A/N1: I posted two chapters on Friday. Please read chapter 13 first. We have made it to the halfway point readers. For those in the US, enjoy the holiday weekend. And to everyone, thank you all for reading!
A/N2: Derailment and loosening of associations is also called knight's move thinking. The move of the knight in chess is used as a metaphor for the unexpected, and illogical, connections between ideas. The knight in chess is the only piece that can derail from its path and jump over pieces to reach its destination.
Chapter 14: The Knight's Move Thinking
Friday Morning
SD-6
Eric Weiss walked into work like it was any other day. He grabbed himself a cup of coffee, flirted with Carrie in OPS TECH, sat down at his desk and typed in his password. He checked his email and leaned back in his chair as he asked Seth if he wanted to get lunch with him that afternoon, all the while knowing this afternoon he wouldn't be getting lunch with Seth.
Two Hours Ago
CIA Safehouse
Los Angeles
Looking between the two people standing in front of him, Eric pointed at the both of them and said, "You're telling me that I've been working for the Alliance this entire time, and now you want me to be the secret weapon that brings it down?"
The CIA Agent who'd introduced herself as Sydney Sloane, Arvin Sloane's adopted daughter-who was incredibly hot by the way-looked at him and said, "That's what I'm saying."
"I'm in."
"Just like that," asked Vaughn.
Weiss wasn't sure if he should have been upset by that or not as he said, "You're not lying to me, are you?"
"No," they both said in unison.
"Then I'm in. I get to take down the Alliance, and seeing Arvin Sloane shit his pants is an added bonus. I've always hated that guy." He looked at Agent Sloane and told her, "No offense. This has to be hard for you."
She frowned at him but didn't say anything else about it.
"So," he said as he clapped his hands together. "What am I doing? Do I need a gun for this mission? Night vision? Rappelling ropes? What?"
Agent Sloane handed him a piece of paper. "All you need is this."
He stared at the piece of paper and said, "Seriously? A hacker's code and email address?"
"A CIA agent's email address," she said, like that made it more dangerous.
Weiss put the piece of paper in his pocket as he said, "Can I ask how you came to know all this? Where did this information come from?"
"Um, well," Vaughn said as he looked to Agent Sloane.
She looked at him and said, "A plane."
Weiss shook his head in confusion and said, "A plane?"
"Yeah," Vaughn said. "A really big plane. It crashed."
"It-" he stared at the both of them. "Is this confidential? Is that why you're being so vague?"
Vaughn shrugged as he said, "Not confidential, more like-"
"-illegal," Agent Sloane finished for him.
Eric Weiss stared at the two people in the CIA safehouse and wondered what on earth had he been missing out on this entire time.
Present Time
He pulled out the slip of paper that had been given to him and went through the instructions to hack into the SD-6 system. It didn't take long before the hidden file was revealed to him. Server 47 proved SD-6 was part of the Alliance. Weiss let out a breath and brought up his email and sent the code to the email address written on the piece of paper. Then he downed his coffee and waited.
He looked over at Sloane's office and was surprised to see another man at the desk. "Who's that?"
Seth looked over and told him, "New boss. Some Russian or Slavic. I really don't know."
"What happened to Sloane?" he asked as he picked up his cup of coffee.
Seth shrugged. "He went AWOL."
Meanwhile...
Coast of England
Arvin Sloane stood on a beach in Shoreham-by-Sea, the Shoreham Port, with the Shoreham Power Station off to his left, as he stared out across the English Channel. It was a breezy day but the sun was out and he felt it on his face as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt unrestrained and limitless now that he was no longer under the thumb of the Alliance. Let Jack take it all down. He was done with them, having gotten all the use he could out of them. Global dominance may have been the Alliance's ill-fated goal, but it wasn't his.
He opened his eyes and saw in the distance, on the horizon, the grey against the blue sky. It looked like the freighter was a vertical rectangular peg sitting on top of the water. It was crossing over from France with storage containers stacked on top of one another. In one of those containers was the reason he was standing on that beach, looking out at the ocean. Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi had described Shoreham in 1153 as "a fine and cultivated city containing buildings and flourishing activity". The same could be said for the seaside town today.
Today it was flourishing with opportunity. He was always looking for the next opportunity. It wouldn't be long now until he would be able to experience the end results of his acquired opportunity that had been presented to him years ago.
"Is that it?"
Sloane gave a nod as he said, "That's it."
