13 YEARS AGO (Shortly before Day 2)
She was known as Jenny Scott back then. Twelve months into a five year sentence, she was released from juvie, supposedly for good behavior. Truthfully, since she arrived at the detention facility she had no behavior whatsoever. She did nothing but try not to get noticed. She'd been nothing but an empty shell since she had watched her boyfriend kill a man, then pull her into his car. Suddenly one day she's pulled, given back her things, and told to get a life.
She exited the facility and caught sight of a stretch limousine waiting outside. The driver got out and opened the back door. Jenny looked over to see who was exiting, and saw the driver looking straight at her.
"Ms. Scott?"
She figured there would be a quid pro quo to her early release. She had nowhere to go and no one waiting for her- Kevin was still in jail and her sister Ruth was halfway across the country trying to start over. She'd sent a few letters asking to keep in touch, but said that she couldn't be anywhere near home after what happened. She walked to the limo with little hesitation. She had no idea who these people were or what they wanted, but she didn't see much other choice.
As she slid into the limo, a man seated across from her offered her a drink. Suspiciously, she accepted it. The vodka was hard for her to get down, but she managed it without choking. The limo started to move, and the man still hadn't said a word.
"Who are you?"
The man smiled. "My name is Mikhail Novakovich, but this is not important. Surely you have better questions."
Jenny didn't like this- being tested without knowing why.
"What do you want with me?"
"This is better. We want to help you. We want to give you purpose, let your skills develop. You adapt and can stay unnoticed. We can help you improve, teach you new things."
Jenny accepted this in silence. A few minutes later, she saw them pulling onto an airport tarmac. There were several small planes scattered around the hangars, but they sped by all of them. The limo continued to the large hangar at the very end of the tarmac, which contained a similarly large plane.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Nizhniy. Russia."
Jenny suppressed a gasp. She'd never been further than Kansas City before, and now she was escaping the country without even trying. She smiled- she was getting a life, after all.
Once they arrived in Nizhniy, Novakovich accompanied Jenny to an underground bunker. He led her to a private room, where she found a bed and attached bathroom, as well as clothes in the wardrobe and books on the desk's shelf.
"You will be sleeping and studying here. Settle in for the night. Tomorrow you start learning."
She felt a pang of ire- this seemed no different than the last year of her life, stuck in her cot until someone told her she could go outside. At least here there were books. She looked them over- not the crappy romance novels she'd grown up with. These books were guides on infiltration, reading people, surviving. Whatever was in store for her certainly didn't seem boring.
She turned out to be wrong. The next few weeks were exceptionally boring. She was told procedures and protocols, barely allowed contact with anyone else, and not allowed outside the bunker at all. This was just a continued imprisonment, except she didn't speak the language.
After the boring information sessions were boring tests. They polygraphed her, tested her physical endurance, and her mental capabilities. The tests lasted a few days, and then the fun stuff started. She had a history of technological aptitude. She spent hours with programmers and analysts becoming an adept hacker. They taught her how to shoot a gun and made a bomb. They offered her tips for hiding things within reach and escaping a pursuer. They let her out of the bunker for advanced driving techniques. After a few months, she was assigned to a mentor.
She told Jenny that her name was Yelena. This was just an alias, she had several. Back in the United States, they knew her as Nina. The Russians had offered her the position when they found out she was released from jail. She had expertise, they had money. She was going to teach Jenny everything she knew about infiltrating a government organization.
"The first thing you'll need is your new identity. This is who you are now. Understand me, when someone yells at Jenny Scott in the street, you don't turn around. If they shout for Jenny Scott to get down, you do not flinch. If someone says Jenny Scott is in danger, you don't listen. If they ask for Dana Walsh, you will respond." She passed Dana a large envelope.
"This is your life now. You will memorize it. You will live and breathe it. If someone asks where you grew up, I want you to know everything up to the exact location of the swing set in the backyard."
Each morning, Nina would come in before the girl was awake and shout "Dana! Dana!" When she responded, she took her to breakfast. When she didn't, she got ice water in her face. Occasionally, Nina or someone else would call for Jenny. When she responded, she was often met with a slap to the face. With time, Jenny became Dana, then Jenny was forgotten.
It was liberating to be someone else. Jenny was weak, but Dana wasn't. Dana was dangerous and strong.
Nina had her own separate lesson plan for Dana. She taught Dana the benefit of her experience.
"Most important thing- don't let it get personal. The whole game changes when it gets personal. I let it get personal once. Now I'm going to be watching my back until he's dead."
"Why don't you track him down and take care of him?" Nina was a skilled operative. Dana couldn't imagine her scared of anyone.
"Because it's not just personal for him." Nina let that sink in for a bit before she continued. "I had him at gunpoint, just waiting for the ok. When he started to walk away, I knew I had to shoot then or let him go. I let him lead me straight into a set-up, and now he's going to be looking for me the second I'm back on the grid."
