A/N: Huge shout-out to Laura, the reviewer that's been giving love between each chapter. 3
Part 10
"Mr. Sloane?" Marshall stood fidgeting from his left foot to his right outside the open glass door of his boss' office.
"Yes, Marshall, what is it?"
The tech genius hurried in to see the older man slumped in his seat wearing the same rumpled suit from the previous day with deep bags under his eyes.
"I...found something you should see," he stuttered and set the laptop down on the glass desk. It flickered to life and Arvin saw the website, read the title at the top, and put a fake glare across his features.
"What is this?"
'Acting, Arvin. You're good at this. Ignore the feelings; ignore the fact that they have someone you once considered as a daughter in their clutches. Ignore it all and act.'
"Is...is this real, sir? Has Sydney been taken?"
Sloane clicked and watched the video. 'I didn't actually think they'd bring Flynn in, I thought they wouldn't be as dramatic as that.' Looking up at Marshall and seeing the concern written deep, he tried to match the emotion though it wasn't hard to show that he was shocked, saddened, and surprised by aspects of what he already vaguely knew. "Get on this, Marshall. Can you trace it?"
"No, sir, I already tried but I can keep working on it."
"How long has it been up?"
"About thirty minutes. Are...are we going to do something?"
Sloane sighed. "If you can find her we'll see what we can do. I'll make contact with Langley, but Marshall - this...this is the hard part of what we do as black ops. The CIA can't say that she's one of them, one of us, officially."
"But we can, right Mr. Sloane?"
"We can indeed. Coordinate with Dixon but...as much as you can, keep this between the two of you in the office. There's no need to have anyone panic. We'll do what we can; we'll do everything we can."
The techie scampered off with renewed vigor like David sent to slay Goliath. Only, Marshall wasn't David or the sling - he was the stone. And stones could be fired in any direction depending on who held the weapon. The Alliance had this planned to a tee, all the way down to assuming that her cell would want to find and rescue their agent. Countermeasures were put into place that Sloane hoped Flinkman wouldn't be able to skirt because if he did, it would mean the end of SD-6 as a branch of the Alliance. He would be moved to another facility and a new branch would be constructed. Dozens of years of work up in flames, and he'd likely lose his partnership status.
Though it had been over a month after finding out, he was still upset that Sydney had betrayed him. But he wasn't surprised. Since the death of her fiancé, which he'd ordered, she hadn't been the same.
"Arvin, you cannot deny it any longer. The evidence is...overwhelming. We'll dispatch a sniper and you will send her on a mission without Agent Dixon."
"Alain, you must respect how furious I am at learning this. This isn't only a sleight against the Alliance; I'm taking this as a personal affront and I'll gladly help you arrange what needs to be done. However, take a look at the files I've just sent you. These are Agent Bristow's missions over the last twelve months. There's...a pattern. An unfortunate pattern. She knows so much more about all of these things than what she wrote in her reports, and I feel we deserve to know the information she's kept from us."
There was a long pause over the phone, Sloane looking at his phone for a moment to make sure the call was still connected. His heart was beating a mile a minute as he'd been ambushed late at night with the call regarding Sydney's status as a double inside SD-6. There wasn't a thing he could do from home but stall.
"Interesting. What are you suggesting?"
"Bring someone in. They can assess what we've lost and when satisfied, can...interrogate Sydney. I've also sent you a report from McCullough on best information extraction practices based on her psychological profile."
"Good lord, Arvin, I thought this would be a harder decision for you. Didn't you and your wife take her in as a child? She lived with you for over a year and you've mentioned many times the closeness of your relationship. Part of that is what blinded you to her deception for so long. And now you...you want her tortured?"
"She's not a child any longer. If you're curious, yes - I do have regrets over my inattentiveness and potential nepotism, and this will haunt me. But she betrayed us. Family or not, she must pay for that. No exceptions."
"I'll contact Flynn. In the meantime, we'll get in contact with our mole in Langley to get her protocols. She'll be much easier to intercept if she thinks she's with friends."