That freighter would go down the River Adur and get unloaded. His men were there now, waiting. He heard a phone ring. He kept his eyes on the freighter as the woman beside him answered the phone.
She spoke a few words into it and then hung up, telling him, "It's done. The CIA raided all the SD cells ten minutes ago."
He looked over at the woman standing next to him and thought about how much she looked like her mother. It had broken his heart when he told her the news of Irina's death. Looking back over the ocean, he told his daughter Nadia, "I'm not surprised the Alliance was taken down by a single server. They were too complacent, got too comfortable in their own brilliance that they left their entire operation vulnerable by something so irrelevant."
The cell phone rang again and Nadia answered, "Hello. Yes, he's right here. Dad, it's for you."
Sloane eyed the phone before taking it from her. He wasn't expecting a call. "Hello?"
"I figured it out," Jack told him, "the group, the one that the Triad is a front for, it's called Prophet Five. It's based on a project from the 1970's by Oskar Mueller. He brought in scientists, mathematicians, linguists, and cytologists to decipher a section of a 15th-century manuscript known as Profeta Cinque, or Fifth Prophet. I remember being approached by Mueller to join the project. I had already been tasked with Project Christmas at the time and didn't want to take on another assignment, so I declined. No one knows if they succeeded in breaking the supposedly unbreakable code. The project was disbanded in 1980. I'm assuming since you're a member of a group calling itself Prophet Five that the code has been broken. What my daughter has to do with it is what I want to know. You are going to give me that information, Arvin."
"Tell me, Jack," he said as he turned away from Nadia and started walking across the beach as he kept his eyes on the freighter that was getting closer. "Of all the scenarios you've factored into this, did you even imagine yourself isolated and alone out in the cold because of me?"
"You know I consider all possibilities. Unlike you."
"I would ask what you thought of all this, but then I remember how you told me once that you never take into consideration the thoughts of someone before you kill them. Your time is limited, just like your vision. I will find you and kill you for what you did to Irina. So, I'll give you these final words. You lose."
"I'm okay with losing if it gets me what I want. You know who taught me that play? My daughter."
"How is Sydney?"
"A step ahead of you."
He smiled into the phone and shook his head at Jack's feeble attempt to scare him. "Enjoy being a fugitive for the rest of how many days you have left," he said as he looked down at the beach as he kept walking. "I'll be too busy living my life."
"That's your ego talking. I always knew one day that would be your downfall."
"How's that?" he asked as he looked back over his shoulder at Nadia and froze.
Jack was standing behind his daughter with a gun to her head. Still speaking into the phone, he told him, "I'm not too smart for my own good, Arvin. I'm too smart for yours."
"How did you-"
"The necklace. The one Irina always wore," Jack told him.
48 Hours Ago
Taiwan
"Can I see?" he asked Sydney as he spotted the picture she held in her hand.
She looked up from the kitchen table and gave him a soft smile. He loved it when she smiled at him. It wasn't a happy smile. Bittersweet. Full of sadness and grief, but whatever she was looking at, she had a deep fondness for it.
He sat down beside her as she handed over the photograph. Jack took it in his hand and stared at the picture of Sydney and her adopted mother, Emily. They looked so happy. They had been happy. "I can't imagine what this must be like for you with Emily gone and the truth of Arvin-"
"He wasn't my father," she said as she let out a breath and picked up the glass and took a sip of the water.
They were preparing to leave; Vaughn and Dixon were loading up the van as Marshall prepared several aliases for himself and Will. Will was asleep again on the couch. And Sydney was alone in the kitchen.
Looking at his daughter, he said, "He was. You have very real memories and experiences with him. A feeling of family when you think of him."
"Which makes all this so much harder, but...He's a criminal. He's a terrorist. He doesn't deserve my sympathy. Jack, you entrusted him with me and he betrayed you." She looked over at him and he saw the tears in her eyes. "And on top of all that, you've been...You've always been there. I remember when you showed up at the house. The first time we-" she stopped herself. "The first memory I have of us meeting. You were concerned about me. You wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, if I could protect myself. I don't recall Arvin ever being as concerned about me more than you. Now I know why. He wasn't my dad. And I feel so-"
She broke off as she turned away and wiped at the tears that had fallen.
