Wrong

Chapter 1

Irina smiled warmly at Jack. “It’s been far too long.”

“Yes, it has,” Jack replied. He moved in and kissed her deeply.

He moved back and scowled, and she realized with a start that she was chained hand and foot to a bed. She struggled against the chains, but only succeeded in making noise. She looked up at him, pain in her eyes. “Why?”

He came in close again, and she felt the heat of his breath against her neck as he whispered, “Why not?” Then he was straddling her, pushing her legs apart and entering her with a hard, hot thrust. She cried out in pain as he rammed into her over and over; finally, he spilled his seed and fell against her chest, exhausted. Her tears made tracks down her cheeks, spilling off her chin and into his hair. He looked up, smiled at her gently, and brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “My Irina. Everything will be all right.”

“No, it won’t, Jack,” she whispered. “If it were anyone else, maybe, but not you. Never you.”

He stood, smiling viciously, and she saw that he was hard again. “Ready for another round?”

***


Irina’s eyes flew open. The blankets on top of her felt oppressive, and she pushed them off impatiently, only to feel chilled as the sweat she’d produced during her nightmare evaporated. Just a dream, she told herself. Jack wouldn’t do that to her.

The door opened. Irina half sat up and frowned as Arvin Sloane entered carrying a tray. She hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, and she’d been hoping that he’d gotten himself killed. “Good morning, Irina,” he said with a smile. “Breakfast time.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said truthfully.

Sloane put the tray down on the room’s small table. “Now, Irina, you must keep up your strength.”

Irina bit back a retort and remained still. She wanted to ask, “For what?” as she knew perfectly well they were never going to let her go.

After a moment, Arvin raised his eyebrows. “Come eat, Irina. I don’t want to have to force feed you again.”

Seeing that he wasn’t going to leave her alone, Irina got out of bed with a grunt of effort and crossed the room slowly, staggering slightly. She hated the idea of showing weakness in front of Arvin Sloane, but reminded herself that it was necessary if she had any chance of getting out—she pushed the thought away. She couldn’t allow herself to hope that escape was truly possible, or these walls would drive her insane.

She picked up the fork carefully, deliberately dropped it, and then picked it up again. Arvin looked pleased. Her breakfast was a single scrambled egg and half a piece of dry toast, but still it turned her stomach. She stared at the food for a moment, then put the fork down. “I can’t.”

Sloane sat down next to her and pulled the fork from her limp fingers. “Come, Irina, just a few bites.” He scooped up a small bite of the eggs and held it to her lips. Hating the indignity of it, she opened her mouth slightly and let him feed her. Her expression of distaste was unfeigned. She swallowed with difficulty and reached out for the plastic cup of water. When she tried to pick it up, the heaviness surprised her; it tipped and cold water ran everywhere. She swore inwardly. That hadn’t been planned; she was still far from capable of making an escape attempt.

She sat still, pasting a dull expression on her face, as Arvin grabbed the pile of paper towels that always came with her meal trays. Ice water dripped onto her lap, and she squirmed just a little, raising her hands toward the water and then dropping them as if it were too much effort.

Sloane mopped up the water from her and the table, then glanced at her sodden breakfast. “Shall I send down for more?” She shook her head, letting the wave of nausea that rolled over her show on her face. “All right, let’s get you in something dry.” He went to get a dry nightgown from the dresser; by the time he returned, she’d pulled herself out of the chair and stood gripping the table for support. She took the nightgown and staggered toward the bathroom, closing the door behind her. It didn’t latch, but at least there was a door.

A few minutes later, she emerged. She noticed as she walked toward the bed that her nightgown was on backwards, but she couldn’t remember if she’d done it on purpose or not. She pretended to stumble, but then lost her balance and fell for real; Sloane caught her and half-carried her to the bed. “Time for your medicine, Irina.”

“No,” she moaned as he wrapped leather restraints around her wrists, binding her to the bed. Sloane left her cell, and returned shortly pushing a medical cart. He began to mix the drug solution that she would be getting.

As with all drugs, Irina had been building up a tolerance to this one, and she’d noticed that the amount she was getting was slowly growing. One day, though, she’d managed to think enough through the fog of the drug to realize that they must be using her behavior to decide when to increase the dose and had started pretending that the drug was affecting her more than it actually was. She was now getting to the point where she could think mostly coherently some of the time, though her coordination was still off. Of course, some of that could be due to muscle atrophy, but there was no help for that.

Sloane uncapped the IV line that was already in her arm and hooked it up to the bag he’d just prepared. “I heard from Katya this morning,” he said, and Irina turned her head toward him, hoping her expression didn’t show the rage that had flared up at the mention of her sister’s name. “She sends you her regards, and said to tell you that she found your husband quite a good fuck.” He smiled at the fury Irina couldn’t keep out of her face, then left the room.

*****

Chapter 2

Jack stood outside a hospital room, watching his daughter through the window. She sat reading a book while her sister slept. He hesitated for a long moment and was about to leave when Sydney looked up. She smiled at him, put her book down, and came to the door. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Jack replied. He glanced in at Nadia. “How’s she doing?”

“The doctors say she’ll be fine.” They were silent for a moment. “Dad…are you doing okay? I mean, with Nadia, and Sloane and everything…”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, his expression carefully neutral.

“Have you heard from Mom? I mean, if she’s really been looking for Nadia all these years…”

“No. I haven’t heard from her.” Jack was unsure what to think of Irina’s silence. He’d been expecting for months that she’d make contact with Sydney, but she hadn’t, nor had she initiated contact with him. He could only assume she was too busy with her own agenda, whatever that might be.

Sydney frowned, and for a moment looked disappointed; she hid it quickly, but Jack had seen that expression far too many times not to recognize it. His heart twisted. No matter how many times her parents failed her, she never seemed to stop hoping. “I just thought…well, I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything from her.”

He wanted to give her reassurance, but he had none to offer. There was another uncomfortable silence. “I’d better go,” Jack said finally. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Sydney said with a small smile. She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and gave him a hug. He returned it a bit stiffly. There seemed to be nothing else to say, so Jack turned and left the hospital.

***

Irina lay unmoving for what seemed an age, the drug making it impossible for her to do so much as twitch. Her thoughts, hazy from the drug, flitted from memory to memory with no control. She didn’t need nightmares; enough horrors lay in her own past.

Finally the drug’s effects began to fade, and her thoughts cleared. She didn’t try to move at first, still feeling weak and knowing she should remain still longer so that the drug’s efficacy wasn’t doubted.

After a long while, she opened her eyes and tried to roll to her side, only to realize that Sloane had left her wrists restrained. That, combined with Katya being gone, could only mean one thing. She moaned and tried to sit up, the vestiges of the drug overcoming her better judgment.

Unsurprisingly, Sloane came in immediately; no doubt he’d been waiting and watching through the two-way mirror—shatterproof, of course—that took up most of one wall. “Irina,” he said almost tenderly, reaching out to touch her as she attempted to twist her head away from him. “Your dear sister isn’t due back for at least another day, so we can enjoy ourselves, can’t we?” He moved to the foot of the bed, where he bound her ankles to opposite corners as she commanded herself to kick him in the head. Her foot actually did make some weak upward movements this time, but he pushed it down easily.

Once her ankles were secured, he slid her gown up, lifting her body to free it, until the front of the gown was bunched around her neck, making her feel suffocated and leaving her exposed from the shoulders down. He ran his hand over her clearly defined ribs and frowned. “You’re too thin, Irina. We’re going to have to find a way to get you to eat more.” He then unzipped his pants and climbed onto the bed.

Irina’s tears began to flow as he pushed into her. She wasn’t ready, of course, and the searing pain felt as if it would rip her body in half. She sometimes thought in her more lucid moments that it was a good thing Sloane was far from well endowed, as his size did reduce the pain and damage to some extent.

His thrusts came harder and faster until he finally released with a grunt. He collapsed and lay on top of her for a moment, then got off the bed and looked at her tear-stained face as he zipped up again. He smiled at her paternally as he tugged her nightgown down; she stared back with as much fury as she could manage. He left her cell and returned with a plastic cup with a straw in it. She wanted to refuse when he held it up to her lips, but while the drug made her stomach rebel at the idea of anything solid, it also induced an unquenchable thirst. So she accepted the straw and sucked down some water, hating the need to accept anything from him. When he’d decided she’d had enough, he withdrew the straw. His pleased smile made Irina think of knives; she glared at him impotently. “I’ll be back in about an hour with your lunch, my dear,” he said, brushing her cheek one last time. Then he left, leaving her restrained to the bed and wishing for anything, anything but this.

*****

Chapter 3

“Jack,” Dixon said, coming into Jack’s office, “Katya Derevko is leaving today.”

“I know,” Jack replied, barely glancing up.

“We’re keeping surveillance on her, in case she makes contact with Irina.”

Jack nodded. “I’d expected something of the sort.” He also expected that Katya would notice and quickly lose the CIA tail.

“I just thought you should know,” Dixon added uncomfortably. “If we should catch Irina…”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jack said. He looked directly at Dixon. “Thank you for telling me.”

Dixon nodded and left, and Jack turned to his computer, where he was running his own surveillance on Katya. He’d indicated to her, subtly and then not so subtly, that he wanted to make contact with Irina; Katya had evaded him. She had promised to give Irina a message, but had said she doubted Irina would respond.

Jack had been concerned that something was not as it seemed with respect to Irina when his question about the Passenger hadn’t been answered. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Irina had simply signed off, but deleting her username and sending him a virus seemed a little extreme. His attempts to use the other methods they had established to contact each other had all failed. At that point, he’d begun to wonder if he was really speaking to Irina, and if he had in fact been speaking to her at all since Sydney had returned.  If he hadn’t been speaking to Irina, logically, he’d been communicating with Katya.

He’d considered all his possible options and decided that observing Katya was best. So he’d allowed her attempts at seducing him to succeed and used the opportunity to plant a subcutaneous tracker and transmitter. With any luck, she would lead him to Irina.

***

When she felt someone stroking her hand, Irina forced her eyes open to see her sister sitting beside her. Katya saw her eyes open and smiled warmly at her, as if she wasn’t keeping Irina prisoner, as if she hadn’t just returned from seducing Irina’s husband. “You whore,” Irina rasped hoarsely.

Katya frowned, and her thumb stopped moving. “To what are you referring?” She resumed rubbing Irina’s hand, knowing she needed the tactile stimulation to stay awake.

“You fucked my husband.”

“Your ‘husband’?” Katya looked amused. “It’s not as if you’ve been much of a wife to him.”

“That’s not the point,” Irina said, her voice low and dangerous. “You know perfectly well how I feel about him. He’s the father of my chil…” She realized what she was about to say and cursed herself as she launched into a coughing fit. “The father of my child,” she continued after a moment. “And knowing all that, you went off to make him another of your conquests while you left me here with that—thing you call a business partner.”

Katya stopped rubbing again as her expression grew hard. “He wasn’t here when I left,” she said sharply. “What did he do?”

Irina turned her face away. “You know what he did,” she said, forcing back tears.

“That bastard.” Irina felt Katya’s hand squeeze her shoulder, but she didn’t turn. “I’m so sorry, darling. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Irina turned to face Katya again. “I don’t want to hear it,” she hissed. “If you care for me at all, if you ever did, either let me go or kill me.”

Katya looked at her for a moment, pensive. “I’m going to go have a talk with Arvin.” She stood and walked out.

With no external stimulation, Irina soon began to feel sleepy again; it was easy to let the drug pull her down into oblivion.


***

Jack let himself into his dark, empty house and headed for the kitchen, where he took his time pouring himself a drink. After he’d mixed it to his satisfaction, he took it and his laptop into his study, where he set up the computer and checked his bug-killing measures. As he’d expected, the CIA had quickly lost Katya, but his transmitter still seemed to be functioning.

Jack of course couldn’t listen in on Katya every minute of every day, so he’d programmed the computer to scan for “Irina” and for the word “sister” in either English or Russian; it was simple enough, but he thought it would be quite effective in finding conversations Katya had with or about Irina. The computer showed no flags on any conversations since he’d packed it up at the office; he sighed and took a long drink, then switched on the audio.

“I’m going to go have a talk with Arvin,” Katya said, and Jack started. He’d considered many possibilities of Katya’s true agenda, and had of course thought of the idea that she might have been working with Sloane, but he’d thought it rather preposterous. Obviously he’d been wrong.

There was only the sound of footsteps for a few moments, as Jack wondered to whom Katya had been talking before he’d tuned in. But he forgot about that when he heard Arvin Sloane’s voice. “Ah, Katya. Did you have a good trip?”

Jack heard a sound that might have been a slap. “You son of a bitch,” Katya said angrily. “What did I tell you about leaving my sister alone?”

Sloane’s voice was conciliatory. “Katya, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“As I told you before, obviously she’s delusional. I doubt she knows the difference between dreams and reality at this point.”

“Then why does she only mention it when I’ve been gone and you’ve been around?” Katya’s voice was soft, but Jack had an idea how dangerous she was at the moment.

There was silence for a moment, and then Arvin’s voice came across, still calm and collected. “Perhaps we’ve underestimated your sister, Katya.”

“What are you talking about?” There was a note of uncertainty in Katya’s voice.

“Irina Derevko is a brilliant and dangerous woman; we mustn’t be fooled by her current state into thinking she’s harmless. Perhaps she’s making these groundless accusations in order to drive a wedge between us; perhaps she thinks that if you feel she’s being mistreated, you’ll let her out. I did tell her that you were gone; I suppose that was a mistake on my part.”

“It doesn’t seem like Irina to make up something like that, though.” Katya’s tone was doubtful.

“Desperation can make someone do strange things. And we have been holding her a very long time,” Sloane said smoothly.

Jack shut off the audio. He’d review the rest later if necessary, but for now, he had what he needed. Sloane and Katya were working together, and they were holding Irina in—he checked the tracking device—Italy. He picked up the phone.


*****

Chapter 4

Katya held a spoonful of mashed potatoes to her sister’s lips, which opened obligingly as soon as the spoon touched them. Irina took the mashed potatoes and swallowed them, her expression never changing, continuing to stare into space. She had slipped away again into a semi-catatonic state; these episodes seemed to be getting longer and more frequent, and Katya was getting quite worried. Irina’s physician was also concerned about the catatonia and about the dangers of continuing to drug her. And Katya could no longer ignore Irina’s allegations that Sloane had raped her. The first time, Katya had believed Sloane’s postulation that Irina was confusing dreams with reality. The second time, Katya had told Sloane to leave Irina alone; the third time, she’d even gone so far as to have Jack Bristow come close to killing Arvin. After that, Irina’s claims had stopped for a while, as Katya had done her best not to leave the compound. But now that it had happened again…Katya decided that there would be no more chances. It was time for the partnership with Sloane to end.

An alarm sounded, and Katya hurried to the intercom. “What is it?” she asked her security chief.

“We’ve got visitors,” the man said. “About half a dozen, but they’re well-prepared.” She heard flurried activity through the intercom, then “Shit! That’s Toni Cummings!”

Katya froze when she heard the name of the woman who had designed the security system. Ever paranoid, she’d put in a few other basic alarms after Cummings had finished; that must have been what they’d tripped. But if Cummings had sold her out, this facility was effectively useless. “Have security hold them off while all other personnel evacuate.”

She turned to her sister. “Irina.” Irina didn’t respond. Katya hurried to the dresser and quickly got Irina changed into pants and a jacket, then handcuffed her hands in front of her. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Irina by the arm. Fortunately, Irina’s catatonia was such that she could walk and would go where she was led with a minimum of fuss. Katya began leading her toward the exit.

***

Jack cursed when the facility’s guards began firing at his team of freelancers. “What went wrong?” he asked Toni Cummings as they both returned fire.

“She must have brought in someone else to add another layer of defenses,” Cummings answered distractedly. “She did seem like the type to cover all her bases.”

“Yes,” Jack replied, thinking of the multiple methods of getting a tracker onto Katya that he’d tried; several times she’d come perilously close to catching him. He’d finally decided that his only remaining option was to sleep with her. 

They finally broke through the guards, but Jack’s original team of six was down to four. “I’ll take the roof,” he said, heading toward the nearest stairwell from his memories of the facility’s blueprints. The others nodded and fanned out in separate directions, their orders to take Sloane, Katya, and Irina alive if they found them, as Jack sprinted up two flights of stairs to the roof. From the back of the roof, he saw a van; he was pretty sure it was Arvin Sloane in the driver’s seat. Then Katya came into view from the shadows of the building, followed a moment later by Irina. Jack’s breath caught in his throat. She was handcuffed, but didn’t seem to be resisting Katya’s lead. “All targets are at the rear of the building,” he said into his comm. As Katya opened the rear door of the van, he realized that it was going to be too late. He opened his mouth, and, ignoring the knowledge of the danger it put him in, yelled, “Irina!”

***

Irina’s dim awareness that something was going on inspired curiosity, and she rose a bit closer to the surface. She felt handcuffs close around her wrists and realized that she was being moved, for the first time since her captivity had begun; she tried to struggle her way into full consciousness, to retake control of her body, but found it difficult. She’d never actively tried to come back before, and now she wished she had as she watched Katya lead her out of the cell.

She was led outside, into sunlight that seemed impossibly bright, toward a van driven by Arvin Sloane; still, she couldn’t do anything as Katya opened the van door. Then, suddenly, she heard her name. Jack’s voice. His shout ripped through the chains surrounding her will, shredding them like tissue paper, and she wasted no time in acting. She shoved Katya as hard as she could, which wasn’t very hard, but was still effective as it took Katya totally by surprise. Irina didn’t wait to see Katya sprawling into the van; she turned and ran back toward the building. She heard Katya shout, “Arvin, no!” Just as she reached the door, a gunshot rang out; a bullet thudded into her back, propelling her through the door. She managed to twist herself around the corner and throw herself forward so she landed out of line-of-sight with the outside; she hit the ground hard and immediately lost consciousness.

*****

Chapter 5

Jack watched in shock as Irina suddenly came to life, shoving Katya into the van and then running, with an awkwardness that was totally unlike her, back toward the building. Sloane pointed a gun out the window and fired a single shot; Irina had run into the shadow of the building at that point, so Jack couldn’t see if she’d been hit. His heart dropped into his shoes for just a moment, but then he got control of himself. He didn’t have time to do anything else before the van peeled out and drove off; dismissing them, Jack turned and hurried back down the stairs.

He ran through the building toward the door Irina and Katya had used, halting when he saw Thomas Brill, apparently checking Irina’s breathing and pulse. “I found her unconscious,” he said. “She’s bleeding, but not bad. The other two got away.”

Jack nodded and knelt next to Irina. She was lying face down, and there was a bullet hole through her jacket behind her right shoulder, surrounded by a small circle of blood. He reached under her and lifted her upper body carefully, afraid that he’d find a gaping exit wound, but the front of her jacket was clean.

Toni Cummings and Jack’s other hired gun raced around a corner and stopped when they saw Jack, Brill, and Irina. “There’s a room that seems to be an infirmary down that hall,” Cummings offered.

“Let’s get her there, then,” Jack said. He lifted Irina and nearly fell over backwards when she proved to be far lighter than he’d expected. “Brill, secure the rest of the facility.”
 
Cummings led Jack to the infirmary, where he lay Irina on her stomach on the operating table, carefully turning her head to the side. “I don’t know how to do any of this medical stuff,” Cummings said uncertainly.

“That’s fine. Just turn on all the lights and then go help Brill,” Jack said distractedly as he looked at the table. It had a half-dozen adjustable leather straps dangling from the side; he could only guess, given the occupations of the building’s most recent tenants, that it was used for torture at least as often as anything else. He wondered if Irina had been in here before, but pushed the thought out of his mind as he buckled one of the straps over Irina’s back, well below the bullet wound; he didn’t need her waking up and falling off the table while he was gathering supplies.

The infirmary was well stocked, and he found everything he needed without trouble. He cut Irina’s jacket off to discover that she was, indeed, ridiculously thin underneath. How long had they been holding her? Hadn’t they been feeding her?

Jack stopped that line of thinking as he went to work on cleaning her wound. When he started to dig for the bullet, she moaned and tensed slightly. He stopped and moved to see her face; her eyes were still closed. “Irina?” She opened her eyes a sliver and looked at him with a glassy stare, showing no signs of recognition, then closed them again. Jack frowned. He’d been planning to give her something for the pain if she woke up, but she seemed to already be drugged; giving her something else without knowing what was already in her system could be very dangerous. “Irina, there’s a bullet in your back I need to find. I need you to stay still and relax.” She made a slight sound; he took it as an assent and went back to work.

Irina moaned again as Jack carefully pushed torn muscle aside. “It’s all right, Irina,” he said as soothingly as possible. “Almost there.” He pushed aside a last bit of muscle and found the bullet lodged in the inferior angle of her scapula; another inch on either side and it would have gone straight through her lung. Very carefully, he grasped the bullet with his forceps and gave it a gentle tug; it didn’t move. He tried another, much firmer tug, but still it stayed in place. Better to leave it, then, he decided; pulling it with any more force would fragment the bone and send chips into the surrounding tissue. He sterilized the wound, then sutured muscle and skin as the occasional sound or slight movement from Irina told him that she was still hovering on the edge of consciousness.

He finished just as Toni Cummings came back in. “The building’s secure,” she said.

“Good. I’m almost finished here,” Jack replied. He started cleaning up his mess.

“I found a few bedrooms; I can go find a top for her to wear,” Cummings said, glancing at the ruined jacket Irina had been wearing. Jack nodded, and Cummings disappeared.

He cleaned up his instruments and then moved around the room gathering spare supplies to take with him. He supposed he’d have to take Irina to a hotel, as he couldn’t exactly use a CIA safe house. Only for a night, he mused, until the drug wore off.

Jack bypassed a cupboard filled with neat rows of liquid-filled vials, all labeled “diazepam”, then a drawer filled with unused syringes. In the next drawer, though, was a file folder labeled with the name “Irina Derevko”. Jack opened it and almost gasped aloud when he saw the first date: May 17, 2004. Only three days after the NSC had arrested him and put him in solitary. As he read through, he realized that the diazepam in the cupboard was the drug they’d been giving Irina, once a day. As he flipped through, he saw the dosage steadily increase, from 50 milligrams initially to 100 milligrams after a year; at that point there was a note, signed “Dr. Bartimo”, that said that Irina must be by now severely addicted to the drug; he recommended that she be weaned off of it slowly. Jack turned the page and saw that the doctor’s advice hadn’t been followed; Irina was now getting 200 milligrams of the drug each day, and her last injection had been four hours ago.

Realizing that simply waiting for the drug to wear off might not be a good idea, Jack gathered up vials of medication and syringes and added them to the bag; he also put in the medical record. He finished just as Cummings came back in.

As she helped him put the shirt she’d brought on Irina, Jack noticed that she had an IV catheter inserted in her arm. “Are the others ready?” he asked. Cummings nodded. “Good. Let’s get out of here.”

*****

Chapter 6

Irina opened her eyes a little, then squeezed them shut again as a wave of disorientation washed over her. When it passed, with her eyes still closed, she took stock and quickly hit on the major source of the trouble: she was lying on her stomach. She never slept on her stomach. She opened her eyes again carefully. Her left arm was bent around her head, a few inches from her face; beyond that she could see a window with blue sky showing through, set in a burgundy wall. Obviously she was somewhere very different from her sterile, white, fluorescent-lit cell.

She lifted her head and pushed her shoulders up with her elbow; the pain that shot through her back reminded her what had happened. Katya had been taking her somewhere, she’d heard Jack’s voice—had she really heard him? Or had her many dreams of Jack spilled over into her waking hours?

She remembered being shot, and then had a vague memory of pain in her back and someone speaking to her soothingly. She reached behind her with her left hand and winced when she encountered the edges of a bandage. She sat up carefully and took a closer look at her surroundings; it looked like she was in a bedroom in a hotel suite. A very nice hotel, from the look of things. So she obviously wasn’t in any sort of government custody. And if Katya and Sloane had her, they hadn’t secured her very well. Then again, it probably wasn’t necessary; between the drug and the gunshot wound, she doubted she’d get far on her own at the moment.

She was wearing a pair of sweatpants that she had absolutely no memory of putting on, and nothing else; she looked around again and spotted a shirt hanging over the back of a chair. She got to her feet carefully, stumbling at first before she got her legs to support her, then got to the shirt and put it on. Then she went to the window and looked out to see that she was on the third floor; before her captivity, escape through the window would have been easy even with her injury. Now, though, it was out of the question.

Irina made her way to the door and silently eased it open a crack; she peered through and wasn’t surprised to see a sitting room beyond. Then her breath caught in her throat when she heard Jack’s voice. “Yes, two weeks,” he said, then paused. “I know; it’s just that after everything that’s happened lately I need some time to myself.” There was another pause, and Irina realized that she was listening to half a telephone conversation. “Thank you, Marcus,” Jack continued. He paused, then said, “No, I haven’t talked to her. If she asks about me, just tell her she can reach me on my cell.” Another pause. “All right, I’ll see you in two weeks, then.” There was a low beep, and then the sound of someone getting up from a chair.

Irina pushed the door open all the way and stepped forward, her eyes focusing on Jack’s as he looked up at her. “Hi,” she said in a rather hoarse voice.

“Hi,” Jack answered. “How are you feeling?”

Irina frowned when she realized how strange a simple conversation seemed; she wasn’t sure how to answer. She finally settled on something. “Thirsty.”

“Come sit down. I’ll get you some water.” She moved toward the nearest chair slowly, feeling uncomfortable as he watched her move. She was relieved when she fell into the chair rather ungracefully and Jack turned away. “Here,” he said after a moment, handing her a glass of ice water.

“Thank you.” She took it and sipped carefully. “Sloane and…Katya?” she asked uncertainly, realizing belatedly that she didn’t even know if he knew who Katya was.

“They got away.” There was another long silence while Jack stood there uncomfortably; finally he sat down on a nearby couch.

Irina took a deep breath as she got up the nerve to ask a question to which she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. “What’s the date?”

“May 26,” Jack said, then added, “2006.”

She forgot about the glass, and it slipped from her fingers, splashing water all over the carpet. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, her mind still on Jack’s words. Two years. She’d spent just over two years in a drugged stupor.

Jack didn’t say anything, merely picked up the glass, refilled it, and handed it back to her. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he sat back down.

She shook her head. “Where are we?”

“Rome.”

Her last memory of freedom had been meeting Katya in Rome. She’d gone to Katya’s compound to share intelligence, and her sister had had her shot with a tranq dart on her way out. There was something wrong, something that needed to be done, but she wasn’t sure what. Finally she hit on it, and cursed the drug for dulling her thinking. “We should leave,” she said. “They’ll be looking for me.”

“You can’t travel yet,” Jack responded. “Maybe in a few days.” 

Irina found herself getting annoyed; of course she could travel. The glass almost slipped from her fingers again; apparently Jack had been watching it, because he reached out and took it from her before it could spill. Jack was right; she couldn’t travel. And she couldn’t trust her own judgment, either. She opened her mouth to tell Jack that, then realized that it might be a bad idea—could she trust him not to take advantage of her if he knew how bad off she was? She didn’t have a choice, she decided; she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself at the moment. As much as she hated it, she was going to have to give up control. “Jack, they were drugging me. I…I don’t think my judgment can be trusted right now.”

Jack didn’t appear surprised; he merely nodded. He picked up a folder from an end table, opened it, and lay it on the coffee table in front of her. “I found the medical file they were keeping on you,” he said.

Irina leaned forward and read the sheet on top. She had to go over it several times to get meaning out of it. She looked back at Jack. “I’m addicted?”

Jack nodded. “I researched the drug they were giving you. You’ve been taking very high doses; if you were to stop suddenly, the withdrawal could kill you.”

Tears welled up in Irina’s eyes suddenly and spilled down her cheeks before she could even think of stopping them. Since she’d woken up, she hadn’t actively thought that she might no longer have to be drugged; still, the news that it wasn’t over yet was enough to rip out from under her whatever small sense she’d been building of some kind of firm foundation.

Jack placed a hand on her knee; she grabbed it gratefully. “I don’t want it anymore, Jack,” she said through her tears. “I can’t…I…” She struggled to find words to express the horrible gulf of pain she was feeling, but couldn’t.

Jack squeezed her hand tightly. “It’s all right, Irina,” he said, with more tenderness in his voice than she’d heard in over twenty years. “I’ll help you.”

*****

Chapter 7

Jack watched Irina closely as she turned away, looking across the room. She was definitely not herself—she seemed uncertain in both her movements and her words, and slow to respond to anything he said or did. It was probably mostly due to the drug, but he suspected some of her behavior was also the result of having been in captivity for two years. It wasn’t going to be easy for her to get back to any kind of normal. No matter how he felt about recent revelations, no matter how uncertain his feelings for her were, he’d realized earlier, while watching her sleep and trying to figure out what to do, that he couldn’t abandon her to deal with this alone.

“How often have…has…” Irina finally spoke, but seemed to search for words. Jack waited patiently for her to give him enough to guess her meaning. “What’s the dosage schedule?” she finally managed.

”Once a day,” he answered. She closed her eyes and nodded. “I get the impression they were trying to keep you asleep most of the time?” After a moment’s delay, which he was becoming accustomed to, she nodded. “You ought to be able to decrease your dosage pretty quickly at first, then, since we’ll just be trying to prevent withdrawal symptoms.”

“What if I just didn’t take any more?” Irina asked softly.

“You could have seizures strong enough to kill you,” Jack replied. 

She frowned, still not looking at him, and pulled her knees up to her chest. “How long is this going to take?”

“Since you’re on such a high dose, it will take about six weeks to wean you down to a negligible level.  I have to be back at work in two weeks, though.”

She bit her lip, then swallowed hard, and Jack could see that she was struggling with something. He waited silently. Finally she spoke, seemingly half to herself. “I don’t know how to do this. What I want is to not be on the drug anymore, to just stop taking it and damn the consequences, but I can’t trust that that’s the right decision.” She looked straight at Jack again. “If…if I let you decide, about all of it, will you get me off of it as fast as possible?” 

Jack nodded, surprised that she was handing over so much control—he wondered again how much of it was the drug and how much was her time in captivity. He would take care of her for two weeks, anyway; after that it was likely they would have to part ways, but hopefully she would be better able to take care of herself by then. 

Irina slumped back against her chair, looking, he thought, relieved. He understood from his own year in solitary; after spending so long not making any decisions, the idea of controlling one’s own life again seemed almost overwhelming. He could only imagine how Irina must feel, wanting to be free from the drug that had been forced upon her yet unable to figure out how to go about it. “When is my next dose?” she asked.

“Tomorrow morning.” Irina nodded, then was silent. After a few moments, Jack spoke. “Irina, there are some things we need to talk about.”

Her head shot up. “Sydney! I haven’t even asked…”

“She’s fine,” Jack said quickly. That wasn’t exactly true—she was upset with him, distrustful, and uncertain in her relationships with seemingly everyone—but she was safe and healthy, that was the important thing. But had Irina even known Sydney had returned?

“She…Katya told me she’d been found,” Irina said softly. “I wasn’t sure if it was true.”

Jack nodded. “She came back a year ago. She doesn’t remember anything from the two years she was missing, but it appears she was held by the Covenant.”

Irina gave him a relieved smile, then frowned. “Do you know who Katya is?”

“Your sister,” Jack replied.

Irina’s frown deepened. When she spoke again, Jack heard no hostility in her tone, only sadness. “Did you know she was my sister when you slept with her?”

*****

Chapter 8

“And then my father showed up, and he said ‘You were never supposed to find out about this.’ And he just looked…I don’t know…certainly not sorry.” Sydney frowned as she stirred her coffee.

“What did he say then?” asked Vaughn, sitting across from her. She’d invited him to her apartment for coffee; they’d agreed to take it slow, but he’d wondered if she wanted to speed things up. Now he realized, though, that they simply couldn’t have this conversation in public.

“Nothing. I left. He didn’t stop me.”

“Did you take the files?”

“Yeah.” Sydney took a sip of her coffee before continuing. “It’s basically…it’s my whole life. Every damn detail from the day I was born. All those events that my father didn’t go to when I was growing up—ballet recitals, school plays, everything—instead there were CIA agents there, watching me and reporting on my behavior. But that I could deal with…” She trailed off and looked pensively out the window.

“Sydney?”

“He knew about my mother. Before she left. Four years before she left.” Vaughn stared at her in shock. “The surveillance on me…when I was two, they saw her talking to a KGB agent in the park. My father investigated and found out that she was KGB. He was ordered to stay with her and pretend everything was normal.”

“God,” was all Vaughn could say. Jack hadn’t seemed to understand when he’d ordered him to stay with Lauren, but apparently he had after all.

“That must be what he meant earlier, when he said he had a chance to kill her and didn’t take it. He knew for four years…and the reason he stayed with her, the reason the CIA didn’t arrest her, was because I was supposed to have a ‘normal home life’ for this project they designed around me.”

“So he never confronted her?” Vaughn asked. “He just…pretended all that time?”

Sydney nodded. “I guess so.  He just… when he told me she was KGB, he acted like finding that out had been such a horrible thing for him, when really he knew all along.  And then—when she was extracted—Vaughn, he knew she was alive, or at least suspected. All those years. Those six months he supposedly spent in solitary after she left—he was really on a CIA mission, trying to track her down.” She took another sip of her coffee and grimaced; it was cold. “Lauren asked me why I haven’t had contact with my mother since I got back. I’ve figured for the last year that she just didn’t care, but now…I need to talk to her. Michael, I need to find her, find out if she knew about this project, if she knew that my father knew about her…will you help me?”

Vaughn might have a few questions of his own for Irina Derevko, he thought. Like what had really happened between her and his father. “Of course I’ll help you,” he said, laying his hand over Sydney’s. “Where are you going to start?”

“Since Lauren’s dead, the logical choice is to start with her partner, who has very good reason to know where my mother is.”

“Katya,” they said in unison.

***

Sloane finished stitching Katya’s wound, then scanned her once again. “You’re clean,” he said as he glanced once more at the now flattened tracking device he’d removed from her neck. “How did he manage to implant a tracker in you?”

“How do you think?” Katya replied irritably. “Damned man was distracting me. Do you really want details?”

“No,” Sloane said with a frown. “He’ll have the last location of the tracking device. We should leave.”

Katya nodded, and they started to head out. “Do you think my sister is still alive?”

“Don’t worry, Katya, Irina’s not that easy to kill.” She glared at him. He sighed. “Do you want me to find out if she’s in CIA custody?”

“I seriously doubt that,” Katya replied. “Bristow has thought he’s been having Internet conversations with her all this time and he hasn’t told the CIA.” She took the driver’s seat of the van before Sloane had a chance to protest. “Any word on Nadia?”

“No,” Sloane answered bitterly. His daughter had talked about leading him to the location Rambaldi had specified, had let him smuggle her out of the US into France, and had then disappeared. Perhaps she’d gone to the location on her own; perhaps she was simply lying low. He didn’t know. “And if she should decide to come back, she’ll come looking for me in Italy.”

Katya sighed. “Damn Jack Bristow. He and his daughter are nothing but trouble.”

Sloane couldn’t help but agree.

*****

Chapter 9

Jack looked at Irina with a strange expression on his face—not surprise, precisely; more like confusion. “Yes, I knew she was your sister,” he said calmly. Irina blinked back tears. She’d been hoping that maybe Sloane and Katya had both been lying. “I only did it to find you,” Jack continued.

That surprised her. “You were looking for me?”

“How else do you think I ended up there today?”

She hadn’t really thought about that. Why would he come for her? It was something to ponder later, she decided, when she was feeling less confused about everything. “You said we needed to talk.”

Jack looked away and didn’t answer for a moment. “Arvin Sloane claims he had an affair with you,” he said softly.

Irina’s head began to spin. Sloane had talked about…about what he’d done to her? “He told you that?”

Jack saw Irina go pale and frowned. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting—anything from vehement denial to calm acknowledgement—but it certainly hadn’t been fear. Irina looked like she was on the verge of panic. “He didn’t tell me. He told the CIA psychologist,” Jack answered, deciding to take it slow until he could figure out what was upsetting her so much. Irina shrunk into the chair, confusing Jack even more. “He insinuated that he might be Sydney’s father.”

She stared at him, clearly perplexed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“So you didn’t sleep with him while we were married?” Jack wouldn’t allow himself to feel relief yet.

“Aren’t we still married?”

“I meant while…while you were Laura. Did you sleep with Arvin Sloane then?” Best to make it simple, he decided, as indirect questions seemed to do nothing but confuse her.

“Oh. I did, once,” she said quite calmly, looking unaccountably relieved. “It was about a month before I was extracted.  Sydney is yours, I’m quite sure of that.”

“I know,” Jack replied, and she looked perplexed again. “I had her tested.”

“Oh.” Irina nodded. “Probably wise.” She yawned hugely, then gestured to the glass that Jack had taken from her earlier. “Are you going to drink the rest of that?”

“It’s yours,” he answered, holding it out to her.

She frowned as she took the glass. She had trouble maintaining her grip, so she grabbed the glass with her other hand, but it didn’t help. She tried to get a drink, but almost dropped the glass.

Jack took the glass from her again, stood, and held it to her lips. “Maybe you should lie down for a little while,” he said when she was finished drinking.

“I’m fine.” She blinked furiously. Jack was suddenly reminded of Sydney at six years old, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to keep them open while claiming she wasn’t tired.

“You’ll feel better when you wake up. Come on, Irina.” She didn’t look happy, but let him pull her to her feet and lead her into the bedroom. He helped her lie down on her left side, mindful of the gunshot wound on the right, and she pulled her knees up to her chest. “I’m going to go out and get you some clothes and things, so I might not be here when you wake up,” Jack said as he pulled the blanket up over her.

She nodded.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and gently rubbed her shoulder until her breathing grew even.

*****

Chapter 10

“He said he was taking a vacation?” Sydney stared at Dixon in shock.

“That’s what he said. Said he needed some time off,” Dixon answered as they stood in the JTF.

“You know he never takes vacations, right? I mean never ever.”

Dixon shrugged. “Which is why I couldn’t really say no. He’s got a hell of a lot of vacation time built up.”

Sydney frowned. She’d come in to check for leads on Katya and had planned on having to avoid her father, not hearing he was off on vacation somewhere. “Did he say where he was? Or when he’d be back?”

“Two weeks, and he didn’t say where. He did say you could call him on his cell if you need anything.”

Sydney sighed. “Yeah. I guess I’ll do that,” she said, though she had no intention of doing so.

Dixon nodded. “You know, if you need any time off yourself…”

She raised her eyebrows. That would be quite helpful; it would give her time to pursue her mother without CIA interference. “That would be nice, actually.”

“A week? Two?”

“Two weeks would be great. I’ve actually been thinking about maybe heading up north, doing some camping or something.”

Dixon smiled. “Well, enjoy yourself. And I’ll call you if we get any news on your sister. Or, well, any of your other relatives, for that matter.”

She smiled a bit uncomfortably. Nadia’s disappearance had unsettled her, but Nadia appeared to have left on her own, and they didn’t even know where to begin looking, so all she could do was hope Nadia decided to come back. “Thanks,” she said to Dixon.

“See you in two weeks.”

***

After spending an unknown period of time in a fog, going in and out of consciousness, something finally woke Irina up. She sat up in bed groggily, the pressure on her bladder forcing her awake. Spotting the bathroom directly off the bedroom, she pulled herself out of bed and stumbled in.

She felt a bit more awake once she’d relieved herself and splashed some water on her face, so rather than lie back down she went out into the other room, trying to remember what she and Jack had been talking about. Sloane, she remembered, and grabbed the wall for support. She shook her head. It was all right; he wasn’t here.

Where was Jack? The room was empty. She made it to the couch and almost collapsed on it as terror seized her; he was gone. She was alone. What was she supposed to do now?

After perhaps ten minutes of sitting there with her mind in disarray, rational thought began to reassert itself. Maybe he’d just gone for a walk, or gotten hungry. Watching her half-sleep certainly couldn’t be the most interesting thing in the world. But how could she tell if he was coming back? She stood carefully, looked around the room, and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted a small suitcase, professional looking and just like the type Jack had always used, in the corner.

What should she do now? She smiled a little. For the first time in two years, no one was watching her; she could do whatever she wanted. She yawned, but pushed the fatigue away. She could hardly sleep at a time like this.

A shower! The thought came to her suddenly, and she smiled more broadly. She’d only had baths the last two years, and always with someone—usually Katya—watching her and generally managing most of the bathing tasks. A hot shower sounded like heaven. Humming a little, Irina went back to the bathroom, stripped off her pants and shirt, and stepped into the tub.

*****

Chapter 11

Jack entered the hotel suite, loaded down with shopping bags; he’d refused the assistance of a bellboy, not knowing what state Irina would be in. The shopping trip had taken rather a long time, as he’d had to go to several different stores in order to get the essentials for Irina—the Italians didn’t seem to believe in the concept of one-stop shopping.

He put the bags down, then went into the bedroom to check on Irina. He froze when he saw the empty bed. “Irina?” he called. He walked further into the room, looked around, and noticed that the bathroom door was closed. He went over and knocked. “Irina?”

“Jack?” he heard weakly after a moment.

“Are you all right?”

“I…I fell. I can’t get up.”

Jack tried the door and was relieved to find it unlocked—he didn’t want to have to dig his lock picks out of his suitcase. He pushed the shower curtain aside and found Irina half-sitting, half-lying in the tub. The water was off, but the shower was still wet and Irina looked like she had shampoo drying in her hair. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered, her speech slightly slurred. “The floor was slippery, and I fell, and I tried to get up but it didn’t work. I turned off the water, and then I think I fell asleep.”

“Hold still,” Jack said, figuring it would be easier to do all the work himself than to deal with her trying to “help”. He wrapped his arms around her chest, just under her arms, and pulled her up so she was sitting on the edge of the tub. “All right, try standing up.”

By holding onto his arms, she was able to stand herself up. She stood there unsteadily, naked, and Jack tried to hide his shock at how thin she was.  He had realized earlier that she’d lost weight, of course, but he hadn’t taken the time to really look. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“You’re so thin,” he answered. She’d been thin before, but her body had been well muscled; now, she looked almost emaciated. “What have you been eating?”

“Not much,” she answered. “My stomach’s upset most of the time.” She stepped to one side and almost slipped.

Jack reached out and caught her. “You’d better get out of there before you fall again,” he said.

“But I still have shampoo in my hair. I have to wash it out,” she said with certainty.

Jack sighed. “Okay. Hold on to the towel bar.” She grabbed the bar. “Now don’t move.” He started undressing.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding a little frightened.

“Getting in there with you,” Jack answered. “So you don’t fall again.”

The vague sense of unease that Irina had had since Jack entered the bathroom grew as he finished taking his clothes off and got into the tub with her. She had to remind herself that there was nothing to worry about; this was Jack, and he wouldn’t hurt her.

He turned on the spray and held onto her as she started to step under it, then backed out again. “Too hot,” she said; the water felt almost scalding.

Jack turned up the cold water. “Better?”

She tried it and nodded, then stepped fully under the spray. She washed the shampoo out of her hair, her discomfort fading as she remembered many, many previous showers with Jack. She turned to smile at him as she put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him under the spray. “Thank you,” she said. “What would I do without you?”

He looked a bit confused, but he put his hands on her waist. “You’d still be sitting on the bathtub floor,” he answered.

She laughed at that, then, acting on impulse, leaned forward and kissed him. It took only a moment for him to respond. “I missed you,” she said after breaking the kiss.

“I missed you, too,” he answered after a pause. His hand moved to stroke her stomach, which had always been one of her erogenous zones.

She looked down and wasn’t surprised to see that he was erect. “Looks like somebody else missed me, too,” she said with a grin, reaching down and caressing his shaft.

He groaned. “Irina,” he gasped, “are you sure you want to do this?”

“Don’t be silly,” she murmured before she kissed him again, suddenly hungering for him. He reached between her legs and began to stroke her, and she moaned into his mouth. “I love you, Jack,” she murmured. Then his hand found her breast as he slid inside her, and

suddenly she was back in that cell, and it was Sloane inside her, on top of her, suffocating her. “No!” she cried out, pulling back. “No, don’t.” She started crying, sobbing, and she felt like she was falling. And then

arms caught her and pulled her back to her feet. “Irina?” Jack’s voice. Worried, confused.

She blinked and looked at him. They were still in the shower; the tears running down her face mixed with the water. He’d pulled out at some point, and was looking at her with confusion and worry. “Jack?” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes and leaned into him as her body shook with barely repressed sobs.

The water stopped running, and Jack dried her with a towel. He wrapped it around her; she let him help her out of the tub. She stood immobile as he quickly dried himself and wrapped a towel around his waist. He then grabbed a third towel and dried her hair. “Irina? What happened?”

She looked at him and blinked furiously as her eyes filled with tears again. “Okay,” he said softly as she buried her face in his shoulder again. “Do you want to lie down?” She nodded, and he led her into the bedroom. He pulled her towel off, helped her lie down, and pulled the blankets up around her. “I need to put a dry bandage on your back, all right?” he asked as he used the towel to very carefully pat that area dry. She nodded, the tears still keeping her mute.

He left the room, and her tears began to slow. By the time he returned, she was beginning to slip into unconsciousness again. She had a vague awareness of him doing something to her back; then he leaned over and gently kissed her cheek. He remained standing there for a moment, silently, and then left the room. Irina soon fell asleep.

*****

Chapter 12

Jack shifted his position on the couch again, then sat up with a sigh. He checked the clock to see that it was a little after 9 pm—about forty minutes after he’d decided to try to get some sleep. It was currently just after noon in Los Angeles, and he estimated he’d been awake for about thirty hours now. He had decided after getting Irina settled to get some sleep himself, but he couldn’t seem to get comfortable on the couch.

He went into the bedroom.  Irina was still on her side, he saw when he turned the light on, but now had her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders. He picked up the nightgown he’d left in the room for her after she’d fallen asleep, then sat down on the edge of the bed carefully and lay the nightgown by Irina’s pillow before reaching out to gently shake her shoulder. “Irina?” No response. “Irina?” he repeated, shaking her harder.

She rolled back, turning her head toward him, and winced when her injured shoulder made contact with the sheet. She blinked several times and squinted at him. “Jack?” she whispered.

“I brought you a nightgown.” Irina looked confused, but nodded in understanding when Jack took her arm and threaded it through the sleeve of the nightgown. He got her other arm into its sleeve, then slipped the gown over her head, only to find that she’d fallen asleep again. “Irina?” 

She opened her eyes and frowned at him as he pulled her into a sitting position to pull the gown down. He started to lift her to pull the nightgown over her hips, but she shook her head, pushed him away, and wriggled it down herself. He lowered her to the mattress, and she collapsed against the pillow, breathing just a bit faster. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out; instead, she pointed down to where the blankets had gotten tangled around her legs in the struggle to put the gown on.

Jack stood and pulled the blankets up to her neck, but she pulled her arms out. Her eyes started to close, and he grabbed her hand and rubbed it between his own to keep her awake a few moments longer. “Is it all right if I sleep in here?” he asked. “I’ll stay on my side.” Earlier, he wouldn’t have bothered asking, but after what had happened in the shower he thought he should make sure he had her permission to get in bed with her.

Irina looked confused again, but nodded after a moment. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to…it wasn’t you.”

“It’s all right,” Jack answered, smiling in a way that he hoped was reassuring. He had no idea what might have caused her reaction, but he did know that he couldn’t possibly be angry, not when he’d seen the terror in her eyes. “Wake me up if you need anything, all right?”

She nodded, and her eyes closed as Jack placed her hand on her abdomen. He watched her for a moment as her breathing deepened, then turned off the light and made himself comfortable on the other side of the king-size bed.

***

Jack watched his wife as she sat in a chair on the beach, finishing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watching their daughter. The sandwich had once belonged to Sydney, who had taken four or five bites before getting bored with it. The six-year-old was now at the water’s edge building a sand castle under the watchful eyes of her grandmother, Jack’s mother.

She was Irina, not Laura, a Russian spy, not a schoolteacher. As always, the thought was jolting. He’d known her true identity for almost four years now, and yet it was so easy to become lost in the illusion of their life together. He wondered sometimes if she ever felt the same way. Sometimes it seemed that the look in her eyes when she looked at Sydney, perhaps even at him, was so sincere that it couldn’t be a lie.

She finished her sandwich and stood. “I’m going to go in the water. Want to come?”

“Sure,” he answered, standing and taking her hand. The first month or so after he’d been told of her true identity had been difficult, but after that the deception had become easy. He was almost sure that she knew, had realized something was different when he’d first found out, but apparently she’d decided that continuing the charade was safer, easier. He felt the same way.

They waded into the water together, continuing until they were chest-deep. The ocean was calm today, and they stood letting the waves wash over them. Irina looked at Jack, her expression serious. That particular look had first appeared four years ago, and Jack suspected she was debating airing the unspoken secret between them. She leaned forward, and he felt the warmth of her breath against his ear. He wrapped his arms around her, put his hands on her shoulders, and waited.

They stood like that for a long moment, until an unexpectedly large wave crept up on them and knocked them both down.

They surfaced, sputtering and laughing, the spell broken. Jack found her lips and kissed her deeply. “I love you,” she whispered when they broke. He wondered if she meant the words.

“I love you,” he responded. He wasn’t sure if he meant it, either.

Jack opened his eyes reluctantly, the memory that he’d dreamed still with him. He’d been almost happy then, with Irina, despite the cloud of secrecy hanging over them.  He turned his head to see Irina watching him, sleep still in her eyes. He sat up and checked the clock to see that it was just after midnight, about twelve hours since the attack on Katya’s compound.  Irina hadn’t eaten in that time, he realized.. “You should eat something,” he said, standing.

She nodded. “I’ll try.” She stood, and he helped her into the other room.

*****

Chapter 13

“She’ll be glad to see you, I think,” the nurse said as she led Nadia down the hallway. “She’s always talking about how she wishes someone would visit her.”

Nadia looked around the walls warily; they reminded her of her time in the Chechen prison. “She doesn’t get many visitors?”

“She hasn’t had any in the year and a half I’ve been on the ward. She talks about how her daughter used to visit her, but according to her file, she doesn’t have a daughter,” the nurse said as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Nadia wondered what she was getting herself into. But then, what had she expected from a person who’d been locked in an insane asylum for fifteen years? “She’s not dangerous, is she?”

The nurse smiled. “Well, there are still a couple of men she wants to kill, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem.” She pulled out her keys and unlocked one of the many heavy doors lining the corridor. “Mrs. Dvortetsky? Your visitor is here.” She turned back to Nadia. “We’ll be monitoring you by video, but there’s no sound, so you’re free to talk. Just wave at the camera when you’re done.

As the nurse left and re-locked the door, Nadia studied the room’s sole occupant, who gazed back at her with equal frankness. Though the woman’s hair was white, her face showed few wrinkles. It was her eyes, though, that drew Nadia’s attention. She’d seen the same eyes only a few days ago, in a very similar face. She took a deep breath. “Hello, Aunt Elena.”


***

Irina stared at the half sandwich, willing herself to take another bite. For Jack, she told herself. He’d gotten her out of Sloane’s and Katya’s clutches; the least she could do for him was eat a damn sandwich. Suppressing a sigh, she bit, chewed, and swallowed. Repeated the procedure. After stuffing down the last bite, she took a long drink of water, then looked up at Jack.

He was standing by the window, apparently looking out, but she suspected he was more interested in her reflection than in anything he could see in the Rome night. Their eyes met in the mirror of the window. “Was that enough?” he asked. She nodded. There was silence for a moment, and then he turned, meeting her eyes without the distance of reflections. “Are you upset?”

She blinked. “About what?”

“Your sister. What I did.”

“Should I be?” she asked. Jack looked confused. “I didn’t think I had a right to be upset about who you sleep with.”

Jack moved to the couch and sat down. “Ever since you said we were still married, while you were in CIA custody, I have to admit I’ve been wondering what that meant to you. If it should mean anything to me.” He shrugged. “For the record, there hasn’t been anyone else for me since then, except your sister. And that was business.”

Irina turned away. “Business,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. It was no longer her sister she was thinking about, but Katya’s business partner.

Jack must have seen the shame in her eyes before she turned; when he spoke next, his voice was hard. “You of all people ought to understand the concept, Irina.” She didn’t speak; she was too busy trying to hold back the tears that always seemed to come at the worst possible moment. “Was it business for you, too?” Gone was the tender tone he’d used moments before to coax her into eating a sandwich. “How many, Irina? Since Sloane extracted you? One? Three? Was that part of Sloane’s price for your extraction?” 

Irina closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She heard Jack’s footsteps crossing the room, then a door slamming hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall. She leaned back and let the tears come.

*****

Chapter 14

Jack slammed the bedroom door shut, intending to get dressed and head to the hotel bar—until he looked around for his suitcase and remembered that it was in the other room.  Damn that woman, he thought.  Instead, he headed into the bathroom, stripped off his pajamas, and turned the water as hot as he could stand it.

As he stood under the hot spray, he thought that no one in the world could make him lose his calculated calm exterior quite like Irina Derevko.  He’d exposed his heart to her, if only a tiny bit, and she’d taken the opportunity to twist it as usual.  It hadn’t been her words that had upset him so much as her tone, the cold way she’d said “business” as if it were something distasteful, even as the look in her eyes told him that she’d been guilty of the same crime.  Though he doubted she’d be as forthcoming about it as he had been.

Of course, he hadn’t exactly been eager to tell her what he’d done with her sister, he realized as the hot water helped to calm him.  She’d already known; Katya must have told her.  Or perhaps Sloane—he shuddered at that, trying not to think about either Katya and Sloane or Sloane and Irina discussing sexual activities involving him.

She had looked very upset when he asked her who else she’d been with, which was confusing, Jack thought, when contrasted with how easily she’d earlier admitted to sleeping with Sloane in 1981.  And there was still that unexplained near-panic when he’d first asked her about it.

He washed up, turned off the spray, and toweled himself off, much calmer now.  He hadn’t given her much of a chance to speak before he’d stormed off; perhaps he should remedy that.

Back in the sitting room, though, he found her fast asleep, her head hanging at an uncomfortable angle and a frown on her face.  He shook her shoulder.  “Irina?”

She opened her eyes partway and lifted her head.  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she murmured.  “I didn’t want to.  I told him no.”  Her eyes closed again.

Jack stared at her for a moment, confused.  She couldn’t mean that she’d been…  He shook his head.  He must have heard her wrong; she was mostly asleep, after all.  “Come on, Irina,” he said, sliding an arm around her shoulders and helping her to her feet.  He half-carried her into the bedroom and, for the third time that day, put her to bed.

***

Elena studied Nadia for a long moment.  “You’re too young to be Sydney, I think,” she said finally.  “So you must be the younger one.”

Nadia bristled just a bit.  “My name is Nadia.”

Elena’s eyes widened a little.  “Nadia,” she repeated softly.  Then she spoke sharply.  “Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for my mother,” Nadia replied, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible.

“And why do you want to find her?”

“Because…”  Somehow ‘because she’s my mother’ didn’t seem like it would cut it.  Nadia made a quick decision.  “I’ve already met my father and my sister, but I’d like to hear my mother’s side of things.”

Elena raised her eyebrows.  “And what did your father and sister have to say?”

Nadia twisted her hands nervously.  She’d expected to be the one asking the questions, not the one being interrogated.  “Sydney said that our mother’s other sister—Katya—said that the KGB took me away when I was a day old.”

After a moment, Elena nodded.  “They told her you were dead.  She never believed them.  And what about your father?”  She watched Nadia closely, as if her answer was of great import.

Nadia frowned.  Trying to get information out of her father had been like talking to a brick wall.  “He wouldn’t talk about my mother at all.  All he cared about was finding the Rambaldi artifact that I’m supposed to know about.”  Too late, she realized that she had perhaps given away too much.  The truth was that, after what was apparently a full course of the Rambaldi serum, she had no idea what the damned code in her brain meant.  She supposed the only way to figure it out would be to sit down and write out the equations from memory—she hadn’t been lying when she told Sloane she’d altered them.  “So do you know where my mother is?”

Elena shook her head.  “She used to come visit me regularly, but I haven’t seen her in over two years.”

Nadia felt a knot in the pit of her stomach.  She knew it was irrational to expect that if she found her mother, Irina Derevko would just take her in her arms and explain away all the tangled threads of her life.  But the truth was that if Elena couldn’t help her, she had no idea what her next step would be.  “Do you know anything I could do?”  She couldn’t prevent the slight catch in her voice.

Elena looked at her piercingly again.  “Have you met Jack Bristow?”

The first name wasn’t familiar, but the last was.  “Sydney’s father?” Nadia asked.  She’d asked Sydney who the other man in the room had been when she’d woken up after escaping the Chechen prison; Sydney had replied only that he was her father.  Her sister’s expression had deterred Nadia from asking more.

“Sydney’s father, yes,” Elena said.  “Tell him that you believe your mother may be in trouble.”

“You think he’ll help me?”  Nadia frowned, remembering the way Jack Bristow had avoided looking at her, the pensive look on Sydney’s face when Nadia had asked who he was.  “I don’t think he likes me that much.”

“He helped to find you, didn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”  Nadia wondered how she’d know that, if she’s had no visitors for over a year and a half.

“Admittedly I’ve never met the man, but I think he’ll help you.”

“What about Katya?  Would she know where my mother is?”

Elena frowned deeply.  “Child, it’s best if you don’t find Katya.  She is nothing but a danger to you.”  Nadia frowned, confused.  “Her devotion to seeking out the works of Rambaldi runs as deep as that of Arvin Sloane.”  Nadia drew in her breath, understanding completely.  “Now you’d better go.  Nadia,” she said softly as Nadia stood.  “Good luck.”

*****

Chapter 15

Jack was jerked out of sleep when Irina cried out.  He sat up and turned on the bedside lamp to see Irina still asleep, twisting in the sheets and moaning.  “Irina?”  He reached out and touched her shoulders.

She jerked away.  “No.  Not again.  Just kill me, you son of a bitch,” she whispered.

Jack grabbed her shoulder again and shook it, not knowing what to do other than try to wake her up.  “Irina, it’s just a dream.  Wake up.”

Irina sat up suddenly; her eyes popped open and looked at him wildly.  “Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

“It’s all right.”  Jack tried to soothe her, reaching out to her again.

She slapped his hand away, her eyes still full of terror.  He remained still and watched her warily, hoping she would wake up.  She began to scoot away from him; when she reached the edge of the bed and started to fall off, he rolled and grabbed her, pulling her back.  He expected to be pummeled for his trouble, but instead she went rigid as his arms went around her.  He lay her on the bed and saw that her eyes were tightly closed, a few tears leaking out.  “Please don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t what?”  What the hell had happened to her?  This went beyond merely reaction to captivity.  Something horrible had happened to her.  Torture… or rape.  His brain finally pushed forward the answer that had been hovering at the edge of his consciousness since what had happened in the shower.  He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t even want to think it, but now that the idea had finally presented itself he couldn’t deny it.  What else could explain a flashback during sex?

Irina opened her eyes.  “Jack?”  He watched as her body relaxed a little.  “What’s wrong?”  She sat up.

“Irina…” he whispered.  He didn’t want to say it, but he had to know.  “Were you… raped?”

Irina began to shudder as tears suddenly flooded from her eyes.  Jack sat there uncertainly for a moment, then moved closer and put his arms around her.  She collapsed against his chest and sobbed; he had never seen her do anything like this.  Clearly, he’d been right.  He wrapped his arms around her a little tighter, awkwardly rubbed circles on her back.  After a few minutes, when she showed no signs of slowing, he lowered them both back to the bed.

Some time later, Irina lay perfectly still in Jack’s arms, her sobs having finally tapered off.  She desperately wanted a tissue and a glass of water, but didn’t want to move; she suspected that Jack was either asleep or thought that she was.  She couldn’t face him right now; she was far too embarrassed.  Bad enough that she’d been having a flashback again, but then she’d been completely incapable of stopping her sobbing fit.

The anger and hatred that had been in Jack’s eyes the first time he’d seen her after twenty years had been hard; even though she’d been prepared for it, she still thought there could be no worse way for him to look at her.  Now, though, she knew how wrong she’d been; pity was far worse.  She’d seen hints of it already, when he’d looked at the drugged wreck she’d become; how much worse would it be now that he knew that not only was she too damn weak to keep from being raped, but she couldn’t even deal with it without sobbing like a small child?

Thoughts circled in her head until finally they became too much for her; she snuggled a little closer to Jack and succumbed to an exhausted sleep.

***

It was morning when Irina woke next, judging by the sunlight streaming into the room, and she was alone.  She stood and stretched tentatively, stiff after sleeping deeply.  That was unusual lately; although the drug kept her from being fully conscious most of the time, she was usually in more of a twilight state, confused and tossing fitfully as dreams and reality warred.

She went to the window and looked out, relishing the feel of sunlight warming her skin.  She closed her eyes.  Surprisingly, she felt the best she had since her capture.

Irina heard the door open behind her and froze; she hadn’t thought about the need to face Jack since she’d woken.  There was silence for a moment.  “I ordered some breakfast,” Jack said finally.  “It’ll be up in a few minutes.”

She nodded, not turning around, and heard him leave.  A moment later she turned, steeled herself, and walked out into the other room.

*****

Chapter 16

Jack looked up at Irina as she entered, his expression neutral and unreadable.  She went to the sink and got herself a glass of water, which she drank thirstily and refilled before sitting down at the table.  Although she avoided looking directly at him, she could tell that he was tense.  They were both silent for a long moment; finally, Jack said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she answered simply.  Some small part of her did want to talk about it, but she’d spent years telling that part to shut up, since even before she’d joined the KGB.

After another long, uncomfortable silence, there was a knock at the door.  A food cart was rolled in, the busboy left, and they ate in silence.  Irina was concentrating so hard on studiously ignoring Jack that she didn’t realize until she was halfway through her plate that she didn’t feel sick to her stomach.  In fact, she even had an appetite.  She surprised herself by actually finishing the plate.

Jack watched Irina eat out of the corner of his eye as he picked at his own food.  He felt like he should say something about what had happened last night, but he’d had enough trouble just asking her if she wanted to talk about it—and her “no” had been immensely relieving.

He knew, intellectually, that because of the business they were in, and the type of people who often were involved—people who wanted as much power as they could get and were quite amoral about how they got that power—rape was not an uncommon occurrence, especially for a female spy.  He’d seen several women dealing with the aftermath during his time with SD-6, though his involvement had been at most to send them to an SD-6 counselor.  He had never thought about it in relation to Irina before, though.  More than once, when he was feeling less than charitable toward her, he’d thought of her as a whore, but never as a victim.

Jack wished he had any idea of how to help Irina, because he hated seeing the shell she’d become.  He’d love to have his hands around the neck of Arvin Sloane right now, or Katya, or, especially, the man that had raped her, but he doubted that would help her.  The only thing he knew to do that he didn’t think would make things worse was to act as normally as possible.  But even that was difficult, with the drug addiction a painful reminder of her captivity.  He saw that she was done and checked his watch.  “Irina, it’s time for your next dose.”

She looked him full in the face for the first time that morning and nodded, then stood.  “You should know…even if it doesn’t put me to sleep, I won’t be able to move very much.”  Jack nodded, and she disappeared into the bedroom.

He gathered up what he needed and followed her.  As she lay down, he said, “If you feel up to it, we should probably think about getting out of Rome when you wake up.”

Irina nodded.  “Where were you thinking of going?”  She lay on her back at first, then winced and rolled onto her side.

“We could drive up to Genova to start out with, then see how you feel.”

She nodded.  “I’ll probably just sleep, anyway.”  She pushed up her sleeve.

He prepared an IV bag with 5% less drug than she had been getting before.  “I’ll leave the door open in case you need anything,” he said as he started the IV.

She nodded.  Jack sat down and watched her as her eyes closed and her body slowly relaxed.

***

“Jack!”  Irina’s alarmed cry brought Jack hurrying into the bedroom.  She was clawing her way out of bed, looking frantic.  “We have to leave.  We have to get out of here.  He’s coming, Jack.”

“Irina, calm down.”  Jack caught her as she swayed unsteadily.  “Who’s coming?”

“Sloane.  He won’t just let me go, he’ll find me.  He wanted to kill me, and he will now if he finds me.”  She started shaking and let Jack pull her into a sitting position on the bed.

“It’s all right.  We’ve got plenty of time.  Breathe, Irina.”  Jack smoothed her hair back from her face and watched her eyes as she slowly calmed.

“I’m sorry,” Irina said after she’d taken a few deep breaths.  “I just…I had a strange dream, and then I wasn’t quite awake.”

“No need to apologize.”

Irina’s expression grew pensive.  “Jack, there’s something I need to tell you.”  She took a deep breath.  “The man who…”  She shuddered.  “It was Sloane.”

Red rage clouded Jack’s vision.  All that time, when Sloane had been asking for help in finding his daughter, been pretending that he cared about Sydney, acting like he was sorry about the affair with Irina…bad enough that he’d been keeping her prisoner, but this…  “That son of a bitch,” Jack ground out.  “I’m going to kill him.”

“No,” Irina said softly but firmly.  “I’m going to kill him.”

“Of course,” Jack said after a moment.  “But if you need any help…”

Irina shocked him by grabbing him and kissing him hungrily.  “Thank you,” she said when they broke for air.

“For what?”  Jack stared at her, confused.

“For being you.”  She stood, stretched sinuously.  “Do I have any clothes to wear?”

“Uh, yeah, in the other room,” Jack said, still distracted.

“Good.  I do still want to get out of here.”

Jack nodded.  “Let’s get ready, then.”

***

Sloane hung up the phone with a smile.  As he’d suspected, Jack hadn’t gotten far with Irina; they were still in Rome.  And Katya was out; if he moved quickly, she wouldn’t be able to stop him from taking care of the threat that Irina represented once and for all.

He picked out a gun, considered a moment, and then added a tranq gun.  Practically, it didn’t really matter one way or another whether he left Jack alive, but he did have a fondness for his old friend.

***

Katya paused when she saw Sloane coming out of their hotel.  Where was he going?  Her eyes narrowed when she saw him pat a bulge under his coat.  She melted back into the crowd and waited for him to pass, then tailed him.

***

Irina followed Jack out of the hotel lobby and down the stairs to the parking garage.  She felt absurdly happy, almost euphoric; the trigger for her feelings seemed to be the moment when she had really gotten dressed for the first time in two years.  She knew it wouldn’t be long before she was falling asleep again, so she resolved to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

Jack opened the door to the parking garage, then stopped dead in his tracks.  “Jack?” she asked from behind him, confused.  He dropped his suitcase, reached up toward his chest, and then fell backwards.  Irina knew she couldn’t catch him, so she stepped to the side, into the shadows of the stairwell.

The action saved her life.  As she moved, she heard the low bark of a silenced revolver and felt the rush of a bullet inches from her ear, right where her head had just been.  She cursed silently as she crouched down,  slipping into survival mode with the ease of years of practice.  She grabbed Jack’s suitcase, which had fallen to the same side of the doorway that she was on, to look for a weapon.

She froze when she heard a voice that she knew all too well.  “I know you’re back there, Irina.”  Sloane.  Her hands clenched into fists.  “There’s no need to draw this out.  Come out with your hands up, and I’ll consider letting you live.”

Irina’s world went hazy as an equal mixture of rage and terror swept over her.  Use it, she told herself firmly, willing herself to calm down.  She looked at the suitcase, realized that of course Jack wouldn’t keep a gun in the main compartment; it would be in one of the small side compartments, easily accessible.  She unzipped the side compartment; her hunch was confirmed, and she pulled out a handgun.  From the weight of it, it was fully loaded.  She clicked off the safety and waited.

*****

Chapter 17

Irina waited in tense silence for Sloane to make the next move.  She couldn’t go anywhere, as Sloane had a line of sight to the stairs, but she would have the advantage if Sloane came after her.

