Wow…sorry. I'm totally evil. Got caught up in other things. Never updated. Been ages. Sorry. Will you ever forgive me?

Disclaimer: I think we all know this already. Not mine. Wish it were, but not. Sorry.

Chapter 3

"Is it done?"

"No. There were…complications."

"What kind of complications? Your mission was simple and extremely important!"

"I was seen and followed. The only way to ensure I could get away was to detonate early."

There was a long pause. "Where are you now?"

"Back at my car. Everyone at CTU will be too busy for the next few minutes making sure no one was hurt, by the time anyone thinks to look for me, it will be too late. And the man following me was hurt, if not killed. He will be in no condition to make any sort of ID."

Another pause. "Go back, to wherever you were originally going to hide out and watch the parking lot. Fix this." A click, and the conversation was terminated.

SCENE

Tony wasn't sure for how long he had blacked out but he came to as Michelle was gently shaking him.

"Tony…come on, Tony, wake up. Oh please, you have to wake up…Tony?"

He groggily opened his eyes. The first things that registered in his mind were the loud sirens and the medical personnel running every which way. Michelle hugged him tightly. "Oh thank God," she breathed. Tony wearily lifted a hand and ran it through her dirty matted hair.

"You okay?" he asked weakly. She looked about as bad as he felt.

"Fine," she assured. "I told security what happened. They're starting to set up a hard perimeter." She had a few noticeable cuts on her face but nothing looked too serious. "Can you stand? I have to go find Bill and Curtis."

Tony jolted as he was able to wrap his mind around what had happened. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, help me up." The two approached a cluster of paramedics and peered around them. Michelle let out a gasp.

"Bill! Oh, Bill…no…this can't be happening…not Bill and Curtis." The medics had stabilized Bill. He didn't look good but he was nothing compared to Curtis. Curtis was practically unrecognizable due to the burns on the right half of his face. One of the paramedics was hurriedly applying some burn salve. An oxygen mask had been placed over Curtis's face. He appeared to be bleeding profusely from his left leg, where some kind of flying shrapnel had punctured the skin.

Michelle turned and buried her face in Tony's shoulder. He rubbed her back soothingly and tried to ignore the pounding pain in his own head. Finally one of the medics made his way over to them.

"Are you two alright?" he asked.

"We're fine for the moment."

"Then we're trying to move everyone out of the open air and in to the medical wing. Someone will check you out when we have a free set of hands." Tony nodded and began to lead Michelle in to the building when she tugged at him to stop.

"Tony- look."

He turned in time to see a van, driven by Chloe O'Brien, come tearing to a stop just a few meters from the wrecked vehicle. She jumped out and, spotting them, came rushing over.

"What's happened?" she demanded.

"Palmer's car blew up!" Tony gestured. "Bill and Curtis are seriously hurt. Michelle and I were the only other ones out here, we're fine."

Security was now ushering Palmer in to CTU, closely followed by more agents escorting Diane and Derek Huxley. Jack remained well hidden in the back of the van and, in the current situation, it's not like anyone was looking too closely for stowaways.

"What's been going on, Chloe?" Michelle questioned. "Bill called us and said you and Palmer have been communicating all day."

Chloe leaned in and lowered her voice. "Jack's in the back of the van. Someone found him out, he had to escape with his girlfriend and her son."

"So that's who…?"

"That's who got out of the van with President Palmer."

Michelle let out a breath and ran a hand through her hair.

"Well this changes things," she admitted. "This changes things a lot. If someone knows Jack is still alive…"

She was cut off by two shots in quick succession. The three ducked and turned in time to see Jack tear out of the back of the van, quickly followed by two of the security agents escorting Palmer. They had just reached the doorway when a shot ricocheted off the cement wall not two inches from Palmer's head. Jack, anticipating such an action, had been watching from the back of the van and had let off a shot of his own towards the would-be assassin. Apparently his protectiveness of the president that had done so much for him outweighed his own desire to remain secret to the world. Jack reached the man who had dropped his own weapon and was now clutching his right arm with his left. The two agents swarmed past Jack and pulled the man to his feet, cuffing him. One led off the cuffed man, the other turned to Jack. Jack lowered his weapon.

"Identification please."

Jack handed him his year and a half old CTU ID badge. The agent looked at it and frowned but seemed unsure how to proceed with the man who had just made his job a lot easier. "Come with us." He didn't really seem to consider Jack a threat, however.

Jack complied and began to follow. Michelle, Tony, and Chloe hurried to meet him halfway. He hugged Tony and Michelle.

"Jack!" Tony hissed. "What are you doing? You're losing your last chance to get away unnoticed!"

"It doesn't matter anymore," Jack resigned himself. "Someone out there knows I'm alive. Now that Buchanan and Curtis are down, CTU is going to need all the help it can get. I may as well help figure out who that person is instead of hiding and leaving my friends to get hurt."

