Her heart sinks when Marshall confirms her father's suspicions: he can't write a program to disable the Yakuza virus without seeing the code. On site.
"Look like I'm goin' on another mission," he concludes, looking at Dixon. "If you sanction it, of course—"
"Fine, Marshall," Dixon says, and Sydney wonders when Marcus's favorite word became 'fine,' "I'll ask Strategic Services to design an operation for you both to infiltrate the casino's administrative offices."
Her heart sinks even further when Marshall interrupts with a card-counting scenario designed to attract the attention of the casino security. She can't help thinking about Carrie when he suggests getting caught at counting cards as a way of accessing the casino's back room. This might be totally unnecessary, if they just told them about Sark's plan to pass them a copy of the virus.
But there's no interrupting Marshall, and the next thing she knows, they're slated to be a couple of married Texans out to blow some money at the blackjack table.
Outside the briefing room, her father grabs her by the elbow and steers her into a corner. "Sydney, you need to keep Marshall from running his program. I'll leave it up to you how to do that, but Sark and Bomani must get away with at least one copy of the virus intact."
She wrenches her arm free from his vice-grip and crosses her arms. "I know that, thank you. I can't believe they're letting Sloane get away with this."
"Neither can I, sweetheart, but you know we have no choice but to comply."
The card-counting routine works like a dream, and in less than a half hour after entering the casino, they're being shoved into an officer's room where two samurai swords hang crossed on the wall.
"But, sir, we weren't counting cards, I swear!" Marshall stammers, doing his best to keep his ridiculous Texan accent intact. The man turns and gently lifts one of the swords from the rack behind him. "I really like my pinkies."
"For this, we will take your whole hand!" The casino security is not kidding around. He's out for blood, and just then, Vaughn's voice comes over their comms:
You need to hurry up, Sark and Bomani are downstairs now. We just saw them on the surveillance feeds.
She glances sideways at Marshall, who tugs the strings of his bolo tie, shooting the security officer in the neck with sedative-laden darts. She takes out the guard to her right with a hitch-kick to the chest that sends him sprawling backwards. A blow to the temple renders him unconscious, and when she looks up, Marshall is already feverishly hacking at the workstation.
"Can you find the code?" she asks, moving to stand over his shoulder.
"Just… gimme… one second," he murmurs as his fingers fly over the keys.
They're almost there, can you get out? Vaughn sounds mildly panicked.
"I'm not done yet, I'm not done yet!" Marshall is working frantically when she hears the footsteps outside the door.
"Under the desk!" she shoves him down and crawls underneath the cavernous desk amongst the dust bunnies with him.
Footsteps cross the room and Sark pulls the chair from in front of them and then his knee is about three inches from Marshall's head.
"I'm downloading the program now," he narrates for Bomani, who is ostensibly at the door keeping watch. "It looks as though someone was here before us."
Just then Marshall clutches at her hand and she knows instantly his fake moustache is tickling. She shoves her finger hard against the base of his nose, and above their heads, Sark exclaims, "Damnit, the first disk is corrupt. I'll have to use the backup."
"Whatever you use, you need to hurry," Bomani's deep, heavily-accented voice booms across the room. "I can hear the guards coming."
"I'm going as fast as I can," Sark mutters. Her stomach flip-flops at his nearness, the smell of his cologne filling the small space she and Marshall are crammed into. This is twice in two days she's been so close but unable to touch him, and it's driving her mad.
Phoenix, Merlyn, do you copy?
They're both silent, barely breathing, until Sark stands abruptly and says, "I've got it, let's go."
Only after the door shuts behind them does she remove her finger from Marshall's lip to touch her earpiece. "Boy Scout, this is Phoenix—we copy. Sark and Bomani have the virus."
Get yourselves out of there. Their entrance has alerted security in other parts of the casino—we can't risk you getting caught.
Marshall sneezes violently three times in rapid succession as they crawl out from under the desk. "But, but we didn't get the, uh, virus, I can still do it," he stammers as she drags him from the room.