Sloane spoke again, his voice sending a shiver through her.  “Irina, I have a gun pointed at Jack’s head.  I’m going to count to five, and then I’m going to fire unless you’ve come out.  One…two…”

Irina cursed inwardly, then quickly leaned over far enough to send a shot in Sloane’s direction.  She hadn’t taken time to aim, so she was pleased when she heard his yelp of pain, followed by a clatter.  She leaned out again, gun aimed at Sloane, to see that she’d managed to shoot his left arm, causing him to drop the gun.  She stood and stepped out; still aiming at Sloane, she walked forward and kicked his gun into the shadows.  Then she hesitated a moment, not sure what to do next.

A sound off to the side startled her.  She half-turned to see another figure, gun at the ready.  Irina fired reflexively, then realized that it was Katya.  As she watched Katya fall, a bright spot of blood blooming on her leg, Irina felt a thud, and looked down to see the red tail of a tranquilizer dart protruding from her own chest.  A moment later she slumped bonelessly to the ground.

***

Jack lay half-conscious, hearing a familiar male voice but not understanding the words, until the gunshot woke him up completely.  He opened his eyes but didn’t move at first, trying to get his bearings.  He remembered seeing Sloane, then being shot with a tranq dart; he’d pulled it out quickly, but obviously not fast enough.  He saw Irina step over him, gun out.  He determined with the slightest movement of his arm that the gun in his shoulder holster was still there; she must have gotten one out of his suitcase, then.

There was another gunshot, and this time Jack sat up and pulled his gun from the holster.  He saw Irina fall; behind her stood Sloane, holding a tranq gun in his right hand.  Sloane was looking off to the side, though, and Jack managed to get to his feet before Sloane saw him.  Sloane aimed the tranq gun at Jack, then slid his eyes sideways.

Jack saw the motion and followed it to see Katya lying on the ground, reaching for a gun that was only inches away from her grasping fingers.  He turned most of his attention back on Sloane, but watched Katya out of the corner of his eye as he stepped forward.  Even though he was still a bit woozy from the tranq, he had the advantage as long as Katya couldn’t reach her gun; Sloane’s chance of hitting him at this distance with his right hand was slim, especially considering the reduced accuracy of the darts. “Drop it.”

Sloane did so, then kicked it toward Jack at Jack’s instruction.  Jack ignored it for the moment; instead, he walked to Katya and kicked her gun away, noting the wound on her thigh.  Then he turned back to Sloane.  “I suppose you’re going to kill me,” Sloane said.

“No,” Jack replied, returning to the dropped tranq gun.  “Irina’s going to kill you.”  He fired a tranq dart into Sloane’s chest and watched him lose consciousness.

He and Katya watched each other warily.  Making sure to keep her hands visible, Katya tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it around her bleeding leg while Jack returned to his suitcase and dug out a pair of handcuffs, which he tossed to her.  “Handcuff yourself to that pole,” he ordered.

As she did, she spoke.  “I came here to keep Sloane from killing her.”  Jack didn’t respond; instead, he went to Irina, turned her over, and removed the dart from her chest.  She was breathing, albeit slowly; he checked her pulse and found that it was also slow, but strong and steady.  “Is she all right?” Katya asked.

Jack remained silent and used the tranquilizer gun again to send Katya into unconsciousness.  Then he lifted Irina, carried her to his rented car, and strapped her in.  He checked her pulse again; it was absurdly slow, which worried him—there might be a reaction between the diazepam in her system and the drug in the tranq dart.  He knew a physician he could trust enough to call for advice, but he wanted to get her out of here first.  

He retrieved his suitcase from the stairwell and put it in the trunk along with the guns, then returned to Sloane.  He used Sloane’s jacket to secure him to a pillar, moving him roughly; he didn’t really care if the man was injured.  He considered for a moment, then delivered a sharp kick to Sloane’s groin.  Then he found Sloane’s phone and dialed a number; after it connected, he counted to ten and hung up.  Within half an hour, either a CIA team or Italian intelligence would be on the scene.  Secure in the knowledge that Sloane and Katya were taken care of for the time being, he returned to the car, checked Irina’s breathing again, and drove off.

*****

Chapter 18

Sydney approached the diner a bit apprehensively.  Nadia had called yesterday, saying that she wanted to meet but didn’t want to be put back in the CIA’s “protective custody”, which Sydney could understand completely.  Sydney had been up most of the night wondering what her sister had been up to and what she wanted.

She entered the diner, found Nadia’s booth, and slid in across from her.  “Hi,” she said a bit uncertainly.

“Hi.”  Nadia smiled shyly.  They stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a moment.  “I wanted…I’m looking for my—our mother,” Nadia finally blurted out.

“So am I,” Sydney said, surprised.  But then, as she reflected for a moment, she realized that it was only natural for Nadia to be curious about the mother she had never known.  “I’m not having much luck, though.”

“I talked to our mother’s sister the other day.”

“Katya?”  Sydney had tried to find Katya, but the woman seemed to have vanished into thin air.  Even the SVR didn’t know where she was.

“No, Elena,” Nadia corrected.  “She thinks our mother might be in trouble.  She said your father might be able to help find her.”

Sydney tucked her hair behind her ear.  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Nadia frowned.  “Well, I suppose you know him better than I do,” she murmured.  “Do you have any better ideas, then?”

“I’m trying to find Katya.  She had contact with our mother at least a few months ago.  I haven’t been having much luck, though.”

Her sister nodded.  “I hope that works.  In the meantime…well, I’m a little confused.  Do you think maybe you could fill me in on the family history?  How a Russian spy had daughters by two different Americans?”

Sydney hesitated a moment, then nodded.  She supposed her sister had a right to know about the whole mess.  She started at the beginning, when a young KGB agent had been assigned to get close to a rising CIA agent. Nadia paid rapt attention as Sydney explained their family history.  It seemed awfully strange to her that her mother would have slept with her target’s best friend; it seemed like a very good way to get caught.  Surely there was more to the story than what Sydney knew.  And she got the distinct impression that Sydney was conflicted about both her parents, much like Nadia herself was.

Finished with the past, Sydney moved on to the present, telling Nadia about the ancient box with their mother’s name on it, what little she knew about the prophecies involving the Passenger, and how she, Jack Bristow, and Sloane had come to search for Nadia.  Then she talked about how Katya had stabbed Vaughn and tried to shoot her.

“Wait,” Nadia said.  “She tried to kill you and another CIA agent, and yet you’re seeking her out for information?  Are you sure that’s a good idea?  It seems like it would be a lot safer to see if your father can help first.”

Sydney looked thoughtful.  “You might be right,” she said after a moment.  “It’s just…well, we kind of had some issues.”

“Worse than trying to kill you?”

Sydney frowned.  She pulled out a pen, grabbed a napkin, and scrawled something on it.  “Maybe you should give him a call.”

Yeah, I’m sure he’s going to love to talk to me, Nadia thought, but said nothing as she accepted the napkin and noted the phone number on it.  Obviously Sydney wasn’t going to contact her father for whatever reason.  Nadia was used to doing for herself; it would be easy enough to call Jack Bristow now that she had the number.  The worst that would happen would be total rejection, and she could handle that—apparently her sister couldn’t.

Sydney’s phone rang, and she answered.  “Hello?”  Nadia watched as her eyes widened.  “Where?”  There was a long pause.  “I can be at the airport in an hour.  Thanks, Dixon.”  She hung up, then turned to Nadia.  “They’ve caught Katya and Slo—your father in Rome.  The CIA is trying to get them extradited here, but in the meantime, Dixon said I could go to Rome and talk to them.”

Nadia nodded.  “Will you let me know if you learn anything?”

“Of course, if you give me a way to contact you.”  Now it was Nadia’s turn to write a cell phone number on a napkin.  “Okay, I’ve got to go.”  Sydney hesitated a moment, then smiled.  “Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”

Nadia offered a tentative smile in return.  “Good luck.”  She watched her sister leave the diner.


*****

Chapter 19

Jack watched Irina closely, occasionally glancing at his watch.  When the second hand reached the twelve, he spoke into the phone.  “Seven breaths in a minute.”

“That’s slow, but not as bad as it could be,” Dr. Michaels said.  Jack had explained the situation to him; he hadn’t used Irina’s name, but he had needed to give her sex and age.  He only hoped that the doctor would be as discreet as he’d been in the past.  “Look at the skin around her fingernails for me.  Does it look blue or purple?”

Jack picked up Irina’s hand, which felt like ice.  “It’s pale,” he answered.  “And very cold.”

“All right.  You said it’s been about forty-five minutes since she was hit with the tranquilizer dart?”

Jack checked his watch.  He’d driven only a few miles before checking into another hotel, worried about both Irina and his own ability to drive—he was still suffering the aftereffects of the tranq dart.  “Closer to an hour now,” he told Dr. Michaels.

“She shouldn’t get any worse, then—the level of the tranquilizer in her blood should have already peaked.  Try to wake her up again.”

Jack put the doctor on hold, not wanting him to hear Irina’s name, then shook her shoulder.  “Irina, wake up.”  She didn’t respond.  He got back on the phone.  “Still nothing.”

“All right.  I want you to take your fist and rub her sternum with a moderate amount of pressure.  It’s painful and should get a reaction out of her if she’s not comatose.”

Jack did as the doctor instructed and was rewarded when Irina moaned softly and turned her head.  “She responded to that, but she still didn’t wake up.”

“Good.  She should be all right, then.  Keep her warm, and call me again if she’s not awake and oriented in six hours.  She should be in a hospital, of course, but I won’t bother trying to convince you to take her.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Jack replied.  “What about the diazepam?  Should I give her the regular dose tomorrow?”

“Yes.  There probably isn’t much direct interaction between the diazepam and the tranquilizer, so it’s best to keep her on the regular schedule.  But let her in on the decision—she’ll have much better results if she’s in control of how much drug she gets.”

“All right.  Thank you for your help, Nick.”

“No problem.  Call me if you need anything else.  And if you should get to LA with your patient, bring her to see me—she really should be examined by a physician.”

“I’ll see what I can do.  Goodbye.”  Jack hung up the phone, then settled into a chair by the bed.

He must have dozed; he jerked when his phone rang.  When he picked it up, he was surprised to see that two hours had passed.  “Jack Bristow,” he said when he answered.

“Agent Bristow?”  The unfamiliar female voice on the line sounded uncertain.  “This is…this is Nadia Santos.  I need your help.”

Nadia waited anxiously for Jack Bristow to respond.  She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous; perhaps it was because her one brief glimpse of the man had convinced her that he was not to be trifled with.

“How did you get this number?” Agent Bristow asked after a moment.  Fortunately, he didn’t sound angry.

“Sydney gave it to me.”

“I see.  And what did you need help with?”

Odd; apparently Jack wasn’t surprised that his daughter wasn’t contacting him herself, Nadia thought.  “I’m looking for my mother,” she said quickly, before nerves could get the better of her.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.  “We shouldn’t be discussing this over the phone.  Can you be in Marseille in three days?”

Nadia confirmed that she could, then scribbled down the instructions that Jack gave her.  As she hung up the phone, she wondered if she was doing the right thing in meeting with this man, who had every reason to hate her very existence.  But, as she’d concluded before she made the call, her only other choice was to wait around doing nothing and hope that Sydney learned something—and that just wasn’t an option.  She only hoped that she was indeed on the right path toward finding her mother.

***

Jack hung up the phone and looked at Irina thoughtfully.  He hadn’t been in a hurry to ask her about Nadia, but it seemed as if now was the time.  He wondered if Sloane or Katya had bothered to tell her anything about Nadia while they’d had her; his guess would be probably not.

Ever since he’d learned of Nadia’s existence, Jack had tried not to think too much about what Irina knew about her.  Without Irina, he couldn’t answer those questions with anything more than speculation.  Now, though, Irina was here, and he suspected that in her current state of mind he might even be able to believe that her answers were the truth.  He shifted slightly in his chair as he began considering the long list of questions he would have for her when she awoke.

***

Irina drifted slowly up from an unconsciousness so deep that it seemed like days must have passed.  At some point she became aware that she was conscious, which meant that she was, presumably, not dead.  After reviewing her memory, she determined that she was probably a prisoner of Sloane and Katya again; she knew she should have an emotional response to that, but it seemed like far too much effort.

She lay there for awhile, quite content to drift, until it occurred to her that perhaps she should determine her situation.  Reluctantly, she forced her eyes open and was surprised to see Jack in a chair next to her bed.  He wasn’t looking at her at first; when his attention did turn in her direction, she saw him startle as his eyes locked onto hers.  “Irina.  How are you feeling?”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I pulled the tranquilizer out before I got a full dose,” Jack answered.  “I woke up about the time you went down.”

Irina supposed she should nod, but didn’t feel like making the effort.  “Did you kill them?”

Jack shook his head.  “They should be in the custody of either the Italian or American government by now.”

“Oh.”  Irina let her eyelids fall closed; they were far too heavy to keep open.

“Irina?”  She felt Jack take her hand.  “Are you going back to sleep?”

“No,” she murmured.  “I think I’ll just lay here for awhile.”

“Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“Tell me about the Passenger.”

*****

Chapter 20

Jack supposed he should feel bad about interrogating Irina when she was so obviously drugged and not thinking clearly, but instead he was rather glad for the opportunity.  She wasn’t exactly eager to share information under normal circumstances; getting anything from her was like pulling teeth.

After he asked about the Passenger, Irina frowned, her eyes still closed.  “Rambaldi prophesied that a woman would be born who could find and activate a powerful biological weapon that he’d created.”

Jack leaned forward.  “Who is she?”

“I don’t think she’s been born yet,” Irina answered.

Jack frowned.  “Are you sure?”

She sighed.  “I don’t know.  All I know is that the KGB chased the Passenger for years…”  She trailed off.  Her eyes opened, and Jack could see a hint of tears.  “They tortured and killed dozens of little girls, and they still never found her.”  She pushed herself up on her elbows, clearly more awake now.  “Jack, what is this about?”

Since she was evidently alert enough now to be emotionally involved in the conversation, Jack switched tactics.  “You were pregnant when you left.”

She stared at him for a long moment, looking completely floored.  “Yes,” she whispered finally.  She relaxed her arms and let her upper body fall back to the bed.

“Did you know before you left?”  She pressed her lips together and nodded.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”  He suspected her answer would be that the baby wasn’t his, but he had to ask anyway.

She surprised him.  “I knew I was going to be extracted,” she said instead.  “Telling you would have only made things worse.  If you’d believed me dead…I didn’t want you to have to mourn a child.  And if you knew or suspected that I was alive, I thought that you would probably go looking for me.”

“But I did look for you,” Jack said, and then clamped his mouth shut.  He’d never meant to tell her that.  She watched him curiously.  He sighed.  “So what happened to the child?”

She turned her face to the ceiling.  “The KGB took her.”  Her tone was flat.  “When she was a day old, they took her away and said that she’d died.  I didn’t believe it.  But I couldn’t do anything; even after I got out of prison, I couldn’t find where they were keeping her.  Not until years later.”  Jack waited patiently while she paused.  “It wasn’t until 1991, shortly before the Soviet Union fell, that I found the facility in Novgorod where they’d kept her.  I went through their records to see what they’d been doing.  There’s a formula in Rambaldi’s works that the Passenger is supposed to have a reaction to.  In the 60’s, they found twenty girls that met the basic criteria and tried the formula on them.  Most of them got sick from it, but none had the desired reaction.  They killed them all.  In the 70’s, there were sixteen.  One had something like the reaction they were looking for—she went into a kind of trance and started writing.  But what she wrote was clearly gibberish.  They kept her alive and imprisoned, killed the rest.”

Jack frowned.  He hadn’t suspected that the serum would have an effect on others.  “What happened to her?”

“They kept testing her until they were sure they weren’t going to get any better information from her, and then they killed her.”  Jack saw a tear track its way down Irina’s cheek.  “She was my niece.”

Jack blinked a few times.  He hadn’t expected that.  “Irina, we don’t have to keep talking about this…”

“No.”  Irina struggled to push herself up to a sitting position.  Jack moved to help her, but she stopped him with a look.  Once she was upright and leaning against the headboard, she continued.  “She was my sister Elena’s daughter.  I never met her, or even knew of her existence until after she was dead.  But the KGB concluded that she must be related to the Passenger, so they focused on my family.  Rather than wait until another child came along that happened to fulfill the criteria, they engineered one.  The child I was carrying when I was extracted would never have been conceived had it not been for direct orders from the KGB.”

“So she passed the test?”

Irina sighed.  “She responded more than my niece did.  She wrote something that seemed to make sense at first glance, but when they analyzed it more closely, it didn’t actually lead them anywhere.”  

Jack frowned, surprised—according to CIA analysis, the writing Nadia had done had pointed very clearly to a specific location.  

“Somehow the followers of Rambaldi learned that someone who might be the Passenger was in KGB custody, so they kidnapped her.  They gave her the serum and came to the same conclusion as the KGB.”  Irina looked directly at Jack.  “Did you know that William Vaughn was a follower of Rambaldi?”  Jack nodded.  “He was the one that organized the kidnapping.  I found him early in 1992 and asked him what he’d done with my daughter.”  Jack watched as Irina swallowed hard.  “Could I have some water?”

“Sure.”  He got up, filled a glass, and handed it to her.

“Thanks.”  She took a long drink.  “Vaughn said that they’d determined she wasn’t the Passenger, and that he’d killed her.”  Irina locked eyes directly with Jack.  “So I killed him.”

Jack blinked in confusion.  Why would William Vaughn lie and tell Irina he’d killed her daughter?  He must have realized what Irina would do to him.  “So she’s dead, then?” Jack asked, just to confirm that Irina believed her daughter dead.

“That’s what I thought for a long time.”  Irina looked away and focused on the wall.  “About a week after Sydney disappeared, I found out that Sloane was seeking a DNA comparison between his own DNA and a sequence written out on parchment—he wanted to know if he was the father.  I controlled the lab he chose, but he must not have known that.  I suspected immediately what he was looking for, had them compare my DNA as well and give me the results first.”  She looked at Jack again.  “The results said that I was the mother, but that Sloane was not her father.”  Jack stared at her, thunderstruck.  Irina continued, “She’s your daughter, Jack.”

Jack blinked at her.  “But you had the lab tell Sloane she was his?”

Irina nodded.  “To protect her.  I started looking for her, but I wanted a safeguard just in case Sloane found her first.  If he thought he was her father, I figured he wouldn’t kill her trying to get Rambaldi’s damned secret.”

She was lying.  He knew she was lying; he’d checked Nadia’s blood type when she’d been in the hospital, and she couldn’t possibly be his child.  He burned with anger; he knew she couldn’t be trusted, but he wouldn’t think she would lie about something so important, and something so easily checked.  After a deep breath, he calmed enough to decide to play along, at least until her reason for telling him this lie became clear.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Irina bit her lower lip.  “I was going to tell you as soon as we found Sydney.  I didn’t want…I didn’t know how you’d react.”  He could see the pain in her eyes.  “If I told you the whole story, I’d have to tell you about Sloane.  I was afraid you wouldn’t work with me.”

Jack considered for a long moment.  When he spoke, his voice was even, but dangerously soft.  “So I haven’t known for the last three years that I have another daughter, I’ve lost two years of looking for her, because you couldn’t just tell me the truth.”  He stood.  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  Lying is what you do best, isn’t it?”  He tore his eyes away from her and left the hotel room.

*****

Chapter 21

Jack sat in the hotel bar, nursing a drink and trying to sort through his emotions.  He still couldn’t understand why Irina would tell him that Nadia was his.  Perhaps it was because she thought he would protect Nadia if he thought she was his.  But he would have done that anyway, because she was Sydney’s sister.  And because she was Irina’s daughter, he couldn’t help but admit; despite all she had done to him, he still wouldn’t wish the loss of a daughter on Irina.  Just protection didn’t seem a strong enough reason for even Irina to tell a lie of that magnitude, though, so he supposed he would have to keep up the pretense of believing her and wait to see what revealed itself.  In the meantime, though, the question was whether he should tell Irina that her daughter was indeed alive and well.  He ought to keep her in the dark and give her a taste of her own medicine, he thought bitterly as he swirled the liquid in his glass.  See how she liked it when he was the one withholding information.

Feeling much better after another drink, Jack headed back to the room.  Irina wasn’t asleep as he’d suspected; in fact, he didn’t see her at all.  The bathroom door was closed, though, and light shone from under it.  After a brief hesitation, Jack knocked.  “Irina?  Are you all right?”

“Fine,” came her muffled reply.  He moved away and sat down.  A few minutes later she came out, and he could tell that her face was freshly washed.  She came over and sat in the chair next to his.  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said softly.  “I know that I can never make up for everything I’ve done, but for what it’s worth, I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”  When he saw that she was waiting for a response, he nodded tersely.  She continued, “If I could go back and do everything over again, knowing how it would all turn out, honestly, most of my choices would be the same.  But not telling you about our daughter—that was a mistake.”

Jack nodded, gave her a small smile.  He could imagine how difficult that had been for her—Irina Derevko was not a woman who easily admitted to making mistakes.  She really must want him to believe that Nadia was his.

His stomach growled, reminding him that it had been a long time since breakfast.  “Are you hungry?”  Irina thought for a moment, then nodded.  “All right, I’ll order some room service.”

Jack ordered, and then they waited, both acutely aware of the thick tension in the room.  Jack wished he’d been able to get a suite, so they could at least escape to separate rooms, but the hotel hadn’t had any available.  Instead, they were stuck together—one room, one bed.  Jack wondered if it might not be a good idea to start the drive to Marseille tonight.  But it was a nine hour drive, and he was already tired; he supposed it only made sense to remain here for the night.

Dinner arrived and they ate in silence, both focusing on their food.  Jack did note, though, that Irina seemed to have a perfectly normal appetite; her nausea appeared to have resolved itself.  He wondered if it had been due more to distaste at being in captivity than to side effects of the drug.

Irina was blinking to stay awake by the time she finished.  “I think I’d better lie down,” she said, getting to her feet unsteadily.

Jack nodded.  “Do you mind if I turn the TV on?”  Part of him wanted to get up and help her, but he stayed where he was.

She shrugged.  “It doesn’t matter.”  She got into bed, curled up on her side, and closed her eyes.

***

Elena settled into her seat on the airplane, looked out the window, and smiled.  Freedom was exhilarating, if a bit unnerving after being locked away from the world for so long.

She’d thought in 1992, when Irina had told her of finding the CIA agent that had killed her daughter, that this business of Rambaldi’s Passenger was over.  But when Irina had told her a few years ago that Arvin Sloane was looking for “his” daughter, she realized that events had yet to play out, and that the secret she’d kept to herself for so many years was probably going to have to be told.  At that point, she’d started looking for a way out of the institution.

Nadia’s visit, in addition to pressing on Elena the urgency of obtaining freedom, had also given her the key to escape—literally.  A hair pin had fallen out of Nadia’s hair while they spoke; Elena had managed to get hold of it and pick the lock on her cell.

Now, as the plane took off, she felt a growing sense of anticipation.  Rambaldi had taken one of her daughters, but she still had a chance to save the other.

*****

Chapter 22

Sydney walked into the interrogation room and gave Katya a long look, noticing that her bandaged leg was propped up on a chair.  According to the Italian authorities, she and Sloane had been found in a parking garage, both restrained and with relatively minor gunshot wounds.  Both had been waking up from tranquilizer darts when they’d been apprehended, but no tranquilizer gun had been recovered.  Also, someone had called the CIA on Sloane’s cell phone to report their presence.  Clearly, someone had set them up; Sydney wanted to find out who.  Given that few people knew the CIA number that had been called, she actually wondered if it could have possibly been her father… she was certain that he wasn’t really taking a vacation, but was working on some project of his own.

“Sydney,” Katya said, looking and sounding quite like she were merely having Sydney over for tea.

“Katya,” Sydney answered evenly, sitting down.  “Who shot you?”

“Your mother.”  Sydney blinked at her.  “What, you think your mother has a problem with shooting her relatives?  From what I hear, it’s not the first time.”

Sydney frowned at the reminder of that initial meeting with her mother, now almost four years ago.  “Why?”

Katya shrugged.  “To be fair, I did startle her when she had a gun aimed at Sloane.  He went there to kill her, you see, and I went there to stop him, but I suppose Irina didn’t know that.”

So her mother and Sloane were at odds, Sydney mused.  She’d wondered if her mother might be in the shadows behind Sloane’s efforts to find Nadia, given that they’d worked together after Irina’s escape from CIA custody.  “Where might she be now?”

Katya smiled the kind of smile that just screamed ‘I’ve got a secret.’  “Maybe you should ask your father.”

***

Jack devoured Irina’s mouth, his tongue entwining with hers.  She moaned as he massaged her breasts, then rolled him onto his back.  Running her fingers along his shaft, she straddled him, then lowered herself onto him.  “Oh, God, Irina.” 

“Jack…there’s something…I need to tell you,” Irina panted as she clenched her muscles around him.

“Now?”  he groaned.

She nodded, smiling at him wickedly.  “I have a present for you.”

Jack’s arousal vanished as cold foreboding settled in the pit of his stomach.  “What is it?”

Still smiling, Irina reached behind her and pulled a butcher knife into view.  She took one of his balls in her left hand.  “Jack?”

Jack stared up at her, confused.  “What?”

“Jack!” Irina said more urgently.  Jack blinked, opened his eyes, and discovered that the grinning Irina on top of him had been replaced by a rather frightened looking Irina, sitting beside him and looking down on him.  He shook his head, realizing that it had just been a dream.

The real Irina closed her eyes.  “Jack, can you move please?” she blurted out quickly.

Looking down, he saw that his legs were on top of hers, effectively pinning her to the bed.  He rolled off of her, chagrined to see that it was he who had clearly invaded her half of the bed.  “Are you all right?”

“Sick,” she murmured.  She stood, and then promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor.  “Shit,” he heard her mutter.  “Jack, my stomach is really…”

Jack scooted across to her side of the bed in time to see her clamp her hands over her mouth.  He scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom, where he put her down in front of the toilet.  He was rather surprised when she didn’t throw up immediately, though she still looked decidedly green.  He sat down on the edge of the tub.  “Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head.  “Could you go, please?”

He hesitated, then nodded and left the room.  As he closed the bathroom door, he heard her coughing, then retching, but he didn’t turn back.  Irina had never been the type to be coddled when she was sick, so he knew they’d both be happier if he just left her alone.

She came out a few minutes later, looking pale and exhausted and walking unsteadily.  The only thing that wasn’t weakened was her glare, which shot in his direction, strong as ever, when he got up to help her.  Instead, he headed to the mini refrigerator and got out a can of Sprite as she got into bed and curled into a ball again.  He poured the soda into a glass and carried it over to the bed.  “Irina, drink this.”  She opened an eye and glowered at him.  He sighed.  “If you drink it, I’ll leave you alone.  If you don’t, I’ll badger you until you give in.”  She sighed loudly, but took the glass and let him support her in a half-sitting position as she sipped.  She handed the glass back after downing a few ounces; rather than pressing the issue, Jack simply took the glass and lay her back down.  “Still feeling sick?”

She shook her head.  “I think I ate too much,” she murmured as she turned on her side again.

“All right.  I’ll bring the trash can over anyway.”  He pulled the blankets over her, then brought over the trash can as promised.  Then he went around the bed and climbed in, glad that Irina was facing away from him.  He’d been planning to leave shortly before eight in the morning and give her medication in the car, but that didn’t seem feasible now.  He could only hope this had been a one-time event and not the start of a prolonged illness.

He heard her sigh and rustle a little.  “Jack?” she asked.

“What is it?”

There was a long pause, then “Nothing.”

Jack had a suspicion, though, so he rolled over and put his arms around her.  She wriggled back a little, leaned her head back against his shoulder, and went limp.  Despite himself, Jack smiled.

*****

Chapter 23

Jack was startled out of sleep again, this time by his phone ringing.  He rolled over to answer it, wondering who else could be calling while he was supposedly on vacation.  “Jack Bristow,” he said without looking at the caller I.D.

“Dad?”

“Sydney.”  He felt Irina move and turned to see her sitting up and watching him.

“I need to talk to you.”  She sounded very matter-of-fact about it, and Jack could tell that she was trying to keep any emotion out of her voice.

“All right.  Where are you?”  Perhaps she could meet up with Nadia in Marseille, he thought.

“I’m in Rome.  Where are you?”

“I’m in Rome, too.”  He glanced over at Irina, who appeared to be fully awake.  Her expression was merely attentive, but he thought he detected longing in her eyes.  “Where are you specifically?  I’ll come pick you up.”

She gave him an address, and he told her he would be there shortly.  He hung up and turned to Irina.  “Do you want to come with me, or should I bring her back here?”

Irina pursed her lips.  “You don’t mind if I go with you?”  He shook his head, giving her a slight smile.  “Do you think Sydney will be upset?”

He shook his head.  “I think she wants to see you, actually.”  In fact, that may very well be why she had called him – she must have known why Nadia wanted his phone number.  But he had no idea how to broach that subject with Irina, so he kept silent.  He stood.  “Well, we should get dressed.”

***

Sydney stood when she saw her father enter the hotel lobby and hurried over to him.  “Dad,” she said, grabbing his arm and ushering him back outside.  She glanced around to make sure no one was listening.  “Do you know where Mom is?  I need to talk to her.”

“She’s in the car,” Jack answered.

She stopped walking and stared at him in shock.  “She’s what?”

“In the car,” Jack repeated, his face perfectly straight.  He walked forward a few steps, then turned back.  “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” Sydney said, still surprised.  She followed him, wondering how this had happened.  Her parents must have been together when Sydney called.

They reached a non-descript rental car with someone in the back seat.  Jack opened the door and said, “Irina.”  Sydney saw her mother sit up and blink; she must have been asleep.

Her father stood aside, and Sydney slid into the back seat next to her mother.  “Are you all right?” she asked.

Her mother smiled slightly, but Sydney thought she looked tired and pale.  She also looked like she’d lost weight.  “I’m all right.  I got hit with a tranq dart earlier, that’s all.”  As Irina spoke, Jack got into the driver’s seat.

“Oh,” was all Sydney could think of to say.

No one spoke as Jack started the car and pulled away.  “Are you hungry?” he asked after a moment.

Sydney looked at her mother, who shrugged.  “Maybe a little,” Sydney said.  Her father nodded.  There was another silence.  Sydney considered for a moment, then spoke.  “So…um, have you talked to Nadia?  She was looking for you.”

Her mother somehow managed to grow even more pale, and her eyes widened.  “Nadia?” she said softly.

Sydney clapped a hand over her mouth as she realized her mistake.  “Oh, God.  You didn’t know?”  She looked up at her father, who appeared expressionless.  “Dad, you didn’t tell her?”  Her father glanced briefly at her, and she saw a warning in his eyes, but he turned back to the road before she could figure out what he meant.

“You found her?” Irina asked, and Sydney turned back to her.  She still looked shocked, but she seemed oddly calm.

“Yeah, a few weeks ago.  Actually, it was mostly Dad and Sloane who found her.”

She saw her mother glance briefly up at her father, but then she turned back to Sydney.  “How…is she all right?”

“Yeah, she’s okay.  Now she is, after we got her away from Sloane.  He, um, used the Rambaldi serum on her.”

Irina closed her eyes, and Sydney saw a brief ghost of anger pass over her features, but it still didn’t seem like enough for the circumstances.  “Of course he did,” she murmured.

There was yet another uncomfortable silence, and Sydney fidgeted nervously.  “So what have you been up to?” she asked finally.  “I was sort of hoping you would call or… something.”  God, that sounded stupid, she thought.  Like something you say to an old college friend, not to your mother.

Her mother frowned.  “I would have liked to,” she said, barely above a whisper, “but I was unavoidably detained.”

“Oh.”  Sydney considered that for a moment.  Her mother made it sound like it was one of those things that just sort of slipped your mind, but that couldn’t be right – you didn’t just forget to call your daughter after she’d been missing for two years.  So either she really hadn’t been interested in making contact, or something had prevented her.  Yet here she was, with Sydney’s father… Sydney didn’t know what to make of it.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.  “Nadia was looking for me?” Irina asked finally.

Sydney nodded.  “She said she talked to your sister Elena.”

Irina raised her eyes.  “In the mental hospital?”

Sydney frowned.  “She didn’t mention that part.  Your sister’s in a mental hospital?”

“Technically, a prison for the criminally insane.  She went on a bit of a killing spree thirteen…”  Irina trailed off and shook her head.  “No, fifteen years ago.”

“Is she really insane?”  Sydney wasn’t really surprised to find that she had a relative who was a crazed murderer, but it was still interesting.  And she knew so little about her mother’s family anyway.

Irina tilted her head.  “Well, not really.  She’s fine when she’s on her medication.”

Her father pulled into a parking space and turned the engine off.  “Shall we get something to eat?” he asked, seeming completely uninterested in his possibly insane sister-in-law.

Sydney nodded and got out.  She saw her mother wobble as she got out of the car; her father had to assist her.  Must have been some tranq dart, Sydney thought.  They headed into the restaurant.

*****

Chapter 24

“So,” Sydney said to her mother when they were seated in the restaurant, a pizza and some pasta on the way, “I should probably call Nadia and let her know that you’re here.”

“No,” her father said firmly.

“Why not?” Sydney asked.  Her mother frowned.

“She may be working with Sloane,” he said.  “Sloane is searching for your mother.”

“Can I at least tell Nadia that Mom’s all right?” Sydney asked.  She turned to her mother.  “She was worried about you, said that Elena said you might be in trouble.”  She shrugged.  “Although I’m not sure why she’d think that if she’s been in a mental hospital.”

“Because I haven’t been to see her in far too long,” her mother murmured.  She turned to Jack; Sydney couldn’t see her face, but she must have communicated something to him, because he nodded slightly.

Jack then turned to Sydney.  “I’m meeting Nadia in Marseille in three days.  You’re welcome to…”

Her mother interrupted with a bit of the fire Sydney was used to.  “You’re what?”  Her father looked chagrined.  “When were you planning to tell me?”

He looked at her with an expression Sydney couldn’t quite read, some odd combination of sadness and something that might have been satisfaction.  She stared back at him for a moment, then turned away and sighed.  There was tense silence for several moments, as Sydney wondered yet again what the hell was going on between her parents.  Then Sydney’s phone rang, making them all jump.  She pulled it out and recognized the number.  “Dixon,” she said into it.

“Sydney.  We’ve intercepted a Covenant communication.  They have your sister.”

Sydney’s heart dropped into her shoes, but she pushed the emotion aside.  “What are we doing about it?”  Her parents must have seen her alarm, because they were suddenly watching her very intently.

“Our intel indicates that she’s being held in a facility outside of Marseille.  You’re the closest agent, but we can have a team meet you in sixteen hours.”

“Hold on.”  Sydney put Dixon on hold.  “The Covenant has Nadia in Marseille.  Dixon can’t get a team there for sixteen hours.”

“Tell him we can go in tonight,” her father said.

She nodded and clicked the hold button again.  “Dixon?  I don’t need a team.  My father’s here.”

***

Nearly four hours later, Sydney stared out the window of the plane.  The flight had been quiet so far; her mother, in the middle seat, had fallen asleep leaning against her father almost as soon as the plane had gotten off the ground.  To Sydney’s surprise, her father hadn’t pushed her away; in fact, he’d put his arm around her and apparently tried to make her as comfortable as possible.  Probably just keeping up the appearance of a traveling family, Sydney thought.

Her father had remained awake, but he appeared to be lost in his thoughts, giving Sydney time to think herself.  It seemed odd to her that her father had volunteered to help Nadia without the slightest hesitation; had he simply resolved to accept her because she was Sydney’s sister?  Or did it have more to do with her mother?  Sydney watched the reflection of her parents in the window as her mother stirred; her father turned from staring straight ahead to brush a strand of hair back from her face, caressing her cheek gently as he did.  Try as she might, Sydney couldn’t reconcile her parents’ behavior; their attitude toward each other had been mostly cold, with the exception of her mother’s flashes of anger… and yet they must have been together when Sydney called.  What had they been up to?  And why was her father now acting like the most doting husband in the world?

And her mother… as always, Irina Derevko was a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  But Sydney was more or less used to cryptic remarks and being given as little information as possible; it was her behavior that nagged at Sydney, in that it was extremely unusual for her.  She seemed dulled, flat, not nearly as alert as she normally was.  The way she was acting with Jack was odd – she’d clearly been upset with him more than once, but she hadn’t said or done anything about it; normally Sydney would have expected her to distance herself from him, but instead it almost seemed like she was depending on him.  And Sydney thought it was hardly normal to fall asleep so easily when the daughter she hadn’t seen since her birth was being held captive.  Her mother had earlier said she’d been hit by a tranq dart, but that had happened to Sydney plenty of times; once she woke up, she might feel a little off for an hour or two, not more than four hours.  Besides, Sydney had a suspicion that the tranq dart might have come from Katya or Sloane, and they had been discovered more than twelve hours ago.

Sydney turned to look at her mother.  She didn’t bother to hide her interest from her father; she was planning to ask for an explanation as soon as they got a little privacy anyway.  She hadn’t truly looked at her mother at all that evening, except for a brief moment in the dark car, and now she was surprised by what she saw.  Her mother was pale, more pale than she’d been even at the end of her time in CIA custody.  And she was thinner – Sydney could clearly see the bones in her hands and face standing out.  She had a few more wrinkles, not many, and there was still no sign of grey in her hair, but still she somehow looked older.  More tension in her face, perhaps, even in sleep.  Sydney tried not to think about what it could mean – that her mother might be sick, dying even – no, surely it was just something innocuous, a recent case of the flu perhaps.

Her father had noticed her attention immediately, but he waited until she turned back to the window to speak.  “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” she answered, her tone perfectly even.  He would know, of course, that something was on her mind, but that was fine.

The “fasten seatbelts” sign came on as the captain announced that they were preparing to land.  Sydney sat back, resolving not to worry about all of the insanity swirling around her until her sister was safe.

*****

Chapter 25

As soon as Nadia opened her eyes, she couldn’t help a strong feeling of déjà vu.  Once again, she was manacled to a chair, again with a writing surface under her right hand.  The blond woman walking toward her with a cold smile looked quite a bit like the woman who had shown up when her father had given her the Rambaldi serum and encouraged him to kill her, but this woman was a couple of decades older.

“About time you woke up,” the woman said.  She opened a nearby cupboard and pulled out a bottle full of a very familiar green liquid.

“No, please,” Nadia begged.  The serum sent her into a confusing, dark whirlwind where she felt like she was losing her mind.  It was like trying to read a book in the dark, or recognize a face through a dark veil, while a screaming mob tried to knock her down, and she didn’t think she could stand it again without going crazy.

The woman didn’t turn, but Nadia could see her drawing the serum into a syringe.  “You changed the formula last time, didn’t you?  The location you pointed to yielded nothing.  I’m afraid I can’t trust you not to do that again, so I’ll have to make sure the serum doesn’t have a chance to wear off.”  

Nadia couldn’t suppress the tears that came as the woman came toward her with the syringe.  The woman paid her no attention, simply injected the serum.

As always, Nadia was dimly aware of what she was writing, but she couldn’t control it.  Then the visions began, and she no longer cared about the pen in her hand.  Some of the visions were different each time, but it always started with the same one: a woman, blurred and indistinct, lying on her back.  Then the cry of an infant, one of the few things that was always crystal clear.  Then voices; Nadia could never make out the words over the random noise that was always present, but the woman on the bed was crying, pleading with another woman who stood at the foot of the bed holding the baby.  The mother held out her arms, but the other woman shook her head, then carried the baby away.

The vision faded into a cacophony of light and sound.  Then it dissolved into another vision of two little girls playing together.  Nadia had seen these children before, but never this particular scene.  One of the girls was apparently several years older than the other, given the difference in size between them.  The girls’ play was interrupted when a door opened and a man entered the scene.  The older girl stood up and ran to the man, giving him a hug, while the younger girl simply ignored him and continued to play.

Then, with a sickening lurch, Nadia was thrown into another vision, one that could only be described as “death”.  Piles of bodies, everywhere, rotting.  Dressed in everything from nightgowns to business suits, babies and old people and everyone in between, all dead with stricken expressions on their faces.  And the smell… Nadia felt her stomach turn over and realized dimly that her almost forgotten physical body was vomiting.  She managed to turn her head enough to ensure that she ruined the paper she was writing on, and then everything faded to black.

***

Jack had chosen to meet Nadia in Marseille for a reason; he had already been planning to head here with Irina, since he had a storage facility here.  He hadn’t been sure before how useful it would be, but now that they were carrying out a rescue mission, it would come in quite handy.

Dixon had managed to discover the building where Nadia was being held; Jack suspected that he was getting his information from a CIA mole within the Covenant, but there was no time to worry about that now.  He’d already considered the possibility that it might be a trap, but decided that the odds were low and that they should proceed anyway.

Irina had some kind of prior experience with the building.  She didn’t bother detailing it, simply gave them the best route in and told them several places where the Covenant might be keeping Nadia.  As Irina was going through exit possibilities, it must have occurred to Sydney that her mother was using “you” instead of “we”.  “Aren’t you going in with us?” she asked.

Irina shook her head, meeting Jack’s eyes.  He could see that she did, in fact, long for action, and she would hate waiting through the mission, but she was aware enough of her condition to know that she would only be a liability.  He was also pretty sure that she didn’t want the situation explained to Sydney, which he could understand completely.  So he made up a slightly plausible lie.  “This is to some extent a CIA mission,” he said evenly.  “Having your mother along could be a bad idea.”

Sydney nodded, but didn’t look totally convinced.  “I’m going to go get changed.”

As soon as she was enclosed in the bathroom, Jack turned to Irina.  “Will you be all right?”

She nodded.  “Just bring her back.”

He went to one of the lockers and opened it to reveal communications gear.  “At least you can be on comm.”  She smiled and went over to examine the equipment.  He watched her a moment, then cleared his throat.  “If…if something should happen to us, will you be all right?”

She stared at him for a moment, looking surprised, then sad.  “Jack, if something happens to the three of you, it won’t matter what happens to me.”

Thankfully, Sydney chose that moment to emerge from the restroom, which meant Jack could excuse himself to change rather than trying to formulate a response.

***

Jack and Sydney slipped through the corridors of the building silently.  Jack was worried; things were going too well.  They’d dispatched a few guards, but nothing major.  Irina had suggested the infirmary as the most logical place for them to have Nadia if they were giving her the Rambaldi serum, so that was where they headed first.  Jack eased open the door and was relieved to see Nadia in the room.  His relief quickly turned to concern, though; she looked quite ill, even though her hand still moved across a piece of paper.

Sydney cried out behind him, and he spun around just in time to see a syringe pumping green liquid into Sydney’s arm.  He wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the one holding the syringe was Olivia Reed, nor that she was pointing a gun at him with her other hand.  “Interesting,” she said as Sydney’s eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, her right hand jerking.  “I always wondered what would happen if one of the Passenger’s relatives were injected with the serum.  Too bad it won’t work on you.”

They stood in a standoff for a few seconds, but then a guard came through the door behind Olivia and pointed his gun at Jack.  Olivia reached down, pulled the still convulsing Sydney up by her hair, and pointed her gun at Sydney’s head.  “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air.”  Jack had no choice but to comply.

*****

Chapter 26

Nadia felt the effects of the serum begin to wear off as the visions dimmed and she became more aware of her own body again.  She didn’t bother trying to change what she was writing; she felt far too exhausted to think of doing much of anything.  She could only hope that it was over, and that she might be allowed to sleep.

Her hand finally stopped moving and let the pen fall to the paper.  Nadia let her head fall to her chest, sighing as she realized that it couldn’t be over; she hadn’t written out anywhere near the entire pattern.  So why had she been allowed to stop?

She didn’t have time to drift into sleep before her head was pulled up.  “Wake up,” the blonde woman said.  Nadia opened her eyes and blinked at the woman wearily.  “Look.”  Nadia followed the woman’s pointing finger and was dismayed to see her sister handcuffed to a nearby bed, eyes rolled back, hand jerking – she must have been given the Rambaldi serum, and yet there was no pen in her hand.  “You could just tell me where it is,” the woman said, “and then I can let you both go.”

Nadia shook her head.  “I don’t know where it is,” she whispered.

“Fine, you can keep writing, then.  But I would suggest you don’t try altering what you put down.  If we don’t find anything this time, you’ll have to watch while I kill your sister.”  She reached over and picked up a syringe filled with more of the green liquid.

“Please, I’m so tired,” Nadia pleaded.

The woman shrugged.  “I gave you a chance.”  She slid the needle into Nadia’s arm.


***

Irina pulled herself another hard-fought few feet through the ventilation shaft, then paused to rest for a moment before turning what would hopefully be the last corner.  She’d listened helplessly as Jack and Sydney were caught and Sydney injected with the Rambaldi serum, then turned the comm system off before their mikes could be found and used to trace her location.  She’d briefly debated waiting it out – the CIA would send a team when Jack and Sydney didn’t report in – but quickly decided that she wouldn’t be able to stand that.  After being passive for so long, she needed to do something for once.  She knew there was a high probability that she would be caught, but it really didn’t matter.  Her daughters were suffering, and she had to do whatever she could.

She had mentioned the ventilation shafts to Jack and Sydney for completeness, but hadn’t recommended them because there was no way that Jack, at least, would have been able to use them; lying flat on the bottom of the shaft, Irina had only a couple of centimeters free on either side of her shoulders.  There was no vertical space for the backpack containing her gear, so it was attached to her ankle and dragged behind her.  In this case, at least, her weight loss over the last two years was an advantage.

She wedged a chisel into a seam in front of her, then pulled herself forward until there was no place for her elbows to go.  She repeated the process until she was even with the corner, then twisted herself around it, being careful to be as silent as possible.  A few more feet, and she was over a vent looking down on a basement room.  She waited a few minutes, but heard nothing, so she unscrewed the vent.

***

Jack sat in the cold, dark cell that the guard had put him in, trying not to worry about what was happening to his daughter and her sister.  Of course, it was all moot if they didn’t get out of here.  He reminded himself, once again, that Dixon would surely send a team for them.  If they were still here, of course; Dixon wouldn’t expect him or Sydney to check in for at least another hour, and it would be another 16 hours after that for a CIA team to be mobilized and sent over.

He heard a key in the lock and looked up, wondering what they could want with him.  It was Sydney and Nadia they were interested in, the women of Rambaldi’s prophecies, not a man who had merely contributed some DNA to one of them.  His eyes widened in shock when the door opened to reveal not Olivia Reed or a guard, but Irina.  Damn.  He’d been hoping she would stay put.

“Well?” she said after a moment.  “Cell gotten too comfortable for you?”

He stood and hurried to the door.  “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“I was rescuing you, but if you’re going to be an ass about it I can lock you in again.”

He sighed and shook his head; there was nothing to be done for it now.  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked as she led him out of the cell block, deserted but for the guard lying in a pool of blood.  Irina apparently hadn’t lost her touch with knives; he hadn’t heard a thing even though the body was only a few yards from his door.

“I can manage,” she replied.  “It’s amazing how much energy maternal instinct can provide.”

A few years ago he would have retorted that he didn’t think she had any maternal instinct, but he had since learned differently; Irina just had a different way of expressing it than the average mother.  “All right,” he said, knowing that he really had no choice but to hope her maternal instinct overrode her physical limitations.  “We found Nadia right before we were caught.  They’re giving her the serum.”  Irina frowned at that, but let him continue.  “Sydney was injected with the serum when we were caught, I think just to try to incapacitate her.  It worked; she went into the same kind of trance or whatever that Nadia’s in.”

Irina nodded.  “I heard that she was injected.”  She turned her back to him so that he could access her backpack.  “Grab a gun, and let’s go get our daughters.”

*****

Chapter 27

They skulked through the hallways uneventfully; the Covenant seemed to be rather short-handed.  When they reached the infirmary, Jack listened at the door for a moment and then eased it open.  He heard Irina stop moving behind him, and turned to see that she was staring at Nadia.  Not surprising, he supposed, since she hadn’t seen her daughter since she was an infant.  He gently guided her a little further into the room so he could close the door behind her.

After a moment, she went over to Nadia, who was still clearly in the grip of the Rambaldi serum, and touched her cheek gently.  Then she looked up at Jack with tears in her eyes.  “Let’s get her out of here,” she whispered.

Jack had looked around the room in the interim and was glad to see that Sydney was there as well, handcuffed to a bed and apparently asleep.  “I’ll have to carry Nadia,” he said as he dug into Irina’s backpack for lock picks to get Nadia’s handcuffs off.  “Can you get the cuffs off Sydney and see if you can wake her up?”

Irina nodded and headed over to Sydney while Jack went to work.

***

Sydney’s head swam with images and sounds that she didn’t understand, that were missing vital details that might possibly have made them make sense.  There was a young woman that might have been herself, except that she had never walked down a busy street holding a small, dark-haired child by the hand, or sat on the floor reading to that child.  Another vision of a woman shooting a man in the head, and that might have been her in the time she didn’t remember.  A woman lifting a box out of the earth, opening it, and releasing a black cloud that she somehow knew meant death.  Other images flashed by too quickly for her to recognize anything, or were too blurry.  She was going insane.  Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take any more, the lights and sound began to fade.  Finally, she was able to relax and slip into the sweet oblivion of sleep.

It seemed like she had only closed her eyes for a moment, though, when someone was shaking her shoulder and calling her name.  She forced open an eyelid.  “Mom?”

“Can you walk?” her mother asked.

Sydney squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.  “Sleepy.”

“Sydney.”  Her mother’s voice was sharp.  “You can sleep later.  We have to get out of here.”

She groaned, but somehow managed to pull herself to a sitting position.  Her hand brushed against a pair of handcuffs dangling from the bed, and she looked at them in confusion.  “What’s going on?”

“Come on.”  Her mother helped her to her feet, and Sydney swayed unsteadily.  She saw her father on the other side of the room, lifting Nadia over his shoulder head forward.  He held her there with one hand and pulled out a gun with the other.  Her mother began to move, and Sydney saw that she had a gun in her hand as well.  “Let’s go.”

“Don’t I get a gun?” she asked in confusion as she stumbled to the door along with her mother.

“No,” her parents said in unison, confusing her even more: they were agreeing about something?  She shrugged and let her mother guide her into the hallway.

They walked only a short way before Olivia Reed stepped into the hallway in front of them, arms folded, flanked by two armed guards.  “Well, well, well,” she said haughtily, reminding Sydney unbearably of Lauren.  She didn’t get a chance to continue, though; Irina and Jack’s guns fired almost simultaneously, and both guards dropped to the floor.  Olivia pulled out her own gun and neatly shot Irina’s gun from her hand, then aimed at Jack.  “You’ll never get out of here.”

“Yes, we will,” Jack said, and then he put the muzzle of his gun to Nadia’s temple.  “We all walk out of here, or I blow your precious Passenger’s brains out.”

Sydney stared at her father, shock waking her up fully.  “Dad?”

“You wouldn’t,” Olivia said, stepping forward.

He shrugged.  “She’s not my daughter.”

“You’re bluffing,” Olivia said with a smile, taking another step forward.  Then she froze as a knife appeared in her chest.  Her gun fell from her hand as Irina reached out and pulled the knife out; a moment later, she slumped to the floor.  Sydney started in shock; she’d been so focused on her father’s threat to Nadia that she’d missed her mother pulling out a knife.  So, apparently, had Olivia Reed.

Irina calmly cleaned the knife and put it away while Sydney glared at her father.  “How dare you?” she said.

“Sydney,” her mother said.  “Later.”  

Sydney stared at Irina for a moment, not understanding how she could be so calm about this.  “He was going to kill her!”

“He was bluffing, Sydney.  Come on, we need to get out of here,” her mother replied.

Sydney bit back a retort; she settled for sighing loudly as she followed her parents out.

*****

Chapter 28

They made it to Jack’s hidden van with no further incident aside from two dispatched guards and a few glares at Jack from Sydney.  With the three women settled in the back, Jack drove away from the compound, taking a circuitous route to give him plenty of time to determine if they were being tailed.  As he drove, he glanced at the dashboard clock and realized that it was after 8:30 a.m.; Irina’s next drug dose should have been at 8.  He sighed; there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

After about twenty minutes, he was certain that there was no tail, so he headed for his storage facility.  They could pick up the luggage they’d left there and head to a CIA safe house; he would have to wait to give Irina the drug until they were stationary.

There had been silence from the back of the van for some time now, and he was beginning to get a bit concerned when the curtain closing off the back opened; he glanced back to see Irina.  “Everything all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” she answered as she slid into the passenger seat.  “Sydney’s asleep.  Nadia came out of… whatever it was, opened her eyes for a few seconds, and then went to sleep as well.”

Jack nodded.  “They’ll be all right.  They just need some time to recuperate.”  Irina nodded.  After a moment, Jack asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she answered.  “Actually, I feel more awake than I have in a very long time.”

Jack frowned.  “That could be because you’re almost an hour late for your next dose.”

“Oh.”  She was silent for a moment.  “I really do feel fine.  Couldn’t we just wait and see what happens?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”  Irina sighed in frustration.  “Irina, it will only be a few weeks.  And I can tell that you’re already much more awake than you were two days ago.”

“I suppose you’re right.”  She still didn’t sound happy about it, but then Jack hardly expected that she would.

Jack thought of several things to say over the next few minutes, but rejected them all.  The rest of the ride passed in silence.

***

Sydney woke and looked around, confused.  She was in a bedroom, in one of two twin beds; Nadia was asleep in the other.  She thought for a moment and remembered half waking in the van and being led inside by her mother.

She stood, stretched, and evaluated herself; she still felt tired, and she had a rather bothersome headache, but for the most part she was all right.  She was still dressed in all black, though her shoes had been removed.  She noticed her suitcase at the foot of the bed, so she changed into normal clothes, then headed out to see what was going on.

She headed down a short hallway and found her father in an armchair in the living room, reading a book.  “Hi,” she said uncertainly, suddenly remembering what had happened earlier.  Of course he had been bluffing, she realized.  Although threatening Nadia had been a bit of an extreme tactic… she decided that she wouldn’t hold a grudge against him, but she wouldn’t apologize either.

He looked up.  “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” she answered, running a hand through her hair.  “I could use some aspirin, though.”

“Sit down; I’ll get it for you,” her father said, standing.  

She nodded and sat on the couch while he left the room, heading back toward the bedroom.  He went in the door opposite her bedroom, then returned in a few minutes with a bottle of aspirin.  “I’ll get you some water and something to eat with it,” he said, heading through an archway behind her into a kitchen.  “Are you hungry?”

She realized that she did have an appetite.  “Yeah, I am.”  She stood, saw a table in the kitchen, and went in and sat down.  “Where’s Mom?”  She suddenly felt a pang of fear that her mother might have vanished into thin air once again.

“She’s asleep in the other bedroom,” Jack answered, alleviating Sydney’s worry.  He put down the aspirin bottle, a glass of water, and an MRE in front of her.

She scowled at the MRE.  “Are we in a CIA safe house?”  Her father nodded, taking a seat across the table from her.  “What about Mom?”

“Dixon knows that you, Nadia, and I are here; no one has any reason to suspect someone else might be here.”

She nodded and began to eat.  Her father watched her for a moment, and she raised her eyebrows at him; he shrugged and went back into the living room.  She continued eating as she debated asking him about the documents she had found in Wittenberg; she was beginning to feel a bit silly for holding a grudge over something that had happened so long ago.  But then, whatever the real explanation was, he’d had plenty of time now to think up a story; she had no way of knowing if what he might tell her would be the truth.  She could find out what her mother knew – but no, her parents might have already worked out a cover story between themselves.  Or her mother might lie for her own reasons.

As she finished her meal, she sighed.  If she ever had children, would she lie to them as much as her own parents had lied to her?  Was it even possible to out-lie Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko?

*****

Chapter 29

Nadia woke in an unfamiliar place, hardly an unusual experience lately.  She sat up and looked around at the bedroom, noting that she wasn’t restrained; that was a good sign.  The other bed looked slept in, but no one was currently there.  She went to the door, opened it a crack, and listened, but she heard nothing.  She slipped out of the room and walked down the hall, then froze when she saw Sydney and Jack Bristow, each reading a book.  Based on the way Sydney had been acting, that was a combination she hadn’t been expecting.  “Hi,” she said, stepping out.

Both looked up from their books.  Sydney smiled; Jack did not.  “Hi,” Sydney said.  “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” Nadia answered.  She supposed she must be getting used to the serum, because although she was still a little on the tired side, she didn’t feel nearly as bad as she normally did.  Then again, she’d only gotten a few doses instead of the twenty-five or so that it took to get the whole message out.  She sat on the couch next to Sydney.  “Where are we?”

“Marseille,” Jack answered.  “We’re in a CIA safe house.”

“Oh.”  Nadia frowned; she’d hated the feeling of confinement she’d gotten when she’d been in CIA custody earlier.  “I suppose I’m going to have to go back into protection.”

Jack fixed her with a piercing look.  “Unless you’d rather keep getting kidnapped and injected with the serum.”

Sydney looked at her with an expression of regret.  “If you could help us find the Sphere of Life, you would be a lot safer.”

Nadia frowned and wondered whether she should tell them what she hadn’t felt safe telling her own father.  Finally, she decided she might as well.  “I don’t know where it is,” she said softly.

Sydney looked slightly surprised, while Jack’s expression didn’t change.  “I’ve recently learned that both the KGB and a group of Rambaldi followers believed that you were not actually the Passenger,” he said.

Nadia reminded herself not to feel relieved yet at that news, as much as she hoped it was true.  “Who is it, then?”

“No one seems to have figured that out.  She may not have been born yet.”

“Dad,” Sydney interjected, “how did you find that out?”  She glanced over at Nadia, then back to her father.  “Did Mom tell you?”

Nadia’s eyes widened as Jack nodded.  “You know where she is?”  He nodded again.  “I want to see her.”  Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back.

“I’ll be right back,” Jack said, then stood and left the room, apparently ignoring Nadia entirely.  

She turned and looked at her sister in confusion.  “What…”  Sydney just gave her a small, reassuring smile.

A moment later, she heard footsteps behind her.  She twisted to look and stared at her mother in shock.

 “Hello, Nadia,” her mother said with a small smile.  She walked further into the room and sat down on the other end of the couch from Nadia.

Sydney fidgeted nervously for a brief moment, then got up and left the room.

“You must have a lot of questions,” her mother said after they had stared at each other for a long moment.

Of course she did, she’d had dozens of them only moments before, but now her mind was blank.  She opened her mouth, and “Why did you have sex with Arvin Sloane?” came out.  She clamped her mouth shut and turned red; that definitely was not the first question she should have asked.

Her mother looked surprised, but didn’t seem upset.  “Because the KGB ordered me to.”

“So… you didn’t love him?”  Why was she so fixated on her father?  She didn’t even like the man.

“No.”  Her mother glanced down at her hands, then back up at Nadia.  “But I do love your father.”

Nadia stared at her and blinked several times.  “My father?  Sloane’s not my father?”

Her mother shook her head.  “He believes that he is, though.”

“Who’s my father, then?”

She bent her head toward the bedrooms.  “Jack is your father.”

“Oh…does he know?”

“I told him, but he’s not sure whether to believe me.  Sydney doesn’t know yet.”

Nadia frowned.  She supposed she couldn’t take everything her mother said at face value, even though she desperately wanted to.  So she was in limbo… but still, she did have a father, even if she couldn’t be sure which of the two men he was.  And a mother and a sister… so much more than she’d had a few weeks ago.  She teared up once again, and this time the tears trickled down her cheeks.  Her mother’s eyes started to look moist as well; she appeared uncertain for a moment, but then moved over and put an arm around Nadia’s shoulders.  Nadia leaned into her mother and hugged her tightly.

*****

Chapter 30

Sydney was about to enter the room she’d woken up in earlier when she felt a hand on her shoulder.  She turned to see her father beckoning her, so she followed him into the other bedroom.  One queen-sized bed, she noted with a quick look around, and both her parents’ suitcases were in here.  Were they sleeping together, then?  She blinked; she didn’t need to think about that.  She turned her attention back to her father as he shut the door.  “What is it?”

Her father looked a bit uncomfortable.  “There’s something you should know…”

She waited expectantly.  “Well?”

“Your mother claims that I’m Nadia’s father.”

Sydney frowned.  Shouldn’t this be good news?  Her father didn’t look happy about it.  “You don’t believe her?”

“No, I don’t.  I checked Nadia’s blood type, and she’s not my daughter.”

 “So why are you telling me this?”

Her father appeared to consider for a moment.  “I’m not sure when your mother plans to tell you.  I thought you should know.”

Sydney gave her father a brief smile.  “Thanks.”  She moved to sit on the edge of the bed, her smile turning to a frown as she thought about her mother.  “Why would Mom lie about who Nadia’s father is?” she asked, as much to herself as to her father.

Jack hesitated, then came to sit beside her.  “I don’t know.  I’m letting her think I believe her until I can figure out what she’s up to.”

Sydney sighed.  “Are you going to tell Nadia?”

“Not at this point.  If your mother wants Nadia to believe that I’m her father, it won’t hurt her.  Frankly, she’d do just as well without an emotional tie to Arvin Sloane.”

Sydney could well understand that.  “Dad, just… you’re not going to hold it against Nadia, are you?”

“Of course not, Sydney.  Her parents’ actions aren’t her fault.”  They sat in silence for a moment, and then her father stood.  “Your mother and Nadia are probably hungry.  And we should all discuss what our next step is going to be.”

Sydney nodded and followed her father back to the living room.

***

Sydney saw her mother and Nadia parting from a hug as she and her father re-entered the living room, and felt an unexpected surge of jealousy.  She chided herself for it; after all, she’d had the chance to hug her mother as well.  And it didn’t mean that her mother and Nadia suddenly had the kind of loving, trusting relationship that Sydney had once imagined she would have had with Laura Bristow if she had lived.

“I thought you two might be hungry,” her father said.

Irina smiled.  “Maybe a little.”  Nadia nodded.

“Sydney, are you hungry again?” Jack asked.  “It has been a couple of hours.”

She shrugged.  “I could use a snack, I guess.”

“Let me see if I can come up with something that’s not an MRE,” her father said, and went into the kitchen.

Sydney sat down across from her mother and sister, and tried to surreptitiously study Nadia.  The resemblance to her mother was abundantly clear, particularly when Nadia and Irina were right next to each other, but the paternal influence was less clear.  Was it possible that her father had made a mistake and that her mother was telling the truth?  Or even that her father was lying about having checked blood types?  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried to turn her away from her mother, after all.

“Your father told you,” her mother stated, startling Sydney from her thoughts.  She nodded.

“Told her what?” Nadia asked.

“About you,” her mother said.  Nadia’s expression of understanding made Sydney realize that her mother must have told her sister.  Jealousy flared up again, and again Sydney reminded herself that it was completely irrational.

There was an uncomfortable silence, finally broken by Nadia.  “Now what?  I mean, I guess the CIA will want me back in their protection, and you can’t exactly come along,” she said, looking at Irina.  “When will I see you again?”

Irina frowned.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I’m sure we can work something out.”

***

Elena watched the cabin carefully as she approached, and was pleased to see that there were no signs of life.  She had already stopped at the county records office and learned that the property was still in her name.  A slightly outdated name, of course, as she was no longer Elena Sokolov since her thankfully brief marriage to Ivan Dvortetsky, but she’d already decided to go back to the old name anyway.  At least she’d liked Alexander Sokolov, though she didn’t think “love” would be quite accurate; she had detested Ivan, on the other hand, and had been quite glad when she’d finally been able to kill him.

The world had changed enormously since Elena had been locked away fifteen years ago, and she had decided that this would be a good place to retreat for a bit before she began the hunt for Irina.  Her properties in Russia had, of course, been confiscated when she’d been sentenced to the asylum, but Irina would have made sure this place was kept up, at least until whatever had caused her to disappear.  Elena had bought the cabin in 1987 as a gift for Irina, a place to stay close to Los Angeles where she could be close to her family, although of course she could only watch them from a distance.  Irina had used it at least a few times a year since then, or so she had told Elena.

Elena went around to the back, lifted a rock, and found a lockbox just where it should be.  The combination was also the one she remembered, which was good; it meant Irina hadn’t changed the procedures they’d agreed upon to allow them both to use the cabin.  She unlocked the door, then heard a beeping sound.  She frowned as she found the security keypad; this hadn’t been here before.  After a moment’s thought, she punched in 0417, but that produced an error message.  0316 was her next guess, but that didn’t work either.  Finally, she tried 0619 and was relieved when the beeping stopped and the light glowed green.  Clever of Irina to use that one, she supposed, since only she and Irina knew that June 19th was Nadia’s true birthday.

She shut the door behind her and began to explore the house.

*****

Chapter 31

Jack managed to make a quite palatable stew out of canned meat and vegetables.  By the time it was ready, Sydney was more than a little hungry; she noticed as they began to eat that Nadia had apparently been downplaying her own hunger.  Her father ate normally, but she noticed that her mother wasn’t doing much more than picking at her food.  Again, she wondered about what could be wrong with her.

As they were all finishing, Jack spoke up.  “Are you two feeling well enough to travel this afternoon?”  Sydney nodded and glanced at Nadia, who gave her assent as well.  “Good.  I thought we might want to drive to Geneva, just in case the Covenant is watching the airports here.  We can stay there for a few days, until you’re fully recovered, and then Sydney, you can take Nadia back to Los Angeles.”

Sydney wanted to ask what her parents would be doing, but she decided that could wait until they were on their way.  They began to clean up the house and prepare to leave.

***

Half an hour later, they were on the road.  Jack drove while the rest of them rode in the back of the van.  After careful consideration, Nadia spoke.  “Agent Bristow said that I might not be the Passenger.”

“I know you’re not,” Irina replied.

“Because Jack is my father?” Nadia asked, glancing toward the front.

“Well, yes, that supports it,” Irina said, “but I only found out for sure that he was your father about three years ago, and I’ve always known you couldn’t be the Passenger.  You were born a day too early.”

Nadia frowned.  “All the people that think I’m the Passenger…shouldn’t they know that?”

Irina shook her head.  “I was alone when I gave birth to you.  It was late evening, still barely light outside.  When they came the next morning, I lied and said you’d been born only an hour or two before.”  Nadia cocked her head inquisitively.  “I didn’t know much about Rambaldi at the time, but I knew enough to know that they were expecting you to fulfill some prophecy, and that the day of your birth was important.  I heard them talking about inducing labor before they discovered you’d already been born, so I knew that was the day it was supposed to be.”

Her mother had lied to make it appear that she was the child of the prophecy?  Denied her the chance to have a normal childhood?  “Why would you want them to think I was the Passenger when you knew I wasn’t?”  Tears welled up in her eyes, and she impatiently wiped them away.

“To protect you,” her mother answered.  “As long as they believed you were the Passenger, they would have to let you live; I couldn’t be sure that they would if they knew you weren’t the child they wanted.  I was hoping that they would leave you with me; I already had an escape planned that I couldn’t carry out while I was pregnant.”

“But they took me away,” Nadia said.  “Elena said they told you I was dead.”

Irina nodded.  “I didn’t believe them then, but later I was convinced that you had been killed several years later.  I only found out that wasn’t true three years ago.”  She looked out the window for a moment, pensive.  “I wish I could have found you earlier.”

Nadia hesitated a moment, then leaned forward and hugged her mother.  “It’s all right,” she said.  “We’re here now.”

***

Sydney woke and sat up, gingerly stretching her neck; she’d fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position.  She looked around to see that her mother and Nadia were asleep.  After a moment’s consideration, she moved toward the front of the van, figuring she might as well keep her father company.

Her father looked over and gave her a brief smile as she sat down in the passenger seat, then returned his attention to the road.  “We should be in Geneva in about an hour,” he said.  “Buckle your seat belt.”