Nina explained briefly about the plot to set Jack up for Palmer's assassination, how it went wrong, how she ended up having to kill Teri to save her exit. Then she told Dana the real story.
"I had it all planned out. He was supposed to be arrested, but I had his transport route covered. There was a team in place to extract him to Morocco. I had a great place in Morocco, I know he would have loved it. Without the wife and kid around, he'd have no reason to go back to LA. We could have been such a great team, ruthless and brilliant." She sighed. "But then I had to get rid of his wife myself, and he just couldn't understand that I had no other choice."
Dana thought she would never make that mistake- she'd never let anyone get close. And if they did, she wouldn't go after anyone they cared about, at least. Nina pulled herself straighter and started discussing setting up contingency plans and securing escape routes.
For the next few months, Nina taught her almost everything she knew. Not just about infiltration or assassinations or arms deals, but about life and love. It seemed more to Dana like life and obsession, but Nina called it love so that's what she accepted it as. Nina stayed for a total of ten months until a man from Kiev came with a job for her.
Dana finished training two months later and was given the ground rules: take our training and do what you want with it until we call you. Then you will complete our work, and the transaction will be over. They had given her documents and identifications; her life story had been memorized months ago. They secured her transfer admission in an American college for Computer Science, and promised to find her a job when the time came. They wired her enough money into a numbered account to keep her comfortable until she was working.
After a year and a half of college (mostly to secure her cover; the Russians and Nina had taught her more tricks than any of her professors knew), the Russians secured her work at a US DOD-contracted security firm as a systems analyst, and made sure her résumé ended up in the short stack. The day before Brian Hastings called her with the job offer, a man from the Russian syndicate was on her phone, saying that they had an assignment for her. He gave her instructions to take the CTU job and await another call.
One thing led to another, and now, thirteen years after getting her supposed new life, she found herself chained to a hard metal chair in a steel cargo container.
The entire saga took several days to discuss. At the mention of the plan involving his wife and daughter, Jack's features distorted in rage. When he heard Nina's ravings, he was floored- literally, he sat down on his sleeping bag and stared in confusion for five minutes straight. Despite this, he was back to his stoic and focused nature by the end of Dana's speech. Somehow he had managed to absorb everything she threw at him and was still able to keep his mind on the present.
Jack let her sleep soon after she started the story, and the next few days she told the story in bursts of several hours. They would stop to eat, drink, use the nearby bathroom, and sleep. Jack was alright with sleeping on a thin sleeping bag on the cold metal floor- he'd been in worse. Dana was not comfortable sleeping upright chained to a chair. Jack had put the chair near a wall so she could lean her head on it if she chose, but it didn't help much. Her only relief was that uncomfortable was better than dead.
When she was done, her eyes locked on his hands as she expected him to reach for the gun. She was wrong. They still had 2 days before they reached land. During that time, Jack probed her for additional details. Where was the facility located? How did the Russians secure her employment? Dana answered what she could, but her answers were vague at best. Either she didn't know anything or she was planning on using those details as bargaining chips later. Jack gave up after a few hours and not getting anywhere. He spent the remaining time at sea in complete silence sitting on his sleeping bag, staring blankly at the wall across from him. He got up for necessities for himself and his prisoner, but otherwise wasn't very good company.
They both felt it when the ship slowed to dock at the port. Dana's heart started beating faster as her distrust of Jack resurfaced. If he was going to kill her, he would be doing it soon.
"This reaches higher than you realize, Jack. We were in government facilities, using state of the art tech. This was no renegade operation; they had people pulling strings in the Russian government. I have no idea how high it reaches, but it's deep. Jack, you'll never be able to get to the bottom of this without me. What are you going to do with me once we get off the ship?"
Jack smirked. "Relax, you bought your life. Once we get to shore you're not my problem anymore. And I know just how high your damn organization reaches. I found evidence that President Suvarov was in it." He leaned in closer "And now the US Government knows as well." He stood back up, leaning against the back of his chair. "My part in this is done. Our business together will be done as soon as we step onto land."
"So what, we get off this ship and I get to go skipping off into the sunset?"
"We get off this ship and you hope I never see you again. Dana, you're still alive. That's all the proof I've got for you, so stop trying my patience."
True to his word, Dana was still alive when the ship finished docking. Once the commotion outside had settled down, Jack prepared to move out. He released her from the chair, but put the regular cuffs on her to lead her out.
"Why am I still cuffed?"
"Because you're going to try to kill me the first chance you get. You'll get the key once we're on land."
They reached the top of the gangway. Dana could see all the workers milling about, trying to get home. They were all piling into their dusty pickup trucks and fifteen year old station wagons, going to see their families for the first time in over a month. At the very end of the gangway, several shiny SUVs were waiting, looking very much out of place.
As Jack and Dana reached the bottom of the gangway, six men with semi-automatic weapons piled out of the SUVs and advanced towards them.