2. Aces and 8s
-
At first he had said the words in his head, repeat, repeat, like a mantra for the corrupt : "Let me out. Let me out. Let me out."
Locked alone, seamless metal walls, handcuffed at all times, trays of bitter food twice a day brought in by pitiless prison guards in the highest security vault in the land. Sark was not housed with other prisoners : artifacts, evidence, and a graveyard in the basement, here they hid their darkest keepsakes.
The first visit from Michael Vaughn was mildly amusing and nothing more; A verbal battle that barely cleared the rust from Sark's throat. He saw the deceit instantly, and let it play out for the slight diversion of mocking Sydney Bristow's precious soulmate.
Sark had never any hope of being freed from the cage he'd earned. The necessity of his assisstance in capturing Anna Espinosa, galling to his former adversaries and harrowing to himself, had presented a chance to offer amends for the unanswered tragedies he'd inflicted so heartlessly. But it was clumsy, and misunderstood, and it fell flat.
Sark had made a promise to Sydney and he'd kept it, unconvinced though she'd been. He delivered her Espinosa and returned to his 10-by-20 foot corner of the world, where he fell silent and prayed amends to a god he believed in and despised.
So he listened to the echoes and waited for death.
Julian Sark had seen more of this life than any man should; The human soul is a flimsy, despicable thing, and his had become burnt sometime between the begging and the bloodshed.
A month to the day after the showdown in Venice, a month of shrieking silence alone with his ghosts, the door of Sark's cell slid open with a hiss. The guard unlocked his handcuffs and threw a bag stuffed with civillian clothes onto the cement floor.
"Your hearing is today," the man told him.
Confusing, and, worse, unexpected.
The security was surprisingly lax. They transported him to a common courthouse, empty save for a judge and an assistant district attornety. Smiling over the proceedings from the very back of the chamber had sat Arvin Sloane.
They told Sark to sign the dotted line and he did. Sloane slid out the back before he could demand answers.
A parole officer and community service. Sark stepped into the sunlight on the first day of his cheated freedom and could not fathom why he still drew breath.
He craved something stable, unchanging. A link to his past that didn't scald.
-
"Half-baked, presumptuous man-whore," she muttered under her breath.
Sydney stood indecisively eyeing the sliding glass doors. Over the loudspeaker her flight number was announced, urging travellers to proceed to terminal 4.
With a defeated growl she ripped her ticket in half.
"Cryptic, obtuse, British bastard," Sydney continued, winding her way toward the car rental.
She drew out her cellphone, entering a quick code to enter its rewired features index. Sighing, she tapped out a second code. The tracer she'd placed on Sark's collar immediately began transmitting, emitting a faint red light on the miniature map of Queens displayed on the screen. He was mobile, moving fast, east on the Long Island Expressway.
"Irritating, ostentatious, Freudian whack-job," she finished, jamming the keys of the rented Honda into the ignition.
Sydney needed answers, discontent to let him simply drift back into obscurity after today. He should have known this but ignored the possibility.
He would later, of course, take full credit for planning it.
-
Grotesquely, because she was declared to be She of Immovable Morals, Sydney had almost forgotten how to be honest. Here, motiveless beyond her curiosity, stripped of gadgets and disguises and protocols, she really hadn't the faintest idea of how to proceed.
Fess up, she supposed.
"Excuse me," she adressed to the front desk clerk, a small, smiling woman who looked about ready to force-feed a tourism guide to the next businessman who walked through the door. "I'm looking for someone. He probably just arrived. Last name Sark."
"We usually don't give out guests room numbers," the clerk explained, then grinned. "Boyfriend?"
Sydney laughed, and shook her head. "Boytoy."
After tapping out his name into her computer, the clerk directed her to the 5th floor. "Have fun, honey," she called after Sydney.
Remormed or no, Sark had yet to shed his predilection for refinery. After slipping past the eyes of his parole officer (a feat of effortlessness bordering on absence) he had holed up in the finest hotel on the shore of Parsons Beach, a mamoth highrise of frippery overlooking Little Neck Bay. He'd been there over a week, first debating over, than waiting for, Sydney's arrival.
She stepped off the elevator into a lush, silent hallway. Emptiness and cool air greeted as the metal doors slid shut behind her and descended.
Sark's room, #547, was located at the end of the hall. Sighing heavily at the sudden absurdity of tracking him here - he was, atrociously, a free man now - Sydney trekked slowly toward the door. Inanely, she wished she had changed first, out of the pheasant skirt and flip-flops she'd worn to the ballgame, into something dark and domineering and, perhaps, Kevlar.
She was lifting her hand to knock on his door when a gunshot (a 40. caliber automatic, certainly, an S&W 410, possibly 430) sounded from within.