As she did so, she said, “Mom and Nadia are asleep.”  Her father nodded.  She hesitated, then decided to simply be blunt.  “Why is Mom sleeping so much?”

“She’s been sick,” her father answered with only the slightest hesitation.

“Sick?  Is it serious?”

“No, just the flu,” her father replied.

He was lying, of course; she debated whether to call him on it.  She sighed; maybe if she did, he’d actually consider telling her the truth once in a while.  “I’m not going to start trusting you if you keep lying to me.”

“Sydney…” her father said, sounding just a bit perturbed.  “Why don’t you ask your mother.”

“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” Sydney countered.

“Because it’s not my truth to tell.”

Sydney frowned.  It really was something serious, if her father wouldn’t even come up with another lie.  “Is she dying?”

He glanced over at her, eyes wide with surprise.  “No, Sydney, nothing like that.  She’ll be fine.”

Sydney breathed a sigh of relief.  Her feelings about her mother remained uncertain, but she certainly didn’t want her dead.  Her mind started coming up with other possible reasons for her mother’s condition, but she pushed them away.  She would ask her mother… and Irina Derevko might even tell her the truth.

*****

Chapter 32

Irina turned from her left side to her right, trying to get comfortable.  She kicked off the blankets, rubbed her arms and legs in an attempt to stop the itching, to no avail.  She looked at her bandaged hands and frowned; Elena said she mustn’t scratch.  She rolled out of bed and padded out to the living room, where Katya sat at the table doing her schoolwork and Elena was knitting something.  “Lena, I’m thirsty.  And I itch,” she said plaintively.

Elena put down her knitting and put her hand on Irina’s forehead.  “Your fever’s gone down a little,” she said, going to the sink and drawing a glass of water.  “You’re going to be itchy for a few more days, I’m afraid.”  Irina drank the water greedily as Elena said, “Katya, it’s time to get ready for bed.”

“Can I sleep on the floor?  Ira won’t stay still,” Katya responded.

Elena shrugged.  “If you want.”  She led Irina into the bedroom, tucked her back into the bed that the three sisters shared, and changed into her own nightgown.  “If you need anything, wake me up, all right?” she said as she climbed in next to Irina.  Irina nodded and, comforted by her sister’s presence, slipped into sleep.

She woke some time later to the sound of her father’s voice.  “Elena.”

“What, Papa?” her sister answered sleepily.

“Why is Katya on the floor?”

“Irina’s restless because she’s sick.  Katya didn’t want to sleep with her.”

“Well, the little brat will have to learn to be still.”  

Irina curled up slightly, keeping her eyes tightly shut, as Elena replied, “Papa, she has chicken pox, and she’s only three years old.  It’s not her fault.”  Irina bristled a bit; she was FOUR, not three.  But she stayed still, not wanting to draw her father’s attention.

“She’s four, Elena,” her father said tersely.  “You’d do well to remember that.”

“You’re the one that wanted it this way,” Elena answered angrily.  “So you ought to be a little nicer to her.”

Her father took several heavy footsteps into the room.  “Don’t you tell me what I ought to do, young lady.  I don’t have to let her live under my roof at all.  If you don’t like the way I treat her, you can take her and find someone else to feed, clothe, and shelter you.”

“Maybe I will,” Elena spit out.

“Well, you’ll be eighteen in three months.  Do whatever you want,” Papa replied.  “Just don’t expect any help from me.”

Irina woke and sat up with a start; a look around showed her that the van had stopped.  She shook her head to clear it, wondering if what she had dreamt was a real memory.  If it was, it wasn’t something she’d thought about in years.

The door of the van opened to reveal Jack.  “We’re here.”

***

“Girls, what do you think we should do first?” Irina asked, playing the part of rich American tourist perfectly.  The four of them were standing in line at the registration desk, and Jack carefully hid his amusement as the three women enjoyed their roles.

Sydney sighed loudly.  “I’m tired.  Can’t we just watch a movie or something?  Do they have movies in English?”

“I want to go shopping.  I don’t have anything to wear.”  Nadia gestured to the large suitcase she was dragging around, which was in fact completely empty, having been purchased only five minutes ago so that they would each have a suitcase.  She was actually telling the truth – the outfit she was currently wearing had been borrowed from Sydney, since her suitcase had vanished when the Covenant had captured her – but Sydney rolled her eyes convincingly anyway.

“Now, Ellen, I thought we agreed we’d wait to shop in Paris,” Irina said.

Nadia pouted prettily.  “Come on.  Just one outfit?”  

Sydney snorted.  “Nicole, that was not ladylike,” Irina admonished.

Jack reached the front of the line.  “A suite for four, please,” he said in heavily accented French.

“Would you prefer English, Monsieur?” the desk clerk asked, and Jack nodded.  “Two bedrooms?”

Nadia sighed loudly.  “Do I have to share a room with her?”

“Yes,” Jack and Irina said in unison.

The desk clerk couldn’t repress a chuckle.  “How about one of our corner suites?  One bedroom with king size bed, one with two twin beds, two bathrooms, a living room with dining table.”

“Sounds perfect,” Jack said.  He passed over a credit card in a false name that would, eventually, be billed to one of his accounts here in Switzerland.  Behind him, Sydney and Nadia started sniping at each other, causing Irina to intervene, while he completed the transaction.  If he hadn’t had a role to play, he just might have smiled.

***

A short time later, Nadia lounged on a bed as Sydney unpacked her suitcase.  “Why are we in a hotel instead of a safe house?”

“The CIA safe house in Marseille is unmanned, but the one here in Geneva is staffed full time,” Sydney replied.

“Ah.”  Nadia considered for a moment.  “I thought they would hate each other.”  At Sydney’s inquisitive look, she clarified, “Our parents.”  It felt strange to refer to Jack Bristow as her father, however obliquely.  She had decided on the ride here that she would try not to start preferring one man over the other, not until she knew for sure, but had amended that resolve in the hotel lobby.  For this brief period when they were all together, she would assume that her mother had been telling the truth and that she was a full part of the family rather than the product of an indiscretion.

Sydney shrugged.  “I never know what’s going on with them.  They’ve been working together for the past few years, according to Dad, so I guess they’re getting along decently.”

“They’re sharing a bedroom,” Nadia pointed out.  She debated telling Sydney what her mother had said about loving Jack, but decided to wait until she had a better idea of how Sydney felt about the relationship.  “Do you think they’re sleeping together?”

Sydney looked decidedly uncomfortable with that concept.  “I don’t want to know.  As far as I’m concerned, they only ever had sex once.”  She frowned.  “Okay, twice.”

Nadia couldn’t help giggling; having grown up without parents, she had never quite understood the tendency to be embarrassed at the idea of one’s parents having sex.

There was a knock on the door, and Sydney turned a bit red.  “Come in,” Nadia called.

Irina entered the room.  “We thought we might order room service.  Are you hungry?”

They both nodded.  Nadia had noticed that the Rambaldi serum tended to make her very hungry once she’d gotten some sleep, and tonight was no exception.  “Where’s Dad?” Sydney asked as they followed Irina into the empty living room.

“He’s on the phone.  Someone from the CIA called,” Irina answered.  “He’ll be out in a minute.”

*****

Chapter 33

“There’s been a change of plans,” Jack announced when he came out of the bedroom.  The others looked at him with curiosity.  “Sydney, did Dixon tell you that he had applied for reassignment?”

“Yeah, he said he wanted to be in the field again.  Did it come through?”

Jack nodded.  “The new director is a woman named Hayden Chase.  Apparently Dixon is staying for a few weeks to get her adjusted, but she’s in charge now.  She wants Nadia back in Los Angeles tomorrow.”

“So soon?” Nadia asked, dismayed.

“She wanted us to leave immediately, but I convinced her that you needed rest.  She still wants us at the airport by noon tomorrow; a CIA plane will be there to take us to LA.”

Sydney frowned.  “’Us’?  I thought I was going back with Nadia and you were staying here.”

“Apparently she wants to meet with me.  I asked her if she needed you to come as well; she said since you’re on vacation, you’re free to come back with us or stay here, whichever you prefer.”

“But aren’t you on vacation too?” Sydney asked.

“She assures me that she won’t take long.  I don’t know what’s so urgent that it can’t wait, but…”  He shrugged.  “Sydney, do you want to come back with us, or stay here with your mother?”

“Mom?” Sydney turned to her mother, only to see her dozing on the couch.  She turned back to Jack, looking concerned.  “I’ll stay with Mom.”

Nadia frowned.  Her mother had been sleeping all day, it seemed; Nadia hadn’t thought anything of it since she’d been sleeping as well, but as far as she knew, her mother hadn’t been dosed with the Rambaldi serum.  “Is she all right?”

“Irina,” Jack called, walking over to shake her shoulder.

She sat up, blinking.  “What’s going on?”

“I have to take Nadia back to Los Angeles tomorrow.  Sydney’s going to stay here with you.”

Irina frowned, but nodded.

Nadia moved to sit on the couch.  “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Irina answered with a smile.  “It’s just been a long few days.”

Nadia raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t really know her mother well enough yet to figure out what was going on.  Sydney came over and looked like she was about to say something, but then there was a knock on the door, and someone called, “Room service,” from the hallway.

***

Dinner was awkward; Nadia had many questions swirling around in her head, but she was unfamiliar enough with her mother and with the man who might be her father that she didn’t feel comfortable asking.  The look on Sydney’s face suggested that she, too, was deep in thought, but she also didn’t ask questions; instead, she brought up innocuous topics of conversation so that the meal was overlaid with at least some small talk.  Nadia was glad to cooperate, and Irina contributed occasionally, but Jack was almost entirely silent.

Afterwards, no one had any disagreement with Sydney’s suggestion that they watch a movie.  When it ended, she looked at Sydney and opened her mouth to speak, but Sydney held her finger to her lips.  She pointed past Nadia, and Nadia turned to see that her parents were both asleep, Jack leaning into the corner of the couch and Irina resting her head on his chest.  She turned off the TV, and she and Sydney silently crept out of the room.

Once they were enclosed in their bedroom, Nadia asked the question that had been most on her mind all evening.  “Is Mom all right?”

Sydney frowned.  “She’s been acting really strange.  I don’t know what’s going on.”

“How long has she been working with…”  Nadia trailed off, not prepared to make that final leap and call Jack her father out loud.

Her sister shrugged.  “I just met up with them last night, right before we found out you’d been captured.”

Nadia sprawled on the bed.  “I wish I didn’t have to go hide out in a safe house again.  I though we’d at least have a few days.”

“Well, we’ve got tonight,” Sydney said, then yawned.

Nadia yawned as well.  “Yeah, we’re really going to be wild tonight.”  There was silence for a moment, and then Nadia sighed.  “I suppose we should go to bed.”

“I guess so,” Sydney said.  “You want the bathroom first?”

“No, go ahead.”

As Sydney gathered up her things, she yawned again.  “Sometimes I really hate Rambaldi.”

“God, yes,” Nadia agreed.

***

Jack woke when Sydney and Nadia turned the movie off, but remained still as they crept out of the room.  Once they were gone, he woke Irina, and they went into their bedroom.  “Damn it, I hate this,” Irina said as the door shut behind them.  “I can’t even watch a movie without falling asleep.”

“You did fine when it counted,” Jack countered.

She sighed and sat down on the bed.  “That was just adrenaline.”

He sat next to her, not quite touching.  “You’ll be all right.”  He debated a moment, then added, “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

She turned and looked at him, an odd expression on her face.  “You really think that?”  He nodded.  “Funny, I’ve always thought that about you.”

“Irina…”  He didn’t know what to say, so he simply leaned forward and kissed her.  She responded hungrily, and they remained locked for several seconds.  When her hands moved to the buttons on his shirt, though, he pulled away.  “We should stop.”

She turned away from him and looked at the floor.  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“No, Irina, it’s not your fault…”  He trailed off as she turned to him suddenly, and he was shocked to see anger in her eyes.  Then she turned, stormed into the bathroom, and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows.  He sat staring after her, wondering what the hell had just happened.

*****

Chapter 34

Irina locked the bathroom door behind her, then slumped against the wall as sobs shook her body.  She wanted him so much, but at the same time she was terrified that she would react the way she had before; the mingling of desire and fear made her feel sick to her stomach.  And Jack was afraid to touch her, or to let her touch him; he spoke of her strength, but his actions clearly showed that he considered her as breakable as glass.  What was worse, though, was that he was right; she felt as if she would shatter into a million pieces if she took one more hit.

Of course she couldn’t have stayed out there and dealt with the situation like a reasonable person, she thought as she calmed down a little.  Who knew what Jack thought of her now.  She had a fleeting moment of wishing for the days when Jack and Sydney had believed her dead, when she’d nearly convinced herself that she didn’t care what they thought of her.  But that was impossible, and had been since the first time she’d seen them again.  She sighed; the past was past, she could only move forward.  She stood and walked to the sink to wipe away her tears.

When she stepped back into the bedroom, Jack met her eyes.  She saw concern there, but she didn’t think it crossed the line into pity.  “Are you all right?” he asked.  She nodded.  He looked away, then locked his gaze with her again.  “I just… I don’t want something to happen that you’re going to regret.”

“I understand,” she murmured.  “But I don’t want him to be between us.  I’d like to try – but that’s not fair to you.”

“No,” he said softly, moving closer.  “I don’t mind.  Whatever you need.”

She frowned and looked away.  “It’s just… if we get started and then I need to stop…”

“Then we’ll stop,” he said firmly.  “If you’re worried about the physical issues, I can take care of myself if necessary.”

She sat on the bed as tears welled up in her eyes.  “Jack, you don’t have to.  This is my problem to deal with… you’ve already done so much more than anyone could possibly expect.”  She made herself meet his eyes again.  “I don’t deserve everything you’re doing for me.”

He didn’t speak, but came over and kissed her gently.  She suspected what he couldn’t say – that he was doing all this because they were bound together in a way that neither of them could understand.  She’d fought those ties enough herself to know just how strong they were for her, and she could only guess by Jack’s actions over the past few days that his were equally unbreakable.  In the past, she’d cursed whatever fate had left her unable to get rid of her feelings for this man, but now she was nothing but grateful.

This time, he didn’t stop her when her hands moved to unbutton his shirt.  She paused as she remembered that Sydney and Nadia were in the other room.  “Is the door locked?” she murmured between kisses.

“Damn it.”  She let Jack go reluctantly, and he went to the door and locked it.  He returned to the bed, but then frowned.  “They won’t hear us, will they?”

“Hotels are usually pretty good about insulating,” Irina replied, but felt doubt herself.  They looked at each other for a moment, then sighed in unison.  “This isn’t going to work.”

Jack sat down on the bed next to her.  “We didn’t use to be self-conscious about Sydney being in the next room,” he said morosely.

“Back then, sex with me wasn’t regarded as a felony by your government,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.

Jack smiled slightly.  “I’ve lost count of the felonies I’ve committed in the last few days.  A few more really isn’t an issue.”  He absently rubbed her shoulder.  “But we should wait for a better time.  You… last time, when you got upset, you were a little loud.”

She nodded and leaned into him.  “I don’t want you to leave.”  She wouldn’t have admitted the vulnerability of her emotions to anyone but Jack.  But she knew she couldn’t have managed without him the past few days, and he’d seen her at her worst; if she could trust anyone right now, it was her husband.

“Hopefully it will only be for a few days.”  He gave her hair a tentative caress, then pulled away and stood up.  “Sydney asked me earlier what’s wrong with you,” he said as he pulled a pair of pajamas from his suitcase.  “You should tell her what’s going on tomorrow.  I can show her how to hook up the IV.”

“No,” Irina said firmly, shaking her head.  She was managing to deal with letting Jack taking care of her, but turning that responsibility over to her daughter was another matter entirely.  “I can hook it up myself.”  Jack turned and looked at her with raised eyebrows.  “Would you want Sydney starting IVs on you?”

“She’s had enough medical training; she’s perfectly capable.”

“That’s not the issue, and you know it,” Irina countered.

Jack sighed and nodded.  His expression changed into one of contemplation as he began to change into his pajamas; after a moment, Irina got up, extracted a nightgown from her own suitcase, and began to change.  When she had her shirt off, though, Jack said, “Let me check your back.”  She stood still as he peeled the bandage back.  “It looks like it’s starting to heal just fine,” he said, “but you can’t take care of this yourself.”

“Fine, I’ll let Sydney take care of it,” she said as Jack cleaned the wound and put on a fresh bandage.  “But we’ll do something else about the medicine.  Maybe I can get some pills.”

Jack sighed.  “All done,” he said as he finished taping the edges of the bandage.  “I don’t suppose there’s any reason you couldn’t switch to pills.  But Irina…”  He turned her around so she faced him.  “I think Sydney needs to know what’s going on.  She’s already worried about you.  And… well, you get foggy sometimes.  I wouldn’t want you to forget to take the medicine, or take it twice.”

“Or decide not to take it,” she added, knowing he was thinking it.  She suppressed a hint of annoyance, knowing he was right.  “All right,” she said, realizing she had no choice but to give in.  “I’ll tell her tomorrow.  But not Nadia.  I’m sure she already has enough bad impressions of me without thinking her mother is a drug addict.  I’ll talk to Sydney after you and Nadia leave.”

Jack frowned, but nodded.  “All right.  Let’s get to bed.”

*****

Chapter 35

The next morning, Sydney flipped through the TV channels, bored.  It was shortly after 8 am; Nadia was still asleep, and from her parents’ closed door she guessed they weren’t up yet either.  She sat up when her cell phone rang.  “Sydney Bristow.”

“Sydney.”  It was Dixon, and she was instantly alarmed, given that it was after 11 pm in Los Angeles.  “I’m afraid I have some bad news.  Sloane and Katya Derevko escaped as they were being transferred into CIA custody.”

She frowned, remembering what her father had said about Sloane looking for her mother.  She wished she knew why, but at least she could figure out that her father didn’t want Sloane to succeed.  “Do you still want my father and Nadia to come back to LA?”  The idea of staying with her mother had suddenly gotten rather unnerving.

“Yes; in fact, I think it’s even more important that we get Nadia to safety.  It seems they had outside help in escaping; it may have been the Covenant.  Really, it would probably be best if you came with them.  Do you think you could leave earlier?”

“They’re both still asleep,” Sydney answered, glad that she could give Dixon at least some of the truth.  “Nadia was really tired last night.  I doubt she’ll want to leave any earlier.”

“And will you be coming with them?”  She could hear the concern in his voice.

She thought for a moment.  “I should take a different flight back, a little later.  If they are looking for Nadia, they would expect her to be traveling with me rather than my father.”  Perhaps her mother would go to LA with her; she had no idea how Irina went about getting into the US, but she was sure she could manage.

“All right, if that’s what you want to do.”  She heard the confusion in Dixon’s voice and felt a pang of guilt, but there was nothing to be done.  “Let me know what your plans are, and tell your father about the escape.”

“Not a problem.  Bye, Dixon.”  She hung up, considered a moment, and then got up and went to her parents’ door.  Putting her ear to the door, she heard the low murmur of her father’s voice, though she couldn’t make out the words.  She knocked.

A moment later the door was opened a crack, and her father stuck his head out.  “What is it?”

“Something’s come up,” she said, stepping forward.

Instead of letting her in as expected, he said “Just a moment,” and shut the door.  A moment later he opened the door again, slipped out, and closed it behind him.  “What’s going on?”

“Katya and Sloane have escaped.  Dixon thinks they might have had Covenant help.”  She glanced at the bedroom door.  “We should let Mom know.”

“She’s still asleep.  I’ll tell her when she wakes up,” her father said.  Sydney frowned; if her mother was asleep, who had her father been talking to?  “Was there anything else?” he asked after an uncomfortable moment.  She shook her head.  “All right.  I’m going to go brush my teeth, then.”

He opened the door as little as possible and slipped back in, but when he tried to close it again Sydney stuck her foot in.  “What’s going on?”  She peered past her father and gasped when she saw an IV bag hanging from the bedside lamp.  Her mother lay on the bed, eyes closed, IV line running into her arm.  “You’re drugging her?”

Her father sighed, pulled her into the room, and shut the door.  “Sydney…”

She saw a medicine vial and a syringe on the table; pushing past her father, she examined the vial.  “Diazepam?  You’re giving her Valium?”  Now her mother’s tiredness, and her apparent lack of desire for confrontation, made perfect sense.  She turned to her father.  “What, you decided you couldn’t deal with her the way she is, so you’re calming her down with drugs?  I’m taking this thing out.”  She reached for the line.

“Don’t,” came her mother’s voice.  She looked down to see her mother’s eyes half open.  “Calm down,” she whispered.

“Mom, you’re letting him?”  Sydney’s anger abated as confusion took its place.  “What’s going on?”

Her mother blinked and sighed softly.  “Do you want me to tell her?” Jack asked.

“No,” Irina answered.  She spoke slowly and softly; Sydney had to sit on the edge of the bed to hear her clearly.  “Sydney, Katya and Sloane have been holding me prisoner for the last two years.”  Sydney couldn’t suppress a gasp.  “They were the ones that started drugging me.  I’ve been on it too long to just stop, so your father is helping me taper the dose.”

Sydney frowned as she tried to wrap her brain around what her mother had said.  “You’re addicted?”  Irina nodded.  “But you’ll be okay, right?”

“Yes,” her mother murmured.  “I need to sleep now… we’ll talk later.”

“All right.”  Her mother’s eyes closed.  Sydney looked at her father, but his expression was unreadable.  “I’ll just… um, go now,” she said to him, standing.

“Sydney.”  Her father stepped forward.  “Your mother would rather Nadia not know about this.”

Sydney nodded and retreated from the bedroom.

Her father emerged about ten minutes later, and they regarded each other uncertainly for a moment.  “I’m going out,” her father said finally.  “I’m going to see if I can find some oral medication for your mother so she won’t need the IV line,” he added when Sydney continued to stare at him.

“Does Mom need anything?”

Jack shook his head.  “She’ll sleep for a few hours.  She should be able to get up in time to say goodbye to Nadia, though.”

Sydney nodded.  After a brief hesitation, her father left.

*****

Chapter 36

Sydney and her father said goodbye somewhat stiffly as Nadia and her mother hugged.  Then Sydney turned to say goodbye to her sister, both of them watching out of the corner of their eyes as their parents whispered to each other.  Jack and Irina seemed to hesitate, then  kissed briefly.  Sydney’s breath caught in her throat at seeing the first true kiss between her parents since she was six years old.  Then, without another word, Jack lifted his suitcase and gestured to Nadia, and the two of them left.

Sydney and her mother looked at each other awkwardly for a moment; then Irina moved to sit on the couch.  Sydney followed suit.  “Dad told you about Sloane and Katya?”  Her mother nodded.  “So what now?  Are we going to wait for Dad to come back?”

Irina pulled a phone out of her pocket.  “He’s going to call me when he knows what’s going on.”  She hesitated for a moment.  “Sydney, I don’t want you to feel like you need to stay with me.”

“No, I want to,” she protested quickly.  Her mother raised her eyebrows, and Sydney sighed.  “And Dad told me I’m supposed to make sure you take your pills.”

Her mother nodded.  “I thought so.”

Sydney had spent all morning being torn about whether to pry more into what was going on with her mother.  “Does he think you’ll forget?  I mean, you seem fine to me.  Tired a lot, but not forgetful.”

Irina sighed and looked at a point over Sydney’s shoulder.  “He has reason to be concerned,” she said softly.  “When I first got out, I was rather disoriented.  And…”

Sydney waited for her mother to continue, but finally had to prompt her.  “And?”

“He knows how much I don’t want to be dependent on this drug,” her mother said softly, and Sydney could hear barely controlled pain in her voice.  It must cost her mother to have to tell her this.  “I have yet to experience any sort of withdrawal effects, and he’s concerned that I might purposely not take it.”

Sydney nodded, knowing how much she would hate to be where her mother was now.  They sat in contemplative silence for a moment.  “So what are we going to do now?” Sydney asked.

Her mother shrugged.  “What do you want to do?”

Sydney considered for a moment.  She’d thought of asking her mother to take her to see her Aunt Elena, but that was obviously out of the question while Katya and Sloane were at large.  Finally, she mirrored her mother’s shrug.  “Right now, lunch would be good.  You haven’t eaten today, have you?”

Her mother shook her head, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.  “You sound just like your father.  But yes, I suppose something to eat would be nice.  Shall we order room service or go out?”

“Room service would be safer,” Sydney said with just a bit of regret.  She picked out something from the menu, then watched as her mother called to order.  She’d never thought she would see the day when she would be the one protecting her mother.  Not only because she wavered back and forth between regarding her mother as an enemy or friend, but because she’d always thought her mother more than capable of protecting herself.  But now… the thought came into Sydney’s head of a sure way to protect her mother from Sloane and Katya.  They couldn’t come near her if Irina Derevko were in a cell at CIA headquarters, could they?  She shook her head; she wouldn’t turn her mother in.  But now that the idea had occurred, it wouldn’t go away.

***

“Agent Bristow, I’m Director Chase,” the woman said, standing from her desk as Jack and Nadia entered her office.  Jack nodded and shook her hand.  “And Miss Santos, a pleasure,” Chase continued, moving on to Nadia.  She smiled as Nadia shook her hand somewhat nervously.  There was a knock at the door, and Chase looked up.  “Come in, Agent Weiss,” she called, and Eric Weiss entered.  “Nadia, this is Eric Weiss.  I’d like you to discuss with him what you’d like us to do to make your stay as comfortable as possible.  We don’t want you to feel that you’re a prisoner, but we are concerned for your safety.  Will that be all right?”  

Nadia nodded, giving the director a relieved smile.  She’d seemed worried during the flight, and Jack suspected she feared she’d be punished for her disappearance, or at least locked up tighter than she had been before.  Weiss escorted Nadia out; he was a good choice to get Nadia to air her concerns, Jack thought.  It was of course too early to fully size up the new director, but so far she had made a good first impression.

Once Nadia was out of the room, Chase’s friendly demeanor hardened considerably.  She didn’t seem angry, but she was thoroughly professional.  “Sit down, Agent Bristow.”  He did, betraying none of the nervousness he felt.

“What would you like to discuss, Director Chase?” he asked, fully as professional as she.

Chase opened a file folder and took out a page, which she handed to him.  He barely kept himself from gasping aloud at what he saw.  This could be very, very bad.

*****

Chapter 37

After some discussion, Sydney and Irina decided to follow Jack and Nadia to Los Angeles.  Irina knew of a man in Geneva whose business was entirely providing buyers with false identification, and he was able to supply US passports for both herself and Sydney, with the same last name, within a few hours.  It wasn’t as secure a method as she would have liked, but she didn’t have any available contacts that were more trustworthy, with no way of knowing how allegiances had shifted during her captivity.  But their new aliases would only have to remain secret for a short time and could be discarded once they reached LA; thus, the risk was acceptable.

Irina was very glad that Jack had managed to get her some diazepam in tablet form, since having to rely on an IV would have made cross-Atlantic air travel virtually impossible.  Even so, there was simply no way to schedule their flight that allowed her to take the drug at the proper time and be able to remain still for a few hours, not without adding another day to their trip.  Since she would need to take multiple tablets to get the entire dose anyway, she decided to try taking one pill at a time, so that she would still be able to function.  They left Geneva the next morning, and Irina took the first tablet about halfway through the short flight.  At Sydney’s insistence, she took another during their layover in Amsterdam and was pleased to find that she felt only moderately tired, and could even carry on a conversation with Sydney.  It didn’t take her long to decide that spreading the dose out over at least several hours, if not the entire day, would make things much easier.

For Sydney, the last day had been surreal.  It had taken her awhile to get adjusted to the idea that she was with her mother without glass separating them, and she still couldn’t help but feel wary around her.  There was always that fear at the back of her mind that her mother would somehow find a way to hurt her, no matter how much she told herself that it would be all right.

Her mother’s distinctly odd behavior was also taking a lot of getting used to.  Irina Derevko had always seemed fully in control and at the top of her game, even when she was locked in a CIA cell.  Thus, Sydney had gotten used to guarding herself carefully around her mother.  Now, though, her mother was tired, thinking slowly… vulnerable.  Sydney hated seeing her mother like this, a feeling she couldn’t have predicted.  There was no joy in seeing someone she had once regarded as “the bad guy” so weakened; she found herself wishing for the mother she’d known three years ago back, danger and all.  She told herself that her mother just needed some time to recover, remembered that she hadn’t been entirely herself either after she’d lost two years.  But there was a haunted look in Irina’s eyes that Sydney was afraid would never go away.

***

Sydney and Irina arrived in Los Angeles and passed through customs without incident, the false identities that her mother had acquired easily passing scrutiny.  Sydney had been somewhat doubtful when her mother had told her that getting into the United States would not be a problem, but clearly Irina had been right.  It was really rather worrisome that someone who had once reached sixth on the CIA’s most wanted list had so little trouble getting into the country, even if no one was actively looking for her anymore, but Sydney filed it away to worry about later.

They were halfway to baggage claim when her mother slowed slightly and placed a hand on Sydney’s elbow.  Sydney followed her mother’s gaze to see four men in identical black suits walking toward them, and her heart dropped into her shoes.  She kept walking, hoping that the men had some other purpose, but that hope was dashed when the men reached them and moved into position surrounding them.  One of the men held up a CIA badge with one hand while pulling back his jacket to let them see his gun.  “Come with us, please.”

Sydney glanced at her mother and could see that she had come to the same conclusion: there was nothing they could do.  They nodded and allowed the agents to escort them out.

***

Although she walked with the CIA agents quietly, Irina’s thoughts were spinning.  Only many years of practice in controlling her emotions kept her from freezing in fear, or fighting wildly to get away.  This clearly wasn’t a chance encounter.  And it hadn’t been their aliases that had been compromised, or they would have been stopped at customs.  The only other logical explanation was betrayal.  Jack, Nadia, or Sydney.  

She knew, intellectually, that she had no right to expect loyalty from her family, but the realization that one of them must have given her up caused an almost physical pain, like a knife twisted in her gut.  But which of them had done it?  Nadia was the one she knew the least, but also the one who had been least hurt by her actions.  And, she realized after a moment, it was doubtful that Nadia would have known that she and Sydney were even coming to the US, considering that she was probably confined to a CIA safe house by now.  Her thoughts moved next to Sydney, whose feelings about Irina were clearly ambivalent.  She had seen concern in her daughter’s eyes, and also thoughtfulness.  Irina’s best moments with Sydney had been when she was in CIA custody; maybe Sydney wanted to return to that relationship.  Too, Sydney had clearly been uncomfortable with her role as Irina’s protector.  Perhaps she’d decided that the best way to keep her mother safe was to confine her in the hidden depths of the CIA.

They were steered out of the airport terminal and into a waiting van.  Irina sat on the bench she was directed to and gave no resistance as her wrists were shackled.  Sydney was seated across from her, finally giving Irina the opportunity to observe her.  She saw shock and worry in Sydney’s eyes, not the sadness, resignation, and perhaps apology she would have seen if her supposition were true.  The final blow to the theory that Sydney had been the one to turn her in came when she, too, was handcuffed.

That left Jack.  Sydney had talked to him last night and had told him what time they’d be arriving, though she hadn’t given him information about the exact flight.  That would explain why they hadn’t been apprehended as they left the plane or as they passed through customs.  The question that Irina kept puzzling over throughout the van ride was simply, “Why?”

*****

Chapter 38

Jack kept his face neutral as he looked at the photograph.  It was a satellite photo, showing him carrying Nadia from the Covenant compound in Marseille.  Beside him, her face turned up just enough to make identification possible, was Irina, supporting Sydney.  After looking at it for a moment, Jack handed the picture back to Chase, outwardly calm.  There was no way to defend himself, no way to explain this away, so he waited to see what Chase would do.

She accepted the photo, not showing any surprise at his lack of reaction.  “According to your records, this is hardly the first time you’ve been caught behaving contrary to the laws of this country and your oaths as a CIA agent.  And I imagine that for each breach we know about, there are a dozen more.”  She waited a moment, but Jack said nothing.  He had known that the CIA had to be aware of at least some of his illicit activities, but they tended to let it slide as long as he got the job done.  This, though, he doubted they would ignore.  Chase sighed.  “How did you come to be working with Irina Derevko on this mission, Agent Bristow?”

Jack rapidly thought through the options and decided to tell her an edited version of the truth.  “After Sydney and I penetrated the building, we were captured.  We were separated, and I was taken to a cell.  Derevko showed up, let me out, and offered to help me get Sydney and Nadia out.”

Chase leaned forward, appearing no more than mildly interested.  “And how did Derevko happen to know where you were?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied with careful nonchalance.  “We found Sydney and Nadia, she helped me get them to my van, and then she disappeared before I had a chance to take her into custody,”  The van had been under tree cover, so he knew Chase wouldn’t have any evidence of Irina actually getting into the van; still, he was well aware that his story was as thin as tissue paper.

“I see,” Chase said, showing no sign of either belief or disbelief; Jack thought that was probably a bad sign.  “So you’re not in contact with Irina Derevko?”

“No.”

“That’s unfortunate.”  Chase shuffled through some papers on her desk, giving Jack ample time to wonder why he wasn’t in a cell already.  Finally, she looked up.  “Your daughter remained in Geneva?”  He nodded.  “Do you know when she plans to return?”

“No, I don’t.”  Jack’s cell phone vibrated; he ignored it.

Chase apparently heard the low buzz, though.  “Go ahead and answer.”

He did, cursing inwardly when he saw that it was Sydney.  And of course she had to tell him that she would be arriving in LA late the next morning.  She didn’t mention Irina over the phone, of course, but he couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t be travelling together.  He finished the conversation as quickly as possible, then looked up to see Chase watching him with just a hint of a smile.  God damn it, she knew.  He knew he could deny Irina’s whereabouts until he was blue in the face, and Chase would still know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Irina was with Sydney.

“That was your daughter?” Chase asked, and Jack nodded.  She leaned forward.  “I know that you are in contact with Irina Derevko.  I am quite sure that she’s staying in that hotel in Geneva with your daughter.  Now, you have two options.  You can deny it, in which case I’ll have the CIA office in Geneva send a team to the hotel to arrest both Derevko and your daughter, and put you in one of the cells we have right downstairs.  I won’t be inclined to show leniency, so Derevko will likely get the death penalty, and you and your daughter will be in prison for a very long time.  Or you can tell me when they’re arriving in the US.  In that case, I’ll send a team to meet them at the airport.  You will be released, as will your daughter.  And, since I’ll be in a good mood, I’ll see if I can offer Derevko some kind of deal.”

Jack knew he was trapped.  He spend fifteen seconds trying to think of any possible way to wiggle out of the trap Chase had him in; the only thing he could think of was to tell her what time Sydney would be arriving and then warn Sydney, but surely Chase would have thought of that.  It was really the only choice he had, he decided.  “Sydney’s flight arrives at LAX at 11:15 am tomorrow,” he said, still showing no emotion.  “I don’t know the airline or flight number.”

Chase smiled.  “Thank you.  Now if you would be so kind as to hand me your cell phone.”  He did so.  “I’m afraid you’ll have to be our guest tonight.”  He wasn’t surprised; he merely nodded.  “Good.  Now, how would you feel about a promotion?”  Jack could only stare at her in shock.

***

At some point during the van ride, Sydney’s initial shock and numbness morphed into anger.  It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that her father must be to blame for this.  She would have been able to understand him turning her mother in, she supposed, although she certainly hadn’t expected it after the way they’d been acting.  But the thing she really couldn’t wrap her brain around was the way he’d made sure that Sydney had been very clearly implicated – not only in keeping contact with Irina Derevko secret, but also in helping to smuggle her into the US.  Apparently he wanted both his wife and his daughter to rot in jail cells – assuming one or both of them didn’t get the death penalty.

The van came to a stop, and she and her mother were pulled to their feet.  Her mother stumbled, falling against Sydney, and murmured, “Say you were going to turn me in,” in Russian.  As she straightened up, Sydney caught her eye and nodded ever so slightly.  She’d already thought of that strategy, in fact, but had wondered if it weren’t too selfish of her.  Now that she had her mother’s permission, though… there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to help her mother, but she could at least help herself.

Irina was hustled off in one direction, while Sydney was taken in another.  She soon found herself in an interrogation room, where her guards surprised her by removing her handcuffs and then leaving.  She waited perhaps fifteen minutes before the door opened and her father entered.  She glared at him.

“Sydney, this isn’t what you think,” he said calmly.

“Oh?  And just what am I supposed to think?” she said coldly.

He sighed and sat down.  “Our new director has some quite unusual ideas.”

***

Irina sat cross-legged on the bed, her back against the cinderblock wall.  Apparently she no longer rated a glass-enclosed cell watched by cameras, she thought, trying to interject a little humor into the situation.  Instead, she was in a perfectly ordinary cell surrounded by iron bars, buried in a sub-basement somewhere.  She’d been separated from Sydney as soon as the van had reached its destination.  No one seemed terribly interested in talking to her, though, so now all she could do was wait.

After four or five hours, by Irina’s estimation, a silent, blank-faced man brought her a meal.  The food hadn’t changed a bit, it seemed; Tuesday’s dinner was still pot roast.  She never had been terribly fond of pot roast, and she wasn’t particularly hungry, so she merely picked at the fruit cocktail that accompanied it.  After the tray had been taken away, she decided that they apparently weren’t going to do anything with her tonight.  She stretched out on the bed, trying not to think of the drug dose she would miss in a few hours – for they had, of course, taken her carry-on bag containing the drug – and managed to fall asleep.

She woke with a start from a faintly remembered dream involving shouting and gunfire.  Her internal sense of time, finely honed from many experiences of being in captivity, told her that it was about midnight Los Angeles time – an hour after she should have taken the drug.  She felt as she had the other morning when the drug had been late, awake and feeling surprisingly rested.  Unfortunately, there was nothing for her to be rested for.  She sat up with a sigh.  It was going to be a long night.


*****

Chapter 39

When the lights in the cell block came up to full strength, signalling that it was 7 a.m., Irina unfolded herself from her cross-legged position on the bed and stretched.  She had paced, then managed a few pitiful push-ups and sit-ups, and then, still not feeling the least bit sleepy, she’d settled into a meditative state and blanked her mind.  It wasn’t as good as sleep at helping the hours to pass, but it had been better than being stuck with the same circling thoughts in the semidarkness.

She still felt quite awake, not surprising since the meditative state provided almost the same amount of rest as sleep.  She also had a dull headache, though; that was not expected.  She sighed and sat down to wait for whatever was to come.  It appeared from the lack of contact that she was being ignored, but she didn’t think that the CIA had forgotten about her.  So the question was whether they were leaving her alone because they thought it would soften her up for an interrogation, or because they were trying to figure out what to do with her.  She rather suspected the latter.

Breakfast came at 7:30, but she was sick to her stomach, so she ignored it – though she was pleased that she was able to make the guard that brought it quite nervous simply by following him with her eyes.  The same guard removed the tray half an hour later, but he avoided her eyes this time.

It was shortly after 9 when the sound of the gates at the end of the hall brought her out of the meditative trance to which she’d once again retreated.  Four armed men appeared.  “On your feet,” one of them ordered harshly as another unlocked the door.  She stood, slowly enough that the head guard looked impatient, but not so slowly that he would feel the need to correct her.  She held out her hands and stood patiently as she was handcuffed.  No ankle cuffs or other excess chains, which meant that she wasn’t leaving the building – or that Jack had told them how weak she was.

The guards led her to an interrogation room and locked her in.  There was a mirror on the wall opposite her; clearly she was being watched.  So she sat and waited, ignoring the desire to fidget.  She had a feeling this was going to be a very long day.

After about ten minutes, a woman entered the room and sat down at the other side of the table.  They studied each other for a moment.  “I’m Director Chase,” the woman finally said, her tone neither warm nor cold.  Irina gave her a small nod, but said nothing.  There was another pause.  “Is Nadia Santos the Passenger?” the woman said next.

Irina was so surprised she suspected her eyes betrayed a flicker of it before she could repress it.  That certainly hadn’t been the first question she would have anticipated.  “No,” she said neutrally once she’d managed to recover, a matter of a few seconds.

“Who is the Passenger, then?”

“I don’t know.”  Why was Chase asking her this?  Hadn’t Jack told her?

“Do you have another daughter?”  

That shocked Irina enough that it showed, and she cursed her slowed reflexes.  “I have two daughters,” she replied.  “What is this about?”

Chase leaned forward slightly.  “There are a number of intelligence groups searching for Rambaldi’s Sphere of Life.  Which of them are you working with?”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “None.  Quite frankly, Director, I have no interest in finding the Sphere of Life.”

Now it was Chase’s turn to show surprise, but she recovered quickly.  “You’ll forgive me if I find that difficult to believe.”

Irina considered her next words carefully.  Although the CIA was unlikely to threaten the lives of her family if she revealed how important they were to her, there were certainly ways that they could use her ties against her.  She could tell Chase that she had never been interested in the prophecies themselves except in how they affected her family.  What she’d said wasn’t precisely true, though; the Sphere of Life seemed to be what all of Rambaldi’s prophecies led up to, and finding it would mean, she hoped, that her family’s role in all of this would be over.  But she wasn’t interested in the Sphere itself, and would happily destroy it if she had the option.  As for what she would say to Chase, though – there was nothing that would convince her adequately, except perhaps confessing how making sure her daughters had the chance to live their own lives rather than being chained to some pre-ordained destiny overrode absolutely everything else.  But there was no guarantee that even that would be enough, so she simply shrugged.  “Believe what you want.”

Chase frowned for a moment, then shrugged.  “The CIA believes that acquiring the Sphere of Life would grant enormous power to any terrorist organization that manages to find it; therefore, we are determined to find it first.  We have a number of Rambaldi artifacts and documents, but we seem to be very much lacking in information about the Passenger and the Sphere of Life.”

Irina almost smiled as she realized that Chase was asking for her help.  The CIA needed information, a lot of information, and they had enough experience with her to know that they couldn’t get it all from her without her cooperation.  Certainly there were ways of extracting information from the unwilling, but such techniques worked well only for small, easily verifiable pieces of information such as a code or a location.  If they tried to interrogate her, she could simply start lying, so that when the truth finally did slip from her they wouldn’t be able to separate it from the muddle.  “So you want my help.”  Chase nodded.  “I offered to help the CIA before.  I must say I was not terribly impressed with the way I was treated.”  She decided to take a rather large gamble.  “I won’t help you from behind bars this time.”  Chase might decide to lock her up and throw away the key; she wasn’t the only one with knowledge of the prophecies, after all.  But she suspected she could at least negotiate.

What she didn’t suspect was that Chase would simply agree to her demand.  “You’ll be released to the custody of Agent Jack Bristow, wearing a tracker, of course.  It will be up to him to decide what freedoms you’re allowed, since he will be guaranteeing your continued good behavior.”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “He’s willing to guarantee my behavior?”  Even if Jack had been more than kind to her the last few days, even if he hadn’t in fact turned her in, she didn’t believe he would have agreed to that.

Chase smiled.  “I haven’t asked him yet.  But he will agree, I assure you.”  Irina just stared at Chase, wondering if the woman were insane.  “So you’ll agree to work with us under those conditions?”  Irina nodded; she was sure there was a catch in there somewhere, but it was at least worth a try.  “Good.  I’ll have you taken back to your cell, and I should be able to arrange for your release into Agent Bristow’s custody by tomorrow.”  Chase turned and left the room, leaving Irina to wonder if she had hallucinated the entire conversation; it seemed too surreal to be true.

*****

Chapter 40

Irina sighed, stood up, and stretched.  She’d been trying to get into a proper meditation state for hours, but every little sound, every tiny ache in her body called itself to her attention.  And the headache that had continued growing in intensity was playing its part as well.  She began to pace the cell, feeling unaccountably nervous.  Jack must be really upset at her for some reason; he must want her to suffer withdrawal symptoms.  If he hadn’t, surely he could have just come down here and given her the damn pills.

Chase had sent her a book to read with her lunch tray.  Again, she’d been uninterested in the food, but she had read the book for about an hour.  At that point she’d gotten restless and had put the book down to do some exercises.  When she picked it up again, though, the words blurred in front of her face and she found herself unable to concentrate.  It was now about 10 p.m., and she was growing more and more uncomfortable.  And there were still hours to go before she could expect anything to happen.

She stopped pacing and clenched her hands into fists.  She would get through this.  She wouldn’t show weakness.  It was what she had always done, and damn it all, she would just continue to do it.

***

Jack watched Irina through the mirror as she read through the agreement that allowed her to be released.  He had been worried about her over the past two days, but she seemed to be all right at the moment.  He’d asked Chase to let him go talk to Irina, but she’d refused, and he hadn’t pressed the matter for fear that Chase would decide that he wasn’t the best guardian for Irina after all.  Her reasoning as she had explained it to him was that Jack knew Irina better than anyone else, but he knew it would be easy enough to put Irina in a safe house with a few guards instead.

According to the documents Irina was signing, the charges against her weren’t being dropped, nor was she officially getting any sort of pardon.  Instead, her files would be sealed, and she would be removed from all wanted lists and watch lists.  Either successful recovery of the Sphere of Life or full cooperation with the CIA for one year would net her a pardon, though it could be revoked if she stepped out of line.  He doubted anyone at the CIA expected her to continue to cooperate indefinitely, and when she stopped, things would go back to the way they were before.

Jack could easily understand why Irina had accepted Chase’s offer.  Even if it hadn’t offered the quickest opportunity to get out of a cell, it allowed Irina a chance to recuperate with some protection.  He suspected she would also enjoy the chance to spend time with Sydney, and probably Nadia as well.  But he was under no delusions that Irina would permanently turn over a new leaf any more than Chase was.  She still had some kind of overarching agenda, he was sure, even though it had been put on hold for the past few years.  Her lie about Nadia’s paternity proved that she was still very much playing some kind of game.  He just hoped he could figure out the rules.

Irina handed the last document to Chase, who looked at the window and nodded.  Jack left the observation room and walked around to enter the interrogation room by the other door.  When he arrived, Chase had handcuffed Irina.  Jack would escort her from the building as though she were a prisoner; officially, she was being transferred to a detention facility and eventually to prison.  That would account for her no longer being listed as “wanted”, while making it easy enough to start everyone hunting for her again by manufacturing an escape if she should slip away.

Chase nodded at him and left the room as he caught a close-up glimpse of Irina.  Although her expression was carefully neutral, he was surprised to see something that might have been fear in her eyes.  Surely Chase had explained the reason for the handcuffs to her.  He noted, too, the lines of tension around her eyes and mouth, signs that told him from years of experience during their marriage that she hadn’t slept, at least last night if not the night before.  She’d hidden the signs well, but apparently she was experiencing effects of being off the drug after all.  If he’d known, he might very well have told Chase what was going on – no.  He still hadn’t admitted to more than a passing encounter with Irina, and though Chase clearly knew there was more to it, she didn’t have any idea of the depth of their association.

All of this passed through his mind in moments as he took Irina’s arm and led her from the room without a word.  They took a circuitous route through back corridors; the fewer people that saw them, the better.  The exits from the building were secured, of course, but Chase had taken care of that.  Jack led her to an exit that opened on a parking garage, commonly used for transporting low-threat prisoners there for interrogation.  Normally, Irina would have been transferred through the garage for high-security prisoners, but she could have never gotten out that way with only one agent guarding her without arousing suspicion.  “Agent Jack Bristow, transferring Irina Derevko to Beckley Correctional Facility,” he said to the agent on door duty, showing his badge.  The agent consulted his computer, saw that the transfer had been approved, double-checked Irina’s face with her picture in the computer, and nodded.

A few minutes later, Jack unlocked the passenger door of his car, and Irina got in, still cuffed.  She’d been perfectly silent throughout the journey; he wondered if she was worried about cameras and listening devices, or if it was something else.  He shut her door and went around to the driver’s seat.  She was sitting perfectly still, except for her fingers twisting around each other.  “You’d better buckle up,” he said as he buckled his own belt.  Irina grabbed her belt, pulled it across herself, and held it out to him, not really looking at him.  It was a bit difficult, but far from impossible, to buckle a shoulder belt while handcuffed; but he said nothing, simply slid the buckle into place for her.  “I’ll give you the keys to the cuffs as soon as we’re out of the garage,” he said, and she nodded.

Once they were out of the garage, he handed her the promised key, then watched out of the corner of his eye as she tried to fit it into a cuff and instead dropped it.  “Goddamnit,” she murmured as she bent down to retrieve it; he was pleased to hear that she hadn’t somehow gone mute.  She sat back up, and he saw the key glinting in her hand, but she made no move to use it again.

“Irina?”

“I’m a little shaky,” she said, barely above a whisper, and he could indeed hear an odd tremor in her voice.

“Here.”  He held out his hand as he came to a stop at a light.  She gave him the key, and he quickly unlocked the cuffs.  “There’s a plastic container with pills in it and a bottle of water in the glove compartment,” he said when she had the cuffs off.  She didn’t hesitate at all in getting the pills and swallowing them, which confirmed his suspicion that the past couple of days had been quite unpleasant.  There was silence for the next few minutes as Jack merged onto the interstate.  “I tried to come see you, to bring you the pills, but I wasn’t allowed,” he said, answering the question he was sure was in her mind.  “I thought you’d rather I didn’t tell anyone what was going on.”  She nodded.  He waited a moment longer, then snuck another glance at her.  She was staring straight ahead, lines of tension still on her face but without a particular expression.  He let another five minutes of silence pass, then finally decided he needed to know what the hell was going on.  “You’ve had two days to think; there’s got to be something you want to say to me.”

She remained silent for a few seconds, then turned to him.  “I’ve been in hell for the past two days,” she said softly, but with muted anger.  “Right now my head is pounding, my muscles ache, and I can hardly sit still.  All I want to know is how long until those pills will put me to sleep.”

He cursed himself.  He, of all people, knew how good an actress she was; the fact that he could see any signs of what was going on should have given him an idea how miserable she was.  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.  He’d only given her half of the dose she should have gotten last night, so that it would be easy to get her on a schedule of taking the drug at bedtime, but perhaps he should have given her more.  If she wasn’t at least headed toward sleep by the time he got home, he would, he decided.

*****

Chapter 41

After Irina’s extraction, Jack had remained with Sydney in the house that he and Irina had purchased together.  Shortly before Christmas of her first year of college, though, he had purchased a house closer to the city.  Irina had known the address within 24 hours of his signing the contract, and had obtained a floor plan shortly thereafter.  The house was somewhat bigger than the house he had left, and was in a much more upscale neighborhood, so it had unsurprisingly cost far more than the house he sold.  He’d been working for SD-6 at the time, though, and had undoubtedly been paid quite a generous salary as someone highly placed enough to know the true affiliation of the organization.  It was also expected that a man in his position would amass an illicit nest egg by skimming from SD-6 money laundering; that would be a convenient way to hide his payments from the CIA for his double agent status.  Irina doubted that Jack had informed the CIA of his illicit funds, though; men who served their country from behind desks would be unlikely to understand that such grafting was a necessity rather than a stolen luxury – a man who knew that he was working to further the wealth and power of a few men rather than for his country would be suspect if he didn’t take some of that wealth for himself.  Irina had caught several government agents in her own organization using that principle.

By the time they reached Jack’s home, Irina was feeling much better.  Her headache had faded to only a dull pressure, and although she was not particularly sleepy, she did feel comfortably mellow and relaxed.  The nausea that had plagued her for the past two days, preventing her from eating anything, had nearly disappeared, replaced by hints of hunger.

Jack waited until the garage door was fully down before getting out of the car, and Irina followed suit.  She was pleased that she felt relatively steady as she walked around the car to the door to the house, until she saw Jack’s frown.  She raised her eyebrows.  “Maybe you should take another pill or two,” he said.  She shook her head.  He sighed.  “You need to sleep.”

“I’m hungry,” she replied.  “I feel much better, and I don’t want to take any more of the drug than I absolutely have to.  I think I’ll be able to sleep after I have something to eat.”

Jack considered, then nodded, and she followed him into the house.  The garage opened onto the kitchen; as Irina had expected, it was clean but spartan.  She suspected the rest of the house was much the same.  Jack gestured to the table, so she sat, and a moment later he presented her with a can of Ensure.  She raised her eyebrows.  “Am I geriatric?”

She could see the annoyance in his face, and as always got a perverse enjoyment out of it.  “No, you’re just far too thin and not taking in nearly enough calories.  How much have you eaten in the past two days?”  She just looked at him, guessing by his tone that he already knew the answer.  He nodded.  “I thought so.  You need light, easily digested foods.  That’s probably why you got sick the other night.”  He held out the can of Ensure again.

She sighed.  “All right, but I’ll drink it out of a glass like a civilized person.”  The corners of his mouth twitched, and he turned and went to the cupboard.  He came back a moment later with a glass.  Irina took it, sipped, and made a face.  Like most chocolate-flavored beverages, this didn’t taste remotely like chocolate.  “Next time, I pick the flavor.”  She finished the drink slowly, knowing that Jack was right about her vomiting episode and not wanting to precipitate another by drinking too fast.  By the time she was done, she was beginning to slip beyond merely relaxed to sleepiness.

“Ready?” Jack asked when she finally set the glass down.  She nodded and stood up a bit too fast, requiring her to grab onto the table.  Jack took her arm and helped her upstairs.  “Sydney picked up your suitcase at the airport,” he said as she carefully climbed the steps.  “I went ahead and unpacked for you.”

He led her into a bedroom, and she looked around in surprise.  The yellow checked bedspread and white eyelet curtains just weren’t Jack’s style.  “This isn’t your room.”

“I thought you might like some privacy.”

She smiled.  She’d expected to be in Jack’s room, and she would probably have to find out later if he would be amenable to an adjustment of the sleeping arrangements, but it was quite nice to have a space she could at least pretend was her own.  “Thank you.”

He gave her an almost-smile in response.  “There’s a nightgown in the top dresser drawer,” he said.  “Do you need any help?”  Irina shook her head, and Jack nodded.  “The bathroom’s directly across the hall.  I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”  She smiled at him; after a brief hesitation, he left.  Irina changed into the nightgown, got in bed, and was asleep in minutes.

***

Elena was putting away the groceries she had just bought when she suddenly heard her name from directly behind her, causing her to drop the can of peas she’d been putting in the cupboard.  She spun around, but saw no one.  “Who’s there?” she asked warily.

She heard a childish chuckle, again from just behind her.  “Didn’t you miss your dear brother, Elena?” the voice asked in Russian.

She breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing the voice now.  “Dmitri.  Where have you been?  I was beginning to think you’d never come back.”

“They wouldn’t let me in where you were.  Don’t go back there, Elena.  I missed you,” Dmitri pleaded.

“I missed you, too, darling.  But why can’t I see you?”

“You will.  Just give it time.”

Elena smiled.  She had indeed missed her little brother, and it would be a pleasure to see him again.  They had forced him away at the asylum, but now she gladly welcomed him back.  But then her expression grew serious again.  “Dmitri, Irina’s missing.  You have to help me find her.”

“I know she’s missing.  Did you think I wouldn’t keep track of what’s going on?”  Dmitri sounded wounded.

“Of course not.  It was silly of me.  But do you have any idea where she might be?”

“No, I don’t.”  Dmitri sounded worried.  “I’ll help you look, though.”

“Good.”  Elena smiled.  If she could find Irina… then the only thing that would be needed to make life complete would be for her daughter to return.

*****

Chapter 42

Irina woke after about two hours of sleep feeling somewhat refreshed, but not completely restored.  She felt rather grimy from the CIA cell, so she took a shower before heading downstairs.

Jack came out of a door at the bottom of the stairs as she descended.  “Did you sleep well?”

“Not bad,” she replied.  “Now that I’ve had my sleep, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”  Clearly, the CIA wanted her to do more than simply provide intel, or Chase would have insisted on at least some actual interrogation before she released Irina.  Chase wouldn’t expect Irina’s cooperation to hold forever, so if they didn’t want to put her to work immediately, there must be a very good reason for it.

“How about over lunch?” Jack asked, and Irina acquiesced and followed him to the kitchen.  “Sydney’s arranged with Director Chase to take you shopping, if that’s all right with you, of course.”

Jack had only bought a little clothing in Rome, and Irina had seen while getting dressed that it hadn’t been added to.  She had a decent amount of staple clothing at the house Elena had bought for her here in LA, the kind that wouldn’t go out of style, but she had no intention of going there while there was a CIA tracker in the back of her neck.  She’d expected that Jack would take her shopping, but she knew quite well that he wouldn’t enjoy the experience.  Sydney, on the other hand, probably would.  But it surprised her somewhat that Chase was entrusting Sydney with being her watchdog.  “And how many armed guards are going with us?” she asked, her tone light.

“None, that I know of,” Jack replied, and Irina inferred that he meant there would probably be covert surveillance, which was quite logical.

Irina sniffed the savory odor in the kitchen appreciatively as she sat down at the table.  “Smells good.”

“Vegetable soup,” Jack replied.  “It’s been simmering for a while now, so it should be done.”  He dished up two bowls and brought them to the table.

“So what’s going on?  Why all the secrecy?” Irina asked before trying the soup.  It was quite good, and she remembered using the recipe herself – when they were engaged, she and Jack had taken a cooking class together, since both of them had suffered from a distinct lack of skills in the kitchen.  “I understand if anyone looks me up, they’ll think that I’m in a federal penitentiary in Nebraska?”

“Kansas, actually.”  Jack placed two glasses of water on the table and sat down.  He took a moment before speaking.  “It seems the CIA has been planning for some time to establish a small task force that will not be under direct agency supervision.”

Irina nodded.  “Black ops.”  She’d worked with a fair number of black ops agents, and generally found them much easier to deal with than “official” government agents.  “So they’re putting you in charge of this task force?”  Surprise flickered in Jack’s eyes.  She shrugged.  “You have the experience.  I’m guessing they’ll be modeling it quite a bit on SD-6.”

Jack again looked surprised, but nodded.  “There will be a few differences, of course.  For one thing, this division won’t be recruiting directly; we’ll be getting experienced CIA operatives.”

“Including Sydney?” Irina asked, and Jack nodded.  She took another bite of the soup as she contemplated what working with Sydney and Jack, on a far different footing than her prior time with the CIA, would be like.  “So what do they want with me?”  Undoubtedly she knew quite a bit about covert organizations in addition to Jack’s experience, but Chase had indicated that she was wanted more for her Rambaldi expertise.

“Our first goal will be to find the Sphere of Life, or if that’s not possible, develop a protocol for recognizing the Passenger when the time is right.  We’ll need a Rambaldi expert.”  Jack frowned.  “You were their first choice when the idea was first proposed, shortly after Sydney returned, but no one knew where you were.  The general consensus was that you were dead.  They were about to attempt contact with their second choice when you showed up on a satellite photo, while we were rescuing Nadia from the Covenant.”  Irina raised her eyebrows, and Jack sighed and looked off into a corner.  “Their second choice was Arvin Sloane.”

Irina frowned, saying nothing for a long moment as she examined her response to mention of Sloane.  She was surprised and pleased that her primary response was disgust.  She loathed the man, but if there was any fear there, it was only a tiny spark.  “Irina?”  She looked up to see Jack watching her intently, concern evident.

She smiled.  “I’m fine, Jack.  Arvin Sloane is a cockroach that needs to be squashed.  That’s all.”

***

Arvin Sloane walked into the study and nodded his thanks at his “escort”, keeping up the appearance of politeness.  Katya’s associates had shown up to rescue her from the Italian authorities and had been kind enough to bring him along as well, but it was quite clear that they didn’t trust him.  He wasn’t overtly a prisoner – he’d been given a nice guest room that was not locked, and had been allowed limited exploration of the house – but he’d had a very hard time getting any information that was actually useful.  Katya had virtually disappeared; when he did see her, it was in the company of their host, Andrei Shostakovich,  with whom she seemed to be very close.  Now, finally, after three days, he had been summoned to a meeting with Shostakovich.

Shostakovich and Katya were already there, along with a woman he was surprised to see, lounging on a chaise.  “Mrs. Reed,” he said with a smile, holding out his hand.  She smiled and shook his hand, but didn’t rise; he noted that she was quite pale.  “Are you all right?”

“I will be,” she replied.  “Irina Derevko put a knife in my chest, and missed my heart by a few centimeters.  I’m afraid she’s losing her touch.”

“Not as much as we’d hoped, it seems,” Katya replied dryly.  “Sit down, Arvin.”  She motioned to a couch.

He sat.  “What happened?”

Olivia described how the Covenant had captured Nadia, how Jack and Sydney Bristow had attempted to rescue her and were captured.  Things still would have gone quite well if Irina Derevko hadn’t shown up.

Shostakovich, an elderly but still muscled man with a thick thatch of white hair, nodded as he sipped on his brandy.  He directed his next remark at Sloane; Katya, from her non-reaction, had apparently already heard all of this.  “It appears that Irina is not as incapacitated as you and Katya believed.  We clearly must consider her a threat.”

Sloane was quite amused by the idea that the man apparently hadn’t considered her a threat previously.  “How well do you know Irina?”

“I’ve never met her,” Shostakovich replied.  “Which is quite a shame, if her talents are similar to those of her sisters.”  He gave Katya a lascivious smile; she smiled seductively in response.

“One thing I have learned in my experience with Irina Derevko is that she is never to be underestimated,” Sloane said, careful not to let his tone seem pompous.  “We in this room are proof of this; she should be paralyzed with drug withdrawal, and yet she’s managed to inflict injuries on three of us.”  He gestured to his arm, which was in a sling.  Katya, who needed a cane to walk, and Olivia Reed needed little reminder.  He considered for a moment, knowing Katya would not like his next suggestion.  “As long as Irina lives, she is a danger to our work.  I believe the only choice we have is to eliminate her.”

Katya frowned.  He knew she hated the idea of killing her sister; it was a conversation they’d had many times before over the past two years.  He could only hope that Reed and Shostakovich would see the necessity of getting Irina out of the way permanently.  “I don’t need to remind you that this is my sister we’re talking about,” she said softly, the anger at his suggestion dulled by repetition.  “But in any case, we don’t need to worry about Irina at this point.  She was taken into CIA custody two days ago.  It seems she’s been sent to a maximum security prison, though I haven’t been able to find out which one.”

Sloane raised his eyebrows in surprise.  “Jack turned her in?”

Katya shrugged.  “Either he did, or one of her daughters.  My guess would be Sydney.  In any case, Irina is unreachable.  We need to focus on the Passenger.”

“Yes,” Shostakovich said, standing.  “That’s why I asked you here today.  Mrs. Reed has some interesting information for us all.”

They all turned to Olivia expectantly.  “When we had Nadia Santos in custody, she said she didn’t know where the Sphere of Life was.  She was quite fervent about it, with her sister’s life in the balance; I believe she truly does not know where it is.”

Sloane frowned.  “She’s had multiple courses of the serum.  She should know where it is at this point as well as she knows her own name.”

“Unless she isn’t the Passenger,” Katya pointed out.  Sloane sighed, not wanting to believe that his daughter was not Rambaldi’s chosen mouthpiece.  “The KGB suspected that Nadia wasn’t the Passenger, but she was kidnapped before they could be certain,” she continued.

“There’s something else,” Olivia inserted.  “Sydney Bristow also had a reaction to the serum when she was injected with it.  I didn’t have her write, but her reaction seemed quite similar to Nadia’s.  I think we can conclude that the two of them are at least related to the Passenger.”

All eyes turned to Katya, who raised her eyebrows.  “Don’t look at me.  I would have to be either six years older or four years younger to be the Passenger.  And I’m just as closely related to Elena’s daughter, whose reaction to the serum was considerably less than Irina’s daughter.”

“You mean Nadia,” Sloane corrected, annoyed that Katya was singling her out as Irina’s daughter and not his as well.

Katya frowned at him.  “Elena’s daughter was also named Nadya, after our mother, just as your daughter presumably was.  Hell, Elena wanted Irina to be named Nadya, but our father wouldn’t allow it.  I suspect he resented Irina from the beginning, for surviving when our mother didn’t, and then having the temerity to be a daughter instead of a son to replace his Dmitri.”

Shostakovich stood suddenly, looking as if he had just had some great revelation.  “Katya, how old were you?”  She stared at him in bewilderment.  “The car accident, when your mother and brother died and Irina was born,” he clarified impatiently.

“I was three,” she said, still looking confused.

“I have to go to Moscow,” Shostakovich said, and left the room abruptly.  The rest stared after him in shock.

“What the hell?  What’s in Moscow?”  Sloane asked nobody in particular.

Katya drew in a shuddering breath, a look of understanding passing over her face.  “Elena’s in Moscow,” she said softly, and would say no more.

*****

Chapter 43

Jack had noticed over the past few days that even when the drug wasn’t making Irina sleepy, even when she was active, she still exuded an aura of calm.  It was similar to the relaxed presence she’d had when she’d been in CIA custody several years ago, but not the same.  Then, she’d clearly been ready for anything, able to be prepared without being tense; that spark of vitality that she had, the force of her personality, had been clearly evident.  The drug-induced calm, though, was more like a constant dull weariness, as if she was only waiting for the day to end.  He had seen signs of her personality, enough to tell him that she wasn’t broken, only downtrodden.  He had wondered, though, if she would be able to heal completely.

Now, as they moved into the living room after lunch, he watched Irina curl up on the couch like a cat and decided that yes, the Irina he had known – and loved, a tiny part of his mind insisted – was still very much present.  She still needed time to heal completely, but if she had to be on her own, he believed that she would manage quite well.  Her time in CIA custody, even with the drug withdrawal, seemed to have helped more than hurt her, although it was merely a continuation of the process that had begun when she’d faced down Sloane and Katya in Rome five days ago.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Irina said, watching him with a tiny smile as he sat down in an armchair.

 “Nothing important,” he said.  “But I would like to know the details about how the Passenger is supposed to be recognized.”  He’d overheard Irina and Nadia discussing it on the trip from Marseille to Geneva, but he hadn’t been able to hear more than bits and pieces.

Irina nodded, shifted slightly, and stared into the distance.  “The Passenger is supposed to be born the day before the summer solstice in the second year of the decade, but Rambaldi never specified which decade – at least not in any prophecies that have been uncovered.”

“So June twentieth?  That’s when Nadia was born?”

Irina shook her head.  “Nadia was born on the nineteenth, which is why I’ve always known she couldn’t be the Passenger.”  Jack nodded, and Irina continued, “According to astronomical data that Rambaldi gave, she should be born in Russia, within about fifty miles of Moscow.”

Jack frowned.  “Nadia wasn’t born in Kashmir?”

“I was held in a debriefing facility just outside of Moscow during my pregnancy,” Irina said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.  “I was released about a week after she was born and given another assignment by the KGB.  I was sent to Kashmir a year later when they caught me breaking into classified records, trying to figure out what they’d done with my daughter.”

“I see.”  Jack had wondered ever since she’d mentioned Kashmir whether her imprisonment there had been due to something during her time with him, something like refusing extraction.  He knew it was unlikely – he’d seen her debriefing video, in which she’d been the perfect loyal KGB operative – but that spark of odd hope had still flourished.  Now he knew that it was Nadia that had caused her to defy her government, not him or Sydney.

Irina frowned at him.  “What’s wrong?”  He blinked at her.  “You went cold all of a sudden.  What have I done wrong now?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shrug.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.”  She stared at him for a moment, challenging, but he wouldn’t give in.  “Is it that you were hoping I was in Kashmir for something to do with you?  Pleading with my superiors to let me stay with you, perhaps?”  Jack cursed inwardly at how easily she could always read him, and of course his miniscule wince confirmed that she was right.  “I always knew I would have to leave.  If you’d thought about it, you would have known as well.”

Jack drew in a breath at the first spoken reference, however oblique, to his knowledge of her true identity all those years ago.  She watched him, and he knew that he had to say something; she wouldn’t let him get by without comment.  “I tried not to think about it too much.”  “Tried” was the operative word – he really hadn’t been successful.  Thoughts of her, who and what she was, had come to him every night in the darkness, from the day he’d found out her true identity in 1977 up to and including last night.

