshall to look underground rather than above it, and he quickly sent her the sewage maps. She located Nadia's position by overlaying the terrain map over the sewage maps, and Weiss moved the van to the nearest man-hole, which was several blocks away. Then, Sydney talked her sister through the pitch-black tunnels while Vaughn and Weiss took flashlights and went down the man-hole to meet her. The spies didn't want Nadia to stay in one place, in case Sark guessed where she'd disappeared to.

When a chilled, bloody Nadia emerged supported by Weiss and led by Vaughn, she was taken to the nearest safehouse where her wound was tended. While she received stitches, the two men grabbed their own showers; when she was done being doctored, she too was allowed to shower.

Back at APO, Sloane was happy to hear that his daughter was alive. However, when she came down with a fever and cold, he instantly ordered her to stay at home in bed (where he could keep an eye on her). When she asked him about the presentation she was supposed to do, he told her it could be done later. She worried that she hadn't had time to prepare, and he declared that her presentation would be put off indefinitely and if she didn't hush and eat the soup he'd made for her, he would not let her go on any more missions for the next three weeks.

Nadia shamelessly took advantage of her daughter-of-the-boss status (and after all, she had retrieved the Rambaldi device from Sark) and never gave her conclusive presentation on her life as a spy.


AN2: Poor Nadia. Who knows what disease she caught down in the sewers? At least her daddy's going to take care of her. Are you going to take care of me and review?