Part 6: Before I wake

Sydney was once again strapped down, seizures just now passing, when Sloane walked in, apparently back to try to once again convince her to cooperate even though she'd shut down after that last round with him.

She focused on a point just beyond his left ear and concentrated on getting her body back under her control. She let Sloane's voice fade into background noise and found fury quietly taking over the shock she'd been feeling since their last "discussion." Sloane's ego was apparently larger than even she had ever guessed. Just the fact that he apparently believed that she would ever willingly give him anything, much less information she knew would eventually be used to harm others . . .

And from that fury came calm.

Sloane had apparently asked a question and was waiting for an answer. Oh, she'd give him an answer alright . . .

Sydney's attention shifted to him although her gaze looked through him really, and she began to speak. "So, about a year ago I was on a mission in Chile."

Sloane looked puzzled, but didn't interrupt.

"I got shot, point blank in the chest by a Covenant agent and ended up in a coma. But you know that, right?"

Sloane looked puzzled, but she continued before he could answer.

"At some point before I woke up, I flat-lined, right there in that bed in Mount Sinai hospital . . . I don't remember that part, of course. Had it told to me after I woke up . . . I don't remember dying" she said quietly and shook her head. "Now I don't know if it was heaven and I didn't meet God, but you know what I do remember?" Flat eyes met Sloane's curious ones. "Emily was there. She showed up in this flash of light and told me I had to come back here. That I wasn't supposed to be there."

She met his eyes and Sloane looked stripped raw; like he had been gutted.

Sydney shook her head. "Now do you think she told me to come back here so that I could be tortured by you now, a year later? That she knows this is what you were going to do with the life she told me to come back to?"

The blow left stars swimming on the edges of her vision and she blinked a few times to clear it. Sloane signaled to the guards and they undid the straps and pulled her roughly from the room, but not before she saw guilt carve comfortable lines into Sloane's face. A second later his face smoothed out, expressionless. Before the door closed Sloane had already put himself back together again.

It probably wouldn't be long before anger took over. She knew intimately how much better of a companion anger was than grief.

oOo

~*Lie to me*~