“You thought about it.  What did you think would happen when the extraction order came?”

“I hoped that you would talk to me before that happened, that we could work something out.”

She made a derogatory noise in the back of her throat.  “Like what?  Getting thrown into prison by your government?  You wouldn’t have abandoned your country, your ideals, for me.  And if you had been the kind of man who would do that, I wouldn’t have been interested anyway.  Don’t tell me you would have had any respect for me if I’d thrown over my country for some notion of romance.”

“No, not for me.  But I had hoped, perhaps, you might have done it for Sydney.”

She shook her head.  “Either a mother in prison, or a life on the run – that wouldn’t have been any kind of life for her.  I did the best thing for her, left her with you where she’d be safe.  I could have taken her with me, you know.”  He sighed and nodded reluctantly.  “As for why I was willing to betray my government for Nadia – I knew they hadn’t taken her from me to put her in a loving home somewhere.  Whatever they wanted her for, it couldn’t be good.  Sydney had you to take care of her.  Nadia had no one.”  She was calmer now, the reminder of what had been done to her daughter draining her anger at Jack.

It sobered him as well.  If it had been Sydney that the KGB had wanted, Irina would have done the same thing.  If it had been him… well, he was an adult, trained, able to take care of himself.  He should apologize, he supposed, but then apologies had never really been his strong suit.  He changed the subject instead.  “They just took her from you and said she was dead?  Did they really think you would believe them?”

She relaxed a bit, settling back into conversational mode.  “They probably thought I wouldn’t really care.  From the time Sydney was conceived, I did my best to make them believe that I cared nothing for her.  I expressed distaste at the very idea of children, told them how much I hated being saddled with the child of an American.  It seems to have worked, since they never tried to use her to threaten me.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment.  “I suppose they thought the same would be true of Nadia.  More so, since they knew that I was… fond of you, and that I detested Sloane.  Remember, they believed he was her father.”

Jack hadn’t missed the brief hesitation before “fond”, and he wondered how her superiors had known that, if she had been so careful to keep any attachment to Sydney hidden.  But now wasn’t the time; Chase wanted a report from him by five o’clock, detailing how to recognize the Passenger.  “So the Passenger will be born on June 20th, in the second year of some decade, near Moscow.  What else?”

*****

Chapter 44

“Besides the time and place of birth,” Irina said, “the Passenger’s father is supposed to have the initials AS.”

“So that’s why they had you… with Sloane,” Jack said, keeping his tone matter of fact.  Irina nodded.  “And your sister – her daughter’s father had the initials AS too?”

“Her husband’s name was Alexander Sokolov.  Although Elena told me later that there was an even chance he wasn’t the father.”  Irina smiled slightly.  “She never was good at monogamy.  I’m told she had quite a reputation in her teenage years.”

“You don’t remember?”  They were off topic, but Jack didn’t mind; he knew virtually nothing about Elena.  He’d learned that Irina had two sisters named Elena and Ykaterina only from her father’s obituary, which had been extremely brief and hadn’t given their ages or much of anything else.

“She was thirteen when I was born.  I do remember her having a lot of boys around when I was little, and I remember my father getting quite upset with her whenever he caught her.  It’s funny, because Katya must have had at least as many boyfriends when she was a teenager, but my father never seemed to care.  Then again, Katya was always his darling.”  

Jack didn’t fail to note the slight hint of old bitterness in her voice, and decided to lighten the mood a bit.  “There does seem to be an overabundance of libido in your family, from what I’ve seen,” he said with a perfectly straight face.

Irina chuckled at that.  “Very true.  But we’re getting off topic again.  Although there really isn’t much more to tell.  Rambaldi did say that the Passenger wouldn’t know her true relationship to the one she called mother, but no one’s really sure what exactly that means.  The KGB took it to mean that they’d be fulfilling the prophecy if they took the girls from their mothers, obviously.  He also wrote that the Passenger’s mother would have experienced a great loss recently, but again, that could be almost anything.”

Jack frowned.  “That really doesn’t seem like a lot to go on.”

Irina shrugged.  “Personally, I don’t think the Passenger was supposed to be recognized at birth.  The prophecies indicate that her father will be instrumental in helping her obtain the Sphere of Life, so my guess is that he’s the one that’s supposed to realize who she is.”

“So… did Sloane know?  Was he working with the KGB, then?”

“I don’t think so.  I think they were planning to wait until they had a location to get the child’s father involved.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing.  “Jack, I really don’t think this is something that governments and huge organizations are supposed to get involved in.  I haven’t actually read most of the prophecies, just summaries and paraphrases, but I did read one that was fairly detailed.  It really sounded like it was supposed to be some kind of quest by a few people.”  She shrugged.  “But then, I’ve always thought that people read far too much into Rambaldi.”

“I have to agree with you there.”  His report to Chase would be rather brief, he thought.  “So how does the Chosen One fit into all this?”

Irina tried and failed to suppress a yawn.  “The Chosen One and the Passenger are supposed to battle over the Sphere of Life, and only one will survive.  That’s another one that I haven’t actually read for myself, though.  Also, there’s some confusion about their relationship to each other.  There’s one prophecy that says they’re sisters, and another that says that the Chosen One is the mother of the Passenger.”  She shifted position.  “I think Sloane and Katya think that I’m the Chosen One, and that’s why they were holding me, to keep me from interfering.”

Jack considered for a moment.  “So if Nadia’s not the Passenger, does that mean Sydney isn’t the Chosen One?”

Irina shrugged.  “Before I found out that Nadia was alive, my best guess was that Sydney was the Chosen One and would be the mother of the Passenger.  Now, I don’t know; I suppose either one of them could be the Chosen One, or neither one.”  She sighed.  “The problem is that it seems like these prophecies are supposed to come true soon.  Rambaldi wasn’t very specific, but all of the events that were supposed to happen before this have already happened.  If the Passenger hasn’t been born yet, the earliest would be 2012, and that just seems too late somehow.  Ever since I had enough information to try to figure this mess out, back in 1991, I’ve felt like I was missing some vital piece of the puzzle.  It seems like it has to be a relative of mine, but… I just don’t know.  If the Passenger’s been born already, she has to be a relative I don’t know about.”  She yawned again.  “Do you need anything else?  I think I might need a nap.”

“One thing,” Jack said.  He hated to keep her up, but Chase wanted one more piece of information.  “What exactly is the Sphere of Life supposed to do?  A disease of some sort?”

“I guess the Passenger’s supposed to know – after she gets the serum, anyway.  The prophecies indicate that she’ll have visions.  All anyone can agree on about the Sphere is that it’s supposed to be very powerful, but no one knows what it does.”

“People have dedicated their lives to chasing this thing, and they don’t even know what it does?”

“Rambaldi did have that effect of pulling people in,” Irina mused.  “I don’t know how he managed it, but just reading his prophecies and writings seems to make people want more.  I’ve felt it myself, and I can’t explain it – when analyzed rationally, there isn’t really that much to it.”

Jack nodded.  He’d seen people behave quite irrationally about Rambaldi, particularly Arvin Sloane, and had always wondered what the fuss was about.  “Well, I’d better let you get to bed.”

Irina smiled.  “I’ll see you in a little while.”  She stood and left the room, and Jack headed to his study to write his report.

*****

Chapter 45

Andrei Shostakovich closed the hotel room door, sighed, and sat down on the bed.  He’d been rather looking forward to seeing Elena; he’d had no contact with her since the death of her father thirty years ago.  So even if he hadn’t had the impetus of discovering if his supposition about Irina was true, he would have been disappointed to learn that she’d escaped from the mental hospital that had confined her for fifteen years.

Andrei had met Elena when he was eighteen, just getting his start in the KGB.  His first assignment had been as a clerk in the official records office, helping to ferret out an employee there who was believed to be taking bribes to furnish people with false identification, most of them foreign agents.  Elena’s father, Vladislav Derevko, had been in charge of the office; she’d sauntered in one day to see him and then stopped at Andrei’s desk on the way out.  She’d been quite charming, not to mention beautiful and desirable, and had adroitly managed to goad him into seducing her.  He’d been furious when he discovered she was only fourteen; she’d claimed to be seventeen and young-looking for her age.

He’d learned her true age the same day she’d told him that she was pregnant, in October of 1951.  She’d wanted to get married; he’d wanted her to get an abortion.  She didn’t know that he was in the KGB, and in any case he certainly hadn’t wanted to be saddled with a wife and child.  She’d ranted at him and finally stormed out.  He didn’t see her again for two weeks, when she’d appeared at his desk at work at the end of the day, red-eyed, with her furious-looking father behind her.  She’d quietly told him that she’d had an abortion, and that she never wanted to see or hear from him again.  Her father had then fired him, resulting in his disgrace with the KGB and assignment as a filing clerk for the next two years.

He’d spent the plane ride to Moscow trying to remember everything that Elena had mentioned about her family during their relationship.  There wasn’t much; they hadn’t exactly spent a great deal of time talking.  He knew that her mother and brother had been killed a few months before he had met her, and she did have to run home a few times.  He couldn’t remember, though, whether she’d said it was to take care of a single sister or two.

Had Elena lied about the abortion?  Was Irina her daughter, and not her sister?  If so, then Irina could very well be the Passenger; the timing was right, and all of the other prophecies would work.  Irina’s official birth date was March 22, 1951, almost fifteen months before the date that would make her the Passenger, but Vladislav Derevko had plenty of access to official records; if he wanted to claim his daughter’s child as his own, he could easily have altered her birth date to be the day his wife had died.

It all made far too much sense.  He’d been certain that the Passenger had already been born, and if it wasn’t Nadia, that didn’t leave too many other choices.  All the pieces fell into place almost too perfectly for him to be wrong.  He would have liked to have confirmation from Elena, but he was beginning to think it wasn’t necessary.  He would have to be certain before he did anything drastic, though.

He picked up the phone and dialed Katya.  “It’s Andrei,” he said when she answered on the second ring.

“I have news for you,” she replied.  “I was thinking about what you said, and examining my memories.  I remember the car accident that killed my mother, but I don’t remember Irina being born as my mother was dying.  I do remember that Elena was sent away some time later.  And I remember Irina being very tiny, newborn, even though she was supposed to have been sent to live with a cousin for the first year or so.”

Andrei frowned.  Had she come to the same conclusion as he?  He would rather no one else know about this for the moment.  He fixated on an irrelevant point.  “Why was she sent away?”

“This cousin lived in a farming commune and had goats,” Katya replied with a hint of exasperation.  “It would have been possible to get enough milk for a motherless baby in Moscow, I suppose, but it would have been difficult.  Far easier to send her to where the milk was.  But anyway, I don’t think that’s what happened.  When Elena got married and moved out when she turned 18, she took Irina with her; I never really thought about that much until now.”

“So what are you saying?” Andrei asked, just to confirm that she was on the right track.

“I’m saying that I started to think that Irina isn’t my sister at all, that she’s Elena’s daughter.  And I know you had a relationship with Elena shortly after our mother died.  I had a blood sample from Irina from when we were holding her, and I sent it to a lab.  I also took the liberty of taking in your toothbrush; they were able to get DNA from it.”  There was silence on the line for a moment.  “I just got the results back a few minutes ago, and I was about to call you.  Irina is your daughter, Andrei.”

His head whirled.  There was so much to do, so many plans to make.  “Katya, I need some time to think about this,” he said into the telephone.

“Of course,” she replied.  “I’m still getting over the shock myself.”

“I’ll see you in a few days.”  He hung up and began to think.  Now that he knew Irina was his daughter, he was almost certain that she must be the Passenger as well.  That meant that the plan he’d made – a plan that Olivia Reed had managed to forget when she’d caught Nadia Santos – would need to be put into motion.  It would have been easier with Nadia, but he suspected it would work with Irina as well, particularly since she was no doubt weakened and demoralized from her captivity.

Her location in an American prison actually made things easier; he had enough contacts in the US government that he expected he could get his hands on her fairly quickly.  But there was no hurry, since she wasn’t going anywhere; there was plenty of time to make sure that she was demoralized a little more.  He picked up the phone again and dialed one of his employees.  “I need you to order a hit,” he said.  “Use freelancers.  I want them to kill Jack Bristow.”

*****

Chapter 46

Sydney rang her father’s doorbell and fidgeted nervously.  She’d been here only a handful of times since her father had bought the house, and the fact that her mother was here made it even more surreal.  Her father came to the door and gave her a slightly uncomfortable smile.  “Come in.”

Glancing around the foyer as she entered, Sydney wasn’t surprised to see that it hadn’t changed.  Her father’s house had always felt cold and sterile to her, as if no one really lived here.  “How’s Mom?”  She’d wanted to see her mother while she was in CIA custody, but Chase had refused, and her father had warned her not to press the matter.

“She’s fine.  Asleep.  I can wake her up if you’re in a hurry.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sydney answered.  “Has she been asleep since you got here?”  Her father had checked her mother out about 10 a.m., and it was a little after 4 now.

“She was up for a while,” her father said.  “Do you want something to drink?”

“Sure,” Sydney said, glad for an excuse to relieve the awkwardness.  There was a good reason she didn’t generally visit her father at home.  “Some soda would be good.”  She followed her father into the kitchen, which was spotlessly clean and just as impersonal as the foyer.

Her father poured them both sodas, and they sipped them while awkwardly half-looking at one another.  “So where are you planning to go shopping?” her father asked finally.

She shrugged.  “I guess Macy’s, unless Mom has somewhere she wants to go.  I suppose she needs pretty much everything?”  Her father nodded, and there was another awkward pause.  “There’s a surveillance van outside,” she said after trying and failing to come up with a more innocuous topic of conversation.

“I know,” her father answered, and Sydney flushed slightly.  Of course he knew.  “I imagine they’ll follow you; I suspect Director Chase is rather nervous about letting your mother out in public.”  He looked up at the ceiling.  “Your mother’s up.”

Sydney hadn’t heard anything, but a few minutes later she heard footsteps on the stairs, then headed toward the kitchen.  “Hello, Sydney,” her mother said when she came in.

“Hi,” Sydney said with a smile.  “Are you ready to go shopping?”

Her mother frowned.  “Your father mentioned that we were going, but he didn’t say when.”

“I figured it would be best not to give Chase a chance to change her mind.”

Irina nodded.  “Of course.  Now is fine.”

“Hold on a moment,” Jack said, stepping forward.  He got a cereal bar from the cupboard and a bottle of water from the fridge and handed them to Irina.  “A snack for the road.”

Sydney thought she saw her mother roll her eyes, but she said nothing.  Together, they headed out.

***

Three hours later, they pulled back into Jack’s driveway, the trunk laded with shopping bags.  They’d first stopped at a bank Irina had specified, and she’d paid for all the purchases with cash; Sydney didn’t ask where the money had come from.  She had been surprised at her mother’s shopping efficiency, though she supposed she should have expected it.  Sydney had also been surprised by how easily she’d been able to relax and enjoy the shopping, making intentionally outlandish suggestions to her mother and trading jokes about the four “covert” surveillance operatives, who had failed desperately at being inconspicuous.

Jack came outside as they got out of the car, no doubt having heard them pull up.  “Need help?” he asked when Sydney popped the trunk and he saw the masses of shopping bags.

Irina held up the bags of Chinese food they’d picked up on the way.  “We got dinner.  I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Jack replied.  “I can take that to the kitchen.”  Irina handed him the food, then joined Sydney in getting bags of clothing from the trunk.

Sydney followed her mother upstairs and was surprised at the room Irina led her into – it was clearly not her father’s bedroom.  She suspected this room had originally been designed for her; when her father had told her that he was moving during her first year of college, he’d added on that she would have a bedroom in his new house, but she had never spent the night here.  She felt a hint of regret for all those years they’d lost to secrets and lies, but pushed it away; there was no use in worrying over what couldn’t be changed.  Besides, she was here with both her parents now.  She followed her mother’s lead and put the bags on the bed, then went down to get the rest with a hint of a smile on her face.

***

Once dinner was over and Sydney had left, Jack insisted on helping Irina put away her clothes.  They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Irina spoke.  “So am I not taking any more of the drug until tomorrow, or taking some tonight?”  Once again, she was feeling quite wide awake; it would be rather funny if she went from sleeping far too much to not being able to sleep, she thought.

“If you’d been able to stay on schedule, the time change difference would have had you taking the full dose at about 11 p.m.,” Jack replied.  “That’s probably a good time to take it, since it will help you sleep at night.  What I gave you this morning was half of the dose you would have had last night if you’d stayed on schedule.”

“So you’re saying I’m taking a full dose tonight,” Irina said.

“I think that’s best.  But I think you should take over responsibility for deciding when and how much you get.  It seems like you’re clear-headed enough to handle it just fine.”

“And now that I’ve had a nasty little taste of the withdrawal symptoms, you’re not worried about me deciding not to take it,” Irina added.  Jack smiled just a bit and nodded.  Irina returned the smile, pleased that she was gaining a bit of independence, and that she felt ready to do so.  Jack had known that she was ready before she’d known it herself, which meant he was still able to read her just as well as she could read him.  They finished putting the clothes away, and Irina said, “All right.  Tell me how much I’ve been taking and how you’ve been decreasing it.  Whatever you’ve been doing has been working fine, so I see no reason to change.”

Jack nodded.  “Let’s go down to the kitchen; that’s where the pills are.”  She smiled and entwined her fingers with his, surprising him; they went downstairs hand in hand.

*****

Chapter 47

Irina rolled over in bed, checked the clock, and sighed.  3:30 am; she’d slept about four hours.  That seemed to be typical for her lately; she was sleeping a lot, but it was in short shifts alternating with short periods of being awake.  When she thought about it, though, she realized that this wasn’t a new phenomenon.  She’d followed much the same pattern when she’d been captive, she just hadn’t paid attention to it because time didn’t have much meaning in that cell.  Her stomach grumbled, and after a moment’s consideration she got up and headed downstairs.  She hadn’t eaten much at dinner, but now it seemed that her appetite had caught up with her.

Ten minutes later, she went back upstairs, feeling better after having eaten a piece of toast.  She paused at her door, but continued on to Jack’s bedroom.  His door was open, and she stood there watching him sleep for a couple of minutes.  Deciding that some physical contact was exactly what she needed, she padded into the room and slipped into bed beside him.  In her ten years undercover, she’d become quite skilled at slipping into and out of his bed without waking him, so she was surprised when he turned over and looked at her just as she was about to spoon her body behind his.  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said softly.

He smiled.  “It’s all right.  I don’t sleep as deeply as I used to.”  She nodded and then kissed him as a sudden surge of desire overtook her.  “What are you doing?” he whispered when they broke for air.

“Seducing you,” she replied, her voice low-pitched, “so I can steal your secrets”.  The familiar dialogue had its start on their wedding night; after they had officially consummated their marriage, Jack had commented teasingly that he didn’t deserve her, that she must be out to seduce him and steal his secrets.  Irina, 21 years old and still inexperienced, had been scared very badly; she hadn’t fully recovered until quite a while after he had laughed, confirming that it was only a joke.  The next day, she’d woken him with deep kisses and tantalizing touches.  Half awake, he’d asked what she was doing, and she’d answered with the exact words she had just spoken.  The little game had taken on immensely more meaning, and strangely became even more erotic for both of them, after Jack had discovered her true identity five years into their marriage.

“All right, you can have my secrets,” Jack murmured against her neck, “but only if you work for them.”

“Oh, I intend to, Agent Bristow.”  In seconds, they were undressed.  They knew each other’s bodies perfectly, all the ways to make the other gasp with only a touch or a kiss.

It didn’t take Irina long to realize that Jack was intentionally taking it slow, making sure to arouse her fully, and she was grateful.  Finally, though, she grew impatient, pushed him onto his back, and climbed on top of him.  “Are you sure…” Jack murmured, then gasped as she slid down around him.  He closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“Jack, look at me,” she said, a bit more sharply than she’d intended.  “Please,” she added more softly.  He opened his eyes, and she kept her gaze locked with his, everything focused on him as she held him within her.  As he thrust, the pressure inside her began to build in waves, coming closer and closer to the peak.  He came hard and her excitement rose to a fever pitch – and then faded away, never quite reaching that peak.  She caught her breath as she slipped off of him and rolled to lay beside him.

Jack was silent and still for a long moment, and then he rolled to his side and put his arms around her.  “Are you all right?”  She smiled and nodded.  “Do you want to keep going?”

“No.”  There was no use; her arousal had faded.  She saw that he still looked worried and kissed him tenderly.  “It’s all right.  I would have been surprised if I’d come, actually.”

“I just feel bad that you didn’t… it seems unfair.”

“We’ll even the score sooner or later, I’m sure.”  She caressed his ear, then blinked sleepily.  “Now, I think sleep would be good.”  He smiled and pulled her close.

*****

When Irina woke, sunlight was streaming into the room, and she was alone.  She smiled, remembering the night’s events.  She had enjoyed herself, and was quite pleased that she’d managed to avoid flashbacks.

She stood, stretched, then picked up her nightgown from the floor and went down the hall to her bedroom.  After showering and dressing, she headed downstairs.  She was almost at the bottom when the gunshot erupted, deafening.  There was a sharp cry – Jack.

She ran toward the sound, which had come from the kitchen.  When she reached the doorway, she saw a man dressed in black standing over Jack’s prone form, aiming a gun at his head.  She grabbed a butcher knife from the knife block by the door and rushed him.  He heard her and turned at the last second, and she saw surprise in his eyes.

Irina plunged the knife into the man’s stomach while knocking the gun from his hand, then tackled him to the floor.  “Who sent you?” she ground out.  He sneered at her.  She pulled the knife from his abdomen and traced it down the sensitive skin of his cheek, pressing just hard enough to draw blood.  “You can die quickly or slowly.”

He coughed, spraying flecks of blood.  “Andrei Shostakovich.”  Then his right hand shot upwards, and Irina saw the glint of steel too late; he’d gotten a knife.  It plunged into her left side and slid under her ribs.  She gasped at the pain, then slit his throat.  His knife slipped out of her body as he relaxed; she pressed her hand against the wound and found it soaking wet.  He’d hit something vital.

She looked over at Jack and was relieved to see that he appeared to be breathing, although it was shallow.  The gunshot wound in his chest was seeping blood into a pool around him that was growing steadily larger.  She tried to stand, to get to a phone and call for help, but lightheadness forced her back to the floor.  She glanced down and saw that she was creating her own puddle of blood; she only had a few seconds of consciousness left.  She crawled over to Jack and draped herself across his body, her wound atop his, then let the blackness claim her.

*****

Chapter 48

Sydney turned into her father’s cul-de-sac, a bit annoyed that she was on this trip at all.  She’d noticed when she got home last night that a bag of books, which her mother had bought at a bookstore on the way home, was sitting on the floor of the passenger seat.  She had called this morning, expecting that her father at least would be up, but there was no answer; maybe they were out somewhere.  She figured she could just leave the bag by the front door if they weren’t home.

She noted a coroner’s van pass her, but didn’t pay it much attention until she turned onto her father’s street.  She gasped when she saw the collection of police cars in front of his house.  As she got closer she could see half a dozen women gathered on the sidewalk, watching, and then yellow police tape surrounding the property.

She pulled up behind the last police car, next to the knot of women, and ignored their questioning looks as she rushed toward the uniformed policeman that was keeping an eye on the group of women.  “Ma’am, this is a crime scene.  You’ll need to step back,” he said sternly.

“This is my father’s house,” she replied, cursing the fact that she didn’t have her CIA badge on her.  With it, she could have walked right in.  “What happened?”

The officer frowned.  “Wait a moment.  I’ll call the detective in charge.”  He picked up his radio.

A moment later, a man in a suit came out.  “Detective Edgecomb,” he said.  “Your father lives here?”

“Both my parents,” she answered.  “Are they all right?  What happened?”  She was already fearing the worst, remembering the coroner’s van; only years of field experience allowed her to stay calm.  It was a false calm, but it was enough.

“We’re not sure what happened.  Your parents were taken to USC Medical Center.”  Sydney turned to go back to her car and felt a hand on her shoulder; she barely resisted the instinctive urge to throw the man to the ground.  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let you drive yourself.  Maybe we can get a neighbor to drive you.”

She didn’t know any of the neighbors, and if her parents had been attacked as she suspected, she wasn’t about to get in a car with a stranger.  “No,” she said firmly, shrugging off the man’s hand.  “I can drive.  I’m fine.”

He sighed.  “I was just finishing up here and was about to go to the hospital myself.  I can drive you.”

She ran through the options quickly.  She knew it was paranoia to suspect that everyone she didn’t know was an assassin, but paranoia had saved her life more than once.  “Let me see your badge.”

The man raised his eyebrows, but took out his badge and held it out to her.  She studied it, looking for any signs that it was a forgery, and saw none.  She nodded.  “All right.”

The detective looked relieved.  “Was there anyone in the house besides your parents?”  She shook her head.  “I just have a few things to finish up inside; I’ll be back out in a minute.”  He turned, then whispered to the uniformed cop, “Don’t let her leave,” in a whisper that she was certain she wasn’t supposed to hear.

Once he was gone, she moved down the sidewalk, away from the knot of curious women and the cop.  She very obviously took out her cell phone so the man wouldn’t bother her, then turned away and dialed the safe house where Nadia was staying.

“Joey’s Pizza.  Pickup or delivery?”  She recognized the voice delivering the initial code phrase as that of Eric Weiss.  She wondered why he was on simple guard duty, but shrugged it off; she should just be glad it was someone she knew.

“Delivery of a large deluxe pizza with extra anchovies,” she replied.  “Eric, it’s Sydney.  I need you to bring Nadia to the emergency room at USC Medical Center.”  She felt a hand on her shoulder, jumped, and turned to see the detective.  He pointed at an unmarked car parked among the police cruisers, and she nodded and followed him.

“Have you cleared this with Chase or Dixon?” Weiss asked uncertainly.

“No, it’s an emergency.”  She glanced at the detective, then continued, “I’ll take care of it.  Just bring her as soon as possible.”  The detective opened the passenger side door of his car, and she got in.

“Syd, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know yet.  I’ll explain later.  Please?”

He sighed.  “All right.”

She hung up the phone as the detective got into the driver’s seat and glanced at her curiously.  “My sister,” she said.  “A friend is taking her to the hospital.”

“Of course,” he replied as he started to drive.  “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“I need to make another call first.”  He nodded, and she dialed Chase’s number.  She would rather have called Dixon, but as far as she knew he didn’t know about her mother.  “It’s Sydney Bristow,” she said when Chase answered.

“What is it, Agent Bristow?”  Chase sounded brisk but concerned; her personal line was only supposed to be used for emergencies.

“Something’s happened at my parents’ house.  I don’t know what exactly, but they’re in the hospital.  There are police all over.  One of the officers is driving me to the hospital.”  Chase would want more information later, of course, but that gave her what she needed – that there was a situation that needed to be controlled, and that Sydney wasn’t free to talk at the moment.

“Which hospital?”

“USC Medical Center.”

“All right.  I’ll make some calls to get the police out of this.  Call me as soon as you know your parents’ conditions.”  She hung up before Sydney could tell her about Nadia.  Oh well; she’d already decided it would be better to ask forgiveness than permission when she called the safe house first.

“Do you know of a man in his late twenties or early thirties that might have been visiting your parents?” the detective said as soon as she put the phone away.  She shook her head.  “Do your parents have any enemies that you know of?  Anyone who might want to hurt them?”

She could think of a long list, and every one of them was far out of the league of the LAPD.  Besides, Chase would see to it that the case was taken over by the FBI within half an hour.  “No.”

“What about their work?  Have they talked about anyone there that they didn’t get along with?”

She shook her head.  “I don’t see them a whole lot, and when I do we don’t really talk about work.”

“I see.”  The detective was silent for a moment.  “Why did you go there this morning?”

That, at least, she could answer truthfully.  “My mother and I went shopping yesterday, and she left a bag in my car.  Were they hurt badly?”  She could see that he was getting a bit concerned, though not yet suspicious, about her non-answers and decided it was best to change the subject.”

“The paramedics were already gone when I got there.”

“Did one of my parents call 911?”  She knew her father wouldn’t have; he would have used the CIA’s emergency number.  She didn’t know if her mother had been briefed on those procedures yet, though.

“A neighbor called, said she heard a gunshot.”  The detective turned his car into the road leading to the hospital, to Sydney’s relief.

*****

Chapter 49

In the hospital emergency room, the detective approached the desk, Sydney beside him.  He showed his badge and said, “A man and a woman were brought here by ambulance about an hour ago, the man with a gunshot wound to the chest and the woman with a knife wound to the abdomen.”

The nurse at the desk nodded.  “They were taken back to surgery.  I don’t know if they’re still there.”

“This is their daughter,” Edgecomb said, gesturing at Sydney.

“Oh, good, we didn’t have their names,” the nurse said, and looked at Sydney expectantly.

Shit, she hadn’t thought about this.  Her mind raced.  Should she give their real names?  The cop had heard her last name, and might have learned her father’s name while he was in the house.  But her mother… surely she couldn’t give her mother’s real name.  “Jack and Laura Bristow,” she said, spitting out the first thing that came into her head.  She was relieved when neither Edgecomb nor the nurse seemed to have heard her hesitation.

“Sydney!”  She turned at the familiar female voice to see Nadia and Weiss, both looking worried.  “Are you all right?  What happened?” Nadia asked.

“Our parents,” she replied.  She knew her father didn’t believe that Nadia was his, but her mother seemed convinced of it; she’d spent the past few days hoping her father had made a mistake.  “Dad was shot and Mom was stabbed.”

Weiss’s eyes widened.  “Wait… your mother?  When…”

Sydney gestured ostentatiously to Edgecomb.  “This is Detective Edgecomb.  He’s investigating what happened.”  She gave Weiss a meaningful glare, and he clamped his mouth shut.  She turned back to the nurse.  “Can you tell us where our parents are?”

The nurse had been inputing the names into the computer, so she had the information immediately.  “Your mother got out of surgery a few minutes ago; she’s in room 3085.  I’ve put a note in the computer that your father should be taken to the same room.”

“Thanks,” Sydney said.  She glanced at the detective, hoping he would leave now.

“I’ll come back later to get statements from your parents,” he said, apparently catching her hint.  He handed her a business card.  “If they have anything important, any concerns about anyone out there who might still threaten them, give me a call.”

Sydney nodded, and led Nadia and Weiss away before he could get any more inquisitive.  “What happened?” the other two asked in unison as soon as they were out of the emergency department and into the main hospital.  They moved up to flank Sydney and leaned in so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“I went to Dad’s house to drop something off, and there were police.  It sounds like they were attacked; I saw a coroner’s van on the way in, and the detective mentioned something about a younger man being there.”

“Wait, your mother was at your father’s house?” Weiss asked as they boarded an elevator.

“Long story,” Sydney replied.  Nadia already knew most of it, since Sydney had visited her at the safe house and told her about their mother’s capture and deal with the CIA.  She didn’t know about the black ops division that her mother would be a part of, but Sydney suspected she would learn about that soon.

There was silence until the elevator opened on the third floor.  The three of them wandered through the halls until they found 3085.

Irina was propped up in the hospital bed, nearly as white as the gown she wore.  An IV was in her arm, dripping blood, and an oxygen tube ran under her nose.  Sydney and Nadia moved to her side, while Weiss hung back.  “Who do you think attacked them?” Nadia murmured as she took her mother’s hand.  “Do you think it was… Sloane?”

Sydney didn’t fail to notice the slight hesitation before Nadia named the man who might be her father.  “I don’t know,” she answered.  “Whoever it was, I’d like to know how they found out Mom was there.  I didn’t think anyone knew besides us, Dad, and Director Chase.”

“Excuse me,” said a voice from the door, and they turned to see a nurse.  “There’s a limit of two visitors per patient, please.”

“Um, I’m not really visiting,” Weiss said.  “I’m just the transportation.”

The nurse gave a small smile.  “She just came out of surgery.  She’s not going to wake up for a little while, anyway.”  Sydney frowned.  “Are you her daughters?” the nurse asked.  They nodded.  “Well, if you want to help out, the blood center’s right next door.  You could do a directed blood donation – she’s probably going to need another couple of units.”

“Our father’s here, too.  They’re supposed to bring him here when he’s out of surgery,” Sydney said.

“Oh.  Well, he’ll be out for a while, too, from the anesthesia, and I expect he’ll also need blood.”  She walked to the bed and checked Irina’s identification wrist band.  “Your mother’s blood type is O negative.”

“I’m O negative,” Sydney said.  “But I just gave blood two weeks ago.”  She had, in fact, during her mandated days off after Lauren’s death and the revelations about her father, when she’d been very much at loose ends.

“Well, then, your mother might be getting your blood right now,” the nurse said cheerfully.  Sydney knew that the chances were infinitesimally small, but it was still a nice thought.  There was a beeping from the hallway, and the nurse said, “Excuse me,” and disappeared.

“I haven’t given blood recently,” Nadia said, “but I’m not O negative.”

Her father had said it was something about blood types that had him convinced that Nadia wasn’t his, Sydney remembered.  Best to get it out in the open, whatever it was, she decided.  “Dad’s O positive.”

Nadia’s face fell.  “I’m A positive,” she whispered.  Sydney saw tears appear in her eyes, and she guided her sister to a chair.  

In some cases, of course, it was possible for children to have different blood types from their parents, but Sydney knew – as Nadia apparently did – that O was a recessive type; two parents with type O blood couldn’t have children with any other blood type.  “Well, at least now you know,” she said, unable to think of anything more comforting.

“I guess so,” Nadia said, looking at Irina with an expression Sydney suspected she’d worn herself many times in the past, a look of hopes unfulfilled and bitter betrayal.  “Now I know.”

*****

Chapter 50

An hour passed, and there was still no sign of Jack.  Sydney checked her watch one more time and stood up.  “I’m going to see if they know what’s happening with Dad.”  She left the room, and came back five minutes later.  “He’s in the ICU,” she said.  “I’m going to go down and see how he’s doing.  They won’t let me stay longer than fifteen minutes, so I’ll be back soon.”

Nadia nodded and watched her sister leave again, then settled back into waiting mode.  After about ten minutes, she heard a slight sound from the bed and looked to see that her mother’s eyes were open.  She stood and crossed to the bedside.  “Nadia,” her mother whispered.

She looked exhausted and in pain, and Nadia forgot her anger at her mother’s lie for a moment.  “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s your father?” 

The worry in her mother’s eyes didn’t stop Nadia’s anger from boiling back up again, but it gave her pause enough to give her mother a bit of information before demanding an explanation.  “He’s in the ICU.  Sydney’s with him.  But he’s not my father.  You lied to me.”

Irina looked confused.  “What… why do you say that?”

“The blood types don’t match.  You and he are both type O, and I’m type A.”

Irina frowned.  “There must be a mistake.  He is your father, I’m sure of it.”

Nadia studied her mother.  She seemed sincere, but Sydney had warned her that Irina’s ability to lie convincingly was remarkable.  But the real question was why she would bother.  The only thing Nadia could think of was that maybe her mother had a vendetta against Sloane, and didn’t want Nadia to be upset with her if she hurt or killed him.  But even then, why claim that her father was Jack Bristow?  She could have just said it was someone else, someone who wasn’t available to be tested.  Nadia shook her head and sighed.  “I don’t understand.  How could the blood types be wrong?”

Her mother pulled her sheet up over her arms.  “I don’t know.  All I know is that he is your father.”  She held Nadia’s eyes for a moment.  “I’m sure you’ve been told that I’m not to be trusted.  But in this case you don’t have to take my word for it; get a DNA test.”

Nadia nodded, feeling a surge of hope once again.  The idea of Jack as her father, rather than Sloane, had been growing on her for the past few days.  Particularly since she didn’t like Sloane – Jack seemed cold and distant, but being around Sloane gave her the sensation of having touched something cold and slimy.  “I will,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” came a voice from the doorway, and they looked over to see Director Chase.

“Sydney called for me.  It was an emergency,” Nadia answered.

“Agent Weiss?”  Chase turned on Weiss, clearly annoyed.

Weiss shrugged.  “Sydney said she would clear it with you.”

“And where is Agent Bristow?”

“She’s in the ICU with her father,” Weiss answered evenly.

Chase sighed.  “All right.  We’ll discuss this later after I’ve had a chance to talk to Agent Bristow.”  She turned and studied Irina briefly.  “You don’t look like you’re going to die in the next few minutes.”  Looking back at Weiss, she continued, “Agent Weiss, take Miss Santos back to the safe house.”

“But – “ Nadia protested.

“This facility is not secure,” Chase said, her tone brooking no argument.  “As soon as it’s feasible, I’ll have your mother moved to a secure hospital, and we can arrange a visit then.”

Nadia nodded reluctantly.  She squeezed her mother’s hand.  “I’ll see you soon.”

Irina smiled and squeezed back.  “Take care.”

With a last look back, Nadia allowed Weiss to lead her from the hospital room.

As she watched Nadia leave, Irina shifted slightly, trying to warm herself.  She’d been cold ever since she’d woken; the thin hospital gown and sheet didn’t provide much warmth.  It was hard to move to a better position, though, when the slightest movement of her torso sent pain shooting through her side.

Chase approached the bed.  “What happened?” she asked brusquely.

“There was a single assassin, probably a freelancer,” Irina said, and was surprised to find herself a bit breathless.  “I wasn’t in the room when he shot Jack; he was just about to shoot him again when I came in.  He seemed surprised to see me; I’m reasonably certain Jack was his target.”

Chase’s eyes widened.  “You’re sure?”

“I can’t be sure,” Irina answered.  “But it would be rather stupid to send a single assassin against two trained agents.”

“Of course,” Chase said, nodding.  “Any idea who sent him?”

“I got a name from the assassin before he died.”  Irina paused and drew in breath until that needle of pain went through her, then involuntarily coughed.  The pain that caused was incredible, and it was a good minute before she could manage to gasp out the name.  “Andrei Shostakovich.”

“Do you know him?” Chase asked, watching her with concern.  Irina shook her head, then shuddered violently as a wave of intense cold went through her.  She broke out in a cold sweat.  “Are you all right?  I think I’d better call the nurse.”  Chase looked around for a minute until she found the call button.

By the time the nurse arrived, Irina was shaking and felt like she was about to throw up.  “I think it might be a reaction to the transfusion,” she whispered, having to stop twice for breath during the sentence.  “Happened once before.”

The nurse nodded, pressed the call button, and started removing the transfusion IV line.  Irina closed her eyes and focused on breathing as she dimly heard the nurse order Chase from the room.  Soon after there were the bustling noises of several people in the room.  “Laura?  Can you hear me?” someone asked, confusing her, until she realized that Sydney must have told them her name was Laura. 

She opened her eyes.  “Can’t breathe.  Cold,” she gasped out.

“All right.  Try and relax,” the nurse said, and a mask was slipped over her mouth and nose.  The pressure on her chest eased a bit, but not enough for her to breath easily.  “What’s her temp?” she heard.

“100.6,” another voice said.

Her arms had been pulled out from under the sheet, but now a blanket was placed over the sheet and tucked in around her, under her arms.  She was still shaking with cold, still trying to breathe; when unconsciousness beckoned, she gladly let herself fall into darkness.

*****

Chapter 51

Andrei Shostakovich hung up the phone after speaking to his contact in Los Angeles and steepled his fingers in thought.  It was unfortunate that Jack Bristow had survived, but his disappointment was outweighed by his pleasure at the unexpected good news.  A woman had been in Bristow’s house, had been taken to the hospital with him, and was listed there as “Laura Bristow”.  From what he had learned about Irina, particularly during his intense study the last few days, she was too smart to make such a blunder, even injured and, presumably, drugged.  He wondered who else could have been stupid enough to give such a blindingly obvious alias.  The daughter, perhaps – Sydney.  His granddaughter, he reminded himself.

But that wasn’t important.  He had the perfect opportunity to get custody of Irina, if he acted quickly, and any injuries she had could only make the execution of his plan easier.  He picked up the phone again to arrange to get himself to America.

***

Sydney got into the elevator to go back to her mother’s room, feeling discouraged and worried.  Her father had looked terrible, and he’d been on a ventilator.  No one would tell her much about his condition, citing privacy laws; all they’d told her was that he was stable and would be unconscious until at least the next day.  She’d left her pager number, and they’d promised to call her if there was any change.

She sighed quietly as the elevator reached the third floor.  It could be worse, she told herself.  At least they were both alive.  She walked toward her mother’s room, but slowed when she saw Director Chase in the hallway, on the phone.  She acknowledged Chase with a nod as she passed her, then looked in her mother’s doorway and froze when she saw the flurry of activity around the bed.

She saw Chase hang up the phone and turned to her.  “What happened?’

“It seems your mother’s having a reaction to the transfusion,” Chase replied.  She drew Sydney down the hall to a quiet spot.  “Your mother said that the assassination attempt was aimed at your father.  I’ve ordered protection for him, but in the meantime, one of us should go up there.”

“My father?”  Sydney frowned.  She’d assumed that the attack had been aimed at her mother, but when she thought about it, she supposed her father had enemies as well.  The timing just seemed too coincidental.  “What about my mother?  If whoever did this finds out she was there, she could become a target, too.”

Chase shook her head.  “The assassin is dead, and it’s just too much of a risk to put surveillance on her and risk word of her presence getting out that way.  You can stay with her if you like.”  Sydney nodded reluctantly.  “Your mother said that the assassin told her his employer was Andrei Shostakovich.  Have you heard of him?  Heard your father mention him, perhaps?”

Sydney shook her head.  “The name’s Russian.  Does my mother know who he is?”

“Unfortunately, that was just when she was starting to get sick, but she gave the impression that she didn’t know him, at least not well.”  Chase glanced down the hall at Irina’s room, where a white-coated doctor had just entered.  “I’d better go up and keep an eye on your father until the guards arrive.  I’ll come back down then.”  Sydney nodded.  Chase headed toward the elevators, while Sydney went to her mother’s room.

She stood against the wall, out of the way, and watched as the doctor checked her mother.  All but one of the nurses left, and she was relieved to see that their attitude was relaxed; whatever had happened, it appeared that her mother was stabilized now.  The doctor finished his exam, looked up, and noticed Sydney.  He nodded briefly in acknowledgement, then turned to the nurse.  “I’m not going to give her anything now, but keep a close eye on her vitals.”  The nurse nodded and left, and the doctor turned to Sydney.  “Are you her daughter?”  Sydney nodded.  “I’m Dr. Merriman.”  He extended a hand.

“Sydney Bristow,” she replied, and shook it.  “What happened?  Is she going to be all right?”

“Let’s sit down.”  Sydney followed his lead and sat.  “Your mother appears to have had a reaction to the transfusion; that happens sometimes.  We won’t know exactly what it was until we hear back from the transfusion lab.”

“Could they have gotten her blood type wrong?”

The doctor shook his head.  “Even if they had, she was getting O negative, which is the universal donor.  She couldn’t have had a reaction due to blood type unless the blood in the bag were typed wrong.  That’s one of the things the transfusion lab is checking.”

“And if it wasn’t a wrong blood type?”

“Sometimes someone just has a bad reaction to a blood transfusion.”  Merriman shrugged apologetically.  “We don’t really know why.  The good news, though, is that it’s usually a reaction to one particular bag of blood, which means we should be able to get your mother started on a new transfusion as soon as we hear from the lab.”

Sydney nodded.  “So she’s still going to need more blood?”

“I’m afraid so.”  Sydney frowned, imagining how much blood her mother must have lost, but nodded.  The doctor smiled reassuringly.  “She’s stable for now, and we should be able to start another transfusion soon.”

“But what if you can’t give her another transfusion?”

“If by some chance we can’t give her more blood, she will live; her recovery will just take a lot longer.”  Sydney nodded, relieved.  The doctor opened the file folder he was carrying.  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your mother?  About her medical history, that is.”

“Go ahead,” Sydney replied.  “I can’t promise I’ll know the answers.”

“Anything you can give us will be helpful.  Does your mother have a regular doctor?”

Sydney shook her head.  “If she does, I don’t know who it is.”

Merriman didn’t look happy at that news, but he also looked like he had expected it.  “Is she allergic to any medications?”

“Not that I know of.”  Sydney frowned as she realized she should probably tell the doctor about the diazepam.

“Is she taking any medications right now?”  Sydney glanced away, uncertain, and the doctor leaned forward.  “If your mother’s taking something, we need to know in order to treat her.  It will be completely confidential, I promise.”

But Chase could, if she wanted to, seize the hospital records, and Sydney knew that her mother wanted to keep her problem from as many people as possible.  But the doctor truly did need to know.  She took a deep breath.  “She’s taking Valium,” she said quickly.  “She’s addicted.  It’s not her fault…”  She trailed off, knowing she couldn’t possibly explain to him anything like the real situation.

“Of course not,” the doctor replied.  Sydney could tell that he was just humoring her, but it didn’t matter as long as he wasn’t prying.  “How long has she been taking it, and how much is she taking?”

“Two years,” Sydney replied.  “She’s trying to get off of it, you know, reducing the dose.”

Merriman nodded.  “That’s good.  Stopping Valium suddenly can be very dangerous, actually.  Do you know about how much she was taking?”

Sydney calculated quickly, based on the dose she had given her mother a few days ago.  “She should be getting about 131 mg tonight.  She was getting 200, so she’s cut down a lot.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows.  “200 mg a day?  That’s a lot, especially for someone her size.  Was she functioning all right?”

“Sleeping a lot,” Sydney replied.  “Are you going to keep giving her the drug?”

He nodded.  “As I said, stopping suddenly can be quite dangerous.  And she’ll need some sedation anyway.”

A nurse stuck her head in the door.  “Doctor, you’ve got a call from the transfusion service.”

“Excuse me,” the doctor said to Sydney, standing.  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”  He hurried from the room.

*****

Chapter 52

Sydney moved to her mother’s bedside and took her hand.  She was asleep; Sydney hoped that she would wake up, but there was no response.  She was worried about her parents, afraid one or both of them wouldn’t recover.  She didn’t know who this Andrei Shostakovich was, or what he wanted with her parents, but she vowed silently that she would find him and make him pay for what he’d done.

Dr. Merriman re-entered the room; Sydney looked up and frowned when she saw his worried expression.  “It seems your mother’s blood type isn’t type O at all.  She has a very rare blood type called Bombay type; apparently only one in a million have it.  She can’t receive type O blood, or blood from anyone but someone else with the Bombay phenotype.”

Sydney’s eyes widened.  “Is there any of that type available?”

The doctor ran his fingers through his hair nervously.  “The transfusion service director is trying to locate some in the area.  Apparently they don’t routinely test blood donors for this type, since it’s so rare, so it usually only turns up if someone needs a transfusion, or if there are ‘blood type abnormalities in the family’, she said, though I’m not quite sure what she meant by that.”

Sydney thought fleetingly that perhaps this explained Nadia’s blood type somehow, but her attention was focused on more urgent matters.  “I’m O negative, but I’ve never had a transfusion.  Could I have the same blood type?”

“It’s possible,” the doctor said, but he looked uncertain.  “I mentioned that you were here, and the transfusion service director did ask me to have you come down to see if you had the same blood type, although she said it was unlikely.  She also asked me to ask you if your mother had any siblings available.”

Sydney shook her head.  “She has two sisters, but they’re out of the country, and I don’t know how to reach them.”

Merriman nodded.  “You should go down to the transfusion service; they’re on the ground floor.  The director there can explain all this better than I can.”

Sydney glanced at her mother, not wanting to leave her unguarded and defenseless.  Surely no one would try anything now, in the middle of the day with people everywhere.  But still… “Is my mother in any immediate danger?”

The doctor looked surprised.  “No, she’s stable.  We’ll just need to keep her on oxygen, and preferably unconscious, unless she gets some blood.”

“I just don’t want to leave her alone.  I have a friend who should be here in a few minutes.”

He nodded.  “A few minutes won’t make any difference.”  She gave him a brief smile.  There was a moment of awkward silence.  “I’ll go call the transfusion service and let them know you’ll be down in a bit,” the doctor said, and left the room.

Sydney stood by her mother’s bedside for a long moment, then began to pace.  Half an hour passed, and she was just about resolved to go down to the transfusion service anyway when Chase finally appeared.  “I hate civilian hospitals,” she said as she entered.  “I had to be quite firm to get them to let the guards anywhere near your father.  I’ve made arrangements to move both of your parents in the morning, as long as they remain stable.”  She glanced over at Irina.  “How is she?”

“She’ll be all right,” Sydney said.  “Apparently she has an extremely rare blood type, though, and she can’t get transfusions except from people with the same blood type.  I’m supposed to go down and see if I’m a match, but I wanted to wait for you first.  I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

“I need to get back to headquarters, so you’re going to have to leave her alone,” Chase said.

Sydney thought for a moment, then sighed.  She doubted Chase would give permission to bring Vaughn in on this, especially considering he was currently on leave and in mandatory counseling after Lauren’s death.  Since Nadia and Weiss had been shooed away, the only person left that she would trust would be Dixon, and he no doubt had to be at headquarters with Chase.  “I guess.”

Chase gave her a sympathetic smile.  “I’m sure she’ll be fine.  The assassin was after your father, and no one knows she’s here.  And now I really must go.”  Sydney nodded and watched her leave.  Then she looked over at her mother.  She didn’t want to leave her alone, but she was awfully pale, and Sydney knew she had to at least find out if her blood type was compatible with her mother’s.  She gave her mother’s hand one last squeeze and then left the room.

***

Irina stirred as she felt cold metal against the skin of her chest; the pain that shot through her abdomen induced a moan and reminded her that moving wasn’t such a good idea.  She opened her eyes, saw someone standing over her with a stethoscope, and had to blink a few times before she was able to focus enough to tell that it was a young man, wearing a white coat.  “Hello there,” he said.  “I was wondering if I was actually going to get the chance to talk to my patient.  I’m Dr. Merriman.”

She looked around, but found that no one else was in the room.  There was, however, another bag of blood dripping into her arm.  “This isn’t going to make me sick again, is it?”

“No, we figured out the problem,” the doctor said with a reassuring smile.  “It turns out you have an extremely rare blood type; fortunately, your daughter’s a match.”

Irina looked over at the bag again.  “That’s Sydney’s blood?”  Merriman nodded.  “Where is she?”

“I’m not sure, but I expect she’ll be back soon.  How are you feeling?”

Irina considered for a moment.  “A little fuzzy.”

“That’s not surprising.  You lost a lot of blood; if I could, I’d give you a few more units, but as it is you’re going to be anemic for a few weeks.  How does your stomach feel?”

“It’s fine if I don’t move.”

The doctor nodded.  “If you feel like you need something for the pain, let me or a nurse know.  I’ve got you on a mild pain reliever right now, but if you need it I can give you something stronger.”

Irina suspected he was talking about morphine or similar drugs; she hated the way they made her feel.  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

The doctor looked surprised, but shrugged.  “Well, you can always change your mind.”  He checked his watch.  “I’ve got a meeting to get to.  I’ll check on you again in a little while.”  Irina nodded, and he hurried off.

*****

Chapter 53

Irina closed her eyes and began a meditation exercise that would keep the pain under control, but she opened them after a moment when she heard someone enter the room.  “Sydney.”

Sydney started slightly, but then smiled.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.  The doctor just left a minute ago.”

Sydney pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, then held up the white paper bag she’d brought in.  “You don’t mind if I eat, do you?”

“Of course not.”  Irina watched as Sydney unwrapped a sandwich, then let her eyes fall closed.  When she opened them after what seemed only a brief moment, the sandwich had disappeared and Sydney was watching television.  She blinked in confusion.  “Did I fall asleep?”

Sydney smiled.  “For about an hour.  You didn’t even wake up when the nurse came to change the IV.

Irina looked up to see that the blood bag was gone, replaced by clear liquid.  She turned back to Sydney.  “The doctor said that you gave the blood.  Thank you.”

Sydney came over and squeezed her hand.  “Don’t mention it,” she said.

“I had a blood transfusion once before, and I got sick then, too.  I suppose this rare blood type is the reason why?”

“Yeah.  Apparently our blood looks like type O without a specific test, but our red blood cells are missing an antigen that people with all blood types have, so we have antibodies to it.”

Irina nodded.  “I don’t know if Nadia told you,” she said, “but she’s type A, and your father is type O.”

Sydney nodded.  “I asked the doctor in the transfusion lab about that.  She said that you could have the gene for type A, and pass it on, but you don’t express it yourself because you’re missing a different gene.”

Irina considered for a moment.  “I think your father knows that Nadia’s blood type is different.  I could tell he didn’t believe me when I told him that he’s Nadia’s father.”

“He knows,” Sydney said softly.  “But I’ll tell him as soon as he wakes up.  Although they said in the ICU that he wouldn’t wake up until at least tomorrow.”

Irina felt a flash of worry.  “How bad is he?”

Sydney gave a frustrated sigh.  “He seems to be stable.  No one up there will tell me much.  Privacy laws, they say.”

“If they’re not talking, that means they expect him to live,” Irina said with relief.  “When you were two, your father was injured on a mission.  No one would tell me much, until I finally bullied a nurse into telling me that they would be giving me more information if they didn’t think he was going to recover.”

For some reason, that seemed to trouble Sydney more than it comforted her.  Irina watched as she seemed to war with herself; finally, she spoke.  “That was around the time that Dad found out you were KGB,” she said, barely audible.  Irina could see Sydney watching her intently.

She nodded.  “It was about two weeks after he found out, actually.  Or two weeks after he first saw me after finding out, anyway.  I suppose he must have learned the truth during the month he was gone before that.”

“So you knew that he knew?  Did you ever talk about it?”

Irina drifted into the past for a moment, remembering Jack’s stiffness when he’d returned from that month away, the pain in his eyes, the way sex had been either cold and perfunctory, when initiated by her, or harsh and almost feral when he started things.  The fear she’d seen in his eyes when he watched her with their daughter.  The thought of Sydney brought her back to the present, reminding her that that daughter was waiting for an answer.  “No, we never talked about it.”  She thought for a moment about whether to reveal more, to tell what she’d never told anyone, even Elena.  It couldn’t hurt anything now, she decided.  “I was aware that he knew the truth, but I didn’t fully admit that to myself until later.  I had myself convinced that as long as there was doubt, I could avoid taking my suspicions to my handler.”

“Because you would have been extracted,” Sydney said.

Irina had never wanted her daughter to become a spy, but in one way it made things easier: there was a much greater chance that Sydney might one day come to understand her mother’s actions.  She nodded.  “And they almost certainly would have had your father killed.  I suspected that others in the CIA knew my true identity besides your father, but if there was even a chance that he had kept it secret, they would have eliminated him.”

“What about me?”

Irina glanced over and saw that Sydney was pale and looked like she might be holding back tears.  “You would have come with me.  Sydney, the past is over and done with.  There’s no use worrying over what might have been.”

“I know.”  Sydney looked down at her hands and twisted her fingers together.  “I just can’t help wondering sometimes, you know?”  She looked up.  “When you were extracted, did you think about taking me with you?”

Of course she’d thought about it, longed for it desperately, but she’d known it would be a horrible mistake.  But Sydney didn’t need to know of her machinations to keep the KGB in the dark about her true feelings for her daughter, not when another part of the truth would suffice.  “I didn’t want to leave you, or your father,” she said, measuring her words carefully; this might well be the most vital conversation she would ever have with Sydney.  “I could have taken you with me, but I very much believed that you would be better off with your father.  No matter what happened, you would lose one parent, but by staying with your father, you didn’t have to adjust to a totally new culture, language, way of life.”  She almost didn’t continue, but Sydney was one of the very few people in the world she could trust not to exploit her feelings for Jack – at least, not in a way that would hurt him.  “And I left you for your father’s good, too.  I couldn’t stay with you, but at least I could give the two of you each other.”

“Did you know you were pregnant?”  Sydney asked, and Irina nodded.  “So, a nice even division of the children?  Did you think about it that way?”  There was a note of hostility in her tone, but it was uncertain.

She sighed softly.  “No, I didn’t think about it that way.  At the time, I didn’t know who Nadia’s father was.”  She’d also been trying to be indifferent to the pregnancy; since she hadn’t known then that the KGB had planned it, she’d suspected that she would be strongly encouraged to have an abortion.

Sydney shifted uncomfortably.  “I just… I’m sorry.”

“No.”  Sydney looked up, surprised.  “You’re angry at me.  It’s all right.”

Irina caught a hint of tears in her daughter’s eyes before Sydney stood and turned away, crossing her arms tightly in front of you.  “I know,” Sydney said, her voice shaky.  “I understand that you didn’t have any other choice, that you had to leave.  But it still hurts, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.”

“I don’t expect forgiveness,” Irina replied, her own eyes feeling suspiciously moist.  “But I want you to know that I love you.  If you can believe that, then I’ll have more than I ever hoped for.”

Sydney didn’t turn around, but Irina could see her shoulders shaking.  Neither said anything for a long moment, until finally Sydney was still.  “I’m going to go see how Dad’s doing,” she said, and Irina could only barely detect the trembling in her voice.

Once she was gone, Irina relaxed back into the mattress, drained by the encounter.  She took in a deep breath and let it out with a shuddering sigh.  Even though thoughts and emotions raced about in her head, she was still utterly exhausted.  As her eyes fell closed, a single tear slipped out and trailed down her cheek.  She meant to wipe it away, but sleep claimed her before she had a chance.

*****

Chapter 54

Sitting with her father, even for just the fifteen minutes she was allowed, let Sydney calm down immensely.  She didn’t know whether her father had been able to forgive her mother, but even if he hadn’t, even if he was still angry at her deep down inside, he had gotten past it enough to work with her, even to rescue her from Sloane and Katya.  True, there might have been other reasons – she still didn’t know the full story behind her mother’s deal with the CIA, and he might have planned to get information about the Passenger from her even then – but still, he had gone to get her himself, and had taken care of her.

Sydney realized that she, too, had been doing the same thing.  Her anger at her mother was still there, yes, and she suspected it always would be, but there had been quite a few times over the last several days when she had forgotten the anger and been able to just enjoy being with her mother.

Her mother seemed willing, at least to some extent, to uncover the secrets that surrounded their family; perhaps her father would do so as well, if she asked.  And Nadia… well, they’d have to do a DNA test, to determine Nadia’s parentage once and for all.  Sydney decided she could easily make sure that was done once her parents were transferred, so they’d have the results before her parents were out of the hospital.  Then, once they were released, they could all have an honest family discussion… and they would be a happy, perfect family, while pigs flew around outside the windows.  Sydney sighed; it wouldn’t be that easy.  But she had had that talk with her mother, and she could certainly get a DNA test.  Baby steps – but they were better than nothing.

When the nurse shooed her out of her father’s alcove, Sydney returned to the third floor.  Her mother was asleep again, which wasn’t really too surprising; Sydney wondered if some of her mother’s willingness to talk might be due to her condition.  Well, she supposed she had to take what she could get.  She sat down and turned her attention to the television, which had never been turned off.  She’d never been much of a tv watcher, and sitting through five minutes of an inane soap opera reminded her why.  She chuckled to herself; the characters on the soap thought their lives were crazy, but they had nothing on her.  It wasn’t long before she’d had enough, though, and so she flipped through the channels until she found Animal Planet.  On the rare occasions when she was too tired to do anything except zone out in front of the tv, that was usually the channel she chose; she saw so much evil from humans in her work that it was refreshing to watch animals, who acted on instinct rather than ulterior motives.

Several hours passed, slowly.  Nurses, residents, and medical students came in frequently, and some of them woke Irina, but she always went to sleep again as soon as they left.  Even though they didn’t say much to each other, Sydney could tell that her mother was glad she was there.

She got hungry again, so she headed to the cafeteria for a quick meal, followed by another visit to her father’s bedside.  When she returned, her mother’s eyes were open, but she was gazing at the tv in a manner suggesting that she wasn’t paying that much attention.  She looked over when Sydney entered.  “What time is it?”

“A little after seven.”

“You’ve been here all day?”  Sydney nodded.  “You should go home.  There have got to be more interesting things for you to do than sitting around watching me sleep.”

“That’s not all I’m doing.  Sometimes I go watch Dad sleep.”  Her mother smiled.  “But really, it’s no big deal.  I don’t want to leave you alone; the assassin might come back to finish the job.”

“Sydney, I killed the assassin.  If I hadn’t, the job would already be finished.”

“Not that specific assassin,” Sydney said, a bit exasperated for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint.  “The man who ordered it is still out there, and we don’t know who he is or what he wants.”

“Andrei Shostakovich,” her mother said thoughtfully.  “He was KGB, I know that, and fairly highly ranked.  But I haven’t heard anything about him since I left.”  She sighed.  “Maybe your father knows who he is.  But in any case, I see no reason why he was out to get me; the assassin was surprised to find me there.  Go home; I’ll be fine.”

Sydney frowned, hesitant.  “I just… I wish there was something more I could do.  This whole thing just seems so random.”

Irina shrugged.  “Things like this happen.  I can’t tell you how many people have tried to kill me over the years, and half the time I have no idea why.”  She considered for a moment.  “Will you go home if you ask me to do you a favor?”

“A favor?”

“You said Nadia told you that my sister Elena was worried about me.”  Sydney nodded.  “I meant to get in touch with her and let her know that I’m all right, but it slipped my mind last night.  Would you call her for me?  You’ll have to wait until about 9 because of the time difference.”

“Of course.”  Sydney dug in her purse and found a paper and pencil.

Her mother wrote out a phone number.  “She’s there under the name Elena Dvortetsky.”  Sydney’s eyes widened in surprise.  “It’s her married name.  Well, the name of her most recent husband, anyway,” her mother said, looking perplexed at her reaction.

“Elena Dvortetsky is your sister?”  Irina nodded, still clearly confused.  “The one that killed over a dozen highly placed KGB officers in 1991?”

“Didn’t I mention that she’d gone on a killing spree?”

“Mom…”  Sydney dropped her voice to a whisper, ignoring the strong suspicion that she really shouldn’t be saying this.  “The CIA credits her with the destruction of the KGB that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.”

“Well, it’s true that some of the men she killed were the ones holding the KGB together by their teeth, but it wouldn’t have lasted more than a year or two more anyway.”  She shrugged.  “Besides, accelerating the destruction of the KGB was only an accidental side effect.”

“Why did she do it, then?”

“Revenge.  Those men were in charge of the Rambaldi research program back in the 70’s.  They kidnapped her daughter, looking for the Passenger, and eventually killed her.”

“Oh.”  Sydney didn’t quite know what to say, so she returned to the pragmatic.  “I’ll call her tonight and let her know you’re all right.”

“Do you have access to an untraceable line?”  Sydney nodded.  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sloane or Katya were monitoring calls to her.”

“I won’t give her any details, then.”  She walked to the bed and leaned down to give her mother an awkward kiss on the cheek.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I love you,” her mother said with a smile.  Sydney returned the smile, lingered for a moment, and then left. 

*****

Chapter 55

Andrei Shostakovich watched as his men, dressed as ambulance attendants, shot the two nurses at the nurses’ station with tranquilizer darts.  American hospitals were ridiculously easy to infiltrate, as security was almost nonexistent compared to what he had dealt with elsewhere.

He was dressed as a doctor, and he and his team had so far attracted not the slightest bit of attention.  He smiled as he headed to Irina’s room.  He checked her chart and saw that she had been given 160 mg of diazepam only an hour before.  He had suspected that she and Jack Bristow might be aware of her addiction; apparently they were, and were attempting to taper the dose, and obviously someone had told her physician.  That was good; her addiction would complicate his plan, so he would continue to reduce the dose.  Between that and her convalescence from the wound that was also detailed in the chart, it would be at least a couple of weeks before he could really get started with her in earnest, but he was nothing if not patient.

His exile to the filing department after his affair with Elena Derevko had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  During two years of paperwork drudgery, his patience and attention to detail had been noticed; when they’d decided that his punishment was over, he’d been transferred to the secretive division in charge of “prisoner education” – brainwashing.  He’d become quite adept at the techniques used and had managed to improve upon them.  After a few years, he had become interested in the possible uses of drugs, and so he’d asked for and received permission to get special training in pharmacology and medicine.  His application of what he learned had been revolutionary, vastly reducing the amount of time he needed to reshape someone to his will – weeks rather than months.  Unfortunately, though, his attempts to teach his techniques to others in his division had largely failed; only a few had managed enough proficiency with the drugs to avoid killing or disabling their subjects, and those few were never as good as he was.  So he had been assigned to only the most difficult cases, those that might normally take over a year to break.

He suspected that Irina would be one of the hardest cases he’d ever taken on; she was quite a remarkable woman from everything he’d learned about her.  He had only expected to need a month to six weeks to convert Nadia, but he suspected Irina would take a minimum of three months – a short time for a traditional brainwashing, but quite a long time for him.  He smiled to himself as he closed the chart and entered the hospital room for his first look at his daughter.

As soon as he saw her, any lingering doubts about her paternity were dispelled.  She bore a strong resemblance to her mother, and he could see why it had been easy enough for people to believe them sisters rather than mother and daughter.  But he also saw himself in her, and a resemblance to his own mother.  He felt a pang of regret for missing out on her life so far.  It didn’t matter, he reminded himself as his men wheeled in a gurney and began to load Irina onto it.  Soon, she would be his completely.

***

The first thing Jack became aware of was a regular, high-pitched beeping sound.  It was quite annoying, and he wished someone would turn it off.  The next sensation was pressure as he breathed, as if a heavy object was on his chest.  He tried to breathe in deeply, but only ended up coughing, and that caused a strong but dull pain.  “Dad?”

He opened his eyes and blinked several times before he could focus on Sydney’s face.  “Sydney.”  His voice was raspy, and speaking made his throat hurt.  “Is there some water?”

Sydney picked up a plastic cup.  “They said you could have some ice chips.”  She held out a piece of ice on a spoon, and he opened his mouth, feeling rather like a small child.  As the ice melted, though, the cold water felt wonderful as it ran down his throat.  “How are you feeling?”  Sydney asked.

He ignored her question as he looked around the room.  A hospital room, he realized quickly, empty except for him, Sydney, and a disturbing plethora of medical equipment.  It took him only a moment to remember what had brought him here: the man with the gun, the exploding pain in his chest.  As he’d been losing consciousness, he remembered a blur of motion that must have been Irina entering the kitchen.  “Where’s your mother?”  Sydney didn’t meet his eyes, and his heart rate – and that obnoxious beeping – sped up.  “Sydney.  Where. is. she?”  He had spoken too forcefully, causing him to cough again.

“She’s missing,” Sydney blurted out.

He stared at her.  “The assassin took her?”

Sydney shook her head, still not meeting his eyes.  “She killed him, but she was injured.  A neighbor called the police, so you were both taken to a civilian hospital.  She disappeared that night.  The nurses were hit with tranquilizer darts, and no one remembers anything.”

“The tracking device?” Jack asked.  His throat was burning again, but he needed information more than he needed more ice.

“No one was actively monitoring it at the time she disappeared.  It showed her in a moving vehicle, but the signal disappeared before it went more than a couple of miles.  Whoever took her must have taken it out.”  She dug in with the spoon and offered him another ice chip, which he accepted.  “At least nobody thinks she left on her own – her doctor talked Chase out of considering that as a possibility.  And the phone in her room wasn’t used, so she didn’t contact anyone.”

“What’s being done?”

Sydney sighed.  “Nothing, at the moment.  The nurses didn’t wake up until at least an hour after she was taken, and then there was some confusion while they tried to figure out what to do.  Chances are they were out of the country before the alarm was raised.”

“God.”  Jack stared at the ceiling.  “No ideas on who did it?”

“I told Chase that Katya and Sloane were looking for Mom, but there’s been no sign of them.  The other possibility is the man who ordered the hit on you.  Mom got a name from the assassin – Andrei Shostakovich.”