Momentarily Sydney froze, objectifying her choices. There were many possibilities, none of them good. She aimed for the hinges and kicked the door down.
Her intentions for coming to New York had not involved heroism for the benefit of a converted assassin. Nonetheless, the amateur phyciatrist himself stood awkwardly with his head held flat against a table and a gun pressed below his ear.
There were four intruders in Sark's hotel room, discounting Sydney, who at the moment was rather welcomed. Four hulking men dressed in black, ski masks secure, one of them lying dead in the suite's kitchenette with a bullet in his esophagus. There'd been a scuffle, a straight-up, thrown-down fight, with broken furniture and battered bones, which Sark had recently lost. Two held him against a writing desk while the third prepared to perform the execution.
Sydney and the three living attackers stared nonplussed at eachother. Sark smiled around bloody teeth. "Sydney!" he said politely. "How wonderful to see you."
She dove to the floor. Bullets, bullets everywhere, but not a dead agent. Three goons with three guns, each with 10-round magazines, all fired at Sydney's head as she scrambled behind the recently-upholstered couch. One remained to restrain Sark as the other two moved in on her.
Stupidity (or trust, either option sickening) had moved her to not bring a gun. Weaponless, Sydney fell flat on her back as bullets lacerated the wooden coffee table inches from her head. Impatient, one attacker lept over the couch, landing precariously on the cushions.
Sydney lashed out, catching both feet in his stomach and using his momentum to launch him head-first into the television screen facing the couch.
"Freeze!" shouted the second assailant, aiming his Smith & Wesson at Sydney's forehead.
Brazen, she pushed off the ground with her hands, sommersaulting backwards to catch a dazing blow to his jaw as she flipped to her feet. Dodging the bullet that sliced past her ribcage, Sydney danced forward, catching his upraised arm and elbowing him viciously in the collarbone and sternum. As he doubled over she planted a quick left hook to the face, nose shattering as he fell pathetically to the elegant carpet.
Belatedly, Sark broke free from the grapple, twisting around to seize his captor's forearm, snapping it cleanly as he jerked the man sideways. Snatching the gun from his attacker's ruined hand, Sark plugged the last remaining bullet behind his ear. Blood and cartilege spattered Sark's face as the man fell limp in his grasp.
He glanced Sydney's way, to where she stood breathlessly amid two whimpering, concussed opponents.
"Oh, shit," he muttered. "I forgot about the No Killing rule."
Repelled, Sydney ran a hand across her mouth, struggling for composure. She took in the carnage, critical, unsure if she'd just saved a life or cost thousands.
"Your timing," he said, "is impeccable."
She gestured with disgust to the four dispatched assassins cluttering the ornate suite. "Welcome Home Party?" she guessed scathingly.
"More of a Get Well Soon or Else sort of thing," Sark answered, grimacing as he touched the gash running from his ear to his mouth. "I left some… business, unfinished when I went away. Their way of saying they want their deposit back in the form of a pound of flesh."
Sydney smiled darkly. "Who's 'they'?"
"Employers. Associates. I was a popular man in my time," he said caustically, blinking slowly to clear away the recent head trauma. "May I ask what brought you here?"
"Specifically? A tracking device. Honestly? Intrigue." Sydney, immersed in a surreal feeling of ease, sat gingerly on the bullet-ravaged sofa.
"I got to you, did I?" he smirked, rolling his stiff shoulders awkwardly.
She smiled, and was silent.
Through the open door, faint, came the cheerful ding of the elevator opening. Simultaneously, a cellphone began ringing from inside the pocket of an unconscious assassin and went unanswered. Footsteps advanced slowly from down the hall.
Sark fixed her with an apprehensive stare. "I have to run."
She stood.
"Do you honestly want to make amends for your past?" she asked.
"More than anything."
She'd never seen him like this, so haggard, haunted. The intensity of his stare gnawed through her skin and into her veins, infecting like poison.
"Then you'll need help," she said. "A lot of it."
Sydney darted forward, seizing him by the wrist and pulling him into the suite's bedroom. She slammed the door just as the reinforcements arrived, shooting erratically as the two disappeared from view.
"Dresser," she commanded as she moved swiftly to the window.
Compliantly he shoved the cedar dresser sideways, haphazardly blocking the door.
When it would not open, Sydney grabbed a lamp and threw it viciously through the window. Glass spiderwebbed and shattered, sparkling through the air as it fluttered into the bay.
She scrambled out onto the narrow ledge, catching her breath as Sark followed.
"Where are we - oh. Lovely," he lamented, staring down.
Sydney took his hand, sarcastic. "Ready to take the plunge?"
They jumped quixotically into the unclean waters of Little Neck Bay.