Jack desperately wanted to reach out and pull her into a hug but he held back. She had turned away from him. She didn't want him to see her cry. It'd been so long since he had to comfort her, to be a dad, that it felt...undeserved. Their closeness wasn't deserved. He didn't deserve the right to be the one to comfort her. She needed Will or someone else, not him.
But, he was there. He reached out and placed his hand on her left shoulder and that was as far as he got. As she composed herself, he looked back at the picture and really took it in. Sydney smiled behind a pair of sunglasses, a pink sweater too big for her body hung off her right shoulder. Her and Emily were sitting in the garden, Arvin must have taken the picture. Or someone-
Jack raised the picture closer as he spotted the necklace around her neck. "Where did you get the necklace? The one in the photo?"
Sydney turned back to him and took the picture from his hand as she looked at it. "Oh, that. It was a birthday gift from Arvin."
"I don't remember ever seeing you wearing it before?"
"That's because I lost it," she said as she pocketed the picture. "Why do you want to know about the necklace?"
"It's the exact same one that Irina was wearing." Jack saw her face frown in confusion as he thought back to his conversation with his ex-wife. "That necklace was gifted to her by a "friend"."
"You're thinking that if we had the same necklace then we received it from the same person. You honestly think that Arvin and my mother-"
"Had an affair," he said as he leaned back in the chair. As if he couldn't have hated Arvin or Irina anymore than he already did; now he found out that they were most likely together and in a relationship while she was married to him. And when Arvin had been with Emily. "She said...she told me that she didn't want to have my child."
Sydney looked at him as he looked at her, both coming to the same understanding. "They could've had a child together. If they're close, he'll reach out. We need to find out."
Present Time
Coast of England
Sloane realized his mistake immediately. He could take leaps in logic to realize how they could have gotten from Irina's necklace to him, there now, on the beach in England because of Nadia. His daughter that he had with Irina Derevko had been his vulnerability.
"Jack," he said as he walked back toward them, phone still to his ear because he was too far away. There was a breeze off the water. The waves breaking on the coast. "You wouldn't hurt her. She's not a part of this."
"You sent Noah Hicks to kill Sydney in Berlin. You knew she was with the agency because of Hayden Chase." He could hear the restrained anger in his voice as he kept the gun to the back of his daughter's head. "Tell me why I shouldn't do to your daughter what you wanted him to do to mine? And before you say I don't have it in me, may I remind you of Laos."
Sloane stopped walking as he stared at Jack as the memory of Laos came to mind. Jack had been on the rooftop of a crumbling building having been tasked with taking out a Xiu, a leader of the communist Pathet Lao, a group that had been allied with North Vietnam and the Soviet Union during the Vietnam War. Jack had the shot but at the last moment, Xiu's daughter had gotten in front of her father.
Jack didn't hesitate as he fired anyway. The bullet was traveling so fast, it went through Xiu's daughter and into Xiu, killing them both. When he later asked Jack about it, his only reply was that it had to be done. It was his mission. That cold brevity had chilled his spine but it was due to Jack's ability to always do what was necessary that kept others alive and what won wars.
Sloane knew that Jack was the type of man that wanted to win all his battles. He stared at him as he spoke into the phone, "Let her go and I'll tell you what you want to know."
"You'll tell me now."
"The answer is in a shipping container that's being unloaded as we speak," he lied to him. The freighter hadn't even arrived at port yet. "We can go together. And I'll show you."
Jack was silent a moment and he knew he was considering his options. All the scenarios and possibilities. The hundreds of ways it could all go wrong. "Too many guards and security. The likelihood that you have one if not all of them on your payroll is highly in your favor. Sixty seconds."
"You bastard, Jack."
"Fifty seconds."
They continued to stare at one another as the seconds ticked by, then Sloane finally said, "All right. It's about the Horizon. Genetics. That's what it's about, Jack. Regeneration."
Jack stared at him, not understanding his answer as he narrowed his eyes in thought. He knew Jack's vision was limited. "How is Sydney connected?"
As Sloane opened his mouth to speak, a black helicopter flew overhead. "Looks like my cavalry is here," he said as he dropped the phone as gunfire erupted.
The sand flew up in the air as bullets rained down from the inside of the helicopter. Behind the 240 machine gun was Julian Sark. He watched as Jack grabbed Nadia and pulled her along with him over to the car as they took cover.
"Nadia!" he called out as a rope ladder was dropped down to him.