Jack shook his head.  “Never heard of him.”

“All we could find on him is that he’s former KGB.  No idea what he did for the KGB, and no one seems to have any idea what he’s been doing since the Soviet Union fell.”

Jack sighed.  “That’s all we have?  Just a few names?”

“Oh, one more thing,” Sydney said.  “Elena Derevko escaped from the mental hospital, about a week before Mom disappeared.  I told Chase, but neither of us think it’s very likely that she had anything to do with Mom’s disappearance.”

“I’m inclined to agree, but it doesn’t sound like we can afford to discount any possibility.”

Sydney nodded.  “There is a bit of good news,” she said, almost apologetically.  “While she was in the hospital, they found out that Mom’s blood type isn’t really O.  It’s a really rare blood type; I have it too.  The thing is, she could have the gene for type A blood and pass it on.”  Jack stared at her.  “We went ahead and got Nadia tested.  She is your daughter.”

Jack could feel the blood draining from his face.  He hadn’t believed her, hadn’t even considered that there might be another explanation.  And now she was gone.  “Your mother…did she know about this before she disappeared?”

“She knew about the blood types.  She seemed like she was already sure that Nadia’s your daughter.”  Well, that was good, anyway.  Sydney gave him a small smile.  “Nadia’s outside.  They kept you unconscious for three days, and she’s been here with me, but she thought it was better if I talked to you first.  Should I go get her?”  Jack nodded and watched Sydney go.  Things would have been – well, not perfect, but the best they’d been in a very, very long time – if only Irina were here.

*****

Chapter 56

Irina opened her eyes to find herself in a different hospital room.  Had she slept through the move, then?  She looked around and saw no sign of Sydney or anyone else, but before she had a chance to think about it, the door opened and a man entered.  He was tall, white-haired, and oddly familiar even though Irina was sure she hadn’t seen him before.  “Irina,” the man said, smiling warmly at her.  “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” he continued in Russian.  “How are you feeling?”

Irina blinked at him.  She felt calm and peaceful, and a bit like she was floating; she suspected she had been drugged.  “Who are you?” she asked in the same language.

His smile widened as he took her hand.  “I’m your father.”

“My father’s dead.”  He had died while she was in America, while she’d been pregnant with Sydney.  When her handler had told her, she had merely nodded, and waved off his feigned regret that the KGB could not arrange for her to attend his funeral.

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand; it made her skin crawl, but she’d had enough experience with pretending interest in men that she didn’t instinctively draw away.  “Vladislav Derevko was not your father.  Surely you must have suspected; he treated you differently from Katya, did he not?”

She had indeed suspected; she remembered asking Elena if her father was merely pretending to be her papa when she’d been no older than five.  Elena had merely said, “Of course not,” and had refused to answer any more questions on the subject.

The man who now claimed to be her father must have seen her doubt; he patted her comfortingly on the shoulder.  “Irina, I’m sorry to have to tell you that you have been deceived your entire life.  Not only was Vladislav Derevko not your father, Nadya Derevko was not your mother.  They were your grandparents.”

Irina’s eyes widened.  She had always been far closer to Elena than to her father, and Elena had always been the one responsible for her care, even when her father was there and in charge of Katya.  She’d wondered on occasion why Elena had taken her with her when she married at eighteen, but not Katya, and something had always prickled at the edge of her subconscious.  This was it, she realized.  “Elena’s my mother,” she breathed.  Even though she had no reason to trust this man, she knew, deep down, that he was telling the truth.

He nodded.  “We were very young, and I thought we were in love.  But then one day she told me she never wanted to see me again.  I never dreamed that I had a child.  If I had known, I would have wanted to be a part of your life.”

Irina suddenly felt a surge of exhaustion; she blinked sleepily.  “You need to rest,” the man said, brushing her hair back from her face.  “You’ve been injured.  We’ll talk more later.”  She nodded, and slipped into sleep before he was out the door.

***

It had gone better than he’d thought, Andrei thought as he left Irina’s room.  He always met his subjects first while they were only mildly sedated, in order to size them up.  What drugs he used in what ratios depended heavily on the personality and hostility level of the subject.  He had expected Irina to be more hostile, or at least far more inquisitive.  But then, she was more heavily drugged than usual; in addition to the diazepam, he had her on a dose of morphine, to avoid the possibility that pain from her injury would complicate matters.

Normally, he would spend an hour or two with the subject doing his initial assessment, and then proceed with the full array of drugs in short order, but things would of necessity be different with Irina, since he couldn’t get started while she was still on the diazepam.  He would have taken a bit longer with her anyway, because failure was not an option in this case, but he might have taken two days if she were healthy.  Instead, he would spend two weeks getting to know her, being a loving father.  During that time, he would have her morphine drip controlled by a remote in his pocket, so that he could easily put her to sleep if she got inquisitive or hostile.

But he had detected only a little of the first, and none of the second in her manner.  He wondered how she would react if he told her directly that she was the Passenger and suggested that they seek out the Sphere of Life together.  He had heard, after all, that she believed in the works of Rambaldi.  If she continued to be cooperative, perhaps he wouldn’t need to brainwash her after all.

He stopped.  He had never, ever considered merely asking a subject to cooperate.  Of course, in the KGB he had only been assigned to subjects that were known to be uncooperative, and he had brainwashed only a few people in the years since – in most cases, it was far easier and less time consuming to find someone who could be bought.  But once the decision had been made to give someone the full treatment, he had never gone back on it.

Was it merely because Irina was his daughter that he was reconsidering?  He supposed that was part of it.  After all, it would be nice to at least attempt to have a real relationship with his daughter without interference from mind control techniques.  But he had also developed a great deal of admiration for Irina while researching her life; it seemed a shame to destroy such a remarkable woman.  And he realized that he had never considered not brainwashing Irina; he had merely transferred his plan for Nadia onto Irina without considering if there might be a better way.  He sighed; he hated uncertainty.  But his actions over the next two weeks would be the same no matter what action he decided on, focused on learning as much about Irina as he could while attempting to gain her trust.  He could put off the final decision until then.

*****

Chapter 57

“Did you know that Mom’s sister is Elena Dvortetsky?” Sydney asked.  She was walking along as Jack shuffled slowly down the hospital corridor.  It had been a week since the assassination attempt, four days since he had woken up, and the nurses had finally allowed him to take a short walk.  In fact, typical of hospital nurses, they had ordered him to take a walk despite the fact that he had been trying to get up for two days.

He stopped for a moment and looked at Sydney.  “No, I didn’t know that.  Your mother mentioned that she had been married to a man named Sokolov, but I didn’t realize he wasn’t her only husband.”  He continued walking.

“It doesn’t surprise you?  I mean, this is Mom’s sister, my aunt, who single-handedly brought down the KGB.”

Jack shrugged.  “Sydney, you’ve seen a bit of what your mother is capable of.  Does it really surprise you that her sister would be similarly inclined?”

“I suppose not.”  Sydney was silent as they reached the end of the corridor and turned around.  “Marshall’s run both ‘Elena Derevko’ and ‘Elena Dvortetsky’ through the computer, looking for property she might own, but he didn’t find anything.  I’ll have him run ‘Elena Sokolov’.”

He nodded.  “Good idea.  Since she’s been imprisoned for 15 years, she might not realize how easy it is to do a computer search of property records these days.  But Sydney, you do realize that even if you find her there’s only a very slim chance she’ll be able to help you find your mother.”

“I know,” Sydney said glumly.  “I suppose since we don’t have any leads on Mom, it would be nice to at least find her sister, though.”

A nurse came up.  “Agent Bristow, you should go lie down now.”

He grimaced.  Being in the hospital was worse than being in prison.  In some ways, he amended as Sydney took his arm, giving him a sympathetic smile.

***

When Irina woke, she wasn’t in the least surprised to see her father sitting beside her bed – or at least the man who claimed to be her father.  He’d been with her every moment that she wasn’t asleep, giving her no time to ponder the truth of his claims.  Even though she barely moved, he noticed instantly.  “Your doctor thinks you’re ready to take a short walk,” he said brightly.  She had met the doctor only once, and the degree of deference he had shown to her father had clearly shown her where the doctor’s loyalties lay.

She did feel more clear-headed, she noted; her drug dose must have been reduced enough that she wouldn’t be too unsteady to walk.  “I’d like that,” she said with a smile.  Whether he was her father or not, she still didn’t know this man’s intentions.  Every time she had tried to ask why she was here or what he wanted, she had found herself unable to stay awake; she suspected he was manipulating the drug dose on purpose.  But she was injured and weak, and she had decided that the best strategy for now would be cooperation.  She had mostly stopped asking difficult questions, instead letting him steer the conversation.  If they were going for a walk, though, she might actually have a chance to try for some information.  She sat up and let him help her out of bed.  As she got to her feet, a flash of pain came from her wound; she grimaced and gave a soft hiss.

“I know it hurts, but you need to start moving,” her father said.  He probably meant it to sound supportive, but it merely seemed patronizing.

“I know that,” she answered, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.  More than once, she’d been injured and had to tend to it herself, so she was quite used to making herself get up and walk around.

Her father held onto her arm, but she was steady enough to support herself as they made their way to the door, her father guiding her IV stand with his free hand.  The hallway outside was uninspiring: windowless and gray, with walls of cinderblock, it could have been anywhere.  Although it was brightly lit and had a slightly medicinal smell, it was clearly not a regular hospital.

“Who are you?” she asked once they were far enough away from the door that he couldn’t turn back around without still having time to answer her question.

“I already told you, my dear.  I’m your father,” he replied with a smile.

She raised her eyebrows.  “What’s your name?”

“Andrei Shostakovich.”

Only the fact that she’d already steeled herself not to react if it was a name she knew kept Irina from giving herself away.  He was the one who had tried to assassinate Jack.  Why?  Did he have some other connection to Jack than through her?  He seemed to want to gain her trust; if so, obviously an attempt on her husband’s life wouldn’t help.

“Heard horrible things about me?” he asked lightly, breaking into her thoughts.

She cursed silently.  Keep playing along, she reminded herself.  “I was just trying to think if I’ve heard your name before,” she answered with a smile.  “You were KGB, weren’t you?”

He nodded, seeming pleased and showing no evidence of suspicion.  He could have given her a fake name, so he must not think there was a possibility that she knew about the assassin.  “I was on my first assignment when I met your mother, actually.”  He then proceeded to tell her of a romantic meeting in a park, when they’d both been walking and had caught each others’ eyes.  That was followed by flowers, picnics in the park, evenings walking together on the streets of Moscow.

It wasn’t the worst concocted story Irina had ever heard; he hadn’t put in ridiculous details like box seats at the opera or dining at the finest restaurants.  But Irina knew Elena; she wasn’t generally interested in any notions of “romance” when she could go right to the sex.  And Elena had only been thirteen when Irina was born; how much open courting could there have possibly been if he was old enough to be in the KGB?  Nevertheless, she appeared fascinated with the story, looking like she was hanging on his every word despite attempts to seem indifferent.  This was, after all, a seduction of sorts.  It didn’t have sex as an end goal – at least, she certainly hoped not – but he was trying to seduce her all the same, into a mimicry of a loving family.  Her goal was to make him believe he was succeeding, in effect turning his seduction upside down.  “How old were you?” she asked when he finished the story.

“Eighteen,” he answered, then looked abashed.  “Your mother told me she was seventeen, and I’m afraid I believed her.  I didn’t find out until she broke it off that she was only fourteen.”

Irina’s confused expression was not feigned.  “Elena was only thirteen when I was born.”

He gave her that superior, knowing smile that she was growing to really, really hate.  “You’re younger than you think you are.  I met your mother in the summer of 1951, and you were born in 1952.  I suppose your grandfather must have altered your birth records.”

“To be the day that Mama died,” Irina murmured.  When she was very young, she’d been fascinated by the story of the car crash that had killed her mother and brother and brought her into the world.  Katya had liked to taunt Irina by claiming that she could remember it, but Irina had never believed her since Katya pestered Elena for the story as often as Irina did.

“Your grandmother, you mean,” her father said, and she nodded.  They’d turned around during his story of the courtship, and now he was guiding her back into her room.  “I suppose you must be tired.”

She nodded, giving him a small smile as he tucked her into bed.  It was only the briefest of moments before that familiar irresistable exhaustion rolled over her; as usual, she was asleep before he was out of the room.

*****

Chapter 58

“Another Elena?”  Marshall’s open countenance clearly showed his surprise.  “Um, Sydney, that’s the third Elena you’ve wanted me to look for.  Are you going through the alphabet or something?”

Sydney smiled.  “Actually, they’re all the same person.”

“Oh yeah, I get it, different aliases.”  Sydney didn’t bother to correct him.  Marshall inputted a few lines into the computer.  “This’ll take a few minutes,” he said, leaning back.  Then he looked over her shoulder awkwardly.  “I, uh, heard about your dad, getting shot and all.  I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“So was he on a mission?  Because I thought he was on vacation.  I mean, Dixon said… not that I’m keeping track of him or anything…”

Once again, Sydney couldn’t help a smile.  She was actually surprised that Marshall hadn’t heard the details; everyone else seemed to know.  But then, he did tend to be on the very edge of the gossip loop.  “He was at home.  Someone sent an assassin.”  That bit of information wasn’t classified from CIA employees; it couldn’t be, since her father would have to be under guard until they could find Andrei Shostakovich.

“Yeah, I heard that part,” Marshall said.  “Andrei Shostakovich.  I’m supposed to keep an eye out for any information on him, but that’s kind of hard since it looks like he vanished off the face of the earth in 1991.  But all these searches… do they have to do with it?  The first one you asked for was Elena Derevko.  Do you think your mom’s involved in this?”

“Not exactly,” Sydney said.  She sighed inwardly, wishing she could tell Marshall the whole of what was going on, but he didn’t have clearance to know about the situation with her mother.

The computer beeped; when Marshall turned to it, his eyes widened.  “Hey, I got a match!”  Sydney moved closer to look at the screen.  “Right here in LA, even.”  His voice grew distracted as he searched deeper into the record.  “Looks like she bought it in 1987, paid cash… property taxes paid by a direct debit from a bank account in her name, here in town… hold on.”  A few more key strokes, and to Sydney’s surprise, they were in the bank records.  “Looks like regular automated transfers into the account from a bank in Switzerland.  Cash withdrawals of $500 each in 1987, 1990, and 1991.  Direct debits to the utility company – usually really low, but sometimes it spikes up.  But hey, there have been two more withdrawals in the last two weeks.  Wow.”

Sydney looked at the bank information more closely, but it wasn’t the same bank her mother had stopped at the day of their shopping trip.  The earlier of the two withdrawals had been the day after Elena had escaped from the mental institution.  The electric bills, though – most months they were quite low, apparently when no one was using the house, but there were one or two each year that were increased, even after 1991.  Except for the last two years, when there had been nothing.  Her mother must have been using the house as well.

“So is this good?” Marshall asked, interrupting her thoughts.

“Marshall, this is great.  Thank you so much,” Sydney said.  He blushed, but smiled.  She left, headed for Chase’s office.

“Come in, Agent Bristow,” Chase said when she saw her.

Sydney entered.  “Marshall has located a property belonging to Elena Sokolov here in Los Angeles; my father said that my mother told him that used to be Elena Dvortetsky’s name.  According to her bank records, she’s made two recent withdrawals from her bank account, the first a day after she escaped.”

Chase pursed her lips.  “What do you think we should do?”

Sydney frowned.  “I suppose the Russian government is looking for her.  I guess it’s our duty to bring her in and tell them we have her.”  She’d known that would be the likely action taken, especially if Elena were located on American soil, but she hoped she would still have an opportunity to talk to her aunt.

“The Russians are indeed looking for her.  However, they have not asked for our help in locating her.  As far as we know, she’s committed no crimes in the United States, and so we aren’t actually obligated to bring her into custody or tell the Russians anything.  The only matter that concerns us is whether she might know anything about your mother’s whereabouts.  I suppose I need to send an agent out to interview her.  Preferably someone who already has clearance regarding your mother.”  Chase smiled.

“I’ll go,” Sydney said quickly.  She suspected that had been Chase’s plan all along.

“Good.  You can go this afternoon if you like.”  Sydney nodded and turned toward the door.  “Agent Bristow,” Chase said, and she turned back.  “I’d like a report in the morning – only about the current whereabouts of your mother or any of the others we’re looking for.  Anything else you choose to discuss is up to you.”

Sydney smiled and nodded, then headed out.  She hoped this aunt would be nicer to her than the other one.

***

Sydney knocked on the door, then waited for a couple of minutes.  She was about to knock again when she heard the sound of a deadbolt turning.  The door opened, revealing a woman who looked very much like she suspected she herself would in another thirty-five years or so.  “You must be Sydney,” Elena said.  “Your mother said you looked just like me.  I thought she was exaggerating.  Come in.”  She stood back, and with only the slightest hint of trepidation, Sydney entered the house.

*****

Chapter 59

As soon as Sydney entered the house, a black cat wound itself around her ankles.  “Watch out for the cat,” Elena said obliviously as she walked down the hall.  Sydney disentangled herself from the cat and followed, looking around as she did.  She could see touches that could well have been her mother’s, things that reminded her of her childhood home.  But it wasn’t the same; the house also seemed distinctly foreign, Russian, she supposed, though she couldn’t exactly put her finger on what gave it that feeling.  “Tea?” Elena asked when she reached the kitchen, which was sunny, welcoming, and full of appliances that were at least twenty years old.

“Please,” Sydney replied.  Elena gestured to the table, so Sydney sat and watched as Elena spooned loose tea leaves into a pair of cups, then poured boiling water over them from a kettle that had already been whistling on the stove.  She was struck with a sense of déjà vu as she watched; had she ever seen her mother make tea like this?  Or was it just the similarity between the two women?  It wasn’t just appearance; Sydney could see the similarities in mannerism.

“Do you take sugar?”  Elena asked.

“No, thank you,” Sydney replied.  Normally she would have, but she’d rather get right down to conversation.

“Vodka?” Elena asked, just as casually as she’d asked about the sugar, and Sydney saw her pull out a bottle of the alcohol and pour a liberal measure into one of the tea cups.  Sydney again responded in the negative; Elena shrugged and put the bottle away.  She brought the cups to the table and placed the one without the vodka in front of Sydney, then sat down across from her.  “I assume you’ve spoken to Nadia.”

Sydney nodded.  She didn’t really like tea unless it was iced with sugar and lemon, but she sipped from her cup anyway.

Elena took a sip of her own tea.  “Do you have any idea where your mother might be?”

“Not at the moment,” Sydney said, then sighed.  “She was being held prisoner.  My father found her, but now she’s missing again.”

Elena frowned, and Sydney could see deep concern.  “Who was holding her prisoner before?”

Sydney didn’t want to give Elena, whose loyalties were after all unknown, any more information than necessary, but it seemed cruel to refuse to answer a direct question.  “It was Arvin Sloane and… Katya.”

Elena didn’t seem surprised.  “I knew Katya’s addiction to the works of that crackpot would outstrip her loyalty to her family one day.”  She saw Sydney’s surprise and added, “He was a genius, of course, and perhaps he really did see the future, but he was quite mad.  But you’re not here to discuss Rambaldi.  You’re here because your mother is missing, and you think I might be able to help.”

 “We don’t know who took her,” Sydney said, “but she didn’t leave on her own.”

“Sloane or Katya?”

“Possibly.  But we believe a man named Andrei Shostakovich might be involved.”  Sydney couldn’t possibly have missed the look of shock that came over Elena’s face.  “You know who he is?”

“God, I thought I would have more time,” Elena murmured.  She sat up straight.  “You have to find her.  If he’s got her, if he knows what she is…”

“What she is?” Sydney asked, confused.

“No one was ever supposed to know,” Elena whispered.  She seemed barely aware that Sydney was in the room.  “I didn’t even tell Irina.  He’s the only one that could have figured it out, but I didn’t think he’d have any reason to suspect.  And now we’re all in danger if we don’t find her before he’s done with her.”

Sydney leaned forward, fixing her aunt with a piercing gaze.  “What is he doing to her?” she said, slowly and forcefully.

“Oh, you don’t know.”  Elena looked directly at Sydney, finally, her face an open mask of pain and fear.  “He brainwashes people.”

***

“This is your room,” Andrei said, ushering Irina into the room he had chosen for her at his home near St. Petersburg.  All of his properties had a high level of security, but this was the place where it was the least obtrusive; Irina wouldn’t know that she was being watched the vast majority of the time.  All of the rooms were covered with hidden cameras, as were much of the grounds.  The cameras in the bedrooms and bathrooms could function in normal mode or in heat-sensing mode that would provide a silhouette of the occupant.  He would know exactly where Irina was and what she was doing at all times, and he would be able to monitor her facial expressions.  If she tried to leave, he would know well before she got anywhere near the perimeter of the property.

If that happened, or if she didn’t cooperate, he had a secure apartment ready for her two levels below ground.  He also had the array of drugs that he would need to make her thoroughly his creature.  But he had enjoyed her company over the past week, and though she was naturally still a bit wary, she didn’t seem to be desperate to get away.  Of course, she was no longer on a morphine IV that he could control, so the next couple of days would be the test.  She was still on the diazepam, but she was down to 90 mg a day, and he doubted it was affecting her very much.

“It’s lovely,” Irina said, looking around the room, and graced him with a smile.

“I would offer to give you a tour of the rest of the house, but I’m sure you’re tired, so I’ll leave you to rest.  When you wake up, just come downstairs.  My study is to the right at the bottom.”  She nodded.  Uncertainly, he reached out and gave her a gentle hug around the shoulders; she didn’t hug him back, but she didn’t pull away either.

He left the room and headed to his study, where he could view any camera he wished.  When he finished getting through his layers of security, Irina was just coming out of the bathroom.  She went to the dresser and pulled out a nightgown, then began to pull her shirt off; he switched the camera to infrared just after he caught a glimpse of the bandage under her ribs.  She wasn’t completely healed, of course, but her medical condition no longer needed to be monitored constantly, and he could tell that she’d been getting restless in the hospital-like setting.

He watched her infrared image as she changed, then switched back to normal viewing to see her go to the bureau, brush her hair, and get into bed.  She lay there for a few minutes with her eyes open, the same thoughtful expression on her face that had been there since he’d started watching her, and then closed her eyes.  He smiled.  Tonight they would talk, and he would finally decide exactly what he was going to do with her.

*****

Chapter 60

Sydney shuddered at Elena’s words; she’d always been glad that she didn’t remember the Covenant’s attempts to brainwash her, and she didn’t want to think of it happening to her mother.  “Do you know where he is?  How we can find him?”

Elena shook her head.  “I haven’t seen him in over thirty years.  I was going to kill him fifteen years ago, but I was caught before I could get to him.”

“Oh.”  Sydney hadn’t really had any hope that Elena would know where Shostakovich was, but it was still a letdown.  “Why is he interested in my mother?  And why would he send an assassin after my father?”

Elena opened her mouth, but then shut it again and leaned to the side as if she were listening to something.  “He may have thought that killing your father would upset her and make the brainwashing easier.”

“But why does he want to brainwash my mother in the first place?”  Sydney said, beginning to get a bit frustrated.

“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” Elena said.  “I was going to, but Dmitri says it isn’t time yet.”

“Who’s Dmitri?  There’s no one here.”  Sydney had to fight not to act annoyed.

“Dmitri is my brother.  I know you can’t see him; no one can see him but me.”

Apparently there had been good reason for Elena being in that mental hospital.  She supposed it was pointless to try to talk Elena out of her delusion that someone else was here, so she’d best find a way to work around it.  “Mom never mentioned a brother.”

Elena stood.  “Come with me.”  Bewildered, Sydney followed her into the living room and took a seat when Elena gestured to the couch.  She took a framed photograph from the mantle, then sat down next to Sydney and handed it to her carefully.  It was an old, black and white family portrait, five people posed carefully.  A woman sat on a sofa, a toddler on her lap; there was a boy of about nine or ten sitting on one side of her and a teenage girl on the other side.  A man stood behind them.  They all stared at the camera seriously with the exception of the toddler, who was looking off to the side and smiling at something.  Elena pointed to the boy.  “That’s Dmitri.”

“And this is you?” Sydney asked, pointing to the teenager, who almost could have been Sydney herself at that age.  Elena nodded.  Sydney’s focus then moved to the toddler.  “Is that my mother?”

“That’s Katya,” Elena said.  “That picture was taken in November of 1950.  Irina hadn’t been born yet.”

Sydney looked more closely at the woman, who must be her grandmother; she must have been pregnant, then.  Between the child on her lap and the loose dress she was wearing, though, there was no way of telling.  “You’re a lot older than my mother, then.”

“I was thirteen when that picture was taken.  Dmitri was ten, and Katya was almost three.”

“What happened to Dmitri?” Sydney asked.

“He died,” Elena said softly.  Her gaze grew distant.  “We were on our way to buy groceries.  Katya had been dawdling, so we were running late, and Mama was worried there wouldn’t be enough food left.  Well, Katya got distracted looking at something or other, so Mama told me to get her moving, and she went ahead and crossed the street with Dmitri.  But she didn’t look, I guess, and a car was coming too fast.  It hit them and killed them both.”

Sydney’s eyes widened as Elena told the story.  She remembered how devastated she had been at age six when her father had told her that her mother had been killed in a car accident; she couldn’t imagine actually seeing it happen.  “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Elena said, giving her a small smile.  “It was a very long time ago.”

“But where was my mother?”

Curiously, there was far less emotion in Elena’s voice when she spoke this time.  “Irina was born that day.  There was a doctor there; he cut Irina out of our mother’s body.  I suppose it was a miracle that she wasn’t killed as well.”

Sydney had an odd feeling that there was more to the story, but how could there be?  How much more drama in a tale could anyone ask for?  But then something else occurred to her.  “My mother told me that her mother gave her a pair of earrings when she graduated.”  She looked at the picture again.  “These earrings,” she said, pointing to the small sparkles on her grandmother’s earlobes.  She couldn’t be absolutely certain that they were the same, of course, but they certainly looked similar.

Elena stared at her for a good few seconds.  “She said her mother gave them to her?”  Sydney nodded.  Elena looked thoughtful for another moment, then shook her head.  “I gave her those earrings at her graduation,” she said softly, then shrugged.  “I suppose she was simplifying; maybe she didn’t have time to explain the whole situation.  I did raise her, after all, and when she was small she sometimes used to call me ‘Mama’.”

Sydney considered that for a moment.  She still thought there was more to the story, but she decided to let it pass in favor of more urgent matters.  “So Dmitri’s dead,” she said, and Elena nodded.  “But he talks to you?”

“Oh, yes,” Elena said.  “In fact, he’s sitting right over there.”  She pointed to an armchair.  “I know you can’t see him, of course; no one can see him but me.  But he always gives me good advice.  He’s the one that told me to kill all those men who took my baby away.”

If Elena was fine when she was on her medication, she clearly hadn’t been taking it for a while.  If the CIA ever did take her into custody, she could probably fill Dr. Barnett’s schedule all by herself.  But Sydney didn’t have time to challenge her delusions.  “Why doesn’t he want you to tell me why Andrei Shostakovich is interested in my mother?  We might need to know to help us find her,” Sydney said instead, calmly.

Elena yawned ostentatiously, then turned to a grandfather clock and gasped.  “Oh, my, look at the time.  I’m afraid I’m going to have to say goodbye, my dear.  I usually take a nap in the afternoons, and I can’t think properly without it.”

Or with it, Sydney thought, but of course she kept her mouth shut.  She wouldn’t get anything more from Elena today, but perhaps her aunt would feel differently later.  Surely she didn’t always listen blindly to her dead brother.  So Sydney smiled.  “Well, thank you for having me,” she said brightly.  “Perhaps we could have tea again sometime.”

Elena smiled back.  “Yes, dear, that would be lovely.  And if your sister’s around, feel free to bring her along as well.”  She leaned forward and gave Sydney a kiss on the cheek, then stood.  “Let me show you out.”

*****

Chapter 61

He stood at the door of the nursery, a smile on his face as he watched her with their baby.  She didn’t notice him at first, and he took pleasure in watching her absorption with the infant.  Then she looked up, her smile warm and welcoming.  He crossed the room, knelt by the chair, and caressed the baby’s cheek.  “Our Nadia,” he said.  “I wish I hadn’t missed this.”

“I missed it, too,” Irina said.  “I just knew what I was missing.  Here, why don’t you hold her?”  She stood.

Jack took her place in the rocking chair, and she handed Nadia to him carefully.  “I know you’ll take good care of her,” Irina said, as she took a step backward, toward the door.

He looked up in alarm.  “Irina, where are you going?”  He tried to stand, but the baby was too heavy, weighing him down.  “You can’t leave now.  Things were just starting to work out.”

She looked at him with sorrow.  “I have to, Jack.  I have to take care of things, to make sure we’ll be left alone.”

“No.  You’ve been gone too long already.  Just stay with me.”

“I can’t.  I want to, but I can’t.”  She turned and kept walking toward the door, and he could only watch in anguish.  When she reached the doorway, she paused and turned.  “Jack, I need you to trust me, to trust that I have our family’s best interests at heart.  Can you do that?”  

Could he do that?  She had no idea of the difficulty of the task she was setting him.  “I’ll try.”

She laughed.  “You’ll try?  Jack, that’s just not good enough.  You have to trust me, completely.”

“All right.  I trust you,” he said, knowing that it was a lie.

“No, it doesn’t work like that.”  Irina suddenly pulled a knife.  “I’m sorry, Jack.”  The knife flew through the air, and she was gone.  When he looked down, his lap was filled with blood.  Nadia and Sydney both lay dead.  He held up his hands, covered in his daughters’ blood, and screamed.

“No!”  Jack jerked upright, holding out his hands.  He was in a hospital room; his hands were clean.  Just a dream, he told himself as he tried to calm his breathing.  Sydney and Nadia were both very much alive, and Irina hadn’t left on her own, she’d been taken.  Just a dream.  But still… could he ever really, truly trust Irina?  Did he want to?  Was it even possible for her to be considered trustworthy?  Though he tried to forget the dream, the questions nagged at him.

***

Irina woke; it took her only an instant to figure out where she was, after years of waking up in strange places.  Late afternoon sunlight spilled across the foot of the bed, the quality of the light very familiar.  She would bet that she was in Russia, though it was possible that she was somewhere else at the same latitude.  She stood and went to the window.  The house seemed to be in a small depression, so all she could see was an expanse of lawn.

She had been far more exhausted after the journey here than she’d been willing to admit, but was feeling better after a few hours sleep.  She suspected, too, that the last vestiges of morphine were out of her system.  There was still the diazepam, of course, but it seemed that its effects were negligible at this point.  When her father had told her that he intended to wean her off of it, she hadn’t believed him at first, but she could see that the number of pills he was giving her each morning was decreasing.

She was probably being watched, but that didn’t matter.  Her grandfather, the man she had believed to be her father when she was growing up, had told Elena once that she had been born “without a sense of shame” when he didn’t know she was listening.  She supposed that was true to some extent, at least about physical matters.  She would have had a much harder time in CIA custody for all those months if it hadn’t been.  She pulled her nightgown off and headed into the bathroom to shower.

A few minutes later she made her way downstairs and to the study.  Her father sat behind a mahogany desk in a lavishly decorated office.  Everything here dripped luxury, in fact, a tidbit of information she filed away for later use.  “Irina,” he said, smiling, when he saw her.  He turned off his computer screen, stood, and came around the desk.  “You look lovely.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile.  The black slacks and navy blue blouse she was wearing were some of the less offensive choices in the wardrobe in her room; given a choice, she would put about three quarters of it directly in the garbage.  Too many light and bright colors and patterns, too many dresses and skirts – it was the wardrobe of a teenager, or of someone wishing she were a teenager.  But then, that made perfect sense with the way her father was treating her.  Not that he was talking down to her, exactly, but his attitude was decidedly more paternal than that of an equal.  She was willing to play along with that to some extent, but she drew the line at wearing a skirt covered in pink polka dots.  “Could I get that tour of the house now?”

“Yes, actually, I was just going to suggest that, since it will be about half an hour until supper is ready.”  He offered her his arm.  “Shall we?”

She took it, and prepared to file away every possible detail.

***

Elena took the teacups to the sink and washed them, lost in thought.  She wanted to tell Sydney what was going on, but at the same time she was afraid of divulging the secrets that she’d held for so long.  It was Dmitri who had given voice to her fears, convincing her not to reveal herself to her granddaughter, but now she was wondering if she’d made the right decision.

She heard the sound of childish laughter and looked around; the kitchen was empty.  “Dmitri?”  she called out.

“Mama!” came a child’s voice from the hall.

Elena’s eyes widened, and then she smiled as she hurried to the hall.  “Nadya!” she cried when she saw her daughter.  She ran forward to pull the little girl into her arms.

“I missed you, Mama,” Nadya whispered into her neck.

“I missed you, too, darling,” Elena whispered back.  She pulled away and held Nadya at arms’ length.  “You haven’t changed a bit.  You look so much like your sister.”  Her appearance was, in fact, identical to the way Irina had looked at the age of seven.  Elena had once thought it odd, considering that her daughters had different fathers, but she never considered it strange any more.  “Have you seen Dmitri?”

“No.  Is he here?  I want to play.”

“Let’s go find him, then, sweetheart,” Elena said.  She took Nadya’s hand and went to look for her brother.

*****

Chapter 62

After a very brief tour of the house – a lot of doors had remained closed, and Irina suspected there was at least one underground level she hadn’t seen at all – she and Shostakovich left the house and walked along a path outside, surrounded by well-tended gardens.  After a closer look at the vegetation, Irina was almost certain they were in Russia.  She decided it was time to see if she could get a bit of information from her father.  “Where are we?”

“About twenty miles outside St. Petersburg,” he replied.  They walked on in silence for a bit, and Irina was just about to ask another question when her father spoke.  “I hope you don’t mind that I extracted you from CIA custody,” he said.

“No,” she lied.  “Thank you.”  She gave him a brief smile.

“They had a tracker in the back of your neck.  I had it removed while we were still in Los Angeles.”

She nodded; she’d suspected something of the sort.  She doubted the CIA was expending too much effort in looking for her, but if the tracker had been active they surely would have sent a team.  She chose her next words carefully.  “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I’m curious why you decided to contact me now.”

“I didn’t know that you were my daughter until a few days before I extracted you,” he replied.  “Before that, I only thought you were Elena’s sister.”

“How did you find out about me?”  She still suspected that there was an ulterior motive behind his actions; even if he had just found out that she was his daughter, kidnapping her and expending all this effort to gain her trust seemed extreme.  He was obviously wealthy, and apparently well-connected given how fast he’d discovered her location; whatever his business was, it must be important to him, and the fact that he seemed to have put it all aside since he’d taken her indicated that she was probably as important to his business as to his personal life, if not more so.

He smiled.  Irina had seen that smile before, in the hospital room right before she’d been forced into sleep, so evidentally he wasn’t ready to divulge that information yet.  “That requires a long explanation, and I wanted to discuss it with you in any case, but supper should be ready within a few minutes.  Shall we discuss it after we eat?”

“All right,” she said, and let him steer her back to the house.

***

“So I’m going to go back, see if I can get her to trust me enough to tell me why this Shostakovich guy wants Mom,” Sydney said, finishing her explanation of events with Elena earlier in the day.

Her father nodded.  He was sitting in a chair, and seemed outwardly well, but Sydney caught the slight hints of pain whenever he moved.  “That’s assuming, of course, that she’s not faking this dead brother to have a reason not to tell you.”

Sydney frowned.  “But why would she do that?  Why wouldn’t she just say why she wouldn’t tell me?”

“If she is faking, she’s been doing it for a very long time, considering that she managed to get herself committed rather than put in prison fifteen years ago.”  He frowned.  “I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to get her records from the hospital without tipping off the Russians that we’re interested in her.”

Sydney nodded.  “I still think trying to get her to trust me and playing along with her delusions is the best way.”

“I agree.  It’s not going to be easy, though, and we don’t even know if she really has any information of value.”

Sydney nodded, and they sat in silence for a moment.  She was about to leave when Nadia came in.  “Hi,” she said, standing.

“Hi,” Nadia answered.  She gave Sydney a hug and smiled at their father.  “I have good news.  Director Chase said that the Covenant isn’t looking for me anymore, so I don’t have to be under protection all the time.”

Jack raised his eyebrows.  “Did she get out the information that Arvin Sloane isn’t your father somehow?”  That possibility had been discussed a few days ago and discarded as not feasible; anyone they could get the information to would have no reason to believe it.

“No, she doesn’t know why they’re not after me anymore, but she was very sure about it.”  She shrugged.  “It could be because I told them I didn’t know where the thing was when they had me.  If other people have thought that I wasn’t the Passenger, maybe they finally figured they were right.”

Jack frowned, and Sydney privately didn’t think that would be enough, but neither said anything.  “Do you need a place to stay?” Sydney asked instead.  “I have an extra bedroom.”  She’d never been fond of living alone, and she’d been planning to issue the invitation as soon as it was feasible.

Nadia gave her a huge smile.  “That would be wonderful.”

“Great!  You can move in whenever you’re ready.”

“Tomorrow’s not too soon, is it?”

“Of course not.  I can pick you up on the way home from work.”

A few minutes of small talk followed, in which her father actually made an effort to participate.  Then Sydney said her goodbyes, and Nadia got out a deck of cards.  She always had them with her when she visited, and Sydney knew why: their father wasn’t exactly an easy man to simply sit and have a conversation with, unless you had a particular topic such as the one he and Sydney had discussed.  He and Nadia clearly weren’t completely comfortable around each other yet, but they were both trying.  And no progress was made when all three of them were there, since the conversation consisted almost entirely of she and Nadia chatting about inconsequentials, so she always tried to excuse herself when it was reasonable.

Sydney headed to the parking garage, deep in thought about the situation with Elena, mixed with worries about where her mother was at the moment.  She unlocked the car door, then jumped as a gun was cocked right behind her head.  “Hello, Sydney,” said a familiar voice.

*****

Chapter 63

“The stroganoff is all right, isn’t it?”  Shostakovich asked, glancing at Irina’s half empty plate.  “I tried to make sure it would be something your stomach could handle.”

“It’s delicious,” Irina said with a slight smile.  “I’m just full.”  Her father and the doctor both seemed to be aware that she hadn’t been eating properly; the size of her meals had slowly been increasing over the past week, and her father had been gently pushing her to eat what she was given.  She’d been wondering how he knew, and suspected he had been talking to Katya or Sloane – or perhaps they were even working with him and fully aware that she was here.  In any case, that was something to worry about later.

“I suppose it was rather a large amount of food to push on you at once.  It’s just that you’re so thin – it doesn’t seem healthy.”

“I know.  But I’ve gotten sick from eating too much at once, and I don’t want to push it.”

He nodded and gave her a patronizing smile.  “I understand, and of course you know when you’ve had enough better than I do.”  He stood.  “Shall we talk in the study?”  She followed him into the study, where she took a seat in one of the two chairs that had been set up facing each other while he went to the bar.  “I would offer you a drink, but the doctor said it wouldn’t mix well with the diazepam.”

“That’s fine,” she replied.  Even if there hadn’t been the diazepam to consider, she wouldn’t have had a drink; it had been so long since she’d had alcohol that she didn’t know how much of a tolerance she had for it anymore, and she needed all her faculties intact.

Her father sat down opposite her, a clear drink in his hand.  “Well,” he said, then took a sip.  “I suppose I should simply come out and say it.  I believe that you are the Passenger, and together I believe we can find the Sphere of Life.”

Irina was shocked at first, but after a moment’s thought, it made sense.  If Andrei Shostakovich was her father, and she’d been born in the summer of 1952… all the other criteria seemed to fit.  Elena had experienced a tragedy fifteen months previously, and Irina had often called Elena “Mama” when she was a child without knowing the truth of what she was saying.  And it was a relief in some ways, since it took the pressure off of her daughters and potential granddaughters.  She looked back up at her father.  “It does make sense.”  He nodded, smiling.  “But you’re really willing to share whatever is inside the Sphere?”

He shrugged, still smiling.  “It doesn’t seem that I have a choice, does it?  Besides, who better to share the ultimate work of Rambaldi with than my own daughter?”

She smiled in return.  “So when do we start?  Do you have the serum?”

He chuckled.  “I had hoped you would be this eager.  But I don’t think it’s a good idea to give you the serum while you’re still on the diazepam.  Let’s give it another month.  What we can do is start going through the prophecies tomorrow; I have several of them.  How does that sound?”

“That sounds quite acceptable.”  She stood.  “It seems like we’ve got quite a bit of work, then, so I should probably get some rest.”

“Yes, your recovery is still the most important thing.”  He stood, came over, and gave her a kiss on the forehead.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Irina smiled and left the room.  She had a lot of thinking to do, and since she was continuing to assume that she was being constantly watched by hidden cameras, the best place to do that was in bed with her eyes closed.

Andrei watched her leave, torn between pleasure and concern.  It seemed like it had been far too easy.  He would have to find a way to test her.  Perhaps he could send her to recover some document or artifact; he would have her watched and captured if she tried to bolt, and if she didn’t he would have the added security of her believing he trusted her.  He smiled, then headed to his desk to make sure Irina didn’t do anything interesting before she went to bed.

***

“Katya,” Sydney said without turning.  “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to have a little chat with my niece.  Shall we go somewhere more private?”  Katya shepherded Sydney away from the car, causing her to curse inwardly that she wouldn’t have a chance to get at the gun in her glove compartment.  She gestured for Sydney to get into a van, then tossed her a pair of handcuffs and told her to cuff herself to a steel bar.  As Sydney did so, Katya said, “This was supposed to be payback to your father for what he did to me in Rome, but since someone else got to him first, I suppose you’ll have to do.”

“You said my mother shot you,” Sydney said.  She supposed her father must have been there as well, but it couldn’t hurt to draw Katya into conversation; she just might reveal something.

“She did.  And then she was shot with a tranq dart, and your father tranqed me and turned me in to the authorities.”  She shrugged.  “I never did anything to him.”  Now that Sydney was secured, she moved to the front of the van and started the engine.

“You don’t think holding my mother prisoner for two years counts for something?”

She could see Katya’s smug smile in the rearview mirror and realized she’d said too much.  “I was wondering if they’d told you about that.  But that was between your mother and me.”

“What about trying to kill me?”

“Oh, Sydney, you don’t really think I didn’t know the gun wasn’t loaded, do you?”  She chuckled.  “If I truly wanted you dead, you would be dead.”

Sydney supposed that was true.  Of course, that begged the question of why she’d pulled the trigger, but Sydney decided not to ask.  She’d already let one thing slip without learning anything particularly useful from Katya; she supposed she should wait and find out what her aunt wanted with her.  Katya’s statement applied to the current situation as well; she evidently didn’t want Sydney dead.  Sydney tried to get comfortable and settled in to wait.

***

Chapter 64

After perhaps half an hour, the van came to a stop.  Sydney had long ago lost track of the turns, and she could see only sky through the windshield, so she had no idea where they were.

Katya turned off the engine and came back to sit down in front of Sydney.  “Where is your mother?” she asked.  Sydney stared at her stonily.  Katya sighed.  “I was afraid you wouldn’t be cooperative.”  She opened a small plastic case and removed a syringe and a bottle of liquid.  As she filled the syringe, she said, “This will help you to relax, and hopefully it will loosen your tongue a bit as well.”  She held Sydney’s arm in a vice-like grip and quickly injected the drug.  “I know it may be hard to believe, but I don’t want to have to hurt you.  However, it’s vitally important that I find your mother.”

Sydney’s head began to swim, and she fought the desire to simply go limp.  “And what are you going to do to her when you find her?” she asked, trying to use anger to keep herself focused.

Katya smiled.  “I don’t want to hurt her, Sydney.  I know she was in CIA custody, but now she’s not.  She may be in danger.  I have resources that the CIA doesn’t have.”  Sydney managed to keep herself from speaking.  “Does Andrei Shostakovich have her?” Katya asked.

“If you already know who has her, then why are you asking me?”  Sydney asked, confused.

Katya nodded.  “I was afraid of that.  How much do you know about him?”

Sydney shook her head, trying to clear it.  She was so tired.  Maybe if she answered Katya’s questions, she could go to sleep.  “He tried to kill my father,” she said.  “My father doesn’t even know who he is.  Why would he do that?”  Katya gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder.  “And the assassin hurt my mother, too, and then she was kidnapped from the hospital, and Elena said he brainwashes people.”

Katya sat up straight at that.  “Elena?  Where is Elena?”

“I had tea with her,” Sydney answered.  “She’s crazy, you know.  Thinks she’s talking to her dead brother.  That’s why she wouldn’t tell me what this guy wants with Mom.  What does he want her for?”  She blinked at Katya wearily.

“He wants to use her.  Did Elena know where he might be?”

Sydney shook her head.  “She said she was going to kill him, but she got caught first.  Then she showed me an old picture, and you were really cute when you were little.  And she looked like me, except when I was that age I had glasses and braces.  And I didn’t have a bunch of little brothers and sisters, except Nadia, but I guess she was down in Argentina then.”  She smiled.  “Isn’t it great that Nadia’s my dad’s daughter and not Sloane’s?  I don’t like him.  He killed my friend.  And didn’t he hold Mom prisoner with you?”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Wait a minute.  I shouldn’t be talking to you.  You’re a bad guy.”

Katya chuckled.  “So Nadia is Jack’s daughter, not Arvin’s.  Do you know that for sure?  Not that it matters at this point.”

“Yeah, we had a DNA test, because Mom kept saying so even though Nadia’s blood type wasn’t right, and then we found out that Mom’s blood type is funny anyway.”  She yawned.  “Can we talk later?  I’m really tired.”

“Of course, dear,” Katya said with a smile.  She took out another syringe and bottle.  “You’ve been very helpful.”  Sydney felt a prick, and a moment later everything faded to black.

Seemingly seconds later, she opened her eyes and found herself in her own bed.  She sat up, looked around in confusion for a moment, and then swore loudly as she remembered what had happened.  Dear God, how could she let herself be manipulated like that?  Was there anything important she hadn’t spilled out?

She stood, finding herself somewhat woozy, and spotted her purse on the bedside table.  She dug through it to find her phone; she had to talk to her father.

***

Irina ran through the woods at top speed.  The baby in her arms squirmed, and she held the infant more tightly against her chest.  She wasn’t sure whether it was Sydney or Nadia, but it didn’t matter; she had to protect her child.

Her pursuers were getting closer.  She reached a rocky clearing and decided that this was as good a place as any to take a stand.  She tucked the baby into a crevice in the rocks and turned.

It wasn’t long before her father walked out of the woods.  She was sweating and out of breath, but he was calm and perfectly put together.  “Irina,” he said with a smile.  “The Sphere is close, I know it is.  Now all we need is the sacrifice.  What did you do with the baby?”

She shook her head.  “There is no baby.”  She tried to smile, or run off in a different direction to throw him, but she was frozen.

“You’re lying, Irina.  Come now.  You know I’ll never really trust you until you give me the baby.”

She shook her head and found that tears were leaking from her eyes.  “You’ll never share.  You don’t want a daughter, you just want the Sphere.”

“That’s absolutely right.  Such a smart girl.”  He pulled out a gun and shot her.

The gun made no sound, and instead of a flash of pain there was only intense itching where it had struck her abdomen.  Irina clawed at her skin; she had to get the bullet out before it infected her, made her mad only for power, just like him.  The itching turned into pain, and still she scratched desperately, trying to find the poison he’d put inside her.  She screamed.

She sat up, the scream still echoing in her ears.  Just a dream, she realized as she pulled in a breath.  But the pain in her side was real; she put her hand over the stab wound and found it wet and sticky.

There was a knock on the door.  “Ira?  Are you all right?”  Her father.  This was her third night in his house, and he’d taken to calling her Ira.  So far she’d managed to avoid calling him anything.  She reached over and turned on the bedside lamp to find blood all over the sheets.  She cursed; the first night with the bandage off, and she’d managed to claw the wound open again.  She supposed she should have expected it, since she’d had nightmares the last two nights.  The one the night before had been so bad that she’d been completely unable to get back to sleep and had ended up going down to the library and reading Anna Karenina for two hours.  “Irina!  Answer me!” her father’s voice came again.  Irina hastily pulled down her nightgown and was about to call to him to come in when the door opened and her father entered in his pajamas.  “Irina, what happened?  I heard a scream.”

She shook her head as if to clear it, deciding to pretend to more disorientation than she actually felt.  “I had a bad dream,” she murmured, then held up her left hand so he could see the blood.  “I think I scratched myself.”

“Good God,” he said, coming closer.  “I need to call the doctor.  Don’t move, all right?”  She nodded, and he left the room.

*****

Chapter 65

Twenty minutes after she’d woken from her nightmare, Irina was in the mysterious basement, lying on an exam table as the same doctor that had treated her earlier replaced the stitches she’d torn.  “Luckily, you just tore out the top layer,” he said.  “You did this while you were having a nightmare?”  She nodded.  “Had any other nightmares lately?”

She resisted glancing at the large mirror in the wall; she was pretty sure her father was watching from behind it.  After a moment of thought, she decided it didn’t really matter if he knew she’d been having nightmares, so she nodded.  “The past couple of nights.”

“What about headaches, nervousness, being sick to your stomach?”

“Headaches,” she answered.  She had been feeling edgy as well, but she supposed that was only normal given the depth of the game she was playing with her father while being watched every moment.

He nodded as he snipped off the thread and reached for a gauze pad.  “It sounds like you’re experiencing withdrawal symptoms from the diazepam.  You might want to consider going off of it a bit more slowly.”

Irina frowned.  “Withdrawal?  I’ve been taking it every day.”

“Diazepam can be tricky.  You’ve had a lot of time to develop tolerance to the drug, so it’s even possible to have withdrawal symptoms while staying at the same dose.  I would suggest holding your dose where it is until you stop having nightmares and headaches.”  He finished taping the bandage down.  “All done.”

She sat up and fidgeted uncomfortably.  On one hand, she had been rather miserable the past few days; she’d chalked it up to the situation, but she supposed some of it might be physical as well.  On the other, she couldn’t finish this business of the Sphere and try to find a way back to her family until she was off the drug.  “Why did it start so suddenly?”  She realized now that she’d had a headache basically since she’d woken up from her nap that first afternoon.

“The morphine was probably masking some of the signs before.  And going off that all at once is probably contributing to the problems you’re experiencing now.  I realize you want to get off of the drug, but continuing to reduce the dose when you’re having obvious symptoms could cause serious problems.”

After a moment’s thought, she nodded.  “All right.  I’ll see about keeping the dose where it is for a few days.”  Her father would have to agree, since he was the one dispensing the pills.  She hated that, hated not having control over even that aspect of her life; perhaps she could use this to convince him to hand over control to her.  She was pretty sure that she had him convinced that she wanted to find the Sphere of Life as soon as possible – easy enough, since it was true – so hopefully he would agree.

“Good, glad to hear it.  I’ll come back in a couple of days to see how you’re doing.”  He packed up his things and left; her father entered a moment later.

She knew he’d heard everything, but of course she had to pretend he hadn’t.  “He thinks I’m having withdrawal symptoms, and that I should keep the diazepam dose steady for a few days.”

Her father studied her.  “Do you think he’s right?”

She nodded.  “I have been feeling rather… strange the past few days.  I don’t want to delay things – “

“But we don’t want you feeling bad, either.”

She gave a sigh of honest frustration.  “I want to find the Sphere, and I know you do, too.  But I suppose I won’t be much good if I get worse, which is apparently what will happen if I keep decreasing the dose.”

Her father frowned in thought.  “Why don’t I let you handle the pills.  Then once you’re feeling better you can just start decreasing the dose on your own again.”

She gave him a small smile, hiding the extent of her happiness at regaining that small bit of control.  “I think that would probably be easiest.”

He yawned.  “Well, I suppose that’s enough excitement for one night.  Shall we get back to bed?”

***

The next day at supper, her father surprised her.  “I need to go to Moscow tomorrow to do some business,” he said, apparently offhandedly.  “You can come with me if you like, but I imagine it wouldn’t be very interesting.  Of course you’re welcome to stay here as well.”

She would probably be watched even more closely in Moscow, but if she stayed here without her father it was likely that the surveillance would ease.  It was an easy enough decision, but she pretended to consider the matter.  “How long will you be gone?”

“Hopefully I’ll be back by tomorrow evening if everything goes well, but it’s possible that I might have to stay the night.”

She frowned, and called up the memory of the very real worry she’d used to feel when Jack went away.  “It’s not dangerous, is it?”

He smiled at her reassuringly.  “Not at all.  Just some negotiations that might be delicate.”

“Well, I don’t want to interfere,” she said with a self-effacing smile.  She was getting the impression that he really didn’t want her to go with him, which was perfectly fine with her.  “I’m sure I can keep myself busy for a day.”

He left the next day, immediately after breakfast.  Once he was gone, Irina took a walk, glad for the chance to breathe a little easier.  She was certain that she was still being observed by her father’s almost invisible employees, but they were only doing their jobs and probably wouldn’t be watching for much but attempts to leave or obvious snooping.

After she’d walked for about forty minutes, she headed back to the house.  Her father had left the Rambaldi manuscript they were currently working on on his desk, so she walked into the study to get it, making sure to give no signs to the watchers that made it look like she was being sneaky.  As she leaned over to pick up the book, she saw a phone number displayed on the desk phone’s caller ID and almost froze.  She knew the number: Katya’s cell phone.  One that she only used for personal contacts, or so she had told Irina a few years ago when they were still on friendly terms.  It wasn’t really that surprising that her father was in contact with Katya, Irina thought as she took the manuscript to the library; what was surprising was that she’d been able to find that clue so easily.  Either he had intended for her to find it, or he simply wasn’t good at the careful monitoring of every detail of one’s life that a deep cover mission required.  She supposed either was possible.  In any case, this really didn’t change anything; she would continue to bide her time.

*****

Chapter 66

“Katya,” a voice said, and Katya looked up to see Andrei standing by her table.  She waved at the chair opposite her, and he slid into it.  “How are you?”

“Quite all right,” she replied.  “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”  After taking a day to think it over, she had decided that approaching Andrei directly was the best strategy.  If she played her cards right, she might be able to convince him to let her at least observe, if not participate.

“Ah, so you’ve missed me, then,” Andrei replied with that smug smile that annoyed her so.

“Not really,” she replied.  “I just want to know what exactly you’re doing to my sister.”

“Your sister?”  He gave her a ridiculous look of feigned innocence.  “I have no idea where Elena is.”

“You know perfectly well that I’m not talking about Elena.”

He smirked.  “Irina, you mean?  I thought we had established that Irina is your niece.”

She shrugged.  “We grew up together.  No matter what the blood relationship, I’ll always consider her my sister.  But back to what’s important: I know you have her.  What are you doing to her?”

He smiled, but she could see the lines of fear around his eyes.  “I thought Irina was in prison in America.  I have no idea why you think I have her.”

She gave him a well-practiced glare, guaranteed to enhance the fear he was already experiencing.  “Don’t lie to me, Andrei.  You have her.  The CIA is looking for her, and they know you have her as well.  If you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll tell the CIA the location of every one of your properties.”  She shrugged.  “I’m sure you have a few that I don’t know about, and of course you can move Irina to one of them, but it would still make life rather difficult for you, wouldn’t it?  Especially if I throw in a current picture and all of your aliases.”

He stared at her.  “You wouldn’t.”  She merely raised her eyebrows at him.  After a moment, he sighed in defeat.  “All right, she’s with me.  But I’m not harming her.  We’re getting along quite well.”

“I assume ‘quite well’ includes keeping her on one of your lovely drug cocktails.”

He shook his head.  “I told her who I am and proposed that we work together.  She accepted.  That’s all there is to it.”

Katya gave him a narrow smile.  “Then you won’t mind taking me to see her.”  It was possible that he was telling the truth, but she found it difficult to believe.

His lips tightened; clearly, he didn’t like that idea.  “I can cut you in on whatever we get from the Sphere.”

“Why, thank you.  I accept.  Now, shall we go see Irina?”

He muttered under his breath, and she thought she heard him call her a very nasty name.  “All right, I’ll let you see her, but she can’t see you.  I don’t think she’s very happy with you right now.”

“Don’t want her to know we’re working together, I see.”  Katya nodded.  “Very well.  She doesn’t have to know I’m there.”  Once she knew exactly where Irina was, it would be easy enough to make contact if she deemed it necessary.  It might not be – but if Irina really was cooperating with Andrei, Katya suspected there was more to it than just finding the Sphere, and she intended to figure out exactly what was going on.

Andrei nodded.  “I’m headed back there this afternoon.”

***

Irina watched her father closely over the dinner table while pretending an absorption with her food.  He had seemed rather tense ever since he’d gotten back from Moscow.  If he’d met with Katya, as the phone number seemed to suggest, she had evidently gotten whatever she wanted.  Irina knew that her personal style of manipulation was subtle, and she was usually quite capable of making her subjects believe that whatever she wanted was their own idea.  Katya, on the other hand, was more direct, likely to ask for what she wanted and then offer either favors or threats to get it.  Not that Irina was averse to using blackmail and favors, of course; she’d depended on them quite heavily while running an organization that was too large for her to personally influence every important person.

After dinner, her father suggested a walk.  They were well away from the house, near the perimeter of the property, when Katya materialized from the woods and fell into step beside Irina.  She wasn’t particularly surprised, but she pretended to be for her father’s benefit.  “Katya?  What…”  She trailed off and pretended to gape for a moment.  Katya gave her a conspiratorial smile; she always had been able to see through Irina’s acts.

Her father reacted with anger.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?  This wasn’t part of the deal.”

Katya shrugged.  “It is now.  Go back to the house, Andrei.  I want to talk to Irina alone.”  He frowned and muttered, but left them; Katya must have something huge hanging over him.  “Congratulations, Irina,” Katya said when he was out of earshot.  “You’re playing him like a violin.”

She must have been watching them – and not just during their walk, since they’d barely spoken.  Irina supposed that was the “deal” her father had mentioned.  “He’s much easier to play than a violin,” she said.  It was an old joke, but true in this case.  Irina had started in the position of captive and had gained a measure of freedom.  He didn’t trust her yet, but she knew she was close.

“I’m surprised he’s not drugging you.”  Irina gave Katya a raised eyebrow at that.  There was no point in pretending she knew what Katya was talking about; the two of them had a very difficult time lying to one another.  Katya smirked.  “I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you.  He brainwashes people, with a large number of mind-altering drugs.  I can’t imagine how you convinced him not to try it with you.”

That made quite a bit of sense, actually; if he’d been in the psy ops division of the KGB rather than a field agent, it explained the lapses he’d made and his failure to recognize even her most basic techniques of putting him at ease.  She shrugged.  “He’s a man.  Men are all the same.”  That ought to let her know whether Katya knew that he was her father.

Katya stared at her in shock; clearly she knew.  “Irina, did he tell you his relationship to you?”

“That he’s my father, yes,” Irina said nonchalantly, then laughed as Katya continued to look stricken.  “Don’t worry, neither of us has initiated anything even remotely sexual.  I merely meant that men are easy to manipulate.”

“They are when one’s had as much practice as you have,” Katya muttered.  Irina didn’t respond; she wasn’t in the mood for the game of seeing which of them could find the most creative way to call the other a whore.  They walked in silence for a few minutes.  “We should go back to the house, before your dear papa has a fit of apoplexy wondering what I’m telling you.”  Irina nodded and changed direction.  “I do believe I’ll invite myself to stay for a few days, see what you two are up to.”

Irina shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”  Katya didn’t seem about to kidnap her, nor did she have any apparent interest in telling her father that Irina was less enthralled than she appeared, so she wasn’t much of a threat at the moment.  Irina did still have a few pounds of flesh to extract to repay Katya for holding her captive for two years, but she’d learned long ago that revenge truly was a dish best served cold.

As they neared the house, Katya frowned at her.  “I’m sure you haven’t forgiven me, so what are you planning?”

“I haven’t decided yet.  I’ll let you know.”  Katya knew her far too well to believe that she wouldn’t take revenge somehow, so at the moment merely knowing it was ahead would be far worse for Katya than anything Irina could manage at the moment.

Her father was waiting as they entered the house.  “Irina, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she replied cheerfully.  “I’ve invited Katya to stay for a few days.  I hope that’s all right.”

Her father stared at her for a moment in shock.  “Of course, my dear.  Anything you like,” he replied once he’d recovered.  “Katya, let’s see if we can find you a room.”

As they headed upstairs, Katya caught Irina’s eye and gave her a private glare, to which Irina responded with a sweet smile.  This was going to be fun.

*****

Chapter 67

“Are you sure you’ll be all right by yourself?” Sydney asked in a concerned tone.

Jack resisted the urge to sigh in exasperation.  While he was glad that his relationship with his daughters was progressing well, the concern about his ability to take care of himself was grating.  After two weeks in the hospital, he was quite ready for a little privacy and peace.  “I’ll be fine,” he replied, giving them a smile.

Nadia smiled back at him, then tugged at Sydney’s arm.  “We should go, let you get settled in.”  She seemed to understand Jack’s dislike of being taken care of, perhaps because she’d had no one but herself to depend on for so many years and understood how one could become accustomed to that state of affairs.  “Give us a call if you need anything.”

Jack nodded and saw them out the door.  Sydney seemed reluctant, but followed Nadia’s lead.  Once they were gone, he shut the door behind them and looked around.  Nothing in the foyer was grossly out of place, but he very definitely had the feeling that things had been disturbed – the work of the police.  His study was even worse; some of the drawers were still cracked open.  He kept any important or confidential papers in the safe, of course, a habit he had been scrupulous about since 1977, but he still hated the idea of some police detective rifling through his things.

He left the study and went to the kitchen.  It had been scrubbed clean; the faint smell of bleach still lingered.  The FBI cleanup teams did good work.  Everything seemed in place, except for the butcher knife that was missing from the knife block.  Jack had read the report that the police had given to the FBI and knew that Irina had killed the assassin with it.  He didn’t know where the knife was now, and didn’t really care.

Leaving the kitchen, he climbed the stairs slowly, pleased that he had little trouble.  He didn’t like not being at full strength, of course, but considering that a bullet had been lodged in his heart two weeks ago, things were going well.

Irina’s room was undisturbed, the bed unmade.  She’d always hated making beds.  He would find her, he vowed, before Andrei Shostakovich could do her any harm.

***

“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” Irina asked as she and Katya took a stroll around the grounds.  Because of the surveillance in the house, it was the only place they could talk freely, so they had taken several walks on each of the three days Katya had been there.

Katya chuckled.  “Are you surprised?”

“He’s male.  I’d be more surprised if you weren’t sleeping with him.”

“Oh, come now, Irina.  Surely I’m not that bad.  I never slept with Sloane, for example.”

She saw Irina tense and freeze for a moment.  “Don’t ever speak his name in my presence again,” Irina said icily.

Katya hadn’t fully believed Irina’s allegations about Sloane for a long time, mostly because Sloane didn’t seem like the type to do something like that.  But when she had told Sloane that Nadia wasn’t his daughter, the man had gone berserk, ranting about how it couldn’t be true, how she was only trying to disrupt “our family”, evidently speaking of himself and Irina.  When he’d spoken of “making love” to Irina in a way that made it clear he was talking about more than one incident, she had realized that Irina had indeed been telling the truth.  Then he’d snapped out of it and seemed perfectly sane once again, having no apparent memory of what he’d said.  She’d left him in Italy; she was sure he’d self-destruct sooner or later, and she had no intention of being around when it happened.  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” she said softly.

Irina looked away, but not before Katya caught a hint of tears in her eyes.  “Why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t know.  He seemed so shocked when I first accused him that I thought it couldn’t be true.”

“But you believe me now?”

She told Irina what had happened when she had disclosed Nadia’s parentage.  “He’s not sane.  He hides it well, though.  When I think of insanity I see Elena, and her problems are right out in the open.”

Irina nodded thoughtfully.  “I never thought of that.  I never thought about ‘why’ at all; I suppose I wasn’t exactly in a position to be thinking objectively.”

Katya reached out and tentatively placed a hand on Irina’s shoulder.  “I truly am sorry.”

“About all of it?  The captivity, the drugs?” Katya nodded, and Irina sighed.  “I’m not a forgiving woman, Katya.  You know that.”

“I know.  I’m not apologizing out of a desire for forgiveness.”

“Good.”  They walked on in silence for several minutes.  “So is he good?  My father?”  Katya blinked at her.  “In bed,” Irina added.

“Irina, dear God, he’s your father.”

“He’s only been my father for a few weeks.  I’ve been prying into your sex life for far too long to stop now,” Irina said with a small, mischievous smile.

Katya was truly glad for the change of subject; while it certainly didn’t imply any sort of forgiveness, it did mean that Irina had decided to ignore the subject of her captivity for now.  “Well.  I’d say fairly good.  I’ve had better, but I’ve had much, much worse.”  She looked over and saw a gleam in Irina’s eye that was quite familiar.  “Please don’t ask what his kinks are, Irina.  He’s your father.  Even if it doesn’t disturb you, it bothers me.”

Irina shrugged.  “I don’t need to ask.  He brainwashed people for years, likes to give orders but is easy to manipulate.  Obviously he’s into domination.  He’s probably a sadist, too.”

Katya sighed in exasperation.  “All right.  You’re absolutely right, as usual.  Now can we please change the subject?”

“Do you think Elena was his first?”  Katya glared.  “Probably not.  Do you think he was her first?  On the one hand, she was only fourteen.  On the other, Elena’s a certifiable nymphomaniac.”

“I think ‘certified’ is more applicable.  I’m pretty sure that’s on her official list of disorders.”

“Hmm.”  Irina was quiet for a moment, then said, “Do you think she sees them all the time?  Dmitri and Nadya?  Are they there when she’s having sex?”

“You have a one-track mind today.  Do I need to kidnap Jack Bristow for you?”  That was an offer Katya had made many times – in jest, of course – since Irina had told her in 1982 that her assigned husband had been ‘pretty good’ in bed, in a way that told Katya as clear as any words that she was severely understating the matter.  Apparently he hadn’t been doing his best when she was with him, but then, that was hardly surprising considering it was just a business fuck.

“Appealling, but no.”  That was Irina’s standard response to the offer.

“As far as Elena goes, you know her better than I do.  Though she did tell me once that her Nadya looked just like you did as a little girl.  I suppose that should have been a tip-off, but I just used it to try to convince her that Nadya wasn’t real.  A pointless exercise, of course.”

“I’ve wondered why I never realized that she’s my mother.  I always knew something was very strange about our family, but I never thought much about it.”

“I wonder why they did it that way, myself,” Katya replied.  “Somehow I don’t think it was Elena’s idea; she never really much cared what people thought about her.”

Irina shrugged.  “I suppose we’ll have to ask her, the next time she shows up.  In any case, it’s just as well.  If my records hadn’t had the wrong birthdate and the wrong father’s name, I would have been picked up by the KGB when they started looking for potential Passengers.”

Katya started to reply, but then saw Andrei coming toward them.  “Here comes your papa.  I’m sure he thinks we’re plotting his demise.”  Irina chuckled, and they walked forward to greet him.

*****

Chapter 68

Two weeks later

“Black ops.  Wow,” Weiss said, looking around the table at Vaughn, Marshall, Dixon, Sydney, and Nadia.  “So who’s in charge of this thing?”  Sydney and Nadia gave him knowing smiles, making him feel out of the loop.  He wasn’t even sure why he’d been invited to join this division; he supposed it was because he knew that Irina Derevko had re-emerged.  He didn’t know what had happened to her after he’d seen her briefly in the hospital, and he still didn’t know what had been going on in the first place, but he hadn’t though it was a good idea to ask questions.