Michelle glanced at Tony. "Yeah," she agreed. "I think all of us are rejoining the ranks of CTU today."

The four entered the building. With everyone distracted by the two injured men, it was easy to slip to an empty conference room. Video surveillance could be altered later if necessary.

"Tell me everything that's happened, Chloe," Jack started. "Since I lost contact with you."

"Nothing really," Chloe said. "Spencer…this guy working under me…hacked into my computer and saw what I'd been doing on the side for you. He went to Buchanan, Buchanan had me cornered. He was about to have me hauled off when Palmer showed up. I assume that was your doing?"

"Wait," Michelle interrupted. "This Spencer kid…he had security clearance to do something like that? It would take level four passwords at least to log in to your console like that."

"He shouldn't have," Chloe pondered. "Tops, he might have level three."

Jack smiled grimly. "Then we have a place to start our investigation of how this person got through security and managed to put a bomb in Palmer's car. Maybe someone knows something, told him to keep an eye on you. Everything is connected, I know it is; the person following me, Spencer's oddly high security passwords, the attempt on Palmer's life. I just don't know how yet."

"Well I hate to put a damper on everyone's mood," Chloe interjected, "but we can't do anything just yet. In case you forgot, none of you even work here anymore. And with both the director of CTU and the head of field ops in the medical wing, it makes things even more tricky, because I think experience has taught us well that the next step is sending over some incompetent jerk from division."

"She's right," Tony admitted. "That is, generally, how things go."

"There'll be a heavy guard on the shooter," Michelle said, "but we might be able to angle our way in to question him. And Bill might be conscious before long- he didn't look nearly as bad as Curtis." Her voice caught in her throat.

"Well, Jack," Tony said, "you're sure you're ready to do this? Consequences be damned?"

"Consequences be damned," Jack agreed.

"Let's go see what we can find out then." The four left the room. Chloe returned to the floor to make sure everything was still in order. The other three headed to medical, where it was chaotic. Most the staff were busy tending to Buchanan and Curtis, two were doing a checkup on Palmer, and another was tending to Diane and Derek who were confused and scared more than anything. Buchanan was waking up.

"I'm fine," he muttered groggily and even made an attempt to sit up, only to be pushed back by the doctors. "I'm fine. I need to call division."

"Sir," one of the doctors gently interrupted him, "you probably have a concussion. You need to stay here and remain lying down for the time being until we can check for possible brain damage. Do you understand?"

Tony leaned over to Michelle. "You know, I got shot in the neck and came back to work within a few hours and he's just got a measly concussion." Michelle punched him in the arm.

Jack headed over to first talk to Palmer.

"We got the man who shot at you, sir," he told him. "Until we question him further, our best assumption is that he is the same one who put the bomb in your car and detonated it before we got here."

"How are the others?" Palmer asked.

"We don't know yet. Bill seems to be waking up but Curtis was closer to the car and suffered much more severe injuries. Michelle and Tony are fine."

"So you're telling me that CTU is currently operating without both of its top two ranking personnel, correct?" Jack nodded. Palmer looked at him carefully. "Jack, I know you'd rather go back undercover. But someone out there knows you're still alive and we are going to need you to help figure out who that is and what they want."

"Yes, Mr. President. I've already made that decision. There is obviously much more to this than wanting me dead. But I have a daughter that still doesn't know I'm alive. I need to have Chloe get hold of her and bring her here so I can talk to her."

Palmer nodded. "Why don't you go do that. When things are more settled down here, we can discuss what CTU's next course of action will be."

Jack wound his way back through the familiar hallways of CTU. Reaching the main floor, he found it a little hectic as people were unsure how to proceed without any real leadership. Jack spotted Chloe typing away at her computer and headed over to her.

"Chloe, I need you to do a favor for me," he said. "Can you reach Kim and ask her to come here? Don't tell her anything, just try and get her to come to CTU. Say its an emergency but you can't talk about it on the phone."

"Sure," Chloe said distractedly. "But while I'm doing that, can you take a look at this?" She turned her computer monitor to him and picked up the phone. Jack studied the screen. It was a heavily encoded message but Chloe had managed to isolate parts of it and decode them. Some numbers jumped out at him; times and coordinates by the looks of it.

Chloe hung up the phone. "She says she'll be here as soon as possible. I don't think she really wants to set foot in this place ever again but I told her it was important. Now about this message-…"

"Chloe?" Edgar headed over to her. "I have Wayne Palmer on line three, he wants to talk to his brother…?"

"Patch it through to medical," Jack muttered, attention focused on the computer. Edgar noticed Jack for the first time.

"Jack? I thought you were…"

"Yes, Edgar, dead, he's not, now go patch the call through to medical," Chloe interrupted him impatiently.

"Did you run these coordinates here, Chloe?" Jack asked, referring to a decoded segment of the text.

"Yeah. Here's what I found."