"Marshall, there's no time, we'll deal with it when we get back to the Ops Center, but we've gotta run, OK?" she tries to impress upon him the urgency of their current situation. "You've seen the code, maybe you can recreate it in your lab."
"But—I, achoo!" Marshall sneezes so hard he stops hurrying to double over. "Jesus, I don't think I have allergies, but I might be a little, uh, you know—allergic. To Sark."
She glances over her shoulder and says, "I think it's your moustache, let's go aleady!"
The babble of angry voices shouting in Japanese is growing louder when they round a corner and come upon a stairwell. She slams the door open and shoves Marshall in front of her, pulling her pistol from her purse with the other hand. A shot whines past them and Marshall flinches, but she darts out of the safety of the upper stairway to return a shot or two in their direction.
They spill out into the alleyway behind the casino and take off at a dead run. Their van is waiting up the street, and her shins are burning by the time they reach it. Stupid heels.
"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod," Marshall babbles incoherently as they careen towards the airstrip. "Syd, you were unbelievable! I mean, you were like, like, Wonderwoman on speed—"
"Marshall, please," she shakes her head and reaches over to tear off the moustache that nearly did them in. "You did a great job."
"I—you think? Really? I mean, I'm no James Bond, but do you think Dixon would let me, uh, you know," Marshall looks sheepish suddenly. "That's not a good idea, is it."
She smiles, amused at his sudden embarrassment, "What do you think Carrie would say about you being in the field?"
Marshall deflates suddenly, and he says, "Yeah, you're right. But you were still awesome—whoa, why am I so tired all of a sudden, are you tired, I mean, I could take a little, you know, 50 winks or whatever before we get to the airport."
"Take a deep breath, you're just hopped up on adrenaline," she suggests, pulling the itchy black wig from her head. "You can nap on the plane."
"Right, plane, we've got a long flight, Osaka seems nice, but then, it's the middle of the night, so what do I know, it's not like we saw it or anything…"
The debriefing goes as painlessly as that of any failed mission: it's agreed that Marshall will try to recreate the code from what he saw, and the CIA will keep tabs on Sloane's activities as they pertain to the Covenant. She can feel her father's stern gaze on her as she recounts her version of the events, but she doesn't meet his eyes.
After the meeting dissolves, she is on her way to the bathroom when the sound of Lauren's voice, sharp with hurt, pulls her up short.
"I can't believe you'd take her side over mine," Lauren says. Sydney freezes and tucks herself behind an open door. It sounds like Lauren's right around the corner.
"It's not about sides, Lauren," she hears Vaughn reply, "It's not fair for you to accuse Sydney of not doing her job—sometimes you have to deviate from protocol in the field. Things don't always go as planned."
"I understand that," Lauren's voice gets softer and she has to strain to hear them, "But don't you think it's somewhat suspicious that they let the Covenant get away with the virus and didn't disable it at the terminal onsite? And you said yourself she went off comms in Madrid to meet with Sark to make some kind of off-the-books agreement with him." Sydney's stomach twists in protest at this criticism, but she holds her breath and keeps listening.
"Look, I know it may not seem obvious what her plan is, but I know Sydney," Vaughn argues, "She'll come through in the end—she always does."
Lauren sighs, and Sydney can just imagine her making her lovey-dovey expression at Vaughn. "I guess if that's good enough for you, it's good enough for me." She cringes to hear their lips meet and some soft murmuring that is too low for her to discern, but just loud enough for her to imagine in all its detail. When the clack of Lauren's heels has receded from earshot, she steps out of her hiding place and continues on her way to the bathroom.
"Hey, Syd," Vaughn calls after her, but she pretends not to hear him, moving a little faster until she breaks into a half-run. "Syd?"
She cannot get to the women's room fast enough. Inside, she ducks into a stall and sinks down on the toilet, the heel of her hand pressed against her lips as sobs silently wrack her torso. She will not let herself make a sound. Not because of him.