A month later, Flynn provided them with a myriad of evidence showing that Sydney had indeed been betraying them for at least 18 months. The surprise that hit Sloane the hardest was information that the daughter was following in the footsteps of the father. Unlike the dissipated anger with Sydney, he was furious at what he had assumed to be his oldest friend. For weeks he'd been sending them on missions assuming that was the last time he'd see either, but the Alliance was patient and now he knew why.
They were hounding him to find Jack, but he'd honestly not seen him in a few days. Perhaps Sydney had warned him? He wasn't sure how when she had clearly been taken by surprise, but the two of them had been working together to undo SD-6 for over a year and must have had something in place if the other was compromised.
So he'd sent Marshall on a fool's errand knowing he wouldn't get far, Arvin staying in his office sulking behind a blank computer screen. Convincing the other partners to have her tortured for information was the only way he could give Jack time to find her, and maybe even give Sydney a chance at escaping. It also showed the heads of the Alliance that he was all-in with the idea of punishment. Two birds with one stone, as it were.
Sloane thought they were bluffing when Alain had mentioned Flynn. He'd seen the man's work and knew that it was almost the same as sentencing her to death, but with a hidden sniper, she's have absolutely no recourse. The numbers ran through his head without his permission, and though the opportunity for escape or rescue was there, he knew it was slim.
Despite everything, he was going to miss them both terribly.
…
Jack hurried past the conference room but stopped short as he spotted Michael Vaughn sitting alone with an unfocused, glazed look in his eyes. He handed his notes to Will, another potential lead for the analysts to chase, and moved into the room to stand before the dejected agent.
"You told me not to give up on her, do I need to say the same?" The father's voice was surprisingly soft, Vaughn closing his eyes, a sad crook raising his lips into a ghost of a smile.
He didn't speak, merely pointed, Jack's eyes seeing the ugly website he knew far too well as the clock continued its countdown.
"Five hours left, Jack, and we have less now than when we started. They...they've been planning this for weeks, maybe longer, and...I've been trying desperately to find where we screwed up. Maybe it'll give us a lead, something to start with - someone. But I have no clue how they found out. I don't know if it was something she said, something I said," he breathed a heavy sigh, "something we did."
"We have five hours left to find her, Vaughn, I need you on this. She needs you on this."
The agent nodded, another deep sigh lifting his chest and dropping it just as quickly. "I've got dead ends here. There's nothing in the last five months of missions that would indicate that something went this wrong."
"We have a contact in the DOJ. They put in a note a few weeks ago to the duty officer that they thought Langley had an informant. It's worth looking at. If we find this person they may be able to tell us where they've taken her."
Vaughn frowned. "An informant, like a mole?"
"Apparently."
'Maybe it wasn't something you did. Maybe this whole thing isn't your fault.'
An hour passed as that lead, and two others, went cold. The skinny analyst cursed and tossed the wireless mouse across the room in a surprising bout of frustration. "Take a walk, Paul," Will ordered gently, the man apologizing and leaving the room as the three of them looked back and forth, each empty-handed.
Michael leaned forward with a whisper, "Jack, did Irina have anything?" He knew they weren't supposed to talk with the woman in holding about this situation, per Kendall's order, but Jack wasn't about to keep from using a=that fount of information in a situation as dire as this.
The father shook his head.
"What do you mean 'taken'?" The usually emotionless voice of Irina Derevko was elevated and suddenly abrasive as Jack looked back down the hallway waiting for the armed guard to get an order from Kendall to have her closed off from all visitation.
"She was made weeks ago, maybe over a month, but they were waiting for something. Maybe some operation. You...you wouldn't have a contact out there I could go to for information, would you?"
There was a tense moment of silence as she scrolled her brain for contacts, Jack waiting impatiently as he uncharacteristically fidgeted in the hallway on the other side of the glass.
"There's one contact in France, a Renee Arnaud. He worked very closely with upper echelon Alliance members and me on occasion when we were dealing with anything Rambaldi."