He studied the screen. The coordinates plotted a path which ended just outside Los Angeles. A place Jack was very familiar with.

"The President's retreat?" he asked.

"That's right," Chloe said. "I ran the path- it's a flightplan. The Russian president's helicopter will be following that path when it reaches the retreat later this afternoon for the signing of the treaty."

"Damn it." Jack swore under his breath. "Can we get in touch with the pilot and have him alter his course?"

"We can go through air traffic control at Van Nuys. The President's plane should be landing any minute, they'll take a helicopter from there."

"Chloe!" Edgar called. "I have someone from DoD on the line and they want to talk to someone in charge. Who should I give it to?"

"I got it," Chloe sounded extrememly annoyed. She couldn't stand it when things were chaotic, out of order, as they were now without Bill and Curtis to take charge. She spoke abruptly and briefly with the person on the other end and hung up.

"DoD is sending someone over to 'help out'. Get in the way, more like. They'll be here in a few minutes."

"Chloe," Jack said, "we need someone to run CTU while Bill and Curtis are incapacitated. Call division. Convince them to reinstate Michelle and Tony on a provisional basis, just for a few hours."

"They're sending over their own guy already, they'll never do it," Chloe argued. "Michelle and Tony have been out of this job too long."

"They should know as well as we do that anyone they send is still going to need the help of those that already work here. If they reinstate them for today, that person won't have a choice but to listen to them. Otherwise they'll just have security escort them out of the building. You know how these division bigwigs are, they won't take advice from someone outside the circle. Besides," he glanced across the room at the console Spencer was working at, "you can't do anything about Spencer until someone with a little authority is here and someone from division won't take the time to question him."

Chloe sighed. "Alright. But let's go to the conference room and put it on speaker with Michelle and Tony. Maybe President Palmer would like to put a word in?"

Chloe fetched the others while Jack set up the call, then she returned to the floor. It was, of course, not a pretty sight. Young, the bigwig of Division, felt that giving someone who hadn't been involved in CTU for a year and a half control of the entire Los Angeles department was a recipe for disaster.

"And why are you even there, anyway? It's hardly likely that you just dropped by for a social visit." His voice dripped with scorn. Young did not like Michelle very much. She had beaten him out two years earlier for a high level position and he had not forgotten.

"They're here because of me," Palmer finally put in.

"Who's that?" Young asked skeptically.

"David Palmer, Mr. Young. This has gone on quite long enough. CTU is falling apart without someone in charge. Conveniently, you have three people here who all have experience running both tactical and the floor and if you have an ounce of sense in your head, you'll reinstate them all just for the day."

"Three?" Young asked. "Who's the third?" Silence. "Well?"

"Jack Bauer, sir," Jack put in. There was a pronounced silence of several seconds.

"What is this, some sort of conspiracy? You're supposed to be dead!" Jack finally lost his temper.

"That's really not important right now," Jack declared. "What's important is that an attempt was just made on a former president's life and the attack left the top two ranking personnel of CTU in the hospital wing. We have evidence that supports the idea that a possible attack may take place on the helicopter of the Russian president this afternoon, and you're sending over a guy that, qualified as he may be, has no experience running this sort of place. Now, you can utilize the resources available to you or you can let your damned pride get in the way and turn this entire day in to mass chaos."

SCENE

Someone called over to Chloe's console. She picked up the phone with an irritated, "What?"

"DoD liaison is here," Spencer told her.

"Right." Chloe stood up and went to the door to meet him. The person that came through the door and onto the floor of CTU was the last she expected though.

"Hi, Chloe, it's good to see you again." Chloe found herself speechless for several seconds.

"Ms. Raines. It's good to have you back," she stuttered a bit and couldn't help herself; she shot a fleeting glance at the conference room. The conference room with no walls, only windows, rather easy to see through. Jack was on his feet, moving around and, it seemed, talking rather exuberantly. She quickly averted her gaze and began to say something.

"Why don't we go to…" But it was too late. Audrey followed her gaze to the conference room and her breath caught in her throat, eyes wide and disbelieving.

In the conference room, the call ended. It was agreed, with much persuasion from Palmer, to reinstate the three for the day, under the condition that final command would lie with the guy from division. Jack saw Michelle gazing out on to the floor and suddenly she looked stricken.

"Jack…" she began.

Jack turned and met the eyes of the woman he had loved. The woman who told him she couldn't be with him anymore, because of his work. The woman who had believed him to be dead for a year and a half.

SCENE

Again…very sorry. Please update and say you don't hate me. Please?

Seriously though. I don't like this chapter very much. Do you? It's lacking something. I dunno.

I'm anticipating one more chapter. We shall see. Kim still has to come in the picture. Keep in mind that this story won't really have an ending. It will just end where it picks up with the show, where I decided to stop changing everything. Haha.

Thx for reading.

Cheers!

Lexi