The door to the conference room opened and Jack Bristow entered, looking remarkably good for a man who had reportedly been shot in the heart a month ago.  “Good afternoon,” he said, sitting down at the head of the conference table.  “Welcome to APO.”  He pressed a button, and the video screens around the room lit up.  “Our first mission is to find this man.”  A photograph appeared of a man with brown hair and brown eyes, good looking but fairly nondescript, perhaps in his early fifties.  “Andrei Shostakovich, former KGB agent currently believed to be involved with the Covenant.  Unfortunately, this photograph is about twenty years old, and there seems to be no evidence of his existence since 1991.  Marshall?”

“I, uh, tried to update his picture.  A little aging analysis, you know?  It’s harder because we don’t have any pictures of his relatives, like what his parents looked like when they were older,” Marshall said.  He pressed a button, and another picture appeared beside the first, this time with the hair whitened and a few wrinkles added.  “I also ran the picture through, you know, face recognition software and international databases.  Good if somebody’s committed any crimes, which he hasn’t, or at least he hasn’t been caught, so that didn’t really do us any good.”  Marshall smiled nervously.  “This guy’s pretty much a ghost.”

Jack nodded.  “The only person who seems to have any information on this man’s current whereabouts is Katya Derevko, and we don’t know where she is either.”  A picture of Katya appeared on the screen next to that of Shostakovich.

Weiss blinked.  “Wait, the woman who tried to kill Sydney and Vaughn?  And is she… well, related?”  He’d been wondering that for weeks, but it seemed like it might be a sensitive subject to bring up with either Sydney or Vaughn.

“Yes, the same Katya Derevko,” Jack said.  “She’s Irina Derevko’s sister.”

“She kidnapped me a few weeks ago,” Sydney spoke up.  “She drugged me and pumped me for information, but I think she gave me as much as I gave her.  I’m pretty sure she knows Andrei Shostakovich, or at least knows a lot more about him than we do.”

Vaughn leaned forward.  “So if we don’t know anything about this guy, why are we looking for him?”

“I’m sure you’ve all heard about the attempt on my life a month ago,” Jack said, and there were nods all around.  “We’re reasonably certain that Shostakovich ordered it, for reasons that have yet to be determined.  Also, at the time of the attack, Irina Derevko was in CIA custody; shortly afterward, she disappeared, and it seems that Shostakovich was responsible.”

Vaughn still looked confused.  “So he extracted her?  Or did he take her against her will?”

“She was injured, and disappeared from a hospital.  She was in no condition to either help or hinder attempts to move her.”  Jack’s face was set in stone, betraying no emotion.  “She may be working with him, or she may be his prisoner.”

“Dad,” Sydney interjected, sounding distressed.

Jack frowned at her.  “She claimed that she didn’t know who Shostakovich was after the attack, and that she was willing to cooperate with the CIA, but with Irina Derevko there’s no way to know for certain.”  Sydney and Nadia both shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.  “In any case, she has information that the CIA needs, and our ultimate goal is to find her.  The best option at this time seems to be to lure out Katya Derevko.  We know she’s interested in the works of Rambaldi; there’s a manuscript of his up for auction in a few days in Prague.  Sydney, Nadia, Vaughn, you’ll be undercover at the auction and at the party preceding it.  Weiss and I will be backup, while Marshall and Dixon monitor things from here.  We leave in the morning.”

***

Irina sat in her father’s library reading a book – not a Rambaldi manuscript for once, but a play by Chekhov.  They had finished going through all of Shostakovich’s Rambaldi manuscripts a few days ago, or at least all the ones he would show her; her father had obviously been lying when he’d told her that they’d finished the last manuscript.  She wasn’t worried; she supposed she would learn all she needed to know once she got the serum.  If she continued to manage without nightmares and headaches, that would happen in about two weeks.  She’d suggested starting while she was still on the diazepam, but her father had been unwilling to consider it.  Perhaps he was concerned that the diazepam would affect the accuracy of what she was writing, or that some reaction between the two drugs might make her ill and delay their plans.  It was remotely possible that it was merely a concern for her well-being, but she doubted it.

The door connecting the library to her father’s study opened, and Irina looked up.  “Good news,” her father said with a smile.  “A Rambaldi manuscript that I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for years is up for auction in three days.  How would you like a trip to Prague?”

She smiled and shut her book, her thoughts wheeling.  “I’d like that.”  Was this the evidence that he did, in fact, actually trust her?  She’d never seen any evidence of surveillance, merely assumed it was there, so she had no way of knowing if he’d stopped watching her all the time.  Or this could be a test, to see if she would bolt once out of an environment completely controlled by him.  Would it be possible for her to leave, or would he be continuing the surveillance, ready to drag her back and throw her in a cell?  Even if she could leave, should she?  She had a lot of thinking to do over the next few days.

***

Jack wasn’t surprised when Sydney and Nadia followed him into his office after the meeting.  “Do you really think Mom might be working with Shostakovich?”  Sydney asked, crossing her arms over her chest.  It wasn’t a gesture of confrontation, more as if she were trying to reassure herself.

“I don’t know, Sydney.  I hope not.”  Jack had had many hours to think over the past month, and he knew it was more than possible that Irina Derevko had deceived him once again.  Both her sisters seemed to know who Andrei Shostakovich was, making it seem a little odd that she didn’t.  On the other hand, it seemed impossible that she had been in contact with him at any point since her rescue; but then, if they had been allies previously, he might have taken it upon himself to rescue her from the CIA.

“What if he’s already brainwashed her?” Nadia asked, worried.  Sydney had told her about her meeting with Elena a few days after it had occurred; they’d then gone to the house together only to find Elena gone.  Three more visits made it clear that she wasn’t just out on an errand; she’d fled.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we have to.”  Nadia frowned, but nodded.

Sydney put an arm around her sister’s shoulder.  “We’ll get her back.  Right, Dad?”

“Yes.  We will.”

*****

Chapter 69

A piano played unobtrusively in the background as Sydney smiled and made small talk with strangers while keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of Katya or anyone else familiar.  She could see Vaughn out of the corner of her eye, making his way through the crowd a few meters away; Nadia was disguised as a member of the auction staff and was keeping an eye on the manuscript.

A white-haired man came into view on the other side of the room, visible because he was a head taller than most of the other men.  Sydney caught only a glimpse of his profile, but it was enough to make her suck in a breath and begin making her way toward him.  He stood at the bar holding a flute of champagne, apparently waiting for something; Sydney reached a spot further down the bar and turned toward him enough to see a full profile.  It certainly seemed like it could be him.  “Merlin, I’m sending you an image,” she said into her comm as she turned a little more and snapped a photo of him with her necklace.

Marshall, back in LA, must have run the picture through the computer quickly; a moment later she heard his voice.  “That’s him.”

“Keep an eye on him, Phoenix, but don’t let him see you,” came her father’s voice, and Sydney bristled; she knew that.  If he had been able to get her father’s address, and especially if he had worked with Katya and the Covenant, he had almost certainly seen a picture of her at some point.  Hell, they might even have met during her time as Julia Thorne.

But staying back proved difficult a moment later.  “Oh, God,” Sydney breathed as a woman came up next to him at the bar.  She caught only a glimpse of her mother’s smile as she turned to Shostakovich, but that was enough.  He smiled back, running the back of his hand down Irina’s cheek, and Sydney shuddered.

“Freelancer?  Are you all right?”  Her father’s voice was sharp, worried.

“Yeah.  Just…it’s Mom.”

There was a long hesitation.  “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Does she look like she’s being coerced?”  That was Nadia, probably going crazy at being stuck in a room with a musty old manuscript instead of out here where she could see for herself.

“No.  It looks like the two of them are quite… friendly.”  She hated to say it, hated even to think it, but it certainly didn’t look like her mother was a prisoner.  Shostakovich said something to her, she nodded, and the two of them moved away from the bar toward the room where the auction was being held.  “Evergreen, they’re headed your way.”

“Understood,” Nadia said, and then all hell broke loose.

***

Nadia jumped at the sound of the explosion, and then heard the alarms go off.  The others guarding the auction materials hurried off, but she’d been half expecting something like this.  Instead of going out to see what was going on, she crouched down beneath a large painting and arranged herself so that she had a good view of the room’s two doors.  She was certain that she was the only one in the room, which is why she was shocked when she felt the needle enter her neck.  She tried to turn to see who had drugged her, but her vision was going black before she could focus.  The last thing she heard was a voice, female and familiar, saying, “I’m sorry, Nadia.”

***

After making sure that the auction staff were busy with the mayhem they’d caused with the small smoke bomb they’d planted, Shostakovich and Irina slipped into the room where the auction materials were being kept.  As they separated, Andrei heard Katya’s voice through his earpiece; she was monitoring the surveillance network they’d set up the day before.  “Watch out, Andrei, the CIA are here,” Katya said.  “I’ve spotted Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn, but there are almost certainly more.”

“Understood,” he murmured into his mike.  It was best, of course, if Irina didn’t know of her daughter’s presence.

“It’s gone,” Irina said.

He hurried to her side to see a card labeled “47”, an empty patch of table behind it.  “You’re sure this is the right number?”  She raised her eyebrows at him, and he nodded.

He started to say something, but she held up her hand, head cocked to the side.  She put her finger to her lips, then began prowling through the room.  “Oh!” he heard her gasp softly as she disappeared behind a large painting.

“Irina, we should go,” he said, continuing his previous thought.  “Katya says the CIA are here.  They probably already have the manuscript.”

“Yes,” Irina said as she stepped out from behind the painting.  “We should go.  Our original escape plan?”

“Wait, did you find something?” he asked, suddenly registering her earlier exclamation.

“Nothing.  The original plan?”

The original plan had them leaving the building separately and making their rendezvous at a park a few blocks away; Andrei didn’t like that now that the CIA was here, but the main purpose of this expedition had been to test Irina, and she hadn’t been away from him yet.  He had a man outside that would be monitoring her when she left the building who was instructed to tranq her if she deviated from the planned route.  “Yes.  Let’s go.”  He watched her leave through the door that led to the staff portion of the building, then walked back through the other door, which led to the auction room and back to the party.  She was to have been carrying the manuscript; he was to have been the decoy if anyone realized too soon that it was merely a smoke bomb that had disrupted the party.

He put on a worried, slightly confused mask as he left the auction room; he had been disoriented, he would say, and had left the wrong way.  He was old enough to get away with it.  What he wasn’t expecting was to be punched in the face and slammed up against the wall by a very angry looking Sydney Bristow.  “Where’s my mother?”  He could only cough; she’d knocked the wind out of him.

“Sydney,” said a man behind her whom Andrei identified through watery eyes as Michael Vaughn.  “She must have gone out through the back room.  I’ll take care of him.”  Then Sydney’s elbow was gone, and he had only a moment to try to catch his breath before he was spun around and slammed against the wall again.  Now he remembered why he’d always stuck to brainwashing and administrative tasks; even if he had been accustomed to this, he was far too old.

*****

Chapter 70

Sydney burst into the back room and looked around; it was empty.  Where the hell was Nadia?  She heard a moan and quickly located her sister on the floor behind a painting, rubbing her head.  “Are you okay?”

“Tranqed,” Nadia murmured, then pointed to a door.  “Mom.  That way.  Go.”  

Sydney nodded and ran out the door.  She made her way through what seemed an endless array of corridors, and was about to stop and admit she was hopelessly lost when she saw a door falling shut.  She hurried through it and saw her mother a few meters ahead of her, walking quickly.  “Mom!”

Her mother turned, hurried to her, and pushed her against the wall.  “Sydney, go back inside.”  Sydney started to protest, but her mother put a hand on her mouth.  “I’m being watched.  For your own safety, go back inside.”  Sydney stared at her mother, bewildered, and then jerked as she felt a sharp pain in her right shoulder.  “Katya,” she heard her mother hiss, and then everything went black.

***

“That wasn’t necessary,” Irina said as Katya approached.  She’d found Nadia unconscious in the auction room, and thought there was a good chance Katya had decided to grab the manuscript for herself, so she already wasn’t happy with her sister.

“There wasn’t time to argue with her,” Katya replied.  “It’s just a tranq.  She’ll be fine.  But you have to make your rendezvous.  Andrei told me that this mission was a test for you; he’s going to show you something important after this.”

Irina looked around warily.  “Shouldn’t someone be watching me, then?”

“The CIA caught Andrei.  I sent your watcher to get him free.”  Irina glared, and Katya sighed.  “He’ll use tranqs, too.  That’s what he was carrying to use on you.  Enough talk, let’s go.”

***

“Evergreen, do you copy?” Jack repeated, then sighed in frustration.  Weiss glanced at him and smiled sympathetically.  He activated the comm again and repeated himself.

He almost had to sit down with the relief that came when he heard Nadia’s voice, faint but steady.  “I’m here, Raptor.  Somebody tranqed me.”

“What’s going on?”

“Freelancer went after Irina.  The manuscript’s gone.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I just need a few minutes.”

“Understood.  Get out of there as soon as you can.”

“There’s Vaughn,” Weiss said, just as Jack was about to page him.  Jack came forward to see Vaughn coming toward the van with his gun aimed at Shostakovich, who was walking with his hands on his head.  Suddenly Vaughn froze, then crumpled to the ground.  Shostakovich turned and ran back toward the building, where a shadowy figure waited in the doorway.  “Shit,” Weiss muttered.

“Get Vaughn in the van.  I’m going after Shostakovich,” Jack said as he pulled his gun and jumped from the van.  Only a few steps into the building, though, he was presented with three equally likely options with no sign of which way Shostakovich had gone.  He picked one at random, but it opened into an empty corridor with several closed doors leading off it.  The second door opened into another corridor without clues, and the third into a closet.  At that point Jack had to admit that he’d lost his quarry.  He went back outside.  “Lost him,” he said as he climbed into the van, where Vaughn lay unconscious.

“Raptor?” came Nadia’s voice.  “I found Freelancer outside the building unconscious.”  Her voice still sounded a bit weak.

“Where are you?  We’ll come get you.”  The mission had clearly already imploded; there was no point in trying to accomplish anything further and risk true disaster.

“We’re in the alley on the west side of the building.”

“Stay there.  We’ll be there in a few minutes.”  He nodded at Weiss, who hurried to the driver’s seat.

They were currently parked in an alley to the east of the building; another alley in back would take them to the right place.  Immediately after he drove around the first corner, though, Weiss screeched to a halt.  “Shit.”

Jack saw immediately why Weiss had stopped.  “Stay here,” he said, pulling his gun and jumping from the van.  He aimed the gun at Irina and Katya, who he guessed had probably come from the same alley where Sydney lay unconscious.  Even if Shostakovich had made progress in brainwashing Irina, had he really gotten so far that she was willing to work with Katya?  He put that out of his mind.  “Hands up,” he said.  The two women glanced at each other, Irina looking more surprised than Katya, and slowly put their hands in the air.  His gaze bore into Irina.  “Why the hell are you working with the man who tried to kill me?”

“Jack, this isn’t what you think,” Irina said.  “He almost trusts me.  This mission was a test; if I make it to the rendezvous point, he’s going to give me some information that will help me end all this.  You have to let me go.”  He shook his head, but she must have seen the uncertainty in his eyes.  “Please, Jack, you have to trust me.”

He deliberated for a moment.  She wasn’t acting like she’d been brainwashed, or like she was being coerced; no, this was her stubborn side coming out.  Whatever plan she had, she was certain that it was the only way, and she wouldn’t be talked out of it.  He nodded.  “Go.”

Irina started to leave.  “What about me?” Katya asked.

Irina gave her sister a smile that unnerved Jack.  “I’m sure Jack will care for you just as well as you cared for me.”  She turned then and ran down the alley, after a moment ducking into another alley and out of sight.

Jack walked closer and put the gun to Katya’s head, then pulled her to the van.  Weiss was waiting with a pair of handcuffs and an incredulous expression.  “You let her go?  Are you crazy?”

“You’ll have to trust my judgement, Agent Weiss,” Jack said sternly.  Weiss frowned, but said nothing more.  He returned to the driver’s seat and headed toward Sydney and Nadia while Jack patted Katya down, discovering a tranquilizer gun, a normal pistol with a  silencer, and four knives.  Irina must have had the Rambaldi manuscript, he realized, and he’d let her get away with it.  He was already beginning to second guess his decision.

*****

Chapter 71

Inside the park, still not quite at the rendezvous point, Irina thought she might as well take credit for tranquilizing Sydney, so after making sure no one was around, she took her tranquilizer gun out of her bag, shot a dart into the ground, and then picked it up and threw it away in a nearby trashcan.  She then realized that Katya must have taken the manuscript, probably planning to keep it for herself, and cursed herself for not grabbing it from her before she left Jack.  She sighed.  Hopefully there wasn’t anything vital in it.

When she reached the rendezvous point, she had to wait a few minutes before her father approached.  When he got to within ten feet of her, she could see that he had a rapidly swelling black eye.  She hurried to him.  “My God, what happened?  Your eye looks terrible.”

“Your daughter did that to me,” her father said, sounding unusually cheerful for a man who had been injured without even getting the object he had supposedly wanted.

“Sydney?  I ran into her on the way out.  But obviously you got away.”

“She turned me over to her partner.  I knocked him out and got away.  How did you escape Sydney?”

“Tranqed her,” Irina said with a frown that would convey just a smidgen of guilt.  “Before I did, though, she told me that the CIA didn’t have the manuscript.”  She knew that information was correct after finding Nadia unconscious in the auction room, even though the source was a lie.

“Katya,” her father said with a frown; Irina hid her pleasure at how easily she’d led him to the conclusion she wanted.  “She must have taken the manuscript and gone off on her own.  That bitch.”

***

“Jack, how many times do I have to tell you, I didn’t knock out Nadia,” Katya repeated.  She was handcuffed to the built-in bed in one of the APO plane’s sleep rooms, which turned out to be just as handy for transporting prisoners as for comfortable napping.

“But you did knock out Sydney,” Jack said evenly.  They were trying to piece together the sequence of events, and the only thing they couldn’t figure out was who had put a tranquilizer dart in the back of Nadia’s neck.  Nadia had said that the person must have already been hiding in the room when the smoke bomb went off, which meant it couldn’t have been Irina or Shostakovich since they’d been in Sydney’s sight at the time.

Katya gave an exasperated sigh.  “Yes, I told you that, but I never laid eyes on Nadia, or on the manuscript.  Irina or Andrei must have it.”  But that wasn’t right either, since Nadia had heard them talking about the manuscript being missing as she’d been waking up.

“Jack, Marshall’s got something,” Weiss said from the corridor.

Jack turned and left the room without another word to Katya.  “Are Sydney and Vaughn still unconscious?” he asked, and Weiss nodded.  When they reached the main compartment of the plane, he turned to the video screen on which Marshall was displayed.  “What have you got?”

“I think I’m really going to like this job.  Tons of nifty gadgets,” Marshall said.  Jack’s glare at the screen seemed to have no effect.  “Like this little fingerstick drug testing kit.  I stuck a few in the med kit, just in case, and it’s a good thing.  Turns out that Vaughn and Sydney got the same drug, a pretty long-acting one, you know, for a tranquilizer dart.  They should be waking up soon.  At least, I hope so.”  He looked worried for a moment.  “Anyway, the drug Nadia got was a really different one, a lot shorter acting.”  He waved at Nadia, who was watching from behind Jack with Weiss.  “And I’m glad I put that hand-held microscopic scanner in the field kit, too, because I was able to have Weiss scan the darts themselves for me.  See, it’s really cool because you can tell what gun a dart, or a bullet, came from by the patterns on it…”

“I know, Agent Flinkman,” Jack finally said in irritation.

“Oh, okay.  Cool.  Anyway, see, the darts that hit Sydney and Vaughn were from different guns, but they were from the same manufacturer, the guns and darts both.  We didn’t have a dart from Nadia, but that’s ok, because Weiss scanned the place in her neck where it was, you know, injected, and somebody used a hypodermic needle.”

“Does any of this have a point, Mr. Flinkman?  Or are you merely trying to point out that it appears that the person who drugged Nadia was operating independently of the people who drugged Sydney and Vaughn?”

Marshall’s face reddened.  “Well, yeah.  That.”

Jack nodded.  “Whoever it was probably has the manuscript, then.  Thank you, Marshall.”

“You’re, uh, you’re very welcome.”  Marshall fidgeted awkwardly for a moment more, and then waved and squeezed in a “Bye!”  when he saw Jack’s hand raise to the switch that turned off the video feed.

“I remember something else,” Nadia said.  “After I was injected, I heard someone tell me she was sorry.  She knew my name, and the voice was familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“Was it your mother?  Katya?”

Nadia shook her head.  “I remember thinking it was familiar at the time, and I didn’t hear Katya’s voice until afterwards.  And it wasn’t my mother.”  She sighed.  “I just wish I could place that voice.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said.  “Just let us know if anything comes to you.”  Nadia nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face.

***

Elena sat in her hotel room, watching through binoculars as Irina and Andrei talked in the park across the street.  She wished she had a sniper rifle so she could blow a hole in that son of a bitch’s head, but she would have to bide her time.  She watched until they walked away, under cover of the trees, then opened the manuscript that she’d stolen.  “Turn to page 47,” Nadya whispered in her ear.  She did, and gasped at what she saw.

*****

Chapter 72

Two days later, Jack sat in his office compiling everyone’s reports and writing a master report to send to Chase.  He was debating whether to include his encounter with Irina when the decision was taken out of his hands as Chase stormed into his office.  “You had an opportunity to get Derevko back, and you let her go?”

“I was just preparing to write up my encounter in my report,” he said calmly, wondering how Chase could have known.

“Agent Weiss contacted me.  He was concerned that your judgment concerning Irina Derevko might be clouded.”  He could still see rage in her eyes, but his calm appeared to be having an effect on her.  

He made a mental note to have a talk with Weiss about how things were a little different in black ops.  “Please, sit down.  Did Agent Weiss also inform you that we did bring Katya Derevko into custody?”  Chase nodded.  “While she’s not being very cooperative with our questioning, she did reveal that Irina and Andrei Shostakovich are well on their way to locating the Sphere of Life.  As Irina indicated to me when we met, Shostakovich has necessary resources, and she’s nearly managed to convince him to trust her.  I weighed the options and decided that bringing her in would destroy that trust irreparably.”

“Do you honestly believe that once they do recover the Sphere of Life, she’s going to turn it over to the CIA?”

“I believe that she was most likely sincere when she agreed to cooperate.  She knows that our goal is to obtain the Sphere; circumstances have merely forced her into a different way of going about it.  So yes, I believe there’s a good chance that she will turn in the Sphere.”

Chase looked uncertain, then sighed.  “Well, I suppose what’s done is done.  I do, of course, have your assurance that should there be evidence that she is working contrary to the aims of the CIA, you will bring her in?”

“Of course.”

Chase nodded and stood.  She turned to walk out the door, then turned back with a frown.  “If they’re on their way to locating the Sphere, who’s the Passenger?”

“I don’t know.  Katya Derevko seems entirely uninterested in divulging that information.”  Not that she’d divulged much else either, but Jack had a feeling that she’d withold the identity of the Passenger from him even unto death.  He’d even wondered if perhaps Katya might have a child out there; whoever the Passenger was, it seemed like Katya was protecting her.

“I see.  Keep me posted.”  With that, Chase swept out of the office.

***

“I have a confession to make,” Shostakovich said as he and Irina sat in his study.  The return trip from Prague had taken place almost entirely in silence, and Irina could sense the heaviness of what her father was about to tell her.  “I have been uncertain, these past few weeks, if you were really as committed to this course of action, finding the Sphere of Life together, as you seemed to be.  Some part of me was afraid that you would leave me in Prague.  But you didn’t, and you’ve put my fears to rest.”  He smiled, and she returned the expression.  “And I have a second confession: there is a Rambaldi manuscript that I held back from you.  I believe it may be the only one that spells out my role in what is to come, as well as yours.  I have always believed that I was the one Rambaldi speaks of in this manuscript, even before I knew of you.”  He unlocked a door in his desk and pulled out a book, somewhat smaller than most of the Rambaldi manuscripts she’d seen.  Carefully, he handed it to her.  “You’ll probably want to be alone to read it; you can take it up to your room if you wish.”

She smiled at him.  “Thank you.”  Then, making a tactical decision that it was time for a nonverbal daughterly gesture, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.  He beamed at her, and she knew as she carried the manuscript away that she’d made the right decision, as much as it had made her skin crawl to do it.

***

Every Rambaldi manuscript that Irina had ever read had given her a feeling that she’d seen it all before, in dreams, half remembered.  It was that feeling, and the sense that it would all come together and everything would be explained if she could just read a little more, that had led her to continue to seek out the works of Rambaldi.  She’d thought that it must happen to everyone, or at least anyone who was susceptible to becoming obsessed with Rambaldi; she’d thought that it explained the obsession, the fanaticism that made otherwise sane people do ridiculous things.  Now that she knew she was the Passenger, though, she suspected that the feeling was unique to her, a result of the information buried deep in her brain.

The manuscript she was reading now felt familiar, too, and she would have given anything to make that feeling go away.  Rambaldi described a cleansing, a scourging of the planet, after which his Heir – Irina could only suppose he meant her father – and the Passenger would rule over a vastly decimated population consisting of only the “worthy”.  The book spent only a short paragraph talking about how this cleansing would be accomplished, talking of a plague that would strike down the unworthy, but Irina’s mind, unbidden, filled in the details.  People suffocating, awake and unable to breathe as they died, bodies stacked in the streets and then bulldozed into mass graves, survivors wandering about dazed and frightened, and the smell – she dropped the book and raced for the bathroom.  If Rambaldi had actually had visions of all of this and still thought this cleansing was a good thing, then he must have been insane.  Either that, or he had been pure evil.

After a long time in the bathroom, working up her courage, Irina forced herself to go back and pick up the book again.  As terrible as it was, she had to know.  As much as she’d like to just push it away and never touch anything related to Rambaldi again, she knew with a cold and deadly certainty that she was the only person who could make all of this happen, which meant that she was also the only person who could stop it.

*****

Chapter 73

A week after the mission in Prague, Jack was surprised by a knock on his door.  He looked through the peep hole and knew who the woman must be instantly, despite the fact that he’d never seen her before.  He opened the door a bit.  “Can I help you?”

“Jack Bristow.  I always hoped I would one day get to meet Irina’s husband.  She’s told me a great deal about you.”

He pretended ignorance.  “And who are you?”

“Forgive me.  My name is Elena; I’m Irina’s sister.  I need to speak with you.”

Jack noticed that she hadn’t given him a last name; was it because she didn’t know that he already knew and didn’t want him to know, or merely because she didn’t particularly identify with any of the at least three surnames she’d had?  He opened the door wider.  “Please come in.”  He led her to the living room.  “Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Vodka on the rocks, if you have it.”

Jack wasn’t the least bit surprised that Elena was a vodka drinker; he fixed her drink and handed it to her, then sat down.  “What was it you wanted to discuss?”

“Andrei Shostakovich still has Irina.”  It wasn’t a question, but Jack nodded anyway and waited for more.  “She’s in great danger, and I believe that you are the only one able to save her.”

Jack blinked at her in surprise.  “Does this have something to do with Rambaldi’s prophecies?”

“Yes, it does.  I know you don’t believe, and I think that will help Irina.”

“How do you know I don’t believe?”

“Rambaldi said so,” she said with a smile that reminded him very much of Irina.  “At least, he talked about a man whom I believe to be you.  He was terribly vague.”  Jack was tempted to ask if Rambaldi was ancestor to the Derevkos, who seemed to have vagueness as a family trait, but held his tongue; Elena was acting sane enough at the moment, but he didn’t want to do anything to antagonize her.  “He seemed to think that you would be a major hindrance to the realization of his greatest work.  His greatest work is going to be rather unpleasant for most people, so I would think being a hindrance to it is a good thing.  Rambaldi was an evil, nasty man.  At least, that’s what Nadya says, and she knows better than I would.”

Jack frowned.  “Nadia said that?”

“Not your Nadia, my daughter Nadya.”

The dead one, Jack supposed.  He leaned forward.  “So what exactly am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know exactly.  All I know is that Irina will be tested.  Andrei’s already doing his work on her, and she’s resisting so far, but when Rambaldi adds his own seduction to the mix…”

“Seduction?  What are you talking about?”  He’d been prepared to sit patiently through her insane ramblings to see if she actually had a point, but the idea of a man over 400 years dead seducing his wife was too much.

“Not physically,” Elena said in exasperation.  “When she starts experiencing what he wanted her to experience, when she starts getting the serum.”

Serum?  “Are you saying that Irina’s the Passenger?”

Elena looked surprised.  “Of course she is.”  She considered for a moment.  “But of course you didn’t know that.  The details of Irina’s birth were hidden immediately, and the only certificate of birth she ever had was entirely fake except for her first name.”

“Why?  Because of the KGB?”  Had her parents known even then that Irina would be the Passenger and that the KGB would want her?  But no, if she was the Passenger, Derevko couldn’t be her true last name.

Elena frowned, and Jack had a feeling she’d told him more than she intended.  “That’s ancient history.  What’s important is that when Irina starts getting the serum, you’re going to be there.”  He started to speak, and she held up her hand.  “I don’t know how, or why, but I know you’ll be there.  You have to remind Irina who she is.”

“I don’t know who she is,” Jack replied, keeping back most of the bitterness.

“Yes, you do.  You know who she is when she’s with you, and that’s who she needs to be.”

Jack frowned, very uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken.  “Why can’t you be there to remind her?  After all, you’re her sister.”

“I may be dead,” Elena replied with perfect calm.  “I’ve fulfilled most of my part in Rambaldi’s prophecies, and all that’s left for me is to die at Irina’s hand.”

“You’re the Chosen One.”  Elena nodded, and Jack thought that it made sense.  Her resemblance to Sydney was clear, and she could certainly be the woman in Rambaldi’s drawing.  As for the prophecy that she would “render the greatest power unto utter desolation” – well, it was an exaggeration, but it could conceivably describe the fall of the Soviet Union.  “But why would Irina kill you?  She’s never seemed to have any quarrel with you.”

Elena shrugged, then stood.  “I have to go.  Good luck.  If you choose to share this conversation, tell Sydney and Nadia that they’re darling girls.  I wish I could spend more time with them, and I will if I’m still alive when this is all over.”  She turned and walked to the door.  Jack stood and walked with her, but said nothing as she left the house.  He noted the direction she took out of habit – toward the bus stop around the corner – then shut the door and returned to the living room, feeling oddly shaken by the evening’s events.

He put aside Elena’s words about needing to remind Irina who she was; if he did happen to be around when someone was injecting her with the serum, he could reconsider them then.  Instead, he considered how Irina could be the Passenger.  If so, she couldn’t have been born until 1952; if Elena’s mother had indeed died in 1951, as Elena had told Sydney, then they couldn’t have had the same mother.  Yet the family resemblance was too strong for Irina to have been adopted.  He frowned, and then remembered that Irina had said that Elena was thirteen when she was born.  And Elena was the Chosen One, whom Rambaldi had described as both the mother and the sister of the Passenger.  So Elena was Irina’s mother; it seemed the only logical conclusion.  He wondered if Irina knew and suspected that she didn’t.  Unless – she’d said that the Passenger’s father was supposed to be involved in the search for the Sphere of Life.  Andrei Shostakovich was apparently trying to find the Sphere with Irina, and he had the requisite initials.  He could very well be her father.

Jack sighed.  He wouldn’t tell anyone about Elena’s visit at this point, he decided.  For one thing, Sydney and Nadia didn’t need to know that it was their grandfather who had tried to kill their father; they had enough family troubles as it was.  They were already trying to find Irina and Shostakovich, so informing the CIA that Irina was the Passenger wouldn’t speed things along.  He would hold this information in reserve until it became useful.

*****

Chapter 74

Irina smiled as she looked at the pill in her hand, then swallowed it with a sip of water.  That was her last dose of diazepam; finally, almost two months after Jack had rescued her, she was free.

Free of the drug, anyway, she amended as her father entered her bedroom through the half open door.  “Are you ready?”  She nodded, drained the glass of water, and picked up her packed suitcase.  “You pack light,” her father observed as they headed toward the garage; he was carrying his own suitcase, which was a bit bigger than hers.

Irina shrugged.  “We’re hiking in the desert, not going to a fashion exposition.”  They were going to Egypt to retrieve a Rambaldi artifact that was necessary to activate the Sphere of Life.  Her father had wanted to send someone for it while she was getting the serum, but she’d convinced him that since it would take several days for all of the diazepam to be out of her system after she took the last dose, the two of them might as well find it to pass the time.  After reading through the rest of Rambaldi’s manuscript, filled with his “grand plan” of massive genocide, she had no intention of allowing herself to be injected with his green goo; destroying this artifact should make finding the Sphere of Life pointless.  Then she would contact Jack and get her father into CIA custody; delivering him should mollify them when she told them they were never going to get the Sphere.  Assuming everything went well, this was almost over.

***

The cool of the underground chamber was welcoming after an hour in the hot desert sun.  The Rambaldi manuscript had given them a secret way into the tomb involving setting a group of switches.  Irina set hers quickly and then stepped close to her father.  By the time he had finished his, she had unloaded a tranq dart from the gun she wasn’t supposed to know he had and slipped it into her own pocket.

Inside the tomb, they shone their flashlights around, then bypassed the piles of gold and jewels for the sarcophagi.  There were three, containing the daughter of one of the Pharoahs, the handmaid who had had the misfortune to be her favorite at the time of her death and had thus been killed and mummified with her, and her cat.  Working together, Irina and her father slid off the heavy lid of the center sarcophagus and lowered it to the floor, then moved to the side of the sarcophagus and shone their lights in.  The mummy’s hands lay over her chest, crossed at the wrist, and nestled between them was a small, dull object.  “Ah, here it is,” Shostakovich said.  “The key to unlock the Sphere of Life.”  As he reached for it, Irina jabbed the tranquilizer dart into his neck.  He turned and stared at her in shock for a moment before collapsing.

Irina reached down and picked up the small object.  It appeared to be made of obsidian; she couldn’t destroy it without special tools, so she put it in her pocket, then turned to her father.  She slipped his pack from his shoulders, hoping there was something in it she could use to restrain him.  She’d had to assume her own packing was being watched, besides which she had no way to obtain anything her father didn’t provide her; she hated not being able to be prepared.

As she dug through his pack, she saw a flicker of movement from her father.  She looked up to see he had the tranq gun in his hands and was aiming at her.  How the hell could he possibly be awake?  She stepped toward him, but he fired, and the dart lodged in her chest.  A moment later, the world went black.

***

When Irina woke, she found herself blindfolded with her feet bound together and her hands cuffed too tightly behind her.  Her slight movements to discover this must have been noticed, because she then felt someone grab her upper arm, hard enough to bruise.  “Where’s the key, Irina?”  Her father’s voice.  Had he bothered to look at all?  She stayed silent, and he sighed.  “Treachery must run in the Derevko genes.  And you’re damn good at it, too.  Just when I finally stopped expecting you to betray me.  Now where’s the key?”

“Untie me first.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”  The blindfold was pulled away, and she blinked furiously as a flashlight was shone into her eyes.  “I still made plans for this contingency, you know.  An associate of mine is on his way to give me a hand with you.  He hates asking questions, but he is fond of breaking fingers.  Of course, we’ll need to make sure to keep your right hand intact, but there are still a lot of bones in your left hand.”

Irina rolled her eyes.  “Do you think he’ll be smart enough to search me before he starts acting like a villain in a third-rate adventure movie?”  Her father blinked at her.  “It’s in my left pants pocket.”

He quickly bent down and pulled the key from her pocket.  “I’m surprised you gave up so easily, Irina.  I expected more from you.”  She merely shrugged.  Part of the skill of resisting interrogation was knowing when a piece of information wasn’t worth holding on to; if he didn’t know that, he must not have been involved in too many interrogations, on either side.

Several minutes passed in silence.  Irina wriggled into a sitting position, which alarmed her father at first, but he relaxed when he saw what she was doing.  “How did you wake up so fast?” she asked after another long silence.

“I imagine Katya told you that my specialty in the KGB was brainwashing with drugs.”  Irina frowned at the non sequitur, but nodded.  “More than once a subject managed to get hold of a needle and inject me with my own drug.  So I purposely built up a tolerance to the most dangerous drugs.  I’ve had a tolerance to the drug in that tranq gun for years.”

That made sense, Irina supposed.  “So now what?  Are you going to brainwash me?”  She might as well ask questions, she supposed, since he didn’t seem terribly averse to answering them.

“Hmm.  I’d rather not, not when we were just about to start the serum.”  His smile sent a chill through her.  “I’m sure we can find other ways of convincing you to cooperate.”

*****

Chapter 75

Shostakovich might not be the best spy in some areas, but he did know how to transport a prisoner.  His associate, a man called Yegor, arrived after about half an hour, and between the two of them, Irina had no opportunity to escape.  Yegor was quiet, with a businesslike manner; he seemed to regard her as merchandise that might cause trouble, nothing more, though she had no doubt he would torture her without mercy if ordered to.  He was the sort of right hand man every criminal mastermind wanted.

She behaved herself on the ride back to Cairo, and none of them spoke much.  It wasn’t until they were in the air on Shostakovich’s plane that Irina spoke up.  “Do you think you could take the handcuffs off?”  She hated to ask him for anything, but the tightness of the cuffs was giving her pins and needles; she was trying to move her fingers as much as possible to keep the blood flowing, but that was getting tiresome.

“I’d like to know why you decided to turn against me,” her father responded.

She’d been firmly against him since she’d learned that he’d been behind the hit on Jack, but she had no intention of letting him know about that.  But she could tell him about what she’d seen while reading the manuscript; she doubted it would change his mind, but it was always possible.  “Cuffs first,” she said.  Yegor had duct taped her ankles to the legs of her seat before he’d left, so it wasn’t as if her father had to worry about her trying to go anywhere.

He frowned, but came over and unlocked her cuffs.  If he noticed that they’d been too tight, he said nothing.  Irina brought her hands forward and rubbed them, wincing a bit; she was going to have bruises on her wrists.  “All right,” he said, sitting back down.  “Why did you do it?  Why now?” 

“When I was reading the last manuscript you gave me, I… I suppose you’d say I had a vision.  This ‘cleansing’ Rambaldi spoke of is not going to be some wondrous, beautiful thing.  Most of the people on the planet are going to die horrible, painful deaths.  I was going to destroy the key to stop it from happening.”

“I see.”  Her father looked thoughtful.  “Perhaps you were mistaken.  There’s nothing in the prophecies about the Passenger having visions before she gets the serum.  It could be that your mind was working on its own, expanding on what little you read about the cleansing.”

So he was essentially calling her crazy, Irina thought.  That was always something she’d feared, considering Elena’s problems, but she didn’t think so.  What she had seen had had a peculiar feeling of somehow being part of herself and yet coming from the outside at the same time, and she had only experienced that with things related to Rambaldi.  But she pasted an uncertain expression on her face, thinking perhaps she could get him to trust her again, at least a little bit.  “Maybe,” she said.  “I have been having a lot of nightmares from going off the diazepam.  Maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Perhaps.”  Her father smiled at her, but then his expression grew somber again.  “You understand, of course, that I won’t be able to trust you now.  I’m still going to have to find a method of ensuring your cooperation.”

***

A week after Elena’s visit, Jack had mentioned it to no one except Katya, to whom he had gone for confirmation.  Even then, he hadn’t said that Elena was the source, only got her to admit – grudgingly – that Irina was in fact the Passenger.

The APO team had gone out on several missions since the first one, all of them uneventful.  They continued to watch for signs of Shostakovich or any way to find him, but there had been none.  Katya claimed she didn’t know where his base of operations was; Jack knew she was lying, but she was too good at resisting questioning to give up any information under legal interrogation techniques.  Jack suspected he’d be able to get the information from her if he had her alone in a room for a few hours, but that wasn’t feasible, besides which Shostakovich had probably assumed that any information Katya knew had been given up.

Jack leaned back against the headrest and sighed.  He was on a commercial flight to Moscow to meet with a contact that was former KGB and thus might possibly have some idea of Shostakovich’s whereabouts.  Sydney and Nadia had confided in him separately that they’d been experiencing considerable anxiety over the past few days, for no apparent reason, and they both had a feeling that Irina was in some great danger.  Jack had trouble believing in Rambaldi’s prophecies, but Rambaldi had evidently done something to the DNA of Irina’s ancestors; he had seen the evidence of that with his own eyes.  Whatever they were feeling was no doubt a shadow of whatever Rambaldi had planted in Irina’s subconscious, and he felt like he had to do something.  So when he’d gotten news that this particular contact, who had been silent for several months, was active again, it hadn’t taken him long to decide to set up a meeting.  The part of his mind assigned to paranoia, which always thought that every meeting was a trap, was rather louder than usual, but he ignored it.

He was to meet his contact tomorrow afternoon in a public park, so he was surprised just outside the airport when two men approached him as he was trying to get a cab.  “Jack Bristow,” one said.

He raised his eyebrows.  “Do I know you?”

The man who had spoken handed him a piece of paper; what was on it made his heart drop into his stomach.  It was a picture of Sydney and Nadia coming out of their apartment, their heads surrounded by targets of sniper rifles.  “Come with us, please.  Making a scene would be unwise.”

Jack followed them to a large car with tinted windows.  He suspected that Andrei Shostakovich was behind this, and if so there was a very good chance that the threat to his daughters was a bluff, but of course he couldn’t gamble with their lives like that.  In the car, the man who hadn’t spoken injected something into his arm, and he soon lost consciousness.

***

Irina sat in a small, bare room, staring at the monitor in front of her in confusion.  She had never understood why her father had tried to kill Jack, and she didn’t understand now why Jack was here in a cell.  “What’s he doing here?”

Her father came around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.  She tried to move away, but he just pressed down harder.  “He’s here to ensure your good behavior, my dear.  You’re ready to start the serum now, and I don’t expect that anything will go wrong, or that you’ll write down anything inaccurate.”

She tried to sound nonchalant.  “He’ll just die along with everyone else when you activate the Sphere.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Andrei said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.  He’d been quite physical lately, and it unnerved her; there didn’t seem to be any reason for it now that he was treating her as a prisoner.  “The last manuscript I gave you did speak of an antidote, did it not?  I expect you’ll learn what it is, and we can make arrangements to have your husband and your daughters inoculated before we activate the Sphere.”

“So that’s it?  You’ll let him live if I cooperate?  He doesn’t need to be here for that.”

“You misunderstand, Irina.  He’ll live either way.  It’s how he lives that’s up to you.”  Irina felt a chill go through her at those words.  “I told you it’s too late to brainwash you.  But if you don’t behave yourself, if you cause any problems that delay our finding of the Sphere, I’ll turn him into something you won’t recognize.”  Finally letting go of her shoulders, he moved the monitor to the side and went around to sit on the opposite side of the table.  He looked at Irina thoughtfully for a moment as she tried to keep her horror from showing.  “I think I’ll turn him into a yes man, someone who can’t think for himself.  He’ll worship the ground you walk on and want nothing but to please you.  I suppose some women would like that.”

She couldn’t imagine anything more horrible happening to Jack.  She could feel her face drain of blood.  “This isn’t necessary.”

“I think it is.  Just remember, as long as you behave yourself, you have nothing to fear.”  He smiled, and she looked away.  “Now, are you ready to really know what Rambaldi envisioned for you?”

“I want to talk to Jack first.”

“Remember what I said about delays?”

“Ten minutes won’t matter, and he deserves to know why he’s here.”

For some reason, this amused her father.  “I suppose a little chat isn’t out of the question.”

“And turn the camera off.  Permanently.  You have no quarrel with Jack, and there’s nothing he can do in there, so you shouldn’t need to watch him all the time.”

Her father smirked at her.  “Do you really think you should be trying to drive bargains in your position?”

She shrugged.  “You’ve succeeded in forcing me to take the serum.  I concede the advantage there.  But there are still little things I can do to make the process pleasant or unpleasant for you.  I know it’s going to be unpleasant for me, but I’ll be much more inclined to make it pleasant for you if you give me a few small favors.”

“You really think it’s going to be entirely unpleasant for you?”  She nodded.  “You told me earlier that what’s coming will be horrible,” he continued.  “But some part of you knows that there will be beauty in it, too, and you want to know more.  If you had succeeded in overpowering me and taking the key, you couldn’t have gone the rest of your life without a taste of the serum.”  She didn’t respond, but damn it, he was right.  He stood.  “I’ll take you to your husband, and turn off the camera in his cell.  You are my daughter, after all, so how can I deny you something that will make you happy?”

*****

Chapter 76

Jack looked up when he heard the door of his cell beep, indicating that someone was unlocking the door.  He was expecting either Irina or Shostakovich, and hoping for Shostakovich, because Irina’s presence would mean that she was complicit in his kidnapping.  When the door opened, he was a bit surprised to see them both; he noted that Shostakovich was the one holding the key card.  Irina locked eyes with him, her expression unreadable, and stepped into the cell.  “Five minutes,” Shostakovich said, then shut the door.

“Irina?  What’s going on?” Jack asked as soon as the door was securely closed.

“I’m sorry about this, Jack.  You shouldn’t have to be here.”  He raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.  “You’re here to ensure my good behavior.”

“I see.  So I take it that trust thing you were working on didn’t work out?” he asked with a note of bitterness in his voice.

“No.”  She stepped closer.  He could tell that she wanted to touch him; he wanted it, too, but he stood his ground.  Whether she was telling the truth or was actually in collusion with Shostakovich, none of this would be happening if Jack hadn’t let her go two weeks earlier.  “He did trust me, for a little while.  Then I tried to stop him, and I got caught.”  She crossed her arms in front of her as if trying to hug herself.  As she did, Jack caught a glimpse of bruises encircling her wrists – a point in favor of her telling the truth, he supposed, although they could of course be fake.  They stood there for a moment, eyes locked, and then Irina sighed.  “You think I’m working with him willingly.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

She turned away.  “I convinced him to let me talk to you because I thought you should know why you’re here.  I…”  She turned back to him, and he was surprised to see tears in her eyes.  “I’m sorry, Jack.  This is my battle to fight, and you shouldn’t have been dragged into it.”

Jack was surprised to see her acting so vulnerable – surely if this were all an act, she would feel that this was overkill.  But if it was real, why was she acting like this?  She’d always been so reluctant to show weakness.  Unless she was near the breaking point, he thought, remembering Elena’s words about how Irina would be tested.  He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into him.  “It’s all right,” he said, stroking her hair.  “I didn’t have anything important scheduled for the next few days, anyway.”

She smiled at that, even let out a short huff of laughter.  Then she drew back.  “I doubt I can convince him to let you go, but I’ll try.  In the meantime, I’ll see if I can’t get you a better room,” she added, looking around.  She pressed up against him, surprising him.  “Mine’s a lot nicer.  Maybe we could share,” she said in a low, sultry voice.  

She tried to kiss him, but he turned away.  “Irina, there’s a camera in the corner.  And besides, we only have about a minute left.”

She sighed and stepped back.  “The camera’s turned off.  It was just there to show me you were here.  But you’re right, we’re out of time.”  Just then they heard the door beep again.  Feeling daring, he stepped forward and gave her a quick kiss before the door opened.

“Irina,” Shostakovich said, standing in the doorway with a frown.  “Come along.”  Jack studied his face, trying to see if there was a family resemblance; perhaps there was, or perhaps he was imagining things.  Irina left, and Jack sat down and went back to doing nothing.

***

“I trust you had a nice chat,” Shostakovich said when the door was closed.  Irina didn’t respond.  He led her three doors down the hall – she hadn’t been out of the small cellblock since they’d returned from Cairo.  He opened the door and ushered her in.  Inside, she saw a chair with a writing desk attached, several bottles of green liquid, and a stack of paper.  “Have a seat.”

She had to force herself to sit as a feeling of dread more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced before rose up in her.  “What’s that for?” she asked, barely able to keep the fear out of her voice, when her father came toward her with a leather strap.

“It’s to keep you in the chair, just in case.”  She opened her mouth, and he shook his head.  “This isn’t negotiable, Irina.  You could hurt yourself badly; I’ve seen people in the grip of the serum.”

It had to have been with the KGB, Irina thought, which meant he had very likely been involved in the death of her sister.  Her sister – she hadn’t thought of Elena’s dead daughter before, the sister she had always believed to be a niece.  The death of the child she had never met had stung deeply when she believed the girl was her niece, but it hurt worse now.  And Nadia – had he been one of the ones who had tortured Nadia, too?  “I need you to raise your arms, Irina,” her father said, interrupting her thoughts.  She hated the idea of being tied down, but what choice did she have?  She raised her arms, and he placed the strap across her chest beneath them, then buckled it.  She didn’t fail to notice that he had the buckle at the back of the chair, where she couldn’t reach it.

Next, her father strapped her left wrist to the armrest; she didn’t bother to question it this time.  He placed a pen in her right hand and a sheet of paper on the writing surface underneath, then filled a syringe with green liquid.  She held her breath as the liquid was injected into a vein in her left arm, and then started breathing again as she lost control of her body and was thrust into Rambaldi’s world.

*****

Chapter 77

“Irina?”  Her name filtered down to her as if she were hearing it through a long tunnel.  “Irina, can you hear me?”

She followed the voice out of the depths of her mind, then opened her eyes, which was a mistake.  The light seemed incredibly bright, so bright that she could see nothing, and her head exploded with pain.  She shut her eyes again, but the pain in her head didn’t back off.  She’d had migraines before, but she didn’t think she’d ever had one this bad.

“Can you hear me?  Irina?  Are you all right?”  Every syllable her father spoke sent a little extra push of pain through her skull.

“Hurts,” she murmured, then added, “head.”

“All right.  Hold still while we get the straps off, and then we’re going to move you to your room.  It’s just next door.”  She felt the straps on her wrist and chest being unbuckled, and the slight movement brought a wave of nausea.  “All right, Irina, can you walk at all?”

“Can’t move.  Sick.”  She knew if she moved, or if they moved her, she would vomit.

“Well, we can’t leave you here.  We’ll try not to jostle you.”

“No.”  She tried to think of what to do, but thinking was nearly impossible with the pounding of her head.  Then she felt another surge of nausea and knew she was going to vomit whether she moved or not.  “Get something – bucket – “

“Yegor, get a basin,” her father said softly, letting Irina know who the “we” referred to.  “All right, it’s right under your chin.”

Irina opened her eyes a slit and leaned forward slightly; that was all it took.  After what seemed an eternity in which the pain of her convulsing stomach muscles almost equaled that of her head, she finally felt her abdomen relax, leaving her shaking and in a cold sweat.  “I can move now,” she whispered, wanting nothing more than to lie down in the dark.

The basin was taken away and her face and mouth were wiped with a cool cloth, and then she was lifted to her feet.  She stumbled along where she was led, not daring to open her eyes and feeling as weak as a newborn; by the time they helped her onto the bed, she was nauseated again, but it dissolved with a few deep breaths.  “Turn the lights off and leave me alone,” she said, letting each word out slowly.

“Irina, I can’t leave you alone like this,” her father said, running a hand down her cheek.

She was seriously tempted to turn her head and vomit all over him, but she ground out, “Go away!” instead.

“I won’t leave you alone.”

She wanted to scream.  He would do nothing but pester her, and she needed silence and sleep.  “Jack,” she said, the name issuing from her mouth almost as soon as it passed through her brain.  “Get Jack.  He knows what to do.”

There was a long silence, and Irina was half asleep before she heard, “Bring Bristow here.”  She didn’t think she’d ever felt such profound relief.

***

The door to his cell opened, and Jack looked up to see a man he’d never seen before.  “Come with me, please,” the man said with a moderate Russian accent.

“What for?” Jack replied, not moving from his seat on the bed.  Now that he knew it was Shostakovich holding him, and that he was here to be used against Irina, he knew that Sydney and Nadia were safe; he therefore had no intention of cooperating more than was strictly necessary.

“Irina is ill.  She asked for you.”

He frowned.  If Irina was really sick, she’d be more likely to be trying to get rid of people than asking for someone else to come.  But he supposed he should see what was going on.  He stood.  “What’s wrong with her?”

“She seems to have a severe headache.”

A migraine, he thought, understanding now why she would ask for him.  She’d had them right before her periods in the early years of their relationship, but she’d generally still been able to function; when she’d gotten pregnant with Sydney, though, she’d started having absolutely horrible migraines.  The first time, they’d been having dinner with the Sloanes; Irina had gotten very pale over the course of about five minutes, had excused herself, and then had stood up and collapsed.  Jack had taken her to the emergency room, where they had found out together about her pregnancy.  He’d wondered in later years if the fact that he’d learned of the pregnancy at the same time she did had kept either her or the KGB from deciding on an abortion, but had put it out of his mind; there were certain things that he just didn’t think he could handle.

The room he was led to was dimly lit, but he could see Shostakovich in the far corner standing by a bed.  Jack approached and saw Irina lying perfectly still on the bed, her eyes tightly closed.  Shostakovich was watching her with an expression of concern.  Jack pushed past him and went to Irina’s side.  He took her hand, knowing that she’d always hated having seemingly disembodied voices speaking to her when she couldn’t open her eyes, and softly said her name.

“Jack, thank God,” she whispered back.  “He won’t leave me alone.”  Shostakovich, presumably.

“You know what to do?” Shostakovich asked, speaking in a perfectly normal tone of voice.  Jack winced in sympathy for Irina, for whom every syllable was probably like a nail pounding into her head, but nodded.  “Do you need anything?”

“Have you given her any pain medicine?” Jack asked, hoping Shostakovich would pick up on the fact that he was speaking barely over a whisper.

“She can’t take any drugs,” he replied, still at normal volume.

He would worry about trying to discern the logic behind that later.  “Then you’d better leave her alone so she can get some rest.”  Shostakovich frowned, but nodded to the other man, and they left together.  Jack noted that there was no handle on the inside of the door.  Even though Irina’s room was far, far nicer than his cell, it was still a prison.  He turned back to Irina.  “Washcloth?”

“Please,” she answered, giving his hand a tight squeeze.  He headed to the bathroom to wet a cloth to put over her eyes.

*****

Chapter 78

Irina sat up with a gasp, waking from a chaotic dream she could only half remember.  Her head still ached, but not nearly as badly; she was drenched in sweat, though, and the room seemed far too hot.  She pulled off her shirt; when it cleared her head, she jumped to see Jack standing there, lit dimly by the lamp on the other side of the room.  “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Hot,” she replied, dropping her shirt over the side of the bed and then fumbling to unclasp her bra.

Jack put the back of his hand on her forehead.  “You have a fever,” he said, then reached behind her to undo the bra clasp.  “How’s your head?”

“Better,” she said.  She was too hot to bring herself to care about the pain; getting her clothes off seemed far more important.  She didn’t seem to be able to move very fast, though, which annoyed her.  She impatiently yanked her socks off, then stood to remove her pants.  As soon as she was up, Jack started pulling down the blankets on the bed.  “Too hot for blankets,” she said.  She stepped out of her pants and underwear, swaying unsteadily, and grabbed Jack’s shoulder for support.

“You might want them later,” Jack answered, then helped her into bed.  “Would you like a glass of water?”  She nodded, then lay down, taking pleasure in the coolness of the pillow under her.

He returned momentarily with the water and helped her sit up while she drank it.  She smiled at him as she lay down, speading out her limbs so that they wouldn’t touch one another.  “Thank you.”  He gave her a tight smile in response, then went back across the room toward the lamp, where there was also a couch and a bookshelf.  Irina closed her eyes and smiled as she drifted into sleep.

When she woke next, she felt almost human again.  The odd sense of heat – a fever on its way down, she supposed – was gone, and her headache had faded a bit more, to a level she could live with.  But she still felt exhausted, yet at the same time strangely restless.  She realized after a moment what it was: a craving for human contact.  Between that and the headache, it seemed that the aftereffects of the Rambaldi serum were imitating pregnancy; strange, but she shrugged it off and sat up.  “Jack?”

He was across the room, reading, but put down his book and came over.  “Are you feeling better?”

She nodded.  “Would you lie down with me?”  He gave her an odd look.  “Just – I just want to touch you.”

He still looked uncertain, but nodded.  He walked around the bed, undressed down to his undershirt and boxers, and got in beside her, pulling up a sheet to cover them both.  She snuggled in close to him, wrapping her arms around him, and he returned the favor.  “This sickness,” he said, stroking her hair, “is it because of the Rambaldi serum?”

She drew back a little to look at him, surprised.  She was about to ask if Katya had told him, but then realized that her father was no doubt listening, and that would tell him that she’d known all along that Katya was in CIA custody.  She nodded in answer to his question, then asked, “How did you know?”

“Elena told me.”

She frowned.  She supposed Elena must have realized she was the Passenger, but why was Elena telling her husband about it when she hadn’t told Irina herself?  And how had Jack come into contact with her in the first place?  Her father had told her that Elena had escaped from the mental hospital a month or so ago, when she’d asked to see her, so Jack hadn’t gone to see her there.  “Is she in CIA custody?”

Jack shook her head.  “She came to see me and told me that you’re the Passenger.  I don’t really know why.”  His eyes flickered quickly to the ceiling, and Irina knew that Elena had said more, but Jack didn’t want their listeners to learn it.

Did Jack know, then, that Elena and Shostakovich were her parents?  She supposed it didn’t really matter.  She leaned into him again and just enjoyed being near him.

***

Jack sat up, startled out of sleep, and took a few seconds to work out that it was the door beeping that had woken him.  He looked down at Irina, who was still asleep with the sheet down around her waist; he quickly covered her just as the door opened.  Shostakovich entered, carrying a tray which he put down on the table.  He then looked around and frowned disapprovingly when he saw the two of them.  “I take it she’s feeling better, then.  Well.  This is breakfast, and I’ll be back to get Irina in an hour.”  He turned and left the room, turning the overhead light on as he went.

That woke Irina, and she sat up, yawning.  She stretched, then looked over at Jack.  “Something wrong?”

“Shostakovich was just here,” Jack replied.  “He left breakfast…”

“Oh, good, I’m famished.”  Irina got up and walked over to the table, not even seeming to notice the fact that she was completely nude.

Jack stood and followed her.  “And he said he’ll be back for you in an hour.”

She frowned.  “Just when I was starting to feel decent.  I was hoping I’d have more time.”  Jack gave her a sympathetic smile, and she shrugged.  “I suppose it’s just as well if I get it over with quickly.”  She removed the cover from the tray, found breakfast for two, and bit into a piece of fruit.

“Is your headache better?”  Jack hated to think of her getting another headache on top of the remnants of the one she’d had last night.

“It’s bearable,” she replied.  “I’m hoping I’ll get used to the serum.”  Jack nodded.  They finished breakfast in silence, and then Irina stood.  “I’m going to take a shower.”  She gave him an inviting smile, but he could see the seriousness in her eyes.  “Want to join me?”  Guessing that she wanted to talk to him without prying eyes and ears, he nodded and followed her into the bathroom.

*****

Chapter 79

“I wanted to talk to you in private,” Irina said once they were in the shower with the pounding water hopefully keeping their words from any listening devices.  Jack nodded, not looking at all surprised; she thought he had probably gotten her meaning, but hadn’t been entirely sure.  “Shostakovich – he’s – well, did Elena tell you anything else?”

“She told me that Rambaldi wrote a prophecy about me, thought I would harm his work.”  Jack spoke into her ear, barely audible; they stood in a tight embrace under the spray, which was a perk as far as Irina was concerned.  “She didn’t tell me much else, but I guessed a few things when she told me that you’re the Passenger.  She’s your mother, isn’t she?”  On the one hand, Irina was glad she didn’t have to try to explain the situation, but she couldn’t help being rather annoyed that Jack had figured it out so quickly when she’d never had a clue.  “And Shostakovich…”

“He’s my father,” Irina confirmed.  “Not that it matters, really.  I still have to stop him if at all possible.”

“What will happen if you don’t?”

Irina pulled away, leaning against the wall of the shower and crossing her arms over her chest.  “The end of the world.”  She hated thinking about it, hated most of all the feeling that events were rushing toward that inevitable conclusion while she remained powerless to stop it.  “A plague that will kill the vast majority of the population.  My father is supposed to rule over whoever’s left.”  She didn’t mention that she was apparently supposed to rule, too; she didn’t see how either she or her father could be convinced to share power with the other.

“Irina.”  Jack stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulders.  “If you can do something to stop him, and fear for me is what’s preventing you, my life isn’t worth that.”

She shook her head.  “He didn’t threaten to kill you.”  Jack gave her a confused look, but waited for an explanation.  “He threatened to brainwash you.  Turn you into some sort of…”  She shuddered.  “I won’t let that happen.  There has to be another way.”

He frowned, and she thought for a moment that he was going to argue with her.  “All right,” he said.  “I’m sure between the two of us we can come up with something.  How exactly is this supposed to work?”

“I don’t know yet.  I’ve seen…”  She drew in a deep breath to fight the nausea that always threatened whenever she thought about the visions of death she’d had.  “I’ve seen the plague, but I don’t know how it relates to the Sphere.”

“So you had visions with the serum, then?”

She nodded, seeing no need to mention that she’d also seen something before she’d touched the serum; he would probably just think she was crazy.  “Mostly I just saw what I already knew.  I saw Elena giving birth to me, things from my childhood.  Nothing stuck out, really; it was all sort of a blur.  Hopefully what I see later will make more sense, since I’m supposed to somehow learn what the antidote to this plague is.”

She saw Jack go through the same thought process she had when her father had mentioned an antidote: a hope that maybe that could be the solution to stopping the plague, followed by the realization that Shostakovich was certain to make sure that neither of them had any chance to distribute such an antidote to the general population.  “Could we try to get him to give it to Sydney and Nadia, at least?”

Irina nodded.  “He said he would.  They are his granddaughters, after all.  Not that I think he has any real family feelings toward them, but he is at least giving lip service to the idea.”

“That’s good, at least.”  Jack sighed.  “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what else you learn before we come up with a plan.”  She nodded.  “We should probably finish up.”

Irina wasn’t particularly worried about the time, knowing that her father wouldn’t want to discuss any delay with her.  If she hadn’t been so tired, she would have pressed for a little of what they’d pretended to come in here for, but as it was, she needed to save her strength for her next bout with the serum.

***

Shostakovich watched the bathroom camera, which showed only the empty sink area, with annoyance.  He had never intended that this cell would be occupied by two people, particularly two that were likely to shower together, and so the single camera in the bathroom showed only the sink.  He suspected that they were talking, whether or not something more physical was involved; it didn’t matter what they said to each other, but he was annoyed that he was missing the opportunity to observe Bristow interact with Irina.  He hoped he wouldn’t have to carry out his threat to Irina, but he intended to be prepared if he did, and that meant studying Jack Bristow.

Bristow confused Andrei.  He had read Irina’s KGB file and knew that Irina had always been known to be fond of her mark.  That was of course a necessity in a mission like hers; while KGB training taught that an agent should remain aloof, it was well known that missions of this type were most successful when the agent at least liked her target.  So it wasn’t surprising that Irina had an attachment to Jack Bristow.  But the thing that seemed strange to Shostakovich was that Bristow seemed to reciprocate the affection.  By all rights, the man should hate her, and yet he’d worked with her on several occasions and had even gone so far as to rescue her from Katya’s custody.  Andrei had wondered before if their bond might be due simply to the children they shared, but he had seen quickly on watching them interact that there was far more to it.

But none of it really mattered, he thought, turning away from the monitor as the couple got out of the shower.  Irina seemed to be behaving herself, and except as a check on her behavior, Jack Bristow was inconsequential.

*****

Chapter 80

“Maybe he’s just stuck in traffic,” Nadia said, watching Sydney pace her office.  It was 9:30 on Monday morning; they had both been surprised not to find Jack there when they arrived, and his continued absence grew ever more worrisome.

Sydney shook her head.  “It’s just not like him to be late.  Something’s wrong.  Really wrong; I can feel it.”

Nadia wanted to reassure her sister, but she knew that Sydney was right.  She stood.  “Well, if something’s happened to him, let’s try to find out what.”

“Where are you going?” Sydney asked as Nadia headed out of the room.

“To enlist Marshall’s help.”  Sydney nodded and followed her.  “Did he say anything to you about his plans for the weekend?”

“I asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner, and he said he had business to attend to, but he didn’t say what.”

Nadia frowned.  “Not APO business, so it must have been something on his own.”

Sydney nodded, and Nadia could see that she was starting to think instead of just being worried.  “If he had to go somewhere, he would have flown commercial.  Probably under a false name, but there might still be visuals of him on airport surveillance.”  She stopped.  “Do you think we should contact Director Chase?”

Nadia considered briefly, then shook her head.  “Whatever he was doing that wasn’t through APO, he probably wouldn’t appreciate Chase finding out about it.  We can bring the CIA in if we have to, but hopefully we can find him ourselves.”  Sydney looked uncomfortable with the idea, but nodded.  Nadia gave her a sympathetic smile; she had found it quite easy to accept that her father often worked outside the generally accepted boundaries of the agency, but Sydney seemed to have a little more difficulty with the concept.

“Ladies,” Marshall said, as always looking surprised that someone had entered his private sanctum.  “Can I help you?”

“We need to find our father,” Sydney said.

***

It was smaller than she had expected, not even as big as a soccer ball.  And yet she could feel the power radiating from it.  The Sphere sang to her, resonating in the core of her being.  That power could be hers, it said.  It was what she had been born for; all that had come before was merely a prelude.  Within the glow of the Sphere, she would be safe and happy, able to indulge her every whim, no longer subjected to the wants of others.

She reached out and placed her hands on the Sphere, and found herself bathed just for a moment in its warmth and light.  When that faded, she saw that she was standing on the top of a building, the Sphere in her hands, an enormous Mueller device towering above her.  There was someone in front of her; the shape was hazy and indistinct, blurred by the light from the Sphere, but she knew it was someone she loved deeply.  She smiled as she pressed the tips of her fingers more deeply into the Sphere, releasing its blinding light.

“Irina?”  Irina blinked and sat up, taking a few seconds to orient herself – back in the room where she was getting the serum, the Sphere’s location still unknown.  “How are you feeling?” her father asked.

She took a quick inventory to determine the answer to that question.  She had a headache, worse than it had been before she’d gotten the serum but not quite as bad as yesterday’s, and she was sick to her stomach again.  Both of those problems seemed trivial, though, in comparison to the utter exhaustion she felt.  “Tired,” she murmured as the straps holding her to the chair were loosened.

Thankfully, she was able to open her eyes this time, not that there was much to see during the walk next door.  She was also able to walk more or less under her own power, though her father held her arm.  When the door to her cell opened, she saw Jack standing inside and felt profound relief that they hadn’t moved him back to his own cell.  “Do you need anything?” asked her father as she unsteadily took the two steps on her own needed to get inside the doorway.

“Just sleep,” she replied.  He nodded, and the door slid closed.  Once they could no longer be seen from the outside, Jack hurried to her side.  Thankfully, he didn’t bother her with questions or worries about whether she was all right; he merely helped her to bed.  Within seconds, she was asleep.

When she woke, she was physically stiff and mentally foggy from sleeping too deeply.  She was also extremely hungry.  Jack was asleep beside her, and she realized as she stood and stretched that she was naked.  After a moment’s thought, she had a vague memory of half waking, once again bathed in sweat, and pulling her clothes off.

She looked toward the table and saw that it was empty; obviously some hints to her watchers were in order.  She picked up her discarded clothes from the floor, but one sniff convinced her to go to the wardrobe and get something clean.  After a moment’s consideration, she decided on a nightgown rather than regular clothes; she was still quite tired.  She then went to the empty table, sighed loudly, and stared at it sadly for a long moment before going into the bathroom to get a glass of water.

She wasn’t at all surprised when the door beeped after about twenty minutes, and only a bit surprised to see that it was Yegor instead of her father bearing a tray of food.  She dug into it hungrily.  There was more than enough food for two, so she managed to stuff herself quite nicely while still leaving plenty for Jack.  Her hunger satisfied, she returned to the bed, curled up next to Jack, and went back to sleep.