"This isn't Rambaldi-related, Irina. Besides, he's been in police custody for a week. He's a dead end. Next."
She rattled off three or four names, Jack writing two of them down and dismissing the others as they'd already been tested.
"Our daughter is going to die, isn't she?"
Her softly spoken and watery words pulled him from his pen and paper, their eyes meeting through the partition. "We don't know that. She's...she's gotten out of a lot before-"
"This is different. We both know it's different, we can...can feel it. Jack...this is our fault. We got her into this life."
The father shook his head, though the guilt in her voice matched his, "we're not going to lose her. We'll find her."
Irina crossed her arms over her stomach, Jack noting that Sydney shared that same defensive tick. His ex-wife's chin quivered, "she didn't deserve this, Jack."
"Stop. Think. Is there anyone you can think of that may have connections high up in the Alliance? Anything we can use to tie them to a location where they could have taken her?"
Tears fell from the mother's unfocused eyes as she stared off at a point in space to the right of the window. "Jack - she…"
His face turned red as he slammed his palm on the glass. "Goddamnit, Laura I know!"
She jumped and her eyes flew wide, the two staring at one another in surprise as a few moments ticked by.
"Irina. I know. I know it should be me. They...they have our little girl and they're going to do...horrible things if we can't find her. I...I can't let that happen. Not to Sydney."
"I don't know anyone that could help but the people I've named. Jack...if you don't find her," she swallowed at the rising painful lump in her throat, "tell Kendall I'll stop cooperating and accept my sentence."
She hadn't expected to see his stoic facade crumble. Jack leaned with hands flat against the glass, Irina wanting nothing more than to pull him into her arms as she had almost thirty years earlier when he'd come home worn down from an assignment. His drooping shoulders and the deep grooves on his forehead and around his mouth stood out giving away his frantic worry, a dramatic difference from his usually unreadable expression and body language.
"Tell me what you're thinking," she goaded as she leaned her shoulder against the glass between his pressing hands, the closest she could get to hold him while pretending she was also being held by him.
"I...don't know how to process the potential of losing you both right now." His words were quiet but honest, perhaps the first honest thing said between them in a very long time aside from his threats to her survival over the past few months.
"You'll find her, Jack. You've always been there for her. She's lucky it's you out there and not me. Please...please keep me informed."
Jack had shaken off the encounter having not since returned to the cell, unsure if he would unless something drastic happened with the case either way.
"And there's no way to access their system without being in the office," Will confirmed talking to himself as he and Vaughn went over the very short list of things they knew for certain.
"I've already offered to go, but Vaughn is right when he says I'll be taken into custody before I could even reach a terminal."
The three sat for several long minutes until Will excused himself to go check on Francie as their ideas petered out, the lower levels serving as housing for them all as well as Dixon's family for the foreseeable future.
A light went off behind Vaughn's eyes, "wait. Who's that guy at SD-6, the tech guy."
"Marshall?"
"Marshall. We were going to extract him months ago but it went belly-up. Could...could he find a way to trace the signal feeding the website?"
Jack wavered a bit. "Not internally. If they have been planning he's operating within a well-designed box."
"So we let him out of the box."
"You want to extract, Marshall? How?"
"He has to go home at some point, right? I mean," he looked down at his watch, "it's one in the morning."
The father thought hard for a moment, his grey-blue eyes twitching as he ran through the list of pros and cons in his head. "What the hell," Jack mumbled, though the nearly last remnant of hope was staying lit at the idea of Marshall being able to help. Lifting his phone he dialed the techie's number and set it to speaker, surprised and yet not when he picked up on the second ring.
"Jack - oh Jack, thank god. I...I found that website-"
The senior agent interrupted. "Marshall, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Is this a secure line?"
"Of course - all my phones have a custom-designed chip that-"
"Good. Where are you right now?"
"Home, but...I brought my laptop with me. I'm trying, Jack, I'm trying to find her but...this is impossible."