He grabbed the rope ladder and started climbing as Stark laid down suppressive fire from above. Looking down as the beach got further and further away, he saw Nadia being put into the car by Jack before he stared up at him as he walked around to the front of the car.
Sloane got into the helicopter as it banked away and glared at Sark. "Are you trying to kill my daughter?! Cease fire!" Once Sark stopped shooting, he told him, "Re-route the freighter. Get it turned around before it enters port."
As Sark did as he was told, he shook his head as he realized that aside from Emily, Jack had taken his entire family away from him. And if he knew of Jack's nature, Jack knew of his.
He would get even.
One Week Later
US Joint Intelligence Task Force
"I don't care what former CIA agent Jack Bristow has done to help bring down the Alliance, he's a mercenary," Director of the DCS Hayden Chase said as she confronted Kendall. Sydney watched as she looked over at her, and then the rest of the team. "And thanks to Agent Sloane and former SD-6 Agent Vaughn, the NSA was able to determine through analysis of books that had been in his possession-"
"His wife's possession," she said in defense of Jack. "His ex-wife was revealed to have been Irina Derevko, a KGB agent." She turned to Kendall. "There's reasonable doubt."
"There's also the fact that he was a senior officer of the Alliance who was aware of their criminal activity," Kendall told her.
She let out a breath as she knew that would be his retort. She wasn't expecting them to suddenly forgive and forget, but maybe there was something that could be done. "We can offer immunity for his assistance. He can be a Confidential Informant."
"Agent Sloane, I understand that you would want to help Mr. Bristow now that you know that he is your biological father, but we can't just give him immunity. He'll have to turn himself in, first, and then we can meet with the committee-"
"He won't turn himself in as long as he thinks he'll be executed."
"Which he should be," said Director Chase. "He's a traitor to this country and until we can verify for a fact that he knew nothing of his ex-wife's status as a KGB spy, he will be suspected of being a co-conspirator. At this moment, Jonathan "Jack" Bristow is a wanted fugitive. I want this task force revamped with the sole mission of finding him and bringing him in."
"You don't have the authority-"
"She doesn't, but I do," Kendall said as he glanced at her. "And I agree with Director Chase."
Sydney watched as they both walked away, toward Kendall's office, before turning around and walking up to Dixon and Vaughn. "I knew it wouldn't work, but I had to make the effort."
Dixon patted her on the arm as he said, "We'll take it one step at a time. Hopefully by the time Jack is tracked down, we'll have what we need to clear him of these charges."
Vaughn was looking at her; his eyes were full of regret. "It's my fault. If I hadn't gone after those books-"
"It's not your fault," she told him as she gave him a smile. "None of us knew the truth at the time. The only silver lining is that we have Nadia Derevko in our custody thanks to Jack. She could help lead us to Arvin who should be able to give us intel that confirms Jack's claims that he's innocent of killing over a dozen CIA agents over twenty years ago."
"That still doesn't resolve the issue that we can't even prove that Jack was a double agent working for us against the Alliance. Sloane only would've known of Jack's operation due to a CIA mole. Right now, the only mole we are aware of is Director Chase," Dixon said as he leaned on her desk.
"I'm starting to wonder if Kendall isn't involved," she said as she crossed her arms.
Vaughn let out a breath and stood. "We'll figure it out. On the plus side, I have a new job." She and Dixon both smiled as they watched as Vaughn pulled out a new ID. "I'm officially a real CIA agent."
"Congratulations," Dixon said as he patted him on the back. "It is nearly time to head on home, drinks?"
"Only if you're buying," Weiss said as he stepped up behind Dixon and slapped him on the shoulder. "This place is so much better than SD-6. Your tech guy Marshall, he needs to cut out the Red Bull but he's a genius. So, where are we going? Andre's? Joe's Pub? Syd, I'll buy you a beer because Vaughn's cheap."
"Hey," Vaughn said as he glared at him. "I'm not cheap."
"Then how come you never bought me a beer the entire time we were partners?"
Vaughn shook his head at Weiss as he told him, "You're not pretty enough."
She nearly laughed as she started walking, following Dixon, Vaughn, and Weiss out of the building. Stopped at the door, she looked in on Marshall who was in the OPS TECH room and asked, "We're grabbing a beer, want to come?"
Marshall looked up from whatever he was working on and said, "No...No, uh...I-There's this new employee. She's, well, she was the SD-6 tech specialist, and she's-" he looked around, making sure they were alone, before saying, "I think she's pretty enough."
"You heard that?"
"Oh, yeah," he said as he held up something so small with a pair of tweezers that she couldn't even see it. "I'm working on a new listening device. It's so tiny, it can only be seen on the microscopic level. It's just a speck of, like you'd be at your desk and see a crumb on the-on the desk, and you're like, "Oh no! A crumb!" and you'll wipe it away not knowing it's a uh, a microphone that just caught you, y'know, selling classified intelligence."
She gave him a nod and said, "Keep up the good work," before leaving the building.
Vaughn was waiting for her by her car. As she approached, he told her, "SD-6 had a policy about co-workers dating."
"It was frowned upon?"
"More like it was prohibited and with the threat of "retirement"," he said before smiling at her. "I don't suppose the CIA has any such policies?"
"We only do deep frowning."
He laughed as he moved away from the driver's side door to let her get in. "I can live with being frowned upon every once in a while. So, um," he said as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Do you like ice hockey too? I've got tickets to the L.A. Kings game. They're in the playoffs. Would you want to go with me?"
She tossed her jacket into the car and then her bag. Turning to him, she grabbed him behind the neck and pulled him to her as she kissed him. They stumbled slightly, drawing a smile from her as she hit her back against the car door. Once she broke the kiss, she told him, "I've been wanting to do that since we had our first drink."
Vaughn nodded and then took a breath and then kissed her again.
La Paz, Mexico
The Rendezvous
The yacht pitched from side-to-side, rocking it back-and-forth, as he tried to type on the laptop. He was used to the movements by now but it was still annoying.
"Just give up already and join me for a swim. It's a beautiful day."
He looked up at Will and saw him dressed in only a pair of swim shorts. They had anchored near La Paz, Mexico. There was a lead on Julian Sark in the town of San Pedro and he was going to check it out once it got dark. Right then, he was trying to do some recon using the CIA satellite feeds. Marshall had given him a secure access point into the live feeds when they had been searching for Will. He didn't know if it was intentional or not, but Marshall left the program on his laptop and never locked him back out.
Jack minimized the window of the satellite feed and brought up an article that had been published under the alias of Jonah Grayson that exposed the Alliance. "I read the exposé you wrote." He stared up at him as he told him, "You really do exceptional work. You're good. Really good."
Will had a sheepish grin that only he could make look innocent yet painful. "Thanks. I've always been good at finding the gaps. That didn't make sense, did it?"
Jack shrugged as he said, "The gaps are where things are hidden. People fall through gaps and are lost. You find what isn't there. Or, at least, get enough information in order for someone else to discover what isn't there."
"You know, when I was a kid," Will said as he leaned against the counter, "I went to this summer camp and I don't remember much about what I learned, but since then, I've been able to see things differently. I can't explain it. It may have been the movie "His Girl Friday" that caused me to want to be an investigative reporter, but it'd been that experience that caused me to get the itch, y'know? I wanted to uncover the truth about everything after that summer."
"It was that meaningful yet you don't remember what it was about?" he asked as he turned his attention back to the laptop.
"Odd, right? All I remember was that it'd been very satisfying and rewarding."
Jack's fingers stilled over the keyboard. He stared over at Will and watched as he picked up a towel and grabbed the bottle of water as his breath caught in his chest.
"It'd been very satisfying and rewarding." That phrase had been the indicator that someone had been trained using Project Christmas. Will had been a subject?
Will kissed him as he went by, heading up to the deck. "Don't be too long," he called out behind him.
He stared at the laptop for a very long time as he went over in his head the code that he'd broken over a month ago about the "prophesy of five" that he now knew was the group Prophet Five. One of the lines was "William the Prometheus".
Will... William. William, the Prometheus? His Will? If Will had undergone training, then that meant he'd been used in the testing portion of the program during the early 80's. He had overseen that training and the children involved. Had Will been one of his test subjects?
If he had been...
He shook his head and didn't really know how he felt about that realization. Will had obviously used his training, though it was all subconsciously, to become an exceptional investigative reporter. It was no wonder he was quick in his thinking and had been able to recite to him verbatim the instructions he'd given him over the phone even under pressure. How Will was able to get away from Sark and how he fought back against the torture, and his torturer, in Taiwan. How he knew to use his gun. How brave he'd been.
How could Lafayette have known about Will? Antonio Lafayette had to have known a lot about Project Christmas in the early days of its development and the children used in the testing phase of the program. And he had to have known about Prophet Five.
Prophet Five and Project Christmas had to be connected, but why and how?
More importantly, what did all this mean for Will?
Twenty Months Later
December 2003
London, UK
Jack opened his eyes to the sounds of a haunting piano. The sight of a crumbling ceiling with peeling paint and exposed pipes and beams blurred in his vision. He felt a burning itching as the blood in his veins felt like it was crawling to get out under his skin. A burning ache shook over his body as he tried to wake up. He was so tired. So exhausted, yet, he ached so badly. Rolling over onto his side, he spotted the source of the piano.
A boombox was sitting on the floor next to a man who blew swirling blue grey smoke from his lips. Turning to him, the man in dirty torn clothes held out a lighter.
"Ar' you goin' bang up?" the man asked.
He had no idea what the man said, but needing to end the pain and the shivering ache that plagued his body, he sat up, grabbed the lighter, and pulled out a pouch from his jacket pocket. He used his teeth to rip open a package for a new needle and grabbed the burnt silver spoon. He used the lighter to dissolve the heroin then injected it into the needle as the singer's voice entered his head.
"-Come up to meet you
Tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are-"
Using his teeth to tighten the rubber tube around his arm, he had to focus on his hand not shaking as he pierced the vein.
"-I had to find you-"
Leaning back against the wall, he closed his eyes as the euphoria spread through his veins as it became harder to concentrate.
"-Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart-"
He didn't need to anyway as the pain left his body along with every thought that plagued his mind.
"-Tell me your secrets-"
He didn't want to remember the screaming.
"-And ask me your questions-"
The yelling that strained his throat and the electrical currents that shocked his body. The days and nights that'd been filled with water and burning breathing and the screaming.
"-Oh, let's go back to the start-"
The room spun around him as the confusion in his head grew. He didn't know where he was. No idea who the man was who listened to the music and blew out the blue smoke that filled the broken room.
"-Running in circles, coming up tails-"
Out the window, he saw light. Not moonlight, but a streetlight. Street lights that were twinkling in his eyes reminding him of the light swinging back-and-forth above his head in a padded room where his screaming went unheard.
"-Heads on a science apart-"
It was snowing?
"-Nobody said it was easy-"
Stumbling to his feet, he shuffled over the bare wooden floors and headed out of the room. The hallway tilted and he tilted with it, slamming into the wall.
"-It's such a shame for us to part-"
Entering the kitchen, he coughed out the dryness in his mouth and filled a glass with water.
"Who you?" a woman's voice broke through the fog.
"-Nobody said it was easy-"
Looking over his shoulder at the woman in a blue dress...Why was everything blue? He thought about that question. Who was he?
"-No one ever said it would be this hard-"
Setting the glass on the counter, he told her, "I have no idea."
"-Oh, take me back to the start-"
She smiled, then laughed as she took him by the hand. "Are you one of Em's mates?"
Again, he had no idea what was being said. Were they intentionally making him confused? Was that British? "Am I in England?"
"Oh, poor baby," she said in a hushed whisper, "are you mental? Yes, this is England. London. You're an American?"
"Am I?" he asked and it sounded as if his voice was coming through the speaker along with the music.
The piano, and guitar, and drumming along with that hypnotic voice singing words that entered his head.
"-I was just guessing at numbers and figures-"
He was in a room that had a dragon breathing fire on the walls. Staring at it, he felt he knew the dragon from the inside. He felt it breathing the fire into his lungs.
"-Pulling your puzzles apart-"
From his drug filled head, a name entered as he stared at the woman through half-closed eyelids and blurred vision.
"-Questions of science-"
"You're not Will."
"-Science and progress-"
"I'm Kay," she said.
Whatever she was saying, and whatever happened after, was lost as a buzzing static clouded his head as he walked away.
"-Do not speak as loud as my heart-"
Hours later, when the burning ache and need rose up again, like a starved man, he reached for the needle again.
"-Tell me you love me-"
The days and nights blended into one long stream that blended consciousness and sleep.
"-Come back and haunt me-"
Repeating until he stumbled one day out into the sunlight, like a vampire he shielded his eyes from the sun that hadn't heated his face in days, possibly weeks, and started to shake from the cold.
"-Oh, and I rush to the start-"
He'd woken to an empty flat; Em and Kay were gone. An empty refrigerator. And an empty needle. His stash had run out and he was burning, and aching, he was in so much pain. His desperation was that of a man who'd been so starved that death was imminent.
"-Running in circles, chasing our tails-"
His name was a whisper in the back of his head. Trapped in a cage along with his mind. He was only a man, a-someone, in London, and he wanted to die for simply being able to breathe air into fire.
"-Coming back as we are-"
He couldn't remember why he felt so deserving of death. Other than the pain. His soul was even on fire. Fire breathing dragon. He'd done wrong. He'd been wronged. He was wrong.
"-Nobody said it was easy-"
Sweat poured from his face and neck despite the cold air that stung his face and filled his lungs. He reached up and wiped it away with his dirty sleeve of the stained white dress shirt. The sleeves were wrinkled from constantly being rolled up his arms but were down now to cover the holes.
"-Oh, it's such a shame for us to part-"
The tell-tale signs of the poison he'd been injecting into his veins that stopped the pain. Stopped the hate. Stopped the wrong.
"-Nobody said it was easy-"
It had to be. He wanted to die.
"-No one ever said it would be so hard-"
He realized he was only wearing the stained button-up shirt and pants. No socks, no shoes, not wallet, no phone, and no will to live. He wasn't supposed to be in London. He wasn't from London. He remembered angels. A city with angels and another someone.
Someone that caused his heart and body to ache with pain along with the withdrawal.
Who was it? Who was-
"-I'm going back to the start-"
His head throbbed with broken images that plagued him. He was a walking plague. Death followed him everywhere. That's what he'd done, wasn't it? He killed people.
He was the dragon. That's what it was. That was why he felt the dragon inside. It was him. He was the dragon who expelled fire from his lungs.
He should be killed. Should die right there on the pavement that was covered in snow, next to the dumpster. Walking over the snow, he kept putting one foot in front of the other as he made it to the payphone on the corner. He hadn't searched out for the payphone, but once he saw it that was where he headed.
"-Ahooooo-"
Picking up the receiver, he stared at the numbers and felt his pockets. No change. No nothing. He would have to call the operator. The number was on the tip of his tongue and without thinking, he rattled it off.
The dial tone changed and there was ringing that mixed with the static that seemed to be a constant in his head. It wouldn't go away. There was no thought beyond the static. It masked the pain.
The truth.
His name was blocked behind the static until he heard a man's voice say-
"Jack? Is that really you?"
Had he spoken? What'd he say? "I...uh-"
"-Ahooooo-"
Was he Jack? It sounded right. The first right thing he heard in months. Not since-...He couldn't remember.
Bright lights and screaming. Electric shocks and pain and more screaming. He was drowning.
He couldn't breathe.
"Is this…" The name was there, in his head. It was burned onto his mind. A name he couldn't forget. "Are you Will?"
The voice suddenly disappeared in his ear. The man's voice drifted to an echo as a dial tone beep filled his aching and confused head.
"-Ahooooo-"
He pulled the phone away and realized he hadn't dialed a number at all. He never even called the operator. He hadn't done anything except pick up the receiver.
He couldn't remember the number for the operator in the UK. The voice he had heard echoed through his mind as it faded like a memory and he was left with nothing but two names radiating in his head.
He was Jack.
And he now had an objective.
Find Will.
He was-They were…
"-Ahooooo."
Dropping the phone, he stepped away and right into the path of a delivery motorbike. They collided, both going down hard to the ground. His head hit the pavement and for a brief moment the world swirled in bright hazy colors.
"Oh God, are you okay? Sir, sir, are you okay? Can you hear me?"
No. He was pretty fucking far from okay. He shook his head into the snow covered pavement, but in his mind he was still on the phone.
In his mind, he was talking to Will. "I think I messed up," he spoke out loud.
"It's okay," the delivery driver told him as he pulled out a cell phone. "I'm going to ring for an ambulance. It'll be okay-"
He looked up towards the blue-green sky and saw the street signs above his head. And then the streetlight. And then the sky turned from blue-green to black. A black dragon drove down from the sky to set him ablaze.
His breath caught in his chest and he froze.
The delivery driver spoke into the cell phone as he said, "We're at the intersection of-"
"It's okay," Will told him, "we're here. Me and Sydney. We are with you, Jack. We can't get to you. I don't know where you are. Where are you?"
At hearing the name Sydney it sent a wave of relief through his mind. That was a nice name. Sweet name. The name of a goddess. Red goddess. A phoenix. His phoenix. His daughter. Sydney was his daughter. He had a daughter. She was his world, and Will...A trickster of the heart. His heart. He stabbed him in the heart.
"Where are you?"
Will was different. He was separate. Two in one. Two in one-
One was better than none. And he had one. He had Will. He had two. Sydney rose from fire and he was the fire. He devoured her-
"I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm-...I'm the dragon-" His body spasmed and he curled into a ball as aching in his body grew tighter, harder, and more painful.
It hurt to breathe. He had to breathe. He had to breathe.
He had to-
Through the darkness he heard slurred voices and felt his body lift from the cold ground. Someone was yelling. The noise caused him to peer up through slits of cloudy whiteness that blinded him. Shutting his eyes, he winced at the movement that caused his stomach to do flips.
"We need to get him to hospital immediately! Think it's-"
"Jack! Stay with me! Hello, can you hear me? Are you there?"
He heard Will's voice in his head before a woman said, "He's not looking good."
Feeling his stomach lurch, he was rolled to his side as he got sick. Hands were on his head, running fingers through his hair, as his body shook and shivered with cold sweat as numbness made his legs feel as heavily as cement.
He was dying.
"Are you there?"
He knew he was dying. It was the only thing that made sense. The fire from the dragon that burned his body was going to melt him from the inside out.
He was being moved again as his mind spun out of control. Up was down, heaven was hell, and love raged with hate. He needed to get out of his clothes. He needed to get another fix. He needed to get up and stop the pain.
Everything hurt.
His body was on fire. Shaking with cold. Nothing made any sense. Not his body. Not his mind. His hands felt like heavy weights but his legs were weightless. Full of air.
He needed air.
He needed to throw up. He stumbled through a door and collapsed next to a toilet as his body shivered violently. Hands helped to stop him from-He had grabbed a pair of scissors.
What was he planning on doing with scissors?
Hands rubbed his back and wiped a wet cloth over his face and neck as he slipped the scissors into the pocket of the hospital scrubs he wore.
Opening his eyes, he saw a set of blue eyes staring into his. He knew those eyes. Knew that frown of concern.
"Will." His heart pounded heavy in his chest as he saw Will smile. He wasn't dying. He was in love. "I've missed you."
Will lifted him to his feet and wrapped his arm around his body as he helped him out of the bathroom. "I've missed you. What happened?"
He went to shake his head when he felt the ache in his head and the twisting in his gut.
"Sir?" the nurse said as she guided him back toward the bed in the hospital room. "We need you to get back in bed-...Sir, can you hear me?"
Why was everyone asking if he could hear? He wasn't-"I can hear you!" he snapped and grabbed the nurse and pinned her to the walls.
Screaming filled his head as arms grabbed him, yanking, pulling, and clawing at his body, neck, and face. He was thrown to the floor as something constrained his arms and tightened over his chest.
The pin-prick of a needle stung his backside.
When he woke, he wrinkled his head in confusion at the white ceiling and beeping monitors. He went to move his arms and felt them trapped at his sides. They had him restrained to the bed.
His head was throbbing as he swallowed bile down his throat. He tried to keep his eyes open as he slurred out, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I'm here now," Will told him as he ran his fingers through his hair.
"I didn't know-"
"It's not your fault. Anyway, I'm here now and I'm not going anywhere."
He felt his body start to float down into unconsciousness. He was nearly asleep when he felt fingers on his wrist, then on his arm, the crock of his elbow. Fingers that rubbed over the scars and holes that stung his skin with aching need and want.
A soft curse filled his head as he opened his eyes to stare up into Will's worried, sad, eyes. He was lying with his head in his lap. He felt safe, at home.
"I need you. Don't leave again. I need you, please don't-"
"Where you go, I go. I'm not going anywhere."
"Don't tell me that, don't-They took-"
"What'd they take?" Will asked because he needed to know the truth.
He needed to remember the truth.
Staring up at the ceiling as Will faded away, Jack said as he closed his eyes, "Everything."
The Cliffhanger.
TBC...In Part 2: "A Spy in London"
A/N1: The song used at the end of this chapter is "The Scientist" by Coldplay. No copyright intended.
A/N2: Part 2 will start being posted in a few weeks, maybe a month. I want to get ahead on chapters so I'm not rushing to get them written before posting (like I ended up doing with this story).