She didn’t sleep as deeply this time, so she woke after a couple of hours when Jack got up.  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said when she sat up.

“It’s all right, I’m hungry again anyway.”  He was hungry as well, not having eaten since breakfast, and so they finished off the food together.

A few minutes after they were done eating, as they were sitting in companionable silence, Shostakovich entered.  “You seem to have recovered more quickly today,” he said as he picked up the tray.  Irina didn’t like where she suspected he was heading, but nodded anyway since she’d already made her state of health abundantly clear for the cameras.  “It’s only about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.  We could get in another dose of the serum today.”

She might as well, she supposed, so she nodded.  “Just let me get dressed.”  Her father nodded and left the room.

*****

Chapter 81

This time the visions were again of the past.  Irina watched as Elena told a much younger version of Shostakovich that she was pregnant, and then saw him tell her to get an abortion.  Irina was more inclined to believe Rambaldi’s version of events than her father’s.  Then she watched Elena tell her own father of the pregnancy; he was furious and also ordered her to get an abortion.  She refused and told him she’d rather run away and raise her child in an orphanage.  He had then come up with the idea that she would be sent away to stay with a relative during her pregnancy; when she returned, he would claim the baby as his own child.  Elena was reluctant, but acquiesced.

As the visions faded and Irina began to return to reality, she realized that she knew where the Sphere was.  A fraction of a second after that, she no longer cared about the Sphere as her head exploded with pain.  She was aware of her father talking to her, mostly because his voice seemed to be about the volume of a jackhammer, but she didn’t pay attention to his words.  Then there were hands under her arms, lifting her, and she didn’t even have time to try and stop herself from vomiting.

She heard her father curse as she was practically dropped back into the chair, and then she heard him say he was going to go change.  A spark of anger flared up, but she was too busy trying to deal with the excruciating pain in her head to do anything but sit there taking deep, shuddering breaths.  After a moment, she felt a wet cloth wiping her mouth and nose, confusing her; she opened her eyes a slit to see Yegor with a washcloth, looking as close to sympathetic as she had ever seen him.  “I’ll go and get your husband,” he whispered.

***

Jack was instantly worried when Yegor came to get him, and his anxiety only increased when he saw Irina.  She was pale and shaking, and he’d never seen her show pain so clearly.  “Where’s Shostakovich?” he asked, surprised that Irina was alone.

“He’s changing his clothes,” Yegor replied.  “Irina was sick.”

Jack nodded and approached her.  Working together, he and Yegor got her into the next room and into bed, where she curled into a ball, knotted up in pain.  “She needs something for the pain,” he said to Yegor.  “She’ll never be able to get rid of the headache if it hurts too much for her to relax.  I don’t know why Shostakovich won’t let her have anything…”

“He doesn’t want medication interfering with the serum,” Yegor replied.  “But he wasn’t expecting her to be this ill.  I’ll get the doctor.”

He returned after a few minutes later with another man, who looked over Irina quickly and then opened the bag he’d brought and filled a syringe.  “Morphine,” he said.  “It will be completely out of her system in twelve hours.”  He turned to Irina.  “Irina, I need your arm.”  She held her arm out, but she was shaking, so Jack held her arm still.  The doctor nodded, then found a vein and injected her with the medicine.

As he was turning back to his bag, Shostakovich entered the room.  “What the hell is going on here?” he roared, causing Irina, who had been beginning to relax, to tense up again.

“Don’t worry, it won’t last very long.  She’ll be fine by morning,” Yegor said calmly.  

“You’ve exceeded your authority,” Shostakovich said.

“I’m sorry, sir, but she seemed very ill, and since you weren’t here I felt I had to take action.”  Shostakovich continued to fume, and Yegor said, “Why don’t we continue this outside and let Irina get some rest.”  Shostakovich didn’t look very happy at the idea, but he still allowed Yegor to pull him from the room.

When they were gone, Jack went to Irina.  “Better?”  She looked far more relaxed.

“Mmm-hmm,” she replied.  “My father’s an ass.”

“Agreed,” Jack said with a grin.  “I’ll let you get some rest.”

He turned to leave, but she grabbed his wrist.  “Hold me?”

“Of course.”  He started to go to the other side of the bed, but then turned back and felt her forehead.  “You have a fever again, and I’m guessing you’ll wake up hot again.  Do you want to get out of your clothes now?”

She frowned.  “Do I have to stand up?”

“I think we can manage without that.”  She nodded, and Jack helped her to undress, in reality doing most of the work himself, and then went around the bed and climbed in beside her.  He put his arms around her carefully, ready to pull back if she seemed uncomfortable or appeared to have changed her mind, but she merely sighed and snuggled closer to him.

They lay in silence for several minutes, and he thought she’d gone to sleep when she spoke.  “I hate morphine, usually.  I don’t like the way it makes me feel.  But this just feels… nice.”  She sounded a bit worried, or perhaps sad.

“It’s the absence of pain that you like, not the morphine itself,” Jack said, trying to reassure her.

“No.  It got rid of the worst of the pain, but it still hurts.  I just don’t care.  It’s not caring that I like.”  Jack didn’t know what to say to that, so he held her a little tighter.  “I’m just so tired,” she murmured.  “Tired of everything.  I just want to rest, without being watched all the time.”

“I can appreciate that.”  Jack had never lived for so long or under so much direct scrutiny as Irina had for the past few years, but he knew from his times in prison the feeling of being watched like a hawk, with people just waiting for him to trip up.  She didn’t reply, and he couldn’t think of anything else constructive to say.  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” he said instead.

“Aren’t you going to say, ‘you’ll feel better in the morning’?”

Jack was a bit nonplussed by the question.  “I hope you feel better in the morning, but I can’t say for sure that you will.”  While he was almost certain that she would feel better physically, the psychological problems posed a bit more difficulty.

For some reason, that made her smile.  “That’s one of the first things that made me fall in love with you.”

That completely confused him.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re the only person who always tells me the truth.  Not even little white lies.  You always told me the truth when I asked whether an outfit was working for me, even if the truth was that you didn’t know.”

Jack frowned, thinking of the four years they’d danced around the other’s deceptions.  “Irina, I haven’t always told you the truth.  You know that.”

“Yes, you have.  Not always in words, but you always tell me the truth somehow.  I’m sorry I haven’t been able to return the consideration.”

He gave her a light kiss on the forehead.  “It’s never too late to start.”

*****

Chapter 82

Irina was feeling better the next morning, but she still didn’t feel up to doing much.  So when her father arrived with the breakfast tray and said he would be back for her in an hour, she put her foot down.  “We’re taking today off.”

He frowned.  “You look fine to me.”

“Do you want me to throw up on you again?” she countered, making him grimace.  “I know how I’m feeling better than you do, and I need more rest.  You waited almost two months to get started, so another day can’t make much of a difference.”

Her father sighed.  “All right, but we start again first thing tomorrow morning.”

She nodded, and he left.  Making her way to the table, she collapsed into a chair with a sigh and turned to Jack.  “I don’t understand why Rambaldi had to use this particular method of revealing himself.  It’s quite annoying.”

“I can imagine,” he replied.

“At least it’s me and not Sydney or Nadia,” she mumbled, half to herself, before dishing up some food.

***

Irina turned over in bed, unable to get to sleep.  She wasn’t used to sleeping alone, and her new bed, a cot in the kitchen, seemed small and strange.  Nights had been miserable for a week, ever since Elena had gotten married and moved with Irina four blocks away to live with her new husband and his parents.  She’d tried to get in bed with Elena the first night, but Elena’s new husband had been furious and had almost hit her before Elena had stopped him.

Deciding it was time to do something, Irina stood up.  She didn’t understand why she and Katya couldn’t live together anymore, even if Elena had to change things by getting married; surely Katya was as lonely as Irina was.  Silently, she got dressed and slipped out of the apartment.

It was July, but the air outside was still surprisingly chilly.  Irina shivered and hugged herself.  She wasn’t supposed to be out alone during the day, much less at night, and the world was strange and a little frightening.  But it was also fascinating, so Irina trudged ahead into the darkness.

After she’d walked for a few minutes, she heard laughter and footsteps, so she ducked into an alley; she’d get into trouble if anyone saw her.  She startled a cat, which gave her an angry “Mrow!” as it knocked over a trash can lid.  A stream of moonlight shone through the clouds, illuminating a symbol spray painted on the wall: < O >. 

Irina crouched in the shadows and waited.  As the group of boys she’d heard passed by, she recognized two of them as Gerard Cuvee and Andrei Shostakovich.  “Oh, it’s easy to control Irina,” Cuvee was saying.  “Just threaten Jack Bristow and she’ll do whatever you tell her.”  They laughed.

She slipped out of the alley and found herself in a forest, the trees illuminated by moonlight.  Someone ahead of her was crying.  She tried to run toward the sound, but her legs didn’t seem to work the way she wanted them to.  She kept trying to hurry, but she couldn’t seem to get enough air.  Finally, she broke into a clearing, where Sydney and Nadia were sitting on the ground crying.  She walked forward to see what they were looking at, even though she had a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.  The dread was well founded; Jack was lying there dead, and she knew that she had killed him.  She took one more step and then fell.

Irina woke with a jerk to find herself lying in bed.  It took her a moment to remember where she was and to realize that it had just been a dream.  She sat up and looked for Jack, needing to confirm that he was all right.  He was sitting across the room, reading a book, so she got up and went over to him.  “You must be terribly bored,” she said as she sat down beside him.

He put the book down.  “It’s not as bad as being in prison.  And the company’s much better.”

“Except that I sleep all the time.”

He shrugged and gave her a small smile.  “Did you sleep all right?  You were a little restless a while ago.”

“Just an odd dream.”  Jack raised his eyebrows.  “It started out with something I did when I was little, and then it got strange.  The details are fuzzy.”  She had indeed already lost a great deal of the detail from her dream, but the image of Jack’s lifeless body on the ground was still perfectly vivid.

“Mmm.”  Jack looked thoughtful for a moment.  “That’s a strange way to put it, ‘something you did when you were little’.  Now you’ve got me curious.”

She smiled.  The memory of the boldness of her young self was quite amusing, and so she would enjoy telling the story.  “When I was five…”  She paused, remembering that she was a year younger than she’d always thought she was.  “No, I guess I was really four, but I thought I was five.  Anyway, Elena got married the day after she turned eighteen.  She moved in with her new husband and his parents and took me with her.  I was unhappy about the whole thing from the beginning; Elena’s husband and his parents didn’t really want me there, and I didn’t understand why I had to go and Katya couldn’t come.

“Papa – my grandfather – worked during the day, and Elena didn’t at the time, so Katya would come over to our new apartment after school.  So I did all right during the day, but I was miserable at night.  I was used to sharing a bed with Katya and Elena, and I had a lot of trouble adjusting to sleeping by myself.  I tried to get in bed with Elena and didn’t quite understand why her husband was so mad.”  Jack chuckled at that.  Irina continued, “After a week or so I got fed up with the whole situation, so I snuck out of the apartment in the middle of the night and went back home.  It was about four blocks, which was of course much farther than I was allowed to walk by myself even during the day, but I knew the way and didn’t really think much of it.  I never did go through a stage of being afraid of the dark.

“When I got there, I threw pebbles at Katya’s window until she woke up.  She let me in and told me she’d been having trouble sleeping by herself too, we went to bed, and things were just fine until the next morning.”

“And then all hell broke loose?”

“Exactly.  Everyone was furious at me, and I honestly didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.  Although I will admit it was fun to watch them all yell.”

Jack smiled.  “You were an impossible child, weren’t you?”  Irina nodded.  “So what kind of punishment did they come up with?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t remember.  Part of the reason I was an impossible child is that punishments were never that big a deal to me.  I probably had to scrub floors or something; Elena hated scrubbing floors herself, so she was fond of assigning it as a punishment.”  She stood.  “I think I’ll take a shower.”

“Want company?”

“No, but thank you for the offer.”  Irina gave Jack a peck on the lips before heading to the bathroom.

*****

Chapter 83

Power.  Control.  The world laid out at her feet, hers for the taking.  War, famine, all the evils of the world could be ended, if she just accepted the power of the Sphere.

She could see herself holding the Sphere, hear it singing in her blood.  Everything she could ever want, just resting, waiting for her, in a cave in Italy.

The serum’s grip faded, and Irina returned to the world.  Once again, her head pounded and she was exhausted, but she was getting used to that.  She let her father and Yegor guide her to bed, where she promptly fell asleep, not allowing her mind to dwell on what she had experienced just yet.

Irina sat on her throne, her face as impassive as stone, as the prisoners were brought before her in chains.  “How dare you defy me?” she asked coldly.  “I gave you everything you could possibly want, and you turned against me.”

Her daughters glared at her.  “You killed our father.  How can you think we wouldn’t turn against you?” Sydney said spitefully.

Irina shook her head.  “You just don’t understand.  I suppose I can’t expect you to.”  She sighed as she pulled a dagger from her boot.  “Of course, I can’t let people think they can get away with thwarting me, so I’m going to have to make an example of the two of you.”  In a single smooth motion, she slit both of their throats, then stepped back as the blood poured from their bodies.  She motioned to a guard.  “Display their heads so the people can see what happens to traitors.”

Irina sat up in bed, gasping and covered in a cold sweat.  By the time she managed to get her breath and calm down, Jack was standing next to her, looking worried.  “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” she said as she hugged herself and rubbed her arms.  She felt as if ice water were flowing through her veins.  She couldn’t get the memory of her dream, of the total lack of emotion she’d felt while killing her daughters, out of her mind.

“Cold?” Jack asked, reaching out to feel her forehead.  “You don’t seem to have a fever.”  He watched her for a moment as she continued to stare into space.  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She forced the memory of the dream to the back of her mind and looked at Jack.  “I’m all right.  Is it lunch time?  I’m hungry.”

He smiled, but she still saw a hint of worry.  “Hopefully it’ll be here soon.”

She nodded.  “I think I’m going to lie back down.  Wake me up if lunch comes?”  She was still tired, but she doubted she could go to sleep after that dream.  She did need to think, though, and she couldn’t do that if Jack was hovering.

“Of course,” he replied.  He started to turn away, but she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, suddenly needing to touch him.  She pulled his head to hers and kissed him.  “What was that for?” he asked when they broke.

Irina shrugged with a smile.  “I’m glad you’re here.”  He gave her an uncertain smile back, then returned to the couch.  She lay down and closed her eyes to think.  Rambaldi’s visions were promising her everything she’d ever wanted, but she was sure that couldn’t come without a price.  And if the dreams were true, that price was far too steep.  After all, if she didn’t have her family, then she wouldn’t have everything she could want.

But how could she stop it?  In both the dreams, the idea that she had caused Jack’s death was present, but she had no idea how that would come about.  And what could possibly happen to change her so much that she would kill both her daughters without a second thought?  The dreams couldn’t be true, she decided.  It was just her subconscious, overly stressed by worries and the serum, bringing her deepest fears to light.  She wouldn’t hurt any of them; she’d done them enough harm already.  She opened her eyes and watched Jack as he sat reading.  Surely the two of them together could thwart her father and Rambaldi.

***

Sydney sat at her desk, absentmindedly toying with a pen.  Her father had been missing for a week.  They’d found him on a security camera at LAX and determined that he had taken a commercial flight to Moscow, but after that the trail had gone cold.  They had tried to get the security tapes from the Moscow airport through back channels; it had taken several days, and they had only now gotten the video discs in the mail.  Marshall was running them through a computer program to locate Jack’s face.  If his search failed to turn up what had happened to Jack, they would be forced to tell Chase what was going on; Sydney didn’t know how often her father communicated with the director, but she was bound to get suspicious soon.

“I got something!” Marshall said excitedly as he burst through the door.  “I’ll show you.”  He was back out the door, and Sydney followed him at a near run.  In his office, Marshall pointed to the computer monitor, which was frozen on a shot of the curb outside the airport.  Marshall pointed to a grey head.  “There’s your father.  I know because a different camera picked up his face earlier, and I’ve been following him ever since.”  Sydney nodded, and Marshall started the tape.  

She saw her father approached by two men, too far from the camera to make out details.  They stood in a huddle for a moment, and then her father walked to a car, flanked by the two men, and got in.  Sydney sighed in frustration as the car rode away.  “So we know he rode off with someone, but we don’t know who.  That doesn’t really help.”

“But there’s more,” Marshall said eagerly.  He pressed a button, and the view switched to a camera at ground level, aimed at pavement; Sydney realized as a car passed that it was set up to read license plates.  A second car entered the picture, and Marshall froze it.  “There’s the car.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course I’m sure.  I triple checked it.  I just had to correlate the time stamps on the two videos with the distance of the cameras from each other, given that the car was just starting out and so it wasn’t going very fast…”

Sydney waved her hand.  “Yeah, that’s great.  But do we know who the car belongs to?”

“I’m, uh, running the license plate right now,” Marshall said as he turned toward a different machine.

“Agent Bristow,” said a voice from the door, and Sydney turned to see Director Chase.  Uh-oh, she thought.  “I’d like to speak to your father, but he’s not in his office.  Do you know where he is?”

*****

Chapter 84

Irina opened her eyes as the pen fell from her hand.  As usual, she was exhausted and her head hurt, but this time she was filled with a profound sense of relief.  After a dozen doses of the serum, she had written out the entire pattern and, presumably, seen all the visions she was supposed to see.  She still didn’t know how she was going to stop her father, but she might at least be able to think now that she wasn’t spending the majority of every day either in the grip of the serum or trying to recover.

Her father slid the paper out from under her hand.  “The pattern seems to be complete,” he said as he pinned the sheet to the wall with the others.

“It is,” Irina replied, unstrapping her left arm from the chair.  “You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“I just thought it would take longer.  The others needed quite a few more doses before they started repeating themselves.”

Irina shrugged.  “They didn’t have the whole pattern.  I guess their minds must have filled it in and put in too much.”  Her father nodded absently as he studied the pattern on the wall.  She shifted, then sighed.  “Could you unstrap me?  I need some sleep.”

“Oh, of course.”  He came over and undid the strap.  She stood, leaning on her father a bit; she had adjusted somewhat over the twelve days it had taken to write out the pattern, but she was still weak afterward.  “I’ll get the newest pages scanned into the computer and have it analyze the pattern while you rest.  With any luck, we’ll be able to leave in the morning to retrieve the Sphere.”

Irina nodded.  She had no intention of telling him that what she had written didn’t lead to the Sphere, but to a manuscript that would, she assumed, explain exactly how all of this was supposed to work.  She had hoped to be the only one to have that knowledge, as it would make it easier for her to thwart Rambaldi’s plan, but she was sure she could still come up with something if she had a chance to read the manuscript.  No doubt her father wouldn’t want her to read it, but she was pretty sure the location of the Sphere wasn’t in it, so she had a bargaining chip.

Her father let her into her cell, then locked the door behind her.  As Jack helped her into bed, she whispered, “I’m done.”  The last thing she saw before falling asleep was his relieved smile.

***

Sydney watched the house through binoculars, waiting for Marshall’s cue.  Chase had of course been furious when she found out that Jack’s disappearance hadn’t been reported to her.  Nadia had taken full responsibility, saying that she had told everyone else that Chase had already been contacted.  That was the plan the sisters had decided on if they should need to contact Chase; Sydney had wanted to own up to her own part in the omission, but Nadia had convinced her that at least one of them had to stay on the case to find their father.  Nadia had been reprimanded and had been pulled from duty pending a psych eval.  Sydney had a feeling that whether this mission was successful would have a large bearing on whether a good psych eval would be enough to allow her to come back.

The car that her father had been kidnapped in belonged to a courier company run by a man named Ivan Pavlov; Marshall had checked out the name and found a number of clues that it was a false identity.  From what he had been able to find, it seemed quite possible that Ivan Pavlov was really Andrei Shostakovich.  Pavlov was listed as the owner of the house Sydney was currently watching, located outside St. Petersburg; Marshall had somehow used satellite scans to determine that several large subbasements were under the house, and that the building was using far too much computing power for a simple residence.  He was currently back in LA, trying to hack into the security system and try to locate her father.

“I’m into the system,” came Marshall’s voice over the comm, “but there are a whole lot of cameras.  Looks like he’s got pretty much every room covered, and a lot of the outside.  It’ll take me a few minutes to find Raptor.”  Sydney fidgeted impatiently as she waited.  “I found him!” came Marshall’s voice finally, triumphant.

“Is he all right?” Sydney asked.

“He looks fine.  He seems to be reading a book, in fact.  Kind of strange, really, that he would be…”

“What about my mother or Shostakovich?” Sydney interrupted.

“They’re not showing up.  Sorry.  If they are in the building, they’re not on camera.”

“Can you loop the cameras so we can go in undetected?” Dixon asked.

“Oh, yeah, of course.  Was working on that, actually.  Almost there… done.”

As soon as the word “done” reached her earpiece, Sydney jumped from the van, scaled the fence, and ran toward the house, Vaughn a few steps behind her.

***

Jack looked up, surprised, when the door beeped.  Shostakovich had shown up a few hours ago and taken Irina to get the Sphere, while Jack remained hostage here to ensure her good behavior.  He had already had dinner, and had been about to go to bed; certainly Irina and Shostakovich couldn’t be back so soon, so who was at the door?

No one, apparently; the seconds ticked by without the door opening.  Jack put the book down and walked to the door.  The green light was on instead of the red, indicating that the door was indeed unlocked.  A power surge, perhaps?  Since the door opened inward and had no handle on the inside, it would be difficult to open it even unlocked, but not impossible.  Jack headed to the closet for a coat hanger.  It was unlikely that he would actually be able to accomplish anything, but he was sick of just sitting here, so he had to at least try.

*****

Chapter 85

Jack was walking down the hallway of the cell block when the door opened.  He flattened himself against the wall, but stepped out when he saw Sydney.  “Dad!” she cried out when she saw him.  “Are you all right?”  Agent Vaughn stepped through the doorway behind her.

“Fine,” he replied, already working out a plan now that he knew he had backup.  “We need to get to the main control room.”  Sydney blinked at him.  “Your mother and Shostakovich left a few hours ago to retrieve the Sphere of Life.  Hopefully the location is still in the computer.”

“Mom’s working with Shostakovich?”

“Not willingly.”  Jack debated telling Sydney exactly why he had been taken hostage, but decided it was better to leave it unexplained.

Sydney’s eyes widened.  “Is she brainwashed?”

“No.  Just being coerced,” Jack replied.  “We need to find the control room.  There isn’t much time.”

“Marshall’s already gotten the location from the computer,” Vaughn spoke up.  “They’re headed for a location in southern France.”

“Let’s go, then,” said Jack.  He was relieved to be free and able to act again, but he would feel even more relief when they found Irina.

***

“Open it,” Shostakovich said, pointing to the chest that they had found after walking through caves for nearly two hours.  He had already spent twenty minutes trying to get it to open by himself; since he hadn’t bothered asking Irina earlier, she had simply stood back and watched.

“I need a knife.”

“You think I’m going to give you a weapon?”

She shrugged.  “It needs my blood to open it.”

He sighed theatrically, then pulled a small knife from his boot.  “Give me your hand.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “For God’s sake, I’ve been injecting your veins every day for almost two weeks.”  Reluctantly, hating yet another loss of control, she held out her left hand, and her father made a small cut across her palm.

Irina squatted down by the chest, wiped dust from the top with her right hand, and then let a few drops of blood fall into the small hole in the center.  She wondered if it was her rare blood type that allowed her blood to unlock the chest; would anyone with her blood type have been able to do it?  She supposed it didn’t matter.

Something within the chest clicked, and then there was a whirring noise as the top lifted.  Her father stepped forward eagerly, but Irina stood and blocked him.  “I need something for my hand,” she said, holding it up.  He glared at her.  “What’s in that chest has been there for a very long time, and it’s not going to go anywhere in the next few minutes.”

Shostakovich took off his backpack, rummaged through it for a moment, and then handed her a first aid kit.  Then he pushed her aside and went to the chest, leaving her to fumble with the kit with one hand.  As she was tearing open a gauze pad with her teeth, he turned around with a manuscript in his hands.  “I didn’t expect it to be a book.”  She said nothing as she finished bandaging her hand.  When she was finished, she looked up to see her father watching her suspiciously.  “I thought you would have known better than to alter what you were writing.”

“I didn’t change anything,” Irina replied.  She didn’t say anything else, waiting to see what he would do.  She would have to play her cards very carefully if she wanted a chance to look at the manuscript.

“So this manuscript is the Sphere of Life?”

“No.”

She had never seen her father show real evidence of frustration before, so it was interesting to watch the expressions on his face.  When he spoke, his voice was low and barely controlled.  “Where is the Sphere?”

“Not far,” Irina replied with careful nonchalance.  “Can I see the manuscript?”

“I think not,” he said, placing it behind his back.  “You knew this was what we’d find, and I imagine you have some idea what it contains.”  When he seemed to expect a reply, she nodded; there was no point in denying it.  “Tell me where the Sphere is, or we’ll go back and you can watch what I’ll do to your husband.”

She had expected it to come to this; now it was time to bluff and see if he would call it.  She shrugged.  “Let’s go.”

He smirked at her.  “You won’t let me brainwash Bristow.  You’d tell me where the Sphere is before I got started.  Why not save yourself the trouble and tell me now?”

Obviously the bluff hadn’t fooled him for a second, so she switched tracks and countered with, “Why not save yourself the trouble of flying back to Russia and just let me read the manuscript?  You can have the Sphere in your hands in three hours.”

He shook his head and gave her a paternal smile.  “You really think you’re going to get your hands on this manuscript, don’t you?”  She said nothing, merely glared at him.  “Come along, then.  I suppose I’ll read this on the plane back to Russia.”  He turned and walked toward the cave entrance.  Irina, frustrated and furious, had no choice but to follow.

***

Three hours later, Andrei sat on his plane as it winged its way toward Russia, reading the Rambaldi manucript and continuing to ignore Irina’s glare.  He had hoped that receiving the serum would change her mind about helping him carry out Rambaldi’s plans, but clearly it hadn’t.  According to this manuscript, the Sphere was an artifact of great power that would affect Irina strongly, so perhaps that would do the trick.

He read a little further and smiled as he saw that Rambaldi had anticipated Irina’s reticence.  He was extremely glad now that he hadn’t let her see this manuscript; it would ruin everything if she got a chance to read it.  The Passenger would not fully embrace Rambaldi’s plans, the manuscript said, until she was forced to use the power of the Sphere on one she loved.  Rambaldi went on to describe exactly how it would be arranged, and Andrei’s smile broadened as he thought that Jack Bristow would be far more useful than he had originally expected.

*****

Chapter 86

Jack was not in a good mood.  They had missed Irina and Shostakovich, possibly only by minutes, and had found only an empty chest in the caves.  Wherever they were now, Shostakovich had the Sphere, and they had no ideas about when or how he would use it.  He could only hope that Irina would learn that Jack was gone and would be able to figure out how to stop Shostakovich.

He wasn’t surprised to find Chase waiting in the APO office when he arrived with Sydney.  He had decided to go ahead and explain to Sydney on the plane that he had been used to ensure Irina’s good behavior, and so she had easily agreed that the two of them should stay at APO for at least a few days, out of Shostakovich’s reach.  He had also spoken to Chase on the phone, and she agreed to get Nadia to APO immediately as well.  He would rather have put off the inevitable interview with Chase and had considered taking his daughters to one of his own safe houses, but he’d decided that they would need to use CIA resources to keep trying to find Irina and Shostakovich since their own mobility was limited.

Nadia was waiting at the entrance with Chase, and she stepped forward with a smile and gave him a hug.  “Dad,” she said.  “I’m so glad you’re all right.  We were so worried.”  He gave her a slightly uncomfortable smile, which she returned.

“Do you need any medical attention?” Chase asked, and Jack shook his head.  “Good.  I’d like to speak to you privately, then, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” he replied, and followed her to his office.

Once the door was shut, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the desk.  “So Shostakovich kidnapped you in order to keep Derevko in line?”  Jack nodded.  “Why did he think that would work?”  Jack didn’t think he had the words to explain that, even if he wanted to, so he shrugged.  “All right, what was this diversion to France all about?”

That, at least, he could answer.  He chose his words and his tone carefully.  “Irina Derevko is the Passenger.  Shostakovich has been holding her prisoner and giving her the Rambaldi serum, and they left a few hours before the CIA team arrived to retrieve the Sphere of Life.  We got the location from Shostakovich’s computer and followed them, but when we arrived, they were gone with the Sphere.”

Chase frowned, a thoughtful expression on her face.  “So now Shostakovich has the Sphere, which is exactly what we feared most.  Do you still think that letting Derevko go free a few weeks ago was a good idea?”

Jack gave her an answering frown, thinking that she was being quite unfair.  But he had many years of experience in not allowing people to know they were getting to him.  “Hindsight is always 20/20,” he replied blandly.  “I was correct in that Derevko is not willingly working with Shostakovich in furthering his goals.  Besides, now that Shostakovich no longer has someone to use as a weapon against Irina, she may still be able to stop him.”

***

Dixon, Weiss, and Vaughn sat in the control room of Shostakovich’s house, waiting for him.  They had remained behind in case Jack and Sydney didn’t reach the Sphere before he did.  Dixon had thought it was a bad idea when Jack had first proposed that they split up, but he saw Jack had been right when he’d gotten the call that they hadn’t beaten Shostakovich and were returning to Los Angeles.

“Someone’s coming,” Weiss said from behind him, where he was watching the satellite surveillance of the roads that led to Shostakovich’s compound.  “It’s headed for the front gate.  It’s a limo, looks like it’s armored.”

Dixon frowned.  This was already a difficult situation, considering that Jack Bristow had been very clear about his order that Irina Derevko was not to be harmed.  He had never seen the two of them together, but from what little Sydney had said, it seemed that her father hated her mother; obviously, something had changed.  But now, of course, was not the time to think about that.  “Let’s let them get out of the limo and into the house so we can see how many we’ve got.  Agent Vaughn, come with me; they’ll probably come in through the front entrance, so we’ll hide there.  Agent Weiss, keep watch from here.”

Vaughn and Dixon made their way upstairs and hid in two rooms opposite the front entrance.  They had made a cursory search of the house to remove all of Shostakovich’s employees to CIA custody, but hadn’t had time to make a detailed search.  Dixon wasn’t surprised to find a shelf full of Rambaldi manuscripts in the room he was hiding in, which appeared to be an office.

He didn’t have long to wait before Weiss’s voice came through his earpiece.  “The car’s stopped in front of the front entrance… I see Shostakovich, Derevko, and a man we don’t know.”

“Is she restrained?” Dixon asked.

“Doesn’t look like it, but she is in between Shostakovich and the other man,” Weiss answered.  “They’re opening the door.”

Dixon waited as he heard the door open and heard the trio take a few steps inside; he didn’t want to give them a chance to get back through the door to their vehicle.  “Ready…” he said softly.  “Go!”  He and Vaughn stepped out from their respective rooms simultaneously, each firing off a tranq dart.  Dixon’s hit Shostakovich in the shoulder, but his associate ducked out of the way of Vaughn’s shot, which hit Irina in the neck instead.  Shostakovich pulled his dart out while pulling a gun from his coat, his associate also pulled a weapon, and Irina slumped to the floor – her fall was too quick to be due to the immediate effects of the tranq dart, so she must have decided that the floor was the safest place to be.  Dixon thought it was an excellent choice, since it enabled him to put the slow and inaccurate tranq gun away, say “Guns” to Vaughn, and pull out his handgun.

A few shots were fired, but Shostakovich’s grip began to waver quickly, though he evidently hadn’t gotten enough of the drug into his system to cause him to actually lose consciousness.  As soon as the other man realized that the CIA agents were now using deadly weapons, he began to retreat, pulling Shostakovich along with him.  Shostakovich didn’t seem to want to leave, but he wasn’t in much of a condition to fight.  They disappeared through the door; Dixon and Vaughn rushed after them, but they were already safely ensconced in the limo by the time the CIA agents burst through the double doors.  They could only watch as the vehicle sped away.

Dixon returned to Derevko, thinking that at least the ambush had not been a total failure, though he thought he probably would have preferred the Sphere over Derevko.  She was unconscious, but her pulse was strong and steady.  “Let’s get her back to LA,” he said.

*****

Chapter 87

Following Agent Dixon’s lead, Irina stepped through a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” into what she suspected was the headquarters of the CIA’s new black ops division, Weiss and Vaughn trailing behind her.  The three CIA agents seemed uncertain whether to treat her as a prisoner or an ally; she wasn’t handcuffed, but they were keeping a very close eye on her.  They had seemed reluctant to speak on the plane, so she had learned only that they had already released Jack and that he was waiting for her in LA.

She smiled when she saw Sydney waiting in a brightly lit space at the end of the hallway.  Sydney returned it with a small, slightly uncertain smile.  “Director Chase wants to see you,” she said when Irina and her escort reached the end of the hall.

“Is your father all right?” Irina asked, immediately concerned that Chase was going to deliver bad news.

Sydney looked surprised at the question.  “Yeah, he’s fine,” she answered.  “He’s catching up on a lot of work, though,” she added as her eyes quickly shifted to the others and back.

Of course; they still had to pretend to be nothing more than colleagues forced to work together under the watchful eyes of the CIA.  Irina sighed inwardly, sick of the lies and concealment.

Sydney nodded at the three men, and they wandered off, though they remained visible and quite possibly within earshot as Sydney led Irina further into the brightly lit, glass filled office.  “How’s Nadia?” Irina asked, still worried that someone had been injured in the attack on her father’s compound.

“She’s fine,” Sydney answered.  Irina frowned, wondering why Nadia hadn’t come out to meet her; surely she wasn’t still in protective custody.  “She’s in a bit of trouble, for not notifying Chase that Dad was missing,” Sydney added at a much lower volume, and Irina nodded in understanding.

They arrived at a walled office.  Sydney ushered Irina in, then gave her a brief smile before leaving, shutting the door behind her.  Irina looked around at the bare white walls and sighed - another interrogation room.  She sat down at the table to wait for Chase.

***

Shostakovich closed the Rambaldi manuscript and sighed; nowhere in it was the location of the Sphere of Life.  He would have done his best to get Irina back from whoever had taken her regardless, of course, but now her safe return was even more imperative.  He would also have to come up with a new way to induce her to reveal the Sphere’s location; he didn’t know if his unknown assailants had taken Jack Bristow, left him, or killed him, but Andrei didn’t care about the man’s fate, only that he no longer had access to him.  He cursed, something he had done a number of times over the past several hours; everything had been going so well, only to go to pieces so very quickly.

He stood and left his office for the main compartment of the plane, where he found Yegor reading a book, apparently unconcerned with the situation.  “Yegor,” he said, and his right hand man looked up.  “I want Irina.  I don’t care how hard it is to find her, just get her back – alive, of course.  And I’ll need one of her relatives as well.”

Yegor’s expression had not changed from one of polite interest as Andrei spoke.  Now he said, his tone perfectly even, “Relatives, sir?”

“Her husband, one of her daughters, even Elena or Katya would probably do the trick.”  Andrei couldn’t help being annoyed with Yegor; he knew perfectly well that if Yegor hadn’t pulled him out of the house he would only have ended up captured or dead, but he still couldn’t stop blaming the man for the loss of Irina.

“Yes, sir,” Yegor said calmly, and disappeared into his own office to begin contacting people.  Andrei knew perfectly well that the search would almost certainly be fruitless, but at least the man wouldn’t be sitting around reading a book.

Now he was at a loss, though.  Sighing, he sat down and picked up the book Yegor had been reading.

***

The phone rang; Elena waited impatiently for the third ring, then lifted the receiver.  “You’re late,” she snapped into the mouthpiece.

“There have been developments, ma’am,” replied the smooth voice of her contact.  He sounded calm, as always, but the slight inflection in his voice told Elena that the “developments” were not good.

“Irina?” she asked.

“Hit with a tranq dart by unknown assailants.  We don’t know the fate of her husband.”

Elena felt a sting of sympathy pain for Irina if her husband had been killed, but now was not the time.  “Was this before or after they retrieved the Sphere?”

“After, but they found a manuscript, not the Sphere itself.  If my employer knows the location of the Sphere, whether from the manuscript or from Irina herself, he has not told me.”

“I see.”  Elena remained silent for a moment as Dmitri and Nadya whispered conflicting advice into her ears.  “Be quiet!” she hissed finally, when their combined whispers joined into an unintelligible murmur.

“Ma’am?”

“Not you.  I suppose you and Andrei are working on finding Irina.”

“Correct, ma’am.  He also wishes me to find one of her relatives.  It seems quite important, but he did not tell me why.”

Dmitri and Nadya started whispering again, and she glared at each of them in turn.  They actually shut up for once, both looking chagrined.  “When you find Irina, let me know, and I’ll arrange for you to ‘find’ me.”  It was time to get personally involved, rather than watching from the sidelines.

“Very good, ma’am,” he replied, and hung up.  Elena smiled.  Yegor was a good young man, the kind of right hand man that every criminal mastermind wanted to have, except for the minor matter of him selling out his employer for quite a bit of money and some good sex with an experienced woman.

“You can’t go,” Nadya said as Elena got up.  “Irina will kill you.”

“Irina’s supposed to kill her,” Dmitri replied scornfully.

“Just because it’s written doesn’t mean it has to happen,” Nadya answered.

“Quiet, both of you,” Elena said sternly.  “I’m going, and that’s that.”

*****

Chapter 88

Irina looked up when Chase entered and watched her sit down.  She didn’t seem at all inclined to apologize for keeping Irina waiting for nearly an hour, and she didn’t appear to be in a particularly good mood.  “So Shostakovich has the Sphere, and now I have to decide what to do with you.  I suppose your sister could stand a cellmate.”

Irina blinked at her, momentarily confused, but then realized that she hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Jack that what she’d written didn’t lead to the Sphere.  “He doesn’t have it.”

Chase raised her eyebrows, incredulous.  “Agent Bristow reported that they found only an empty chest.”

“It contained a manuscript.  Very valuable, of course, but not the Sphere.”  She didn’t mention that she didn’t know for sure whether the manuscript listed the Sphere’s location, since she wanted to convince Chase that the Sphere didn’t need to be unearthed immediately.

The director still looked confused.  “You are the Passenger, correct?”  Irina nodded.  “So you know where the Sphere is?”  She nodded again.  “Where is it, then?”

“I think it should stay right where it is as long as Shostakovich has that manuscript.”

Chase did not look happy at that.  “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not exactly in charge here.”

“Oh, I think I am,” Irina replied with a smile.  “Rambaldi put me in charge of the Sphere, after all.”

Chase’s mouth twisted in a way that was almost comical, but of course Irina kept a straight face.  Chase stood.  “I think we’re done for tonight.”  She left the room.  A few minutes later a team of U.S. Marshals entered, and Irina sighed inwardly.  She’d known from the moment Chase stepped into the room that the woman was regretting her earlier decision to make a deal with Irina, so she had suspected that she would end up in another cell.  Knowing in advance didn’t make it any easier, though, to quietly cooperate while the guards shackled her hands behind her back and led her from the room.

***

“What happened to the agreement you signed with her?” Jack asked.  He was furious with Director Chase for putting Irina in a cell again, but he doubted Chase was aware of the intensity of his emotions.  His ability to hide his feelings was sometimes just as useful with “friends” as with enemies.

“She broke that agreement.”

“No, she didn’t.  She was taken against her will.”

“She didn’t break the agreement when Shostakovich kidnapped her.  She broke it just a few minutes ago.”  Jack raised his eyebrows; there was no point in concealing his surprise at that statement.  “Shostakovich doesn’t have the Sphere, he has a manuscript.  Derevko knows where the Sphere is, and she’s decided now that the moment of truth is here that she doesn’t want to cooperate after all.”

He frowned.  He knew Irina wanted all this business with the Sphere to be over with, so there had to be more to it.  “Did you ask her why?”

Chase gave him a look of annoyance.  “Asking a Derevko to explain her reasons for anything seems to be similar to bathing a cat.  A lot of trouble and high possibility of damage for very little reward.”

“Then let me deal with her.  I’m accustomed to the claw marks.”

The director raised her eyebrows.  “If you really want to, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.  Let her stew tonight, though, and you can go to work on her in the morning.”

Jack was sure Irina wouldn’t want to spend even a single night in yet another cell, but he had already said enough to give Chase some clues about how he really felt about her, so he merely nodded.

***

Katya sat up when she heard the electronic door to her cell open, and watched in confusion as a guard brought in a neat pile of sheets and blankets and placed them on the bare bed on the opposite side of her cell.  She hadn’t been allowed any contact with other prisoners up to this point, and she couldn’t see why that would change.

She began to understand a little when she saw who her new cellmate was.  Irina gave Katya a small smile as she walked into the cell between two guards, and Katya watched as they removed her cuffs and left.  The opportunity to observe Irina in profile left Katya deeply worried; her little sister looked exhausted, her eyes as dull as they had been during those times when she had slipped into catatonia.  Was it the Rambaldi serum that had done this to her?

When the guards left, Katya stood.  “Sit down,” she said in Russian, gesturing to her own bed.  Irina did so without a word, crossing her legs in front of her, while Katya began to make up the other bed.

“How is prison treating you?” Irina asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Better than life is treating you, apparently.”  Katya debated asking Irina about the serum, but decided to hold off until she knew whether the CIA was aware yet that Irina was the Passenger; they wouldn’t have been put into the same cell if the CIA wasn’t listening in.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately, dear?  You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“I’m fine,” Irina replied.  Katya shrugged and finished making the bed before going to sit next to Irina.  “Why didn’t you tell the CIA that I’m the Passenger?”

If the CIA hadn’t known a moment ago, they did now, but surely Irina would have suspected listening devices as well.  She considered her answer carefully.  “You’re not regarded very well by the CIA, little sister.”  Irina raised her eyebrows at the use of the word “sister”, but said nothing, so Katya concluded that the CIA didn’t know about that part of it.  “I knew they would not be gentle with you if they knew.”

Irina shrugged.  “It wouldn’t have made any difference if you had told them that I’m the Passenger.  It would have made a difference, though, if you’d told them where to find him.”

Katya gave Irina a mild glare, which she didn’t appear to notice.  “How was I supposed to know you wanted to be found?  I seem to recall you convincing that husband of yours to let you go back to Andrei.”  Irina frowned, and Katya could tell that she regretted that decision.  She could have needled Irina about it, of course, but she decided to let it lie.  “Well, they did find you, didn’t they?”

“They did, just a little too late.”

Katya frowned.  “He has the Sphere?”  Irina shook her head.  “Well, what’s the problem, then?”

“He has a manuscript that has a cure for the plague that will come when the Sphere is activated,” Irina replied.

“Hmm.  So you know where the Sphere is?”  Irina nodded.  “Where is it?”

“That’s what the CIA would like to know,” Irina said with a faint smile.  Katya hesitated, then nodded; in her excitement at learning the location of the Sphere of Life, she’d forgotten their invisible listeners.  Irina stood up.  “I’m going to bed.”

*****

Chapter 89

Shostakovich sat at his desk, going over reports from his many businesses under his many assumed names.  It was hard to focus, naturally, but he had been somewhat neglecting them lately, and it was important to have things poised to move when he was finally able to activate the Sphere.  This was, after all, what he had been working for since he’d found the Rambaldi manuscript describing the Heir’s role in 1991, so he couldn’t go into it ill prepared.  He looked up at a knock on the door and called, “Come in,” expecting Yegor.  “Well?” he asked when the man appeared.

“The CIA has Irina, sir,” Yegor replied.  “I was unable to find out where they’re holding her.  Also, her daughters and her husband have not returned to their residences since the attack on your compound.  The whereabouts of Elena and Katya remain unknown.”

“Goddamn it,” Andrei murmured.  He had been afraid of something like this; Jack Bristow was apparently paranoid enough to have taken his daughters and gone into hiding.  He supposed now he would have to be patient, but he hated exercising patience.  Surely there was a weakness he could exploit.  “The daughters,” he said.  “Surely they must have friends, boyfriends perhaps.  Find out everything you can about them.”

Yegor frowned.  “You think the girls will contact their friends?”

He shook his head.  “They are trained agents, and even if they weren’t Bristow would make sure they didn’t contact anyone.  No, what I most want to know is if their closest friends are CIA agents.  If so, they probably know where the girls and perhaps their mother are hiding, and we can extract that information.  If their closest friends are civilians, we can arrange a trade; they’re noble, self-sacrificing government agents who won’t let an innocent be harmed in their place.”

 “I’ll get to it immediately, sir.”  Yegor started to turn, then paused.  “Do you want me to go ahead and obtain custody of anyone?”

“No.  Bring me a report, and I’ll decide who our best target will be.”  Yegor nodded and disappeared.

***

Irina hid a smile as she walked into the interrogation room and saw Jack sitting there; she had hoped it would be him.  She wasn’t sure how well she would have managed another interview with that Chase woman.  As she sat down, she saw Jack flick his eyes to the ceiling, indicating that they were at least being listened to, and probably watched.  Again.

“Director Chase isn’t very happy with you,” Jack said when the guards were gone.

“I noticed.”

“If you tell us where the Sphere is, your immunity agreement will be put back in place.  You won’t have to stay here, and the Sphere will be put in a safe place.”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “Because no Rambaldi artifacts have ever been stolen from the CIA before?”  Jack gave her a glare that had far more in it of ‘annoyed husband’ than ‘angry interrogator’.  He didn’t reply for a moment, so Irina decided to voice the one plan she had been able to come up with.  “I want it destroyed.”

Jack stared at her, honestly surprised.  “What?”

“I’ll tell you where it is if you assure me that you will personally make sure the Sphere is destroyed as soon as it’s found.”

He watched her thoughtfully for a moment.  “The Agency will need to study it to find a way to destroy it safely.”

Irina had strongly suspected ever since Chase originally proposed the deal that the CIA had no intention of destroying the Sphere; if it went to the techs it would likely ‘disappear’, and probably reappear in her father’s hands.  “Blow it up,” she said bluntly.  “That’s perfectly safe; I’m the only one who can activate it.”  Then she remembered her thoughts about her blood type and realized that might not be true.  She frowned and tried to think of a way to tell Jack not to take Sydney along without alerting the CIA to the possibility that Sydney might be able to activate it.

“So I take it you don’t want to come along, then?”

“No.  I stay right here.  I’m not to be transferred out of this building for any reason whatsoever until the Sphere is destroyed.”  Sending them out after the Sphere, letting anyone other than herself know where it was, posed a huge risk; if her father did manage to get the Sphere, he couldn’t have the opportunity to get her as well.

“You’ll need to give us very detailed directions, then.”

Irina nodded deliberately as she stuck out her foot and began tapping in Morse code against Jack’s ankle.  “I will,” she said as she tapped out “Keep Sydney in LA.”  “And take Nadia with you.”

Jack blinked at her, clearly confused, but he tapped the message back to her to confirm that he had understood.  “Why Nadia?”

“She shares half my DNA, and she’s been exposed to large amounts of the Rambaldi serum.  I think it’s quite likely that she may be able to sense the Sphere once she gets close.”  Irina had no idea if that was true, but if the CIA did want to try activating it, Nadia would be their choice for that now instead of Sydney; Irina knew that Nadia wouldn’t be able to activate it because of her different blood type.

“All right.  I’ll take Nadia.  Now where is the Sphere?”

“You promise you’ll destroy it immediately?”  Jack hesitated a moment, then nodded.  Irina felt her stomach churn, and thought that maybe she really shouldn’t reveal the location after all, but she took a deep breath and spoke a series of numbers.  She used a code she and Jack had worked out during their year of looking for Sydney; no doubt the CIA would be able to decipher the message with time, but hopefully Jack and Nadia would be gone by then.  “Go now,” she said when she had given him the exact location.  He nodded.  Suddenly she wanted desperately to kiss him, but she knew that was out of the question, so she merely watched as he left the room.

*****

Chapter 90

“Did that mean anything to you?” Chase asked as soon as the door to the interrogation room closed.  Jack nodded.  “So where is it?”

“Italy,” Jack replied, hoping that would hold her.  “If you’ll excuse me, I have a mission to plan.”

“Wait,” Chase ordered, and Jack reluctantly stopped.  “I’m not sure you should go on this mission.”

He turned to face her.  “And why is that?”

“You’ve just returned from being held prisoner, and you haven’t been properly debriefed.  Agent Dixon can be sent to retrieve the Sphere.”

“’Retrieve’ it?”  Jack gave Chase a piercing glare.  “The Agency doesn’t want the Sphere destroyed, does it?”

Chase appeared to consider for a moment.  “No,” she finally replied.  “We want to study it.”

Jack thought for a moment and decided that all this would take was some hedging on his part, since Chase had no idea how he felt about the Sphere.  “I’ll bring it back, then.”

Chase gave him a suspicious look.  “What about your promise to Derevko?”

“Do you think I’m terribly concerned about breaking a promise to that woman?”

Chase smiled with, Jack noted, a distinct amount of relief.  “All right.  You’d best get going, then.  You’ll be taking Agent Santos with you?”

Jack nodded and headed out the door.  Chase would know he had been lying when the Sphere ‘accidentally’ ended up destroyed, of course, but even though he still wasn’t sure he could believe Rambaldi’s predictions of the future, Jack still felt that the destruction of the Sphere was far more important than his reputation within the CIA.

***

“How did it go?” Katya asked when Irina was returned to the cell.  Irina merely shrugged; she really wanted a nap at the moment, and dealing with Katya was not high on her list of priorities.  “Was it Jack?” Katya asked with a grin.

Irina gave a little sigh and nodded, then went to her bunk and lay down.  She had a headache – not the intense, pounding sort of headache she’d gotten after the Rambaldi serum, just a dull ache that was nevertheless enough to be annoying.  She was already beginning to doubt her decision to tell Jack where the Sphere was.  She trusted him as much as she trusted anyone, but long experience – and betrayals by those she thought would never betray her, she mused with a quick glance at Katya – had taught her that the only person she could truly trust was herself.  And she was quite sure that the CIA wouldn’t want the Sphere destroyed, so Jack would have their pressure on him.  There were just too many unknowns; she shouldn’t have told him.  She’d let her frustration at being put in yet another prison influence her, when she should have just been patient and kept the Sphere’s location safe within her own head until the CIA could find Shostakovich.  Now it was out of her hands; she could only hope Jack would keep his promise.

***

Nadia listened carefully as her father went over the plan one more time.  He seemed to gloss over exactly what happened after they got the Sphere, and Nadia suspected there was more to it, but she didn’t ask questions.  She had barely been with the CIA long enough to survive the trouble she’d already gotten into for taking the blame for keeping Jack’s disappearance hidden from Chase, and she suspected it was only her relationship to the two most important people in APO that had kept her from being tossed out.  If her father was going to do something with the Sphere other than return it to the CIA, she wasn’t going to stop him, but she didn’t want to be in a position to be blamed, either.

“So after we bring the Sphere back, Chase will release Mom?” Nadia asked when he finished and they hovered once more on the brink of uncomfortable silence.

“Hopefully,” her father replied.  He looked a bit uncomfortable, though, strengthening Nadia’s suspicion that he never intended for the Sphere to make its way back to the CIA.  

But, she thought hopefully, if the Sphere was where Irina said it was, they couldn’t blame her if something happened to it after it was found.  She really wanted a chance to get to know her mother, and that couldn’t really happen as long as her mother was in one prison or another.

Jack looked up and seemed to understand her expression, for he gave her a brief smile.  “We’ll get her out,” he said.  “When this is all over.”

***

“What the hell?  Who ordered this?” Chase practically shouted into the phone.  She’d given an order that Irina Derevko was not to be moved, and now, at nearly six p.m. on a Friday, she was told that her prisoner was to be transported to Langley in less than an hour.

“Agent Durham, ma’am,” said the secretary on the other end of the line.  

Damn it; Bob Durham was the assistant director of the CIA, and there was no way she could countermand his order.  “What does he want with her that can’t be done in LA?  I issued that order for a reason.”

“Now that she’s broken her agreement, he wants her interrogated.”

“She didn’t break her agreement.  She gave us the information she was supposed to give.”  Chase really didn’t care whether Derevko’s agreement was honored, but she did want Irina kept secure until Bristow was back with the Sphere.  She supposed she should have anticipated this, though, since Durham had sent her a note back when she’d made the agreement saying she’d nearly overstepped her bounds and that she should have had Derevko thoroughly interrogated before offering her anything.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll have to speak to Director Durham,” the secretary replied calmly.

“Then let me speak to him,” Chase replied.

“He’s gone home for the weekend, but he’ll be in the office on Monday.”

Chase resisted the urge to curse out the secretary.  Had Durham purposely planned it this way?  She wouldn’t be surprised if he had.  “Fine, you can tell him to expect my call.”  She slammed down the phone, wishing she had a chance of calling him at home, but the personal information of an agent that high-ranking was kept almost as secret as the nuclear missile codes.  Not that she couldn’t get the information, but it was more than her life was worth to use it.

If Derevko disappeared on the way to Langley, she’d have plenty of reason to thoroughly chew out Durham.  But there had to be something she could do in the meantime.  She considered for a moment, then dialed the phone again.

*****

Chapter 91

When the guards showed up at her cell at about seven o’clock in the evening, Irina’s first thought was that something had happened to Jack and Nadia.  Her second thought, as they attached the waist chain that kept her hands from rising above that level, was that her father had found some way to smuggle her out of here.  She twisted her head to look at Katya and glared, to which Katya responded with a puzzled expression.  “Tell them where to find him,” she said as the guard led her away.  Katya must know quite a bit about Shostakovich’s aliases and facilities, and she could only hope that her sister would share that information.  Katya nodded, but it was a gesture of understanding rather than commitment.

The guards led her outside.  Just inside the gates was a van, and she could see Agent Weiss in the driver’s seat.  Was he a double agent working for her father?

Then the van door opened and Sydney jumped out; instead of pacifying her unease, this only made it worse.  The CIA had absolutely no reason to move her; if this was a plot by her father, it went a lot deeper than just arranging a prison break if he was using real CIA agents.

“Sign here, please,” one of the guards said to Sydney, holding out a clipboard.  Sydney signed and handed it back.  “You want ankle shackles on her?”

Sydney frowned.  “That won’t be necessary.”  The guard shrugged, and Irina was bundled into the van, where she found Michael Vaughn waiting to hook her waist chain to the seat.  Sydney got in and shut the door behind her, and the van started to move.

“What’s going on?” Irina asked as soon as she heard the prison gates close behind them.

“Someone at Langley ordered that you be transferred there, and then conveniently left the office before Director Chase was informed.  She thought something seemed fishy,” Sydney said as she took out a key and began unlocking Irina’s shackles.  Vaughn looked unhappy about her actions, but he said nothing.

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “So she’s defying her superiors?”  Chase didn’t really seem like the type to do that, at least not any more than what she could get away with.

“Sort of,” Sydney replied with a slight grin.  “She wasn’t given any information on how you were to be transported, so she assumed that she was supposed to arrange it.  So we’re driving you to Langley.”

Irina nodded.  “Giving her a couple of days to sort things out.”

“More than that.  We have to have two guards on you at all times – Agency protocol.  Since there are only three of us, we can only drive about six hours a day to give all of us time for adequate sleep.  That gives a week for Chase to figure out something else.”

Irina smiled.  That left plenty of time for Jack to destroy the Sphere.  Perhaps her worst fears weren’t about to be realized after all.

***

“Are you feeling anything about the Sphere’s location?” Jack asked when they entered the cave.  Irina’s directions ended here, but he saw nothing that could possibly be the Sphere, and the cave continued in three different directions.  He didn’t even know what the thing looked like.  He had assumed that Irina’s directions would lead him directly to the Sphere and that it would be obvious once he saw it, but clearly that wasn’t the case.  It wasn’t like her to neglect important details like that; could she have some other plan?  How could she, when she was locked up in a maximum security prison?

Nadia looked around the cave slowly, then shut her eyes and turned in a circle.  “Nothing,” she said with regret.  “You don’t know where to go from here?”

Jack shook his head.  “I suppose we’ll just have to hunt it down.”  Fortunately he had come prepared; he pulled a stick of long-lasting chalk from his pack.  “Let’s take the left tunnel first.”  After leaning over and drawing an arrow pointing into that section of the cave, he started forward, Nadia right behind him.

They had only gone a few steps when Jack heard something that wasn’t right.  He kept walking while trying to discern what was out of the ordinary, and after a few more steps he was pretty sure that they were being followed.  Taking into account the echoes in the cave, he thought it was only one person.  He chanced a glance back, but the tail wasn’t in sight.  Their pursuer wouldn’t have to see them, of course, since he could follow the marks in the caves.

Jack did nothing until they reached the next branch point, where they had two choices.  “Getting anything?” he asked, a tiny bit louder than he otherwise would have, while taking a notepad and pencil from his pocket.

Nadia frowned and shook her head.  “I’ll let you know if I do,” she said.

He handed her the note he had quickly scrawled out, which said, “Being followed.  You take left tunnel, I’ll hide here.”  She read it quickly and nodded.  He drew an arrow pointing down Nadia’s tunnel, then ducked into the other branch as she continued on.

He had to wait a few minutes until their pursuer came into view, which wasn’t surprising since they’d just come down a long, straight segment of tunnel.  He was surprised when he saw who it was, not because of his identity, but because he had expected Arvin Sloane to be more careful about tailing someone.  Keeping one hand on the tranq gun in his pocket, he stepped out.  “Hello, Arvin.”

Sloane jumped, both feet actually leaving the ground, and Jack had a feeling he would treasure the expression on Arvin’s face for quite a while.  “Jack!  I…”

“You were following us.  Why?”  Jack knew that the echoes of the cave would carry their voices to Nadia, even if she had kept walking the entire time, and he suspected she hadn’t gone far.  He hoped she would stay put.

“I knew she was lying, Jack.  After all, she’s a Derevko.  Of course Nadia is the Passenger.”  There was a strange look in Sloane’s eyes that Jack didn’t like; he wasn’t entirely sure of the sanity of his former friend.  “Jack, I hate to tell you this, but if Irina told you that you’re Nadia’s father, she lied.  She has to be my daughter, you see?”

“You’re not my father,” Nadia said as she stepped out from the other tunnel.  Jack shot her a quick glare.

“Of course I am, darling,” Sloane said, turning to face her fully.  It was then that Jack was sure that something was very wrong with Sloane’s mind; were he in full possession of his faculties, he would never have turned his back on Jack.  “I can love you far better than Jack ever…”

That was more than enough, Jack decided, and slammed his elbow into Sloane’s temple.

*****

Chapter 92

“So you left without the Sphere?” Chase said into the phone, angry.  “Go back in and find it!”

“I intend to,” Jack Bristow replied.  “It’s just that we had a slight complication.  Arvin Sloane followed us, and we captured him.  I’d be more than happy to get rid of him if you’ll just tell me what you want done with him.”

“I see,” Chase said, considerably cheered by the fact that she could cross one off the wanted list.  “Where are you?”

“The Milan safe house,” Bristow answered.

“Good.  I’ll send a team; they should be there within the hour.  After that, I assume it won’t take you long to recover the Sphere?”

“Actually, Derevko’s directions gave us a rather wide area to search.  While we’re waiting, I’d like to speak to her again and see if she can provide a more precise location.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”  Chase suspected he wasn’t going to like the next bit of information.  “She’s en route to another location at the moment.”

“I thought you weren’t going to move her.”  Bristow did sound quite displeased.

“It wasn’t my decision.  But it’ll be a moot point if you show up soon with that Sphere.”  Durham may not like Derevko’s agreement, but he shouldn’t be able to weasel out of it any more than Chase could once the Sphere was recovered.  And she suspected Bristow was still considering destroying the Sphere, so hopefully that would give him an incentive to bring it back intact.  He was a master of hiding his emotions, but Chase suspected that he did in fact want Derevko free – though she couldn’t possibly make a guess as to why.

“All right.  I’ll – “  Suddenly there was a crash from the other end of the line, followed by shouts, then gunfire.  A few moments later, there was silence.

***

“She wasn’t there?  I would think your maximum security prisons would be a little more secure,” Shostakovich said, barely concealing his anger at the man on the other end of the line.  Rather than letting his agitation show in his voice at having Irina slip through his fingers, he stood and began to pace.

“I’m very sorry, sir.”  Durham’s voice was appropriately obsequious – not surprising, since Shostakovich had enough blackmail material on the man to get him kicked out of the CIA and into prison for a very long time.  “It seems that the director of the Los Angeles division thought that she was supposed to arrange transportation herself.  Derevko should be here very soon.  Of course, it will be a bit more difficult to get her into your custody once she’s actually arrived at Langley…”  Clearly, the man was hoping for more money.  He was already being paid a considerable sum, since mere blackmail wasn’t enough for Durham to lose as important a prisoner as Irina Derevko; Shostakovich didn’t intend to pay him any more.

“I suppose that’s your problem, isn’t it?” Andrei replied evenly.  His call waiting beeped.  “I have another call.  Call me when you have her ready for me.”  He hung up on Durham and picked up the other call.  “Yes?”

“Good news, sir.”  It was Yegor, and Shostakovich smiled.  He had had Arvin Sloane under surveillance ever since Sloane had been a guest at his home in Italy; he had never expected it to prove particularly useful, and so he had been pleasantly surprised a few hours ago when he had learned that Sloane had been captured by Jack Bristow and Nadia Santos.  “We’ve captured Bristow, Santos, and Sloane.  We’re currently on our way out of Milan, since Bristow was on the phone when we attacked.”

“Excellent,” Shostakovich replied.  “Are they unharmed?”

“The girl has a broken arm,” Yegor replied, “and we had to give Bristow a good rap on the head to subdue him; he may have a concussion.  Sloane was unconscious when we attacked.”

“Quite acceptable.  Bring them here as soon as you’re sure you’re not being followed.”  Andrei hung up the phone and began to think about how best to use this turn of events to his advantage.

***

Nadia couldn’t hold back a small moan of pain as her right arm was manipulated on the x-ray table.  “Just hold on,” the woman taking the x-ray murmured with a bit of sympathy, while her guard merely glowered.  At least he didn’t poke her with his rifle; that was how he had been directing her so far, with grunts and pokes.  He had been with the men who had attacked them, but he wasn’t in charge.  The man who seemed to be running the show had disappeared as soon as they had arrived here, wherever ‘here’ was.  She didn’t know where her father and Sloane had been taken, either – not that she really cared what happened to Sloane.

The technician and the guard retreated behind a wall, and naturally Nadia had a fleeting thought of making a break for it, but before she could have moved a muscle the x-ray was taken and the guard came back out.  The woman rearranged Nadia’s arm and then took another x-ray, and Nadia thought that it was a good sign that they were treating her, since it meant they probably weren’t planning to kill her.

The guard prodded her into another room, where they waited for quite a while before a man in a white coat came in.  He seemed nervous and timid, and she judged it best not to try to ask him any questions, especially with her guard looming behind her.  He looked at her x-rays carefully while Nadia fidgeted impatiently; her arm was throbbing quite badly.  Finally the man turned toward her.  “Your arm is broken, but it’s not bad, shouldn’t need surgery,” he said.  “Let me take a look.”  She held her arm out a little from where she’d been cradling it close to her chest.  “Oh, dear, it’s quite swollen.  Been a while since you injured it?”  She nodded; it had been at least four hours.  “No one ever thinks to put ice on these things,” he murmured, half to himself.  “I’m going to go ahead and put a splint on it; we’ll replace it with a cast in a few days when the swelling goes down.  I’m also going to give you some anti-inflammatories.”  Nadia nodded absently; the broken arm was really the least of her problems at the moment.  “I’d offer you pain medicine, but I’m afraid I don’t know if it’s allowed.”  She nodded again.

He gave her some pills, she assumed anti-inflammatories, which she took, and then started to wrap her arm; by the time the splint was on, she felt much better.  She left with her immobilized arm in a sling, a bag of ice sitting on top of it.  Then her guard prodded her into a small interrogation room and left her alone for the first time since all this had started.

After a few minutes, a man entered.  She recognized him from the picture Sydney had once snapped of him with a necklace: Andrei Shostakovich.  He gave her a friendly smile that seemed far too familiar for the circumstances.  “Nadia, my dear,” he said warmly as he sat down.  “I was hoping we would get a chance to meet.”

*****

Chapter 93

Sydney nudged her mother’s shoulder.  “Mom, wake up.”  She was rather worried about her mother, who had fallen asleep after less than half an hour in the van and slept soundly for the rest of the six hour drive, despite being positioned sitting up on an uncomfortable wooden bench.  She seemed to need the sleep, too; she didn’t look quite as pale and exhausted as she had when Sydney had first seen her in Rome shortly after she had been rescued from Katya and Sloane, but it was a close call.

“What?” her mother said, blinking at raising her head.  “We’re stopped.”  Sydney nodded.  Irina began carefully stretching her neck, and Sydney winced in sympathy; it must be sore.  “What time is it?”

“About 1 am LA time, but I think we’re in the next time zone now.  We’re stopping at a hotel for a few hours.”

Her mother nodded.  “Sounds sensible.”

Weiss had gotten them a pair of rooms with a connecting door, so Sydney and Irina took one room while Weiss and Vaughn took the other.  “What happened to ‘two guards at all times’?” Irina asked once the door was closed, a slight smile on her face.

Sydney shrugged and grinned, but suddenly felt slightly nervous; she did intend to sleep, so what if her mother decided to make a run for it?  “They didn’t want to share a bathroom with us.”

Her mother reached out and squeezed her shoulder.  “Don’t worry, Sydney, I’m not going anywhere.”  Sydney smiled in relief.  “Do you want the shower first?”

She shook her head.  “You can go ahead.  I brought some things for you.”  She dug into her bag; she’d swung by her father’s house before she left and picked up a few of her mother’s as yet unworn clothes, bought on the shopping trip that seemed like it had happened years ago.

As her mother headed for the shower, Sydney’s phone rang; she picked it up to see that it showed Nadia’s number.  They must be done searching for the Sphere, then.  “It’s Nadia,” she said to her mother, who stopped; these lines were as secure as Marshall could possibly make them, so she doubted there would be any harm in giving her mother a chance to chat.  She answered the call.  “Nadia?  How did it go?”

“Very badly for your sister, I’m afraid,” replied a male voice with a Russian accent.

Sydney felt the blood drain from her face.  “Who is this?”  Her mother came closer, looking very, very worried.

“I think you know who this is, Sydney.  Let me speak to your mother.”

Sydney sank to the bed as her knees suddenly went weak.  How could he know that her mother was here?  Her father and Nadia didn’t even know about that, so even if he had captured them he couldn’t know.  “What have you done to my sister?”

“I’m afraid she sustained some slight injuries during a small altercation with my men, as did your father.  But they’ll be perfectly fine, as long as you put your mother on the phone.”

Not quite sure what to do, Sydney held the phone out to her mother, who gave her a strange look, but took it and put it to her ear.  After a moment she said, in a voice as cold as any Sydney had ever heard her use, “You’re not speaking to Sydney.”  She listened for another few moments, then said, “I see.  I’m afraid it’s not exactly up to me.”  She listened a moment more.  “I’m sure you have some good friends in the CIA who can help you out with that.”  And then, to Sydney’s surprise, she pressed the “end” button.

“He has Nadia and Dad,” Sydney said, wondering if Shostakovich hadn’t made that clear to her mother.

“I know,” Irina replied, “and he wants to trade them.  One for me, one when I lead him to the Sphere.”

“So you hung up on him?” Sydney asked, incensed that her mother didn’t seem to be placing much value on the lives of her husband and daughter.

Irina nodded as she shoved the clothes back into the suitcase.  After closing it, she looked up and saw Sydney still glaring at her.  “Sydney, your father and sister wouldn’t thank us for giving up the entire world to save them.  He won’t do anything to them right away; they’re far too valuable.  I told him to negotiate with the CIA, which gives us time.”