A small smile hit the corner of the man's usually surly face. "Marshall, I need you to meet someone for me, can you do that?"
"Uh...maybe? Who and where?"
"I'll text you the information, but this has to remain a secret. You cannot under any circumstances let SD-6 know where you are, or with whom you are meeting, do you understand?"
He and Vaughn waited impatiently hearing clanking, crashing, and a whole bunch of racket over the speaker as they shared concerned looks back and forth. "Marshall?" Hurried breathing, the sound of keys jingling, and then the closing of a car door.
"Send me the info, I'll leave now. We're...we're gonna go get her, right Jack?"
"Thank you, Marshall."
…
Sydney woke slowly as a hand softly caressed her cheek. The bright light of the room made her squint and she couldn't help the grumble as she remembered where she was, Flynn stepping back with a shit-eating grin on his face. "You talk in your sleep. Mostly incoherent, but it does make one wonder what secrets you've given away in bed. Ooh, does your crush work in the business? Sharing secrets across the pillow, eh?"
Anger flashed in her eyes and he laughed. "Tell me about this crush, Sydney. Do you think he'll be watching? Is he back in the states sitting in an uncomfortable office chair planning a daring rescue? Are you just pining, love?"
She stayed quiet. "Oh don't play the silent game again, Sydney, we've so much planned!"
Silence.
"Suit yourself," he shrugged and wheeled over a cart with a small portable battery and a bundle of meticulously coiled cords and wires, each ending with an adhesive pad. It reminded her of an EKG machine, though smaller and definitely homemade.
"This is one of my favorite new devices. I tested it out and you know what, I think I've really outdone myself this time." He made his way to her side seeing the frown on her forehead and the way her eyes looked straight ahead in an attempt to ignore his excitement. Pulling the cart close he began fastening the sticky pads to her left arm, then right, and one on each side of her neck before kneeling. Sticking a pad to the top of each foot he worked his way up to her calves before lifting her tank top and pressing one to the lower part of her left and right rib cage both in front and behind, between her and the bars of the chair. The last one he adhered under her belly button behind the clasp of her trousers.
Bundling the wires as they ran to the floor, each coated in plastic casing, they led back up to the machine where he twisted the exposed metal ends together and connected them to the battery.
"Shall we give it a test?" Flynn wiggled his eyebrows at her and flipped the switch, Sydney expecting to feel the sudden jolt of electricity running through her body licking at each nerve ending, but that isn't what happened.
An odd sensation, more like a vibration, coursed through her skin making her look down at the pads she could see, but they weren't doing anything. It didn't hurt, but it was uncomfortable. Meeting his eyes with a confused glare, he grinned and walked to her side.
"Annoying, isn't it? See what it really does is turn you into a conduit for the simplest electrical charge. Even one coming from a fingertip." He'd turned on the silk voice again, Sydney learning to be wary when his tone changed from over-dramatic and abrasive to soft and sympathetic. Worse still was that he'd moved behind her where she wasn't able to see him.
A lick of fire singed her skin as he grazed the back of her fingers and she gasped at the suddenness of the sensation. The pain was localized to a few inches around where he touched, but it was acute and went straight to the nearest nerve endings.
"Every single time I touch you," he said slowly as he kept the tip of his finger lightly against her skin dragging it up to her arm to her shoulder, a dark smile on his face as she groaned and clenched her jaw trying to compartmentalize the pain, "it's localized fire. Not enough to kill you, it's not that kind of shock, but painful enough for you to begin despising human contact."
She breathed heavy as his hand left and the fire faded back to the annoying, vibrating tickle. He chuckled and moved to the table to organize the items to his liking. Different styles of knives, needles, tape, and long candle lighters were meticulously placed on the surface along with a set of pliers and a ball-peen hammer. Classic tools of the torture trade, though with this added electrical component, she now didn't know what to expect.
"Do you need anything, love?" Flynn asked as he headed toward the door, a casual look crossing his face.
Her glare was his answer and his laugh echoed in the bright room after he left.
…