“Time to do what?  We looked for you for over two months, and we only found you because we got lucky.”

“I don’t need luck,” her mother replied.  “I’ve got a sister who knows quite a lot about where that bastard might be hiding.  Let’s go talk to Katya.”

***

Shostakovich smiled as he put down the phone.  Once again, Irina thought she could win, but he was, as always, one step ahead of her.  She would try to find him, and her best source for that was Katya, who was, according to Durham, a resident of the same prison Irina had so recently left.  Durham had already left orders that Irina and the people with her were to be considered fugitives, so they would all be arrested before the Chase woman had a chance to interfere.  Durham would, of course, gladly make the trade.  Andrei would have to give up one of his hostages, but that would be no great loss, as he only needed one of them.  In only a few hours, Irina would be his again.

After a few moments’ consideration, he went back to the prison area.  His granddaughter clearly didn’t like him, which wasn’t surprising considering what she had probably been told about him.  He suspected from her behavior that she didn’t know about her relationship to him, which also wasn’t surprising.  But he could see fear as well as fire in her eyes.  Fear was a sign of respect, so he suspected he could convince her that his side was the best place to be without too much effort.  Of course, he would have to give her up soon, since the hostage he kept would soon die at Irina’s hands, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t start on her now.

*****

Chapter 94

Irina found it hard to sit still in her shackles, edgy as she was, even though the guards gave her fierce glares for even the slightest movement.  Even though no one had told her what exactly was going on, she had a pretty good idea: her father had managed to arrange the trade.  He evidently had someone highly placed in the CIA in his pocket, since she, Sydney, Vaughn, and Weiss had all been arrested immediately upon arriving at the prison despite Chase’s assurance that she would arrange for them to see Katya.  Irina was pretty sure it wasn’t Chase herself who was the mole, since she was certain at this point that her father had been behind the original transfer order.

The transport van stopped, and she was prodded out.  They were somewhere in the desert, and she blinked in the harsh sunlight.  Once her eyes adjusted, she saw another vehicle driving toward them.  The other vehicle stopped, and two armed men got out from either side of the back seat.  Then Nadia came out, and Irina’s breath caught in her throat.  She had wondered which hostage her father would choose to trade, and had expected him to trade Jack, who was more valuable to the CIA and presumably less valuable to her.  Was this some sign of family sentiment that he was sending his granddaughter to safety?  She doubted it, and even if it was the reason she knew it wouldn’t affect the way he treated her; he would use any means necessary to extract the location of the Sphere of Life.

At a prod from her guards, she began to walk forward.  She saw that Nadia’s arm was in a sling and hoped that her father hadn’t hurt her.  He had no reason to, since Nadia had no information that would be of value to him, so hopefully her injury was just something that had happened when she was initially captured.  “Are you all right?” she asked Nadia when she reached her.

Nadia nodded.  “Are you?”  Irina nodded in reply, even though she was far from all right.  “We’ll find you,” Nadia whispered.

“Thank you,” Irina replied, giving her a smile.  It would be nice if her daughters could indeed find her, but she had a feeling this was something she was going to have to work out on her own.  Judging that they’d stopped long enough to seriously annoy the watching guards, she stepped forward.  Nadia nodded and did the same.

When she reached the other vehicle, she was hurried into the back seat and quickly squeezed between the two burly guards.  The driver wasn’t someone she recognized, and she was a bit surprised that her father hadn’t come to get her himself, or at least sent Yegor.  But then, that did compound the risk, and a hostage trade was risky enough.  She was sure he was nearby, probably waiting on his private plane.

Irina was able to catch a glimpse of the other vehicle driving away, Nadia safely inside, before the motor of her own vehicle started.  Then one of the guards pulled out a length of black cloth and tied it around her eyes, and she could see nothing.

It was at least an hour before the vehicle stopped moving; she supposed they were trying to avoid tails.  By the time they finally did stop, Irina’s arms were cramped and numb from being squeezed behind her.  She nearly fell as she was “helped” out of the vehicle, still blindfolded.  The blindfold could only be there on her father’s orders; there was no practical reason for it, he just wanted to annoy her.

She was half guided, half carried up a set of steps, and they turned a corner and walked a few more feet before stopping.  “Thank you, gentlemen, you may go,” said a Russian-accented voice, which Irina recognized as Yegor’s.  Amid the footsteps of the guards leaving, he said, “Sit down, Irina,” and guided her to a seat before taking the blindfold off.  She blinked in the bright light and saw that she was indeed on a plane, but her father was nowhere in sight.  “Excuse me, please,” Yegor said.  He walked in the direction the guards had gone, and she heard what she suspected was the hatch closing.  When he returned, he unlocked her handcuffs, saying, “Precautions.  You understand.”  He gave her something that was almost a smile, which surprised her – he was usually so bland.  But he seemed to be in a very good mood at the moment.  Because his boss was getting what he wanted?  She doubted that was all it was.

He went to another door and opened it, nodded at someone inside, and said, “I’ll leave you two alone.”  Then he disappeared into another room.

Irina was expecting to see her father, so it was quite a shock to see Elena step out of the doorway.  She stared at her mother wordlessly for a few seconds; as she did, she heard the plane’s engines come on.  “Irina, darling, it’s been too long,” she said, then came forward and gave her a hug, which Irina returned after a moment.  “I’ve missed you so,” Elena said as they embraced.

Irina pulled back.  “What’s going on?”  She felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.  If Elena was working with Shostakovich – no, surely she wouldn’t betray her like that.

Elena smiled.  “Yegor and I have an understanding.”  The plane began to taxi down the runway, and they both sat down.

Irina understood then – Elena did have that sort of glow that she usually had after sex, and it explained why Yegor seemed so happy.  “But – does Shostakovich know you’re here?”

“No,” Elena answered, her expression growing serious.  “I’ve been keeping track of you since not long after he took you, through Yegor, but Yegor isn’t willing to do much more than pass on information, so I haven’t been able to intervene.”  

Irina nodded; dealing with informants who were reluctant to actually act was something she knew well.  “So why are you here now?”

“Yegor’s ‘captured’ me,” Elena replied calmly.  “Though I doubt it will get Andrei to release your husband, I’m afraid.  Yegor thinks that Andrei has some sort of big plan for Jack.”

Irina frowned.  It probably had something to do with the Rambaldi manuscript he had, which meant it couldn’t be good.  And Elena being here brought even more complications to the situation with Rambaldi’s prophecies.  “You’re the Chosen One.”  Elena nodded  “You know the prophecies say we’re supposed to fight to the death.”

“It won’t be a very long fight,” Elena said with a smile.  “I don’t think it will take too long for you to beat me.”

Irina stared at Elena for a moment.  “You do realize that that’s not a good thing, right?”  Sometimes it was hard to tell with Elena.

Elena shrugged.  “I’m an old woman.  I haven’t done anything but sit around in an institution for the past fifteen years.  Death really doesn’t frighten me.”

“But I don’t want to kill you.”

“Well, if it should happen, I want you to know that I don’t hold it against you.”

“Don’t talk like that.  I’m not going to kill you.”  Elena merely shrugged, and Irina sighed.  Elena could sometimes be difficult to deal with; her thinking often seemed to be on a completely different track than that of other people, and it was nearly impossible to convince her of anything she didn’t want to believe.  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Irina said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you’re my mother?”

Elena sighed.  “I thought that question was coming,” she said.  “I always meant to tell you, but I kept finding reasons to put it off.  I was going to tell you when you turned eighteen, but then Papa told me a few days before that he would kill me if I told you.  You remember how he was at that time; I believed he would do it.”

Irina nodded.  Papa had grown increasingly unstable in the last decade of his life, and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had killed a few people before he finally killed himself.  “So why didn’t you tell me when I came back from America?”

Elena raised her eyebrows.  “You were a little busy at the time mourning your lost family.  I didn’t think it would really be a good time to give you a shock like that.  Then they took your baby, and then you went to prison, and by the time you got out I had started to learn about those damn prophecies.  I knew that you were the Passenger, and I thought maybe if I didn’t tell you I could stop it all from happening.”

Irina sighed and put her head in her hands.  She knew she had no right to be upset with Elena, given how often she herself had failed to share information with her family, but she still wondered if things might have gone differently if she had known.  Perhaps, but she’d told herself hundreds of times over the years that there was no point thinking about ‘might have been’.  She looked up and smiled at her mother.  “Well, I know now, and I’m glad you’re here.”

*****

Chapter 95

“I hate to say this,” Sydney said as she paced the meeting room at APO, “but I don’t think we can trust the CIA.”  Chase had gotten her, Weiss, and Vaughn released after a couple of hours, but it hadn’t been soon enough to stop the exchange of prisoners.

“I have to agree with you,” Vaughn replied.  “But pacing isn’t going to do you any good.”

Sydney ignored him and continued to pace.  “We don’t even know whether we’re getting Nadia or my father back.”

“Syd, they can both take care of themselves.  And so can your mom,” Weiss said.

“I guess,” Sydney answered uncertainly.  She continued pacing for several more minutes, and then the door to the conference room opened.  “Nadia!” Sydney said when she saw her sister.  “Are you all right?  What happened to your arm?”

“It’s broken,” Nadia answered, “but I’ll be fine.  But why are you all sitting around here?  Let’s go get the Sphere.”

Sydney raised her eyebrows; she had completely forgotten about the Sphere of Life.  “You mean he hasn’t already got it?”

Nadia shook her head.  “Dad and I didn’t find it before Sloane showed up, and I don’t think Shostakovich knew we were looking for it.  He didn’t say anything about it, anyway.”

Sydney nodded.  “Let’s go, then.”  It was better to do that then sit around doing nothing.

“Are we going to tell Chase?” Dixon asked.

“Wasn’t planning to,” Sydney said.  The rest of them nodded, and they all trooped out.

***

“Are the kids with you?” Irina asked an hour or so into the flight, getting tired of sitting around in silence.  Talking to Elena about her hallucinations was always entertaining, at least, and she sometimes revealed more information in talking about Dmitri and Nadya than she might have otherwise.

“I’m sure they’re around here somewhere,” Elena replied with a shrug.

“Aren’t you worried that they might get hurt?” Irina asked, wondering what phase Elena was in.  Sometimes she knew that the children she talked to were dead and seemed to think of them as ghosts, while at other times she seemed to think that they were alive and didn’t understand why others couldn’t see them.  She’d always seemed aware that they were dead during her fifteen years in the asylum, which wasn’t surprising since they had kept her on antipsychotic drugs, but she’d always maintained that she had seen their actual ghosts rather than just representations of her own mind.  She also claimed that their absence was due not to the drugs but to the asylum somehow keeping them out.

“Don’t be silly.  They’re already dead,” Elena answered.  Irina felt relieved; when Elena was aware that the children were dead, she was much closer to sane and therefore easier to deal with.  “Why do you ask?  Don’t go trying to tell me that they’re not real again.  Those people who called themselves ‘doctors’ tried to convince me of that for fifteen years, and they weren’t successful, so you won’t be either.”

Irina frowned and tried to steer Elena away from paranoia.  “I’m not going to tell you that they’re not real.”  In a sense, Dmitri at least was real, since Elena was the only person left who had really known him, as Katya had been too young when he died.

“But you don’t believe they’re real,” Elena said flatly.

Irina considered for a moment.  She’d always believed that Elena was simply insane, although she’d always realized that it was an issue of brain chemistry and not something to blame her for.  But hadn’t she herself seen things that no one else had seen, that no one else could see?  She’d been under the influence of the Rambaldi serum at the time, but what she’d seen would still be considered hallucinations.  And yet she believed that what she’d seen of the past was true, and that the future she’d envisioned was quite possible unless it was prevented.  “I’m not really sure what to think,” she said finally.  Elena watched her with a curious expression.  “I believe that you see them; I’ve never thought that you were just making them up.  It’s just hard for me to understand where they come from, if they’re real.”

Now it was Elena’s turn to look thoughtful.  “I never really thought about where they come from.  I suppose I always just thought they wanted to come back to me.  But I suppose there really isn’t a good explanation.”  She shrugged, but then looked off to the side, distracted.  Irina sighed inwardly; she was listening to one of them.  “Dmitri, stop being annoying.  If you’re not going to answer the question, then be quiet.”  She listened a moment more, then sighed.  “They never listen to me.”

But Irina was still thinking about the Rambaldi serum, and she realized that she could get at least some confirmation of what she’d seen.  “So you were fourteen when you got pregnant with me?”  Elena looked confused at the non sequitor, but nodded.  “What did you do?”

“Well, I told Andrei, of course.”  She studied Irina for a moment.  “He probably told you he had no idea that you existed.”  Irina nodded.  “Well, I did tell him that I was pregnant.  I was just a silly girl and thought he would marry me, but naturally he had no intention of doing so.  He told me to get an abortion.  When I told Papa that I was pregnant, he told me the same thing.”  Elena frowned and didn’t look at Irina.  “I considered it, but… well, everyone felt so sorry for Katya for being ‘motherless’, and no one seemed to care that I’d lost my mother too.  And after I started going out with boys – Andrei wasn’t the first boyfriend I had after the accident – Papa sort of wrote me off and started lavishing attention on Katya.  I suppose I wanted someone to love, too, someone who would love me back.”  She shook her head and blinked as if coming out of a trance.  “Irina, I shouldn’t have said all that.”

“No, I’m glad you did,” Irina answered, and meant it.  She had always felt, deep down, that she was somehow responsible for the rift in the family she had grown up in, herself and Elena on one side and Papa and Katya on the other.  She was relieved in many ways to learn that the rift had occurred before her conception.  Elena still looked upset, though, so Irina moved closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders.  “It wasn’t your fault.  You were only a child.”

Elena smiled.  “It doesn’t matter now.  What matters is that we stop what’s going to happen.”

“How do we do that?  What exactly is going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Elena answered with a shrug.

*****

Chapter 96

Yegor put handcuffs on both Irina and Elena as the plane was landing; Irina understood why, but still hated the feel of the metal closing around her wrists once again.  At least Yegor didn’t fasten them as tightly as her father had.  Once they were on the ground, Yegor waited for a guard to board the plane and take Elena, then led Irina off.  He took her to a limousine that was waiting only a few yards from the plane and opened the door for her.  She got in to see her father waiting, alone; there was no sign of Elena.  “Irina, come sit,” he said, acting as if she were visiting him of her own free will and not as a prisoner.  She sat down several feet away from him, but he merely moved closer until his hip was only inches from hers.  Yegor closed the door of the limousine and walked away, and then the engine started and the car began to move.  “I’ve missed you,” her father said, taking her hand, “although it was nice to get a chance to talk to my granddaughter.”  She glared at him.  “The antidote for the plague was in that manuscript, by the way, so I went ahead and had Nadia injected with it just before she left.  I would have given Nadia a dose to give to Sydney, but I couldn’t trust her to deliver it; it seems she doesn’t much like me.”

“I wonder why that could be,” Irina said flatly.

Her father merely chuckled.  “I understand Yegor managed to find Elena as well.”  Fortunately, he didn’t sound suspicious of Yegor’s find.  “Did you have a nice chat with her?”

Irina didn’t know whether Yegor had been supposed to allow them to talk or not.  At least she didn’t have to pretend to be anything but hostile to her father, she thought, and shrugged.

“Not talkative, I see,” he said with a slight smile.  “Well, that doesn’t matter, as long as you tell me what’s important.  Where is the Sphere?”

So he apparently hadn’t gotten the location when he captured Jack and Nadia.  Hopefully Nadia would know to make a beeline for the Sphere, then, so Irina vowed to hold her peace as long as possible.  She merely stared at him.  A look of murderous rage appeared on his face, but she kept her eyes locked with his, even when she knew he was going to hurt her.  “Where is it?” he ground out, his voice low and almost out of control.  She said nothing, so he raised his hand and slapped her face almost hard enough to knock her off the seat.  “Tell me!”  She shook her head.  He punched her in the stomach and managed to get a small grunt of pain from her as she doubled over.  When she sat up again, she was surprised to see that he had calmed somewhat.  “You will tell me,” he said, his voice still low but far more controlled.  He turned away and opened the case he was carrying as Irina watched, confused, her eyes still tearing up from the blow to her abdomen.  She understood when he took out a syringe loaded with a familiar green liquid.  She didn’t bother to resist when he pulled her left arm forward, wrenching her right shoulder back since her hands were still cuffed behind her, and injected the contents into a vein.  Moments later, the real world faded, throwing her back into the familiar world that Rambaldi had created for her.

***

Elena sat calmly in her cell, watching Nadya and Dmitri play.  The children passed through the bars of her cell effortlessly, and their laughter echoed down the hallway.  She had been in this cell for over an hour; she didn’t know whether Andrei thought he was softening her up for questioning or merely ignoring her until he had a use for her.  If it was the latter, she suspected Yegor might find a way to pay her a visit.  If it was the former, she had fifteen years of experience passing the time in a bare room, and she hadn’t even had the children to entertain her.  But she doubted that Andrei was all that interested in interrogating her anyway; the only knowledge she had that would be of any use to him was what she had obtained from the Rambaldi manuscript she had stolen from under his nose in Prague, and Nadya had assured her that Andrei didn’t know that she was the one who had taken it.

She heard the door to her cellblock open, but remained where she was.  Andrei came into view, but she didn’t budge.  “Andrei,” she said when he stopped in front of her cell.  “It’s been a long time.”

“Nearly fifty-five years,” he replied.  “Years in which you kept my daughter from me.”

“As I recall, you weren’t very interested in being a father at the time.”

“I was young.  I might have changed my mind later, if you hadn’t lied and told me you had an abortion.”

Elena shrugged.  “I told you what you wanted to hear.”  Andrei frowned at her.  “What are you doing with Irina?” she asked, not wanting to talk about this any more.

“She’s being quite uncooperative, I’m afraid.  I might have to threaten you to get her to behave.  If I do, please understand that it’s nothing personal.”

That made Elena’s fiery temper flare up.  “Not personal?” she spat.  “Of course it’s not personal.  This is why I’m glad I never told you about Irina; it’s all just business for you.  Even when we were fucking, it was only about getting off for you.  Getting me off was a business courtesy.”  She stood and approached the bars until her face was only inches from his.  “Go ahead and use me against your own daughter.  But I’m not a naïve 14-year-old anymore; don’t expect me to believe you feel anything for me or for her.”

Andrei raised his eyebrows at the tirade, but didn’t look too perturbed.  “Very well, then.”  He turned and strode from the cellblock without another word.

*****

Chapter 97

“Irina, open your eyes.”  Irina opened her eyes a crack, then shut them and moaned as pain attacked her head.  “Are you going to throw up?” her father’s voice asked.  She made a sound of assent, and then her head was shoved forward; she vomited into some sort of plastic container.  When she was done, the bucket was pulled away and her mouth was wiped roughly with a wet cloth.  “Where is the Sphere, Irina?”  She shook her head.  “You can have some morphine if you tell me.  Otherwise, I’ll leave you here for a little while.”

Irina made herself take a few deep breaths against the pounding of her head.  If she could only hold out for a day or two, just time enough for Nadia to find the Sphere and destroy it…  “I’m not telling you,” she said softly.

“Very well,” her father said, and then there was silence.  She breathed a sigh of relief, which was cut short when a loud tone blared in her ear, leaving her shaking from the pain it had caused.  Just as she was beginning to recover, the tone repeated.  Tears began to spill down her cheeks from the pain.  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me?” her father said; clearly he hadn’t gone far.  She clenched her teeth and gave him another no.

***

Nadia stood hopefully when she heard footsteps coming toward them.  They had been combing the cave system for hours in three teams, each team taking one of the three main branches.  She and Weiss had finished quickly, as their branch was short, and had gone to help Marshall and Dixon with the middle branch.  That had finished about ten minutes ago and were now only waiting for Sydney and Vaughn, who had reported over comms that they were almost done.

Nadia frowned when they came into view and she saw that their hands were empty.  “Anything?” she asked, hoping that maybe it was small enough that they had put it in one of their bags.

Sydney shook her head, and Nadia could tell that she too was seriously disappointed.  “We made sure we searched everywhere, but unless it’s buried in the rock or something, we couldn’t find it.  Mom didn’t give you any more specific directions than that it was in this cave?”

Nadia shook her head.  “She only told Dad, and he said this was as far as the directions went.”

“So what now?” Weiss asked.

They all stood there thinking for a moment.  “Well, Mom seemed to think that Katya could help find Shostakovich,” Sydney said with a shrug.  “I suppose we could try talking to her, although I doubt she’ll tell us much.”

Vaughn spoke up.  “Well, it’s got to be better than standing around in this cave.”  No one could disagree with that.

***

Andrei watched as Irina continued to sit there, shaking, as the loud noises continued.  He had added flashing lights to the mix, knowing that they would probably still bother her even with her eyes closed, but she had still stubbornly refused to tell him anything.  He felt bad that he had to take these measures, but sometimes a parent had to be tough with his child for her own good.  Once she had the Sphere, he was sure that she would understand, but until then he simply had to be firm with her until she agreed to take him to it.

He yawned and looked at his watch.  She’d held out for eight hours now; quite impressive, and it was time for him to get some sleep.  He flipped the switch that turned off the sounds and lights.  “I’m going to go to bed now, Irina.  Do you want to tell me where it is and get some morphine and a chance to go to bed yourself?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and he suspected that she was considering giving in.  “No,” she said finally.

“All right, then.  I’ll see you in the morning, and perhaps you can have some more of the serum to remind you what we’re working toward.”  He hesitated a moment, then flipped the switch on again.  He would give her another dose of serum in the morning; if she still didn’t tell him tomorrow he would have to give her some rest time, but if she was still strong enough to refuse him the information now, she could handle a night with the noises and lights keeping her headache at peak.  He left the room without looking back.

***

“Hello, Aunt Katya,” Nadia said as she and Sydney entered the interrogation room.  They had decided that it was best to approach their aunt together, with Nadia being nice and Sydney being more hostile.  Katya would know that they were using the “good cop, bad cop” routine, of course, but she still wouldn’t be able to completely suppress her basic psychological response to the trick.

“Why, hello, Nadia, Sydney,” she replied, nodding to each of them.  “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You know what,” Sydney replied harshly.  She placed her hands on the table and leaned forward, invading Katya’s personal space.  “We want to know where to find Andrei Shostakovich.”

Katya managed to look quite authentically confused, Nadia thought.  Whatever else one could say about her, Katya Derevko was a very good spy.  “What makes you think I would know where he is?”

“You’ve been sleeping with him, haven’t you?” Sydney asked, causing Nadia to stare at her in shock; Sydney had neglected to share that little tidbit of information with her.

She looked back at Katya and saw by her dumbfounded look that Sydney’s statement was true.  How on Earth could Sydney know about that?

She wasn’t surprised when Katya didn’t answer the question.  “Where has your mother been taken?” she asked instead.

“Shostakovich has her,” Nadia said.  “That’s why we need to find him.”  She was careful to keep her tone sad and non-confrontational.

Katya rolled her eyes.  “Of course.  That’s the second time he’s gotten her from CIA custody, isn’t it?”

“Well, if you would tell us where to find him, we could arrest him and it wouldn’t be a problem any more,” Sydney said, anger flashing in her eyes.

Katya shrugged.  “All right, I’ll tell you what I know, although I don’t know if it will be very helpful.”  Nadia and Sydney glanced at each other in surprise; they hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

*****

Chapter 98

Irina woke and for a moment was deeply confused.  She was in a small, silent room, dimly lit, and she seemed to be sitting in a chair.  When she tried to lift an arm, she found she was restrained; then she remembered.  Unable to stand the pain in her head anymore, she had slipped into that catatonic state she had found when Katya and Sloane had been drugging her.  From there, she was still aware of the pain, the lights, and the noise, but it was like she was observing it from within a glass case and it couldn’t quite touch her.  At some point, the lights and noise had stopped, and she had dimly heard a male voice, but she had remained sheltered where she was.  Then the voice had stopped, the lights and noise had not returned, and at some point she had fallen asleep.

Her head still hurt quite badly, but it was bearable now, although she was sure it would flare up again easily if the sensory stimuli were re-initiated.  She closed her eyes and relaxed, determined to enjoy the few moments of peace and quiet she did have, but it was over all too soon.  Just as she was beginning to drift into a daze, the lights came up.  A moment later, Irina heard her father’s voice.  “I know you’re awake, Irina.  Open your eyes.”

There was no use denying that she was awake, she supposed – he probably had cameras watching her – but that didn’t mean she was about to open her eyes and face the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights.  Her head had already begun pounding again.  She shook her head instead.

“I’m guessing your head still hurts, then.  Well, I have a syringe of morphine right here.  Would you like that?”  Irina knew that the offer was conditional, so she remained still.  “I’ll give it to you if you tell me where the Sphere is.”  Again, she remained immobile, knowing that it would gain her a few extra seconds before the torture started again.  “All right,” her father said.  “I’m sorry I have to do this.”

Then the noise started again, and Irina couldn’t suppress a scream.  “Stop,” she cried.  “I’ll tell you.”  The noises stopped immediately.  Irina thought frantically: it had been hours, so surely Nadia must have found the Sphere by now if she were going to find it.

“Well?  Where is it?”

“In Italy,” Irina said softly.  She spoke the coordinates quickly.  She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to see the triumphant smile she was sure he was displaying.

Her father repeated them back to her, and she nodded.  “Good girl,” he said.  “And I did promise you a reward.”  The prick of the needle in her arm was quite welcome; after a moment Irina felt the pain recede to a bearable level.  She heard her father’s footsteps leaving the room, but was asleep before the door closed behind him.

***

Several hours later, Irina and her father stood in the cave that she had already seen in her visions.  The buzz of the morphine was gone, and her head was pounding again.  She didn’t dare mention it to her father, though; he had a manic gleam in his eye, and she had a feeling that anything that slowed him down would bring on an outburst far more severe than the one he’d had in the car when she had refused to give him the location of the Sphere.  She doubted he even noticed that someone had already been here, the chalk arrows at each of the branch points showing clearly in the light of his flashlight.  The Sphere was still there, though; she’d realized that as soon as her father woke her up as the plane was landing.  Even from miles away she’d been able to feel its presence; now that she was in the cave, it felt rather like it was singing inside her head.

“Go on now, Irina.  Take me to it,” her father said after they had stood there for a few seconds.  “Remember that Yegor has your mother and your husband back at my estate, and he’ll kill one of them if you cause any problems.”

He didn’t know, of course, that Yegor was probably at that very moment busy having sex with his female hostage.  Irina felt a bit of satisfaction at that, but reminded herself that she needed to keep an eye on him in case his guard went down.  Then she realized that she was already walking into the cave as he followed several paces behind; the Sphere drew her so powerfully that she didn’t need light to find it.

After quite some time, she reached what appeared to be a dead end, but then turned and fit herself into a crevice that ran a few feet before opening into a larger tunnel.  She wouldn’t have found it if she hadn’t known it was there, and she suspected that was where the earlier searchers had been foiled.  She heard her father grunting behind her, probably struggling to fit through the small space, but she didn’t stop.  She was too close for that.

A few twists and turns brought her into the cavern where the Sphere was, and she had to stop and take a few deep breaths; she could feel it just a few feet in front of her, and her heart was beating in time with its pulse.  By the time she had recovered, her father had entered the cavern; she could see by his light that she was standing on the edge of a circle in the floor that appeared to be made of stained glass.  In the center on a pedestal sat the Sphere, looking exactly as it had in her visions: a small black ball that appeared insignificant.  “Is that it?” her father asked.

Irina didn’t answer, but stepped onto the glass.  She could hear it crackling beneath her, but knew it would hold her, so she walked forward steadily.  She reached the pedestal and hesitated for a brief moment, then placed her hands on the Sphere.

***

At Shostakovich’s estate, Elena screamed and fell unconscious.  It took a few moments for Yegor to realize that she had not simply succumbed to the throes of passion.  

Thousands of miles away in LA, Katya was struck with a blinding headache.

Underneath the Los Angeles subway system, Marshall, who was searching the computer for information on the addresses and names Katya had given Sydney and Nadia, looked back when he heard two sharp cries.  He stood, only to be knocked down when Sydney and Nadia both crumpled on top of him.

Andrei watched as Irina stumbled backwards a few steps, the Sphere in her hands.  She looked about to collapse; without thinking, he rushed forward to catch her.  The glass cracked under his weight, then shattered as he reached Irina, and they both fell into the darkness below.

*****

Chapter 99

It took Andrei a few moments to recover his equilibrium after crashing through the glass, and it certainly didn’t help that he had lost his flashlight in the fall and was now in pitch blackness.  He moved each of his limbs and found that he was unhurt except for some small kernels of pain on his face and hands, probably cuts from shards of glass.  “Irina?” he called out.  No response.  “Irina?” he tried again.  He cursed his earlier impulsivity; he should have known the glass wouldn’t hold both of them.  He had been stupid to go out there after her, and now they were both the worse for it.

He dug into his pocket, found his cell phone, and flipped it open.  Thanks to the powerful signal booster it held, he had a signal, so he dialed Yegor. 

“Sir?” Yegor answered.  He sounded slightly out of breath, which surprised Andrei.

“Is everything all right there?” Andrei asked.

“Elena seems to have passed out, sir.  I don’t know why,” Yegor replied.

“When?”

“Just a minute or two ago.  But I can handle things here, sir.  What did you need?”

“I may need you to send someone in after us,” Andrei replied.  He was about to explain the situation when he saw the outline of what might have been his flashlight in the dim glow from the phone.  “Hold on.”  He held up the phone and saw that it was indeed his flashlight sitting about a foot from him.  He reached out and got it and was pleased to see that it turned on.  He put the phone back to his ear.  “We might be all right after all.”  He turned and saw Irina lying on the other side of him, her eyes wide and staring.  For a moment he thought she might be dead, and he felt his stomach flip, but he got hold of himself, reached out to feel her neck, and found that she had a strong pulse.  She must just be catatonic, then, like she had been this morning when he had first checked on her.

“Sir?”  Yegor’s voice reminded him that the man was still waiting for instructions.

“Just a moment.”  Andrei swept the flashlight up and around and saw with dismay that they were about fifteen feet below the level from which they had fallen, in a cylindrical hole with quite smooth sides – obviously not a hole that had evolved naturally.  He was about to tell Yegor that they would indeed need help when he saw the steps climbing up to the surface.  “I think we’ll be all right, Yegor.  I’ll call you if we do need assistance after all.”

“Understood,” Yegor said, and Andrei ended the call.  He flashed his light around again, this time on the ground, and spotted the Sphere lying a few inches from Irina’s hand.  He picked it up with care and placed it in his backpack, then turned to Irina.  He hoped he could get her to walk; he really didn’t want to have to carry her all the way back to the car.

***

Irina came back to herself with a start.  It took her a moment to realize that she was walking through the cave following her father, who was leading her by the hand.  “Stop,” she called out, dizzy and trying to make sense of a jumble of new information in her head.  She released his hand and sank down to sit on the cave floor.

“Irina?  Are you all right?”

She shook her head.  She needed something, badly.  “Water?”

Her father pulled a bottle of water from his pack and handed it to her.  She drained it quickly; she had indeed been thirsty, but it wasn’t what she needed to fill the aching emptiness inside of her.  “I need…”

“Need what?”  He crouched down beside her, his knees popping in complaint.

She shook her head.  “I don’t know,” she said, and found herself on the edge of tears.  The thoughts in her mind were so confused that she could make nothing out of them.  Unbidden, the idea came to her that maybe this was how Elena felt when she was most psychotic.  She seized on that idea as something familiar.  “My mother.  I want my mother.”  She was marginally aware that she sounded childish, but she didn’t care.

Her father first looked confused, and she wondered if he was in as bad a shape as she was, but then his expression changed to one of annoyance.  “She’s not here.”  He got to his feet, apparently with some difficulty, and then held out a hand to her.  She blinked at him.  “I’ll take you to her, all right?”  His exasperation was clear in his voice.

She nodded and stood on her own, ignoring his proferred hand.  “Let’s go, then.”

***

“I don’t know, they both just collapsed,” Marshall said, trying to explain to Vaughn and Weiss, who both seemed very worried.  They were all standing in APO’s medical center, waiting for the doctor to give them some news about Sydney and Nadia.  “I mean, I was doing my thing on the computer, you know, trying to figure out if those names and addresses that Katya Derevko gave them were any good.  I found some things, too, but they’re going to have to be checked out and all…”  He noticed that the two men were giving him rather nasty glares.  “Anyway, they both just kind of fell over, you know?  At first I was afraid it was a gas or something, and I don’t think I breathed for a minute or two, but then I figured out that hey, I’m still okay.  So I called the medical people.  So, you know, just waiting for news now.  Hey, maybe somebody should check my office.  I mean, it’s really weird that they both collapsed at the same time.  I don’t know why I didn’t pass out if it was something in the air, but I guess it should still be checked.”

“Dixon’s handling that,” Vaughn said.  “So you haven’t heard anything about their condition?”

Marshall shrugged.  “They’re alive.  I mean…”  He grinned nervously.  “They’re not dead or anything.  That would be silly, right?”

The doctor came in, and they all looked over at him expectantly; Marshall noticed that Vaughn and Weiss looked distinctly relieved.  “Are they all right?” Weiss asked, stepping forward.

“They seem to be,” the doctor replied.  “They both woke up a few minutes ago, at about the same time.  They don’t know what caused them to black out, but they both said they had bad headaches, so I gave them some pain medicine.  They’re both asleep now, and I’d like to keep them overnight for observation.”

“But what caused them to pass out?” Vaughn asked.

The doctor shrugged.  “No idea.  They’ve both had CT scans, so I’m waiting for the results of those, but even with them I doubt I’ll have an explanation for why two perfectly healthy young women lost consciousness at exactly the same time.”

“Can we see them?” Weiss asked, it being evident that the doctor had no further information to give.

“Of course, but don’t wake them up,” the doctor replied.  “They both need their rest.”

*****

Chapter 100

The door to his cell opened, and Jack looked up to see Yegor come in with a tray.  He’d woken up a few days ago in a hospital bed, restrained at the wrists and ankles; a man in a white coat had told him that he’d suffered a head injury.  He had no memory of any head injury, in fact no memory beyond picking up the phone to call Chase, but he had guessed by the restraints that he wasn’t in a CIA hospital.  He had seen no one but the white coated man, who had ignored his questions about Nadia.  He hadn’t bothered to ask about Sloane.

Earlier today he had been transferred to a regular cell; he supposed that meant he had recovered from the head injury.  He was still having headaches, though not as bad as they’d been at first.  A steel cord now connected a cuff on his ankle to a ring in the wall behind his bed; it allowed him access to the bed and the cell’s bathroom facilities, but not to the door.  He wasn’t particularly surprised to see Yegor now, as he had surmised that it was probably Shostakovich holding him; the only other likely option was some ally of Sloane.  “Where’s Nadia?” he demanded, standing and walking the few steps he was allowed.

“She has been returned to the CIA in exchange for Irina,” Yegor replied evenly, setting the tray down on a small table next to the bed.  “The other man, Arvin Sloane, is in a cell similar to yours.”

Jack filed away Sloane’s location without attaching any emotion to it other than a bit of satisfaction; the bastard deserved all the punishment he could get.  “Was Nadia hurt?”  If he had been injured, that meant they had used force in their attack, so there was a good chance she had been hurt as well.

“She was injured – a broken arm, nothing more,” Yegor answered.  “She received treatment here before she was traded.”

So the doctor had known at least part of Nadia’s status – it was highly unlikely that Shostakovich would have more than one doctor in his employ that he trusted enough to treat imprisoned CIA agents – but had remained silent, probably on Shostakovich’s orders.  He hadn’t thought that his hatred of Shostakovich could grow any deeper, but it did.  “What about Irina?  What is he doing to her?”

“They have gone to retrieve the Sphere.”  Yegor retreated to the door.  “I am afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose any more.  Enjoy your meal.”  He left, closing and locking the heavy door behind him.  Jack sat back down on his bunk, feeling angry, helpless, and entirely uninterested in eating.


***

Irina woke, looked around, and discovered that she was alone.  Grateful for the privacy, she smiled as she lay back down in the reclined chair and closed her eyes again.  She remembered following her father from the cave, her thoughts a whirl of confusion, and then falling asleep during the ride to the plane.  She was on the plane now, judging from the sound of the engines, and things seemed to have sorted themselves out a bit while she slept.  She set about trying to organize the information the Sphere had given her a bit further.

Rambaldi had not created the Sphere of Life.  It was ancient, created millenia before he was born.  He had had visions of the Sphere and found it in that cave, but he had been unable to use it.  He had managed to cross the glass and had tried to pick it up, but he’d been unable to move it from its pedestal.  That ability was given only to the person that the Sphere recognized as being able to control it.  Irina found it laughable now that she’d worried that Sydney might be able to activate the Sphere; it recognized her on a far deeper level than mere blood type.

Milo Rambaldi had indeed been able to foresee the future, but he only saw one of many possible paths, Irina now understood.  He had done his best to mold events to that path through his writings and inventions, and so far he had succeeded.  Irina still wasn’t certain why she could control the Sphere and no one else, but she knew that it was true, and she also knew that she would have never known of the Sphere’s existence if it weren’t for Rambaldi’s writings and the serum he had devised.  But what she did know now was that no matter how well Rambaldi had planned, she was the one in charge now, and she would choose her own destiny.  Rambaldi had limited her options, true, but she was not about to limit herself to the path he had chosen for her.

She must have slept again, because she woke up with a jerk when the plane touched the ground to see her father sitting across from her, apparently studying her.  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Where’s the Sphere?”  She knew perfectly well that it was sitting in the next cabin, carefully cushioned by blankets, and that her father had spent most of the plane trip studying it, but he didn’t need to know how strong her connection to the Sphere was.

“In the next room,” he replied.  “We’re landing in Sevogda; I have a facility here where we can begin the next phase.  I’ll give you access to the Sphere when the time is right.”

Irina nodded, conceding for now.  It didn’t matter whether he built Rambaldi’s devices; she wouldn’t need them.  She would need the Sphere before the final sequence of events unfolded, but she had a feeling she would be able to gain access when she needed it.  All she had to do at the moment was be patient – easy enough, because when all of this was over, she would be dead.

***

Marshall walked into the meeting and smiled when he saw Sydney and Nadia sitting there, looking a bit pale but okay for the most part.  “Hey, you’re feeling better!  I mean, I hope you’re feeling better… you are feeling better, right?”

They both smiled at him, and he widened his grin in return.  “Yes, we’re feeling better,” Sydney said.  “You have some information?”  In Jack’s absence, Sydney seemed to have taken charge, and no one was contesting it.  They’d found out on the way to Italy that APO had officially been taken off of field active status, supposedly pending a review by Director Durham.  They were supposed to be doing desk work in the meantime; Marshall figured the other field agents must have delegated it all to the support staff.  He certainly hadn’t been given any of it, which was fine with him since he had been busy chasing down Shostakovich.

Marshall nodded.  “Katya Derevko gave us – well, you two,” he said, nodding toward Sydney and Nadia, “a lot of information.  Which is really funny, because she never told us anything at all really before.  Crazy that she’d talk to you two so easily.  How’d you do it?”  Raised eyebrows around the table met his question, and he shrugged.  “Anyway, a lot of the addresses she gave us are properties that have sold in the last month or two, um, since she was captured.  I suppose Shostakovich maybe figured she might have talked or something.  I mean, I suppose I would if I were him.  Very spy-like, you know?”  Vaughn cleared his throat loudly.  “So anyway, none of the buildings she gave as his addresses still belong to the person they belonged to before she was captured.  Well, except for the place in Russia that we raided; I mean, technically I suppose that still belongs to him, even though the CIA has it now.”

“So you didn’t find him, then,” Nadia said, looking disappointed.

“Well, not exactly.  But see, what I also did was trace his businesses.  Most of the names Katya gave us are businesses that have shut down lately, again, a smart move.  I mean, this guy’s pretty smart.  But not as smart as he should be.  I mean, it’s the kind of mistake that anybody could make.  I probably would have…”  Dixon coughed loudly, and Marshall frowned.  “You’re not sick, are you?”  Dixon shook his head.  “That’s good.  Hate being sick.  Last week Mitchell had a cold, and that’s why I had to miss out on the big road trip.  Really too bad, that would have been fun.”

“Marshall.  Where’s Shostakovich?” Sydney asked.

“Oh yeah.  Sorry.  So I looked at where all the clients of those closed businesses went, and most of them – well, the businesses were all kind of interconnected, the guy has his own little empire over in Europe.  Pretty awesome, really.”  Marshall noticed a few glares in his direction; damn, he’d gotten off topic again.  “So anyway, a lot of the business seems to have gone to one particular company.  It’s under a name Katya didn’t give us, but it’s a really huge deal in Eastern Europe.  And it’s gotten a lot bigger in the last few weeks, but the headquarters is still in the same place.”  Marshall clicked a button on the table, and a picture of a tall building appeared on the screens around the conference room.  “This is the headquarters, in Sevogda, Russia.”

“You think Shostakovich is there?” Weiss asked incredulously.

Marshall shrugged.  “I think it’s our best shot.  At the very least, if I can hack into the computers we should be able to get some more information.”

Sydney nodded.  “Sounds like our best lead, unless anyone else has something better.”  She looked around, but no one spoke up.  “All right, then.  Let’s go.”


*****

Chapter 101

The door to Irina’s cell was unlocked, and she looked up from her book.  Her father didn’t seem to have a cell dressed up like a normal bedroom here, as he’d had in St. Petersburg, so she had been secured in an ordinary cell for the past three days.  At least her father had been kind enough to supply her with reading material, though she doubted he’d given the same consideration to Jack and Elena, who were presumably still here somewhere.

The door opened to reveal her father, which didn’t surprise her; she hadn’t seen anyone else since they’d gotten back.  He gave her a warm, friendly smile that was totally at odds with the fact that he was keeping her locked in a cell.  “Come with me,” he said.  That did surprise her; was he ready already?  She stood and followed him.

He led her through a series of hallways to a set of stairs; after climbing a flight, he led her to a door which opened to the roof of the building.  She gasped in surprise when she saw an enormous Mueller device towering over her head.  He had erected it incredibly fast; it had taken her nearly two weeks to assemble the one she had made after she’d gathered all the components.  “Is it time, then?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral – she wanted him to believe that she was reconsidering her firm stance against Rambaldi’s plans.

“Almost,” he replied.  “We’ll do it tonight.”  Her stomach lurched, even though she’d spent the past three days preparing herself for this.  “But first there’s something you need to do.”  He led her back downstairs, and she realized as they walked through the hallways that he was taking her to the Sphere.  She’d known the Sphere’s location throughout that time, and she’d had a hard time thinking about anything other than what was going to happen with it so close.

Her father took her into a corridor that looked far more like one in a normal office building than the plain walled prison corridors they’d been in before, but she still saw no one else, either regular workers or guards.  She assumed that he was relying on electronic surveillance, which seemed to be his preferred method anyway.  He unlocked the door to an office and ushered Irina in.  Inside was a desk on which the Sphere sat, resting on a small support stand.  Irina’s gaze flickered from the Sphere to the full-length windows behind the desk; it would be so easy to crash through the glass and end things now rather than endure what was to come.  But no, she had to do this right to make sure that this would never happen again.

She reached out to take the Sphere, but her father inserted himself between her and the desk.  “Not just yet, Irina.  Wouldn’t want you using this on the wrong person.”  He smiled, and she cursed inwardly; he clearly had some idea of what the Sphere could do.  She hadn’t expected to be able to use it on him, anyway, since that would no doubt bring guards down on her and put her in an untenable position, but she’d hoped to be able to choose her own victim.  She suspected, though, that he’d already chosen one for her.

Her father picked up the Sphere carefully, led her back into the prison-like part of the building, then unlocked and opened a door, and Irina saw that she’d been right.  Arvin Sloane sat at the center of the room, his hands and feet bound to his chair.  He smiled when he saw her.  “Irina, how pleasant to see you again,” he said in a warm and friendly tone, apparently taking no notice of the fact that he was bound.  Katya had been right; his sanity was going, or was already gone.

“I believe you know what to do,” her father said from behind her, and she nodded absently, still looking at Sloane.  “Good.”  He walked across the room and placed the Sphere on a small table, in a box to prevent it from rolling off.  He then left the room by another door, leaving Irina alone with Sloane.  In appearances only, of course – the mirror along the far wall right next to the second door no doubt left her father with a full view of the proceedings from behind it.

“Irina, I’ve seen our daughter,” Sloane said.  Irina walked slowly over to the Sphere, ignoring him.  “But Jack seems to think that she’s his daughter.  I wonder where he could have gotten that idea?”

“Shut up,” Irina said.  She reached toward the Sphere but didn’t quite touch it yet.  A few months ago she would have been quite happy at this opportunity, but now it felt hollow.  Arvin Sloane had once been a great man; evil, yes, but he had done remarkable things.  Despite what he’d done to her, Irina couldn’t see this as a fitting end: bound, helpless, and not in his right mind.

But someone had to die today, and if she’d been given any choice in the world of who her victim would be, Sloane would have been second on the list, right after her father.  She placed her hands on the Sphere.

Instantly, she was surrounded by light; her world consisted of nothing but her and the Sphere.  That couldn’t last for long, though; she felt a black and ancient hunger grow between her hands.  Able to think of nothing but satisfying that hunger, she turned to the only source of energy in the room: Sloane.  She saw a brief flash of fear come over his face before she focused her gaze downward, where the light from the Sphere allowed her to see his heart beating in his chest.  She pressed her fingers into the Sphere, and a beam of light flashed out and slashed across his throat, opening a deep cut.  As his blood flowed out, staining his shirt crimson, the Sphere pulled in the life energy that was being released.  Irina hung suspended in that moment for what seemed like forever as the Sphere continuously pulled in energy.   Sloane’s heart began to slow – slower, slower, and then it stopped.  His death sent out a pulse of energy from his body, which the Sphere greedily took in; the force of it knocked Irina to the floor.  The Sphere continued to glow for a moment, and then dimmed as it pulled in its newly obtained energy.  Finally it went black, taking Irina’s consciousness along with it.

*****

Chapter 102

Andrei hadn’t had clear expectations of what he would see when he watched Irina kill Arvin Sloane with the Sphere, but the result was rather underwhelming.  Irina picked up the Sphere and walked around to face Sloane, an odd expression of serenity on her face.  Then Sloane’s head jerked back while Irina simply stood there staring at him.  He glanced at the camera focused on Sloane’s face to see that the man’s throat was bleeding as if it had been cut, which was the most interesting thing that had happened so far, but still nothing that couldn’t have been accomplished just as well with a good knife.  He returned his attention to Irina and saw that she was still standing immobile, still staring.  Then she stumbled backwards and fell to the floor.  He waited a few more seconds, but nothing else happened, so he went into the room.

Sloane was clearly dead, his head tilted back and his eyes wide and staring.  Irina lay unconscious on the floor, the Sphere still in her hands; Andrei took it from her and found it quite warm.  He opened the door to the hallway and found Yegor waiting outside as he’d been told.  Yegor came in and glanced around, taking in Sloane’s dead body without comment.  “Wake Irina up if you can, and take her back to her cell,” Andrei ordered, then left to return the Sphere to his office.

***

“Look,” Nadia said to Weiss as she looked out the window of the airplane as it circled Sevogda prior to landing.  “I think that’s where we need to go.”  Weiss leaned across her and nodded when he saw the large red ball sitting on top of one of the city’s tallest buildings.

“Oh God, not another one of those,” Sydney groaned from the seat behind them.  “You know, I’d be perfectly happy never to see another Mueller device in my life.”

“Have to agree with you there,” Vaughn commented.

The plane landed without incident and the four of them disembarked; as they were walking through the airport, though, Nadia moaned and grabbed her head as sudden pain lanced through it.  She was half aware of Sydney doing the same thing.  The men guided them to the nearest seats, where they sat gratefully.  Nadia leaned forward and took a few deep breaths, fighting nausea, before the pain eased.

She sat up and saw Sydney doing the same thing, rubbing her temples.  “We’ve got to hurry,” Sydney said.

Nadia frowned, suddenly sure that someone had died in the last few moments.  “It might already be too late.”  She looked at Sydney and saw that her sister shared her certainty.  She stood.  “Let’s go.”

***

Irina opened her eyes to see Yegor above her, looking concerned.  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

She sat up carefully, feeling like she’d run a marathon.  “Fine,” she answered.  The room smelled of blood, and she could feel the Sphere traveling away from her.  “I need to talk to him,” she said as she let Yegor help her to her feet.

“Shostakovich?”  She nodded.  “I’ll let him know.  But first, I’ve been instructed to take you back to your cell.”

“All right,” she replied, and let him shepherd her out.

Once Yegor had left her in the cell, locking the door behind him, she sat cross-legged on the bed.  She hadn’t meditated since her time in CIA custody a few months ago, before she had even heard of Andrei Shostakovich – it seemed like it had been years.  But now she needed rest, more for her mind than her body, and there wasn’t time for adequate sleep.  She didn’t know how long her father would be, but there was always time for a little meditation, so she closed her eyes and stilled her mind.

It was about twenty minutes before she heard the click of the door being unlocked.  She came out of her trance and opened her eyes, feeling much refreshed.  “You wanted to see me?” her father asked from the doorway.

She stood.  “I want to talk to Elena and Jack before tonight, privately” she said, meeting his eyes and keeping her face expressionless; she would not beg him.

Her father considered for a moment.  “I assume I can count on your continued cooperation?”  She raised her eyebrows; he really shouldn’t need an answer to that.  He sighed loudly.  “I suppose that could be arranged.”

She frowned.  “Don’t act like you’re doing me a huge favor.  Are you planning to keep me locked up and monitor my every move for the rest of my life?”  The short answer to that was ‘yes’, since the rest of her life would only be a few more hours, but her father didn’t need to know that.  “We were meant to cooperate in this, remember?”  That wasn’t true either; the cooperation had only been envisioned by Rambaldi.  The truth was that she was in charge, and by the end of the night her father would be left with nothing.

Andrei gave her a conciliatory smile.  “Of course.  I have been treating you with a rather heavy hand.  But you have to admit that your behavior has seemed to warrant it.”

She considered a moment, then gave him a guilty smile and a small shrug.  “I am sorry about knocking you out in Egypt.  I see now that discussing my concerns with you would have been a better option.”  A knife across the carotid would have been the best option.  “But you’ve made things quite difficult for me ever since.  Perhaps it’s time for a second chance.”

He smiled broadly, and Irina’s worries that she’d been laying it on too thick were abated – she’d thought he might be expecting something like this, and apparently she’d been right.  “Of course.”  He moved a few steps into the cell and placed a hand on her shoulder.  “I’m glad we had this talk.  Who would you like to talk to first?”

“Elena,” she said, walking toward the door.

He nodded.  “Let me show you where she is.”

*****

Chapter 103

Elena opened her eyes and sat up when she heard someone enter the cell block, hoping it would be Yegor.  He’d managed a few visits over the past few days; in addition to being quite pleasurable, his visits always brought valuable information – although for the past couple of days it had just been that work on the Mueller device was continuing.

She frowned when she saw Shostakovich, but then smiled when she saw Irina trailing behind him.  She grew worried, though, when she saw how somber Irina looked; was it time already?  Yegor had said that the Mueller device was expected to be finished today, so she supposed it was.

Andrei unlocked the cell door without looking at Elena, then said to Irina, “Press the button by the door at the end of the hall when you’re done.”  Irina nodded and slipped into the cell as Andrei left the way he had come.

Once he was gone, Elena stood and hugged Irina, who returned the embrace eagerly.  “It’s almost time, isn’t it?”

Irina nodded.  “Tonight.”  

Elena frowned, sensing that Irina wasn’t fully ready for whatever was about to occur.  She pulled her to the bed.  “Sit down and tell me about it.”  Irina sat, but looked around warily.  “There aren’t any listening devices here,” Elena said with a smile.  “Nadya and Dmitri assured me of it.”  Irina gave Elena the look that she always gave her when she thought Elena was being crazy.  Elena just shrugged; she’d never been able to convince anyone that Nadya and Dmitri were real, and she hadn’t expected it to miraculously happen now.  “Well, anyway, tell me what you can.”

Irina nodded.  “He’s built a large Mueller device on the roof.  The water inside it has an inactive virus.  For the virus to become active, it needs energy from the Sphere.”  She looked down at her hands.  “The Sphere gets energy from a person’s life force, particularly when it bleeds off as a person is dying.  The moment of death releases a tremendous amount of energy.  It can gather more energy if I feel strongly about that person.”  She looked up, and Elena saw what she couldn’t say: the Sphere would need a victim, and it was likely to be either Elena or Jack Bristow.

Elena nodded, gave her a smile, and tried to convey wordlessly that she was willing to die if it was necessary.  “You’ve already used it,” she said.  She’d been certain that the Sphere had been used to kill someone for about half an hour now, ever since she’d been struck with a sudden, severe headache.

“On Arvin Sloane,” Irina replied.  “I assure you the world has suffered no great loss.”  

Elena knew of Irina’s dislike for the man, dating from when she’d come back from America; that dislike could only have deepened while he held her captive.  And yet there was an odd note of regret in her voice when she talked about killing the man, but Elena decided not to pursue it; time was too short.  “But I take it that wasn’t enough energy.”

Irina shook her head.  “It will take the life energy of two people to activate the virus.”  She raised her eyebrows and fixed Elena with a piercing glare; Elena knew that her next words would be important.  “That’s about as much energy as it can hold.”  Her tone was light, as if she were mentioning an unimportant bit of trivia, but Elena nodded seriously, understanding that Irina intended to overload the Sphere rather than using the energy to start a plague.  

But if Elena was the second victim, who would the third be?  Andrei?  God, she hoped so, but she had a sneaking suspicion he’d keep himself out of the danger zone.  He’d make sure that there weren’t any bystanders as well; Irina would be alone with her second victim.  She understood then and barely kept herself from gasping.  She mouthed “you” to Irina, who nodded.  “Are you sure this has to be done?”

Irina gave her a regretful smile.  “It has to be done.”  Elena couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and so they sat in silence for several seconds before Irina stood.  “I should go.  I still have to see Jack.”

“Of course,” Elena replied, hoping she would have a chance to do more than just talk with him.  She stood up and gave Irina another tight hug.  “I love you,” she whispered.

Irina smiled and gave Elena a kiss on the cheek, then walked to the end of the cell block.  As she was leaving, Elena sat back down.  She’d had a lot of time to think over the past few days, and even after talking to Irina she was still sure of her conclusion: it had to be Jack Bristow, not Elena, who was on the roof with Irina tonight.  Rambaldi’s prophecies stated that the Passenger and Chosen One would battle and that only one would survive, and also that Irina was destined to destroy the world, presumably with this virus that would be activated by the Sphere.  Irina’s plan to overload the Sphere seemed sound, but Elena had a feeling that if she were Irina’s victim, something would go wrong and Rambaldi’s plan would be successful, although one of the two would still die.  Jack, on the other hand, was supposed to be the one to stop Irina from carrying out the prophecies.  It seemed quite possible that the only way the prophecy could be averted was if Jack and Irina both died.

Elene suspected that Irina would prefer to have Elena as her victim, simply because then her daughters would not be left parentless – Elena well knew that a parent never wanted to leave even an adult child unprotected.  Andrei would probably also prefer to see Elena dead; although she doubted he felt any true parental feeling toward Irina, he was still clearly angry with Elena for not telling him about their daughter.  It was doubtful that he had any such feud with Jack.  Ultimately, it would be Andrei who decided which of them would be Irina’s victim, so it was Andrei she had to convince to send Jack to his death instead of her.  She smiled; she had an idea how his opinion of her could be shifted.

*****

Chapter 104

Andrei waited outside impatiently while Irina was speaking to Elena.  He wished he could hear their conversation, but this building had been meant for business dealings, not prisoners, and the surveillance was not as extensive as it had been at his St. Petersburg estate – he had visuals on the hallways and cells, and sensors on the electronic cell doors to let him know when they’d been unlocked, but no audio anywhere.  It wouldn’t matter anyway, he supposed; Irina would most likely assume she was being monitored and wouldn’t reveal anything in any case.

He was relieved when he heard Irina’s knock at the door; he had a low tolerance for boredom.  He smiled at Irina as he closed the door behind her.  “I trust things went well?”

“Fine,” Irina replied.  “Now I want to talk to Jack.  I’ll need a while, and I’d prefer somewhere more comfortable than a prison cell.  A room with a double bed would be best.”  

He nodded, getting her meaning and surprised that she was being so blunt about it.  Then again, given her history with the KGB and the lifestyles of her mother and aunt, it was only natural that she’d be rather uninhibited about discussing sex.  “I think that can be arranged.”  He did have several rooms that were set up like hotel rooms for the use of himself and those of his employees that travelled with him; they didn’t lock from the outside, but he could post a guard outside the door for a couple of hours.  “Come with me.”  Elena’s cell was still unlocked, but the door leading from the cell block was locked; he’d come back and lock her cell after he got Irina settled.

***

Jack didn’t bother getting up when Shostakovich entered his cell; he merely glared.  “Come with me,” Shostakovich said, his tone neutral.

“Mind telling me why?” Jack replied.

“Irina wants to see you,” Shostakovich replied.  Jack supposed that was reason enough, so he stood and followed him through a series of hallways until they reached one that looked more like a hotel than a prison.  Shostakovich stopped in front of a door guarded by two men; at his nod, one of the guards opened the door.

Jack went in and saw Irina standing in front of him as the door closed behind him.  “You wanted to talk?”

She stepped forward so that her face was only inches from his.  “No, I don’t particularly want to talk,” she said, and then kissed him.

His arms went around her and he kissed her back, indulging himself for the moment, but when she tugged him toward the bed he stood immobile.  “Irina, what’s going on?”

“We have two hours,” Irina said, skirting his question.  “Indulge me, and then we’ll talk.”  Jack shook his head and stood his ground, even though his desire for her was growing; surely sex couldn’t be the only reason she’d gone through the trouble of getting him here.  She sighed loudly, and he could see the frustration in her eyes.  “This may be the last time we’ll be together.”

“That’s always true.”

She came back to him, embraced him, and whispered in his ear, “I promise I’ll tell you everything later.  But he might be watching us right now.”

That did make tactical sense.  And tactics was all it was, he told himself as she kissed him again while running her hands down his body, skimming over all the right places.  When she pulled him to the bed this time, he went willingly.

***

After getting Jack into the room with Irina, Andrei almost went back to his office before he remembered that Elena’s cell was still unlocked.  It probably wouldn’t hurt anything to leave it unlocked for the few hours until it was time to take her to the roof, but Andrei hated leaving anything undone, so he changed direction and headed for her cell.

He was hoping she would ignore him as she had when he brought Irina in, so he was disappointed when Elena came up to the bars as Andrei approached.  “It took you long enough,” she said with a smile as he approached.  “I was starting to think you were planning to let me go.”

Since she wasn’t actually being hostile at the moment, he returned the smile.  “You know I can’t do that.  I do still need you around to keep Irina in line.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “Irina seems to be staying ‘in line’, as you put it, all by herself.  You don’t need me for that.  You need me as a sacrifice for the Sphere.”

Andrei knew his shock showed, but he couldn’t help it; he hadn’t expected Irina to know about the coming sacrifice, much less to inform the victim.  “Irina told you that?”

Elena shrugged.  “She confirmed what I already suspected.  Why else would you be keeping me here?  You already have Jack Bristow to keep her in line.”  She tilted her head to the side.  “What I don’t understand is why you’re holding him at all.  Both you and Irina have reasons to prefer me as the victim, so why are you holding on to him?”

Andrei had never even considered letting Bristow go; he’d suspected that Irina would want him around for fun sooner or later.  But he was surprised to learn that Irina had made the same choice of victim he had; he would have thought she’d choose her mother to live over her husband.  “He knows too much,” he said in response to Elena’s question.

“So are you going to keep him for the rest of his life?”

Andrei shook his head.  “After tonight, it won’t matter.”

“I see.”  Elena’s expression turned thoughtful, and Andrei reached out to lock the cell door.  “Wait,” she said, and he couldn’t have explained why he halted.  “It seems I’m going to die tonight, and it would be a shame to end my life without a little fun first.”  He looked at her in shock – the last thing he had expected was for her to come on to him.  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in helping me with that bit of fun?  For old times’ sake?”

He swallowed hard, suddenly aroused.  Why not, he rationalized.  After all, she was still a very attractive woman.  “That sounds acceptable,” he said, holding out a hand to her.  “Come with me.”  As he took her to his bedroom, he thought that maybe Bristow would be a more appropriate sacrifice.  After all, the more conflicted Irina was about what she was going to do, the more power the death should theoretically provide.  And Rambaldi had written that Irina would be conflicted about making the sacrifice, and that coming through that conflict would be what brought her into full concordance with Rambaldi’s plans; if she was already decided about sacrificing Elena, that conflict wouldn’t be there.  And, he thought as he and Elena shared a smile, if she continued to be in this kind of mood, he wouldn’t mind keeping her around instead.

*****

Chapter 105

“Have I mentioned lately that I love you?” Irina murmured as they lay together on the bed amidst tangled sheets.

“Mmm,” Jack murmured into her neck.

Irina hadn’t failed to notice that Jack continued not to respond to her words in kind, but she didn’t intend to press the matter; with Jack, actions always spoke louder and more often than words.  And his actions over the past half hour had told her everything she needed to know.  Sated now, all she wanted to do was take a nice long nap here in Jack’s arms, but there was too much they needed to discuss.  “We need to talk.”

“Yes, we do,” he replied, then said nothing for a moment.  Irina was about to start talking when Jack said, “He has the Sphere?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Irina murmured.  “And he’s planning to start the plague tonight.”

Jack shifted slightly so that his mouth was right next to her ear.  “Have you figured out how to stop him?” he murmured in such a low voice that Irina doubted even the most sensitive microphones would be able to pick up his words.  She nodded.  He waited a moment, then asked, “So how are you going to do it?”  His tone was rather annoyed.

Irina had imagined over the past few days how Jack might react when she told him of her upcoming death.  Although she could predict many aspects of his behavior, the one aspect she had trouble with was how he would react to her.  He did love her in a way – it wasn’t the pure and simple love he’d felt for Laura, but it was strong and deep, something she doubted he would ever be able to uproot.  Mingled with that love was anger, rooted just as deeply, at all she’d done to him.  The two emotions warred within him constantly; lately he had kept the anger down because she’d needed to be taken care of, but she didn’t know when it would surface.  Her deepest fear was that he would greet the news of her upcoming death with relief; he wouldn’t say so, of course, but she would know.  She considered for a moment exactly what to tell him.  “Sloane is dead,” she said finally.  He pulled away and stared at her, his shock clearly displayed.  “I killed him.”

“A test of the plague?”

“Not exactly.”  She could see that he wanted to ask more, but he held back and waited for her to continue.  “Nadia’s been immunized against the virus, supposedly, but Sydney hasn’t.  I won’t let that plague be unleashed.”

“Of course not.”  Jack studied her closely.  “But how are you going to stop it?”

“I control the Sphere, and the Sphere is absolutely required to release the plague.  I wish I could just refuse to use it, but I can’t.”  Jack opened his mouth, and Irina placed a finger over his lips.  “It’s not just because of my father’s threats.  The Sphere is ancient, and far older than Rambaldi.  The Sphere and I cannot coexist without causing enormous destruction.”

Jack stared at her.  “You’re planning to kill yourself?”  Her silence was all the response he needed.  “Irina, there must be another way.”

She shook her head; she had thought through this over and over, and she knew there was no other choice.  In her hands, the Sphere held tremendous power; she could probably avoid using it now without ending her life, but eventually she would be tempted to use it again.  She nominally controlled it, but its hunger to destroy was powerful; she wouldn’t be able to resist forever.  She had to die.

It would be possible for her to only kill herself, of course, to avoid taking someone she loved with her.  But she was not the first with the ability to control the Sphere, and she wouldn’t be the last; it was in her blood, and someday someone else would be born who could use it – quite likely her descendant.  Not her daughter, not her granddaughter, probably not her great-granddaughter, but it would indeed happen, and she didn’t want her current dilemma to be faced by even some nameless, faceless descendant.  She had to end this now.

Jack took her hand and stroked it gently, and she locked eyes with him.  “I have to do this, Jack.  I’ve tried to think of another option, but there isn’t one.”  She moved closer and kissed him gently, then lay her cheek against his.  “I think I can get you out of here.  I might have to promise Yegor you’ll give him some money.  Is that all right?”  She felt his nod against her face.  “Take care of our girls.  Tell them I love them.”  Her eyes were moist, but she refused to let the tears fall.

Jack remained still and silent, so she pulled back to look at him and was surprised to see unshed tears in his eyes as well.  They stared at each other for a long moment; he seemed to be considering whether to say something.  Finally he spoke.  “Irina… I love you.  I don’t know why, and sometimes it would be easier to hate you, but… I’ll miss you.  And I know Sydney and Nadia will too.”

She swallowed hard through the lump that had appeared in her throat.  She’d danced with death more times than she could count in her life, but never had it felt like she would be leaving so much – so many – behind.  She frowned; she couldn’t let her resolve falter now.  She untangled herself from Jack, who watched her in surprise and confusion.  Getting out of bed, she began to gather her scattered clothes and put them on.  When she was dressed, she turned in Jack’s direction and murmured without looking at him, “I have to go.”  She wanted desperately to look into his eyes, to kiss him one last time, but she couldn’t do it; she couldn’t afford to indulge in emotion any more if she wanted to do what needed to be done.  She left the room, closed the door behind her, and said to the guards, “I need to speak to Yegor.”

*****

Chapter 106

Sydney paced quickly, as impatient as she had ever been.  Nadia paced beside her, just as nervous.  Weiss and Vaughn sat on the bed, watching them with annoyance.  They had rented a hotel room directly across the street from Shostakovich’s headquarters, close enough that Marshall, still in Los Angeles, could tap into Shostakovich’s network through the laptop they had brought with them.  The network was, unsurprisingly, heavily encrypted, and there was nothing for the rest of them to do but wait while Marshall broke through it.

“It’s getting dark,” Sydney observed as she looked out the window at the building that hopefully contained her parents.  “Can’t you go any faster?”

“Well, yeah, I could,” Marshall said, and Sydney would have throttled him if he hadn’t been thousands of miles away.  Then he added, “But then I might make a mistake and get noticed, and then he’d probably put the network and probably the whole building into lockdown, and then you guys wouldn’t be able to get in at all.  So I’m being careful.”  Sydney didn’t really have a response for that, so she merely let out a loud sigh.

Nadia came up beside her and looked out the window as well.  She gazed upward, where the red light from the Mueller device could be seen.  “Time is running out.”  Sydney could only nod.

***

Irina couldn’t help but stare at the glowing red Mueller device as she stepped onto the roof; silhouetted against the night, it was even more striking than it had been during the day.  And yet the power it contained was much less than that contained in a much smaller Sphere, currently resting on the other side of the Mueller device.

“Everything you need should be here,” her father said from behind her.  “I’ll see you on the other side.”

She turned to face him.  “You don’t want to stay and watch?”  She kept her tone light; the chance that he’d take the bait was virtually nil, but it was worth a shot.

He smiled.  “I would love to, Irina, but I have a suspicion that wouldn’t be a wise decision.”  He placed a hand on her shoulder.  “I’m proud of you, my dear.”  She pulled away from him with a jerk and walked toward the Mueller device.  Behind her she heard a loud sigh, and then the sound of the door opening and closing.  Well, she thought as she circled the device, that was one person she was glad she’d never have to see again.

She came around the curve of the Mueller device and saw the Sphere, then came to a standstill a few steps later.  “No,” she murmured.  Standing a few feet from where the Sphere sat on a table was Jack, his arms roped around a pole at his back.  She hurried to him and began undoing the complicated knots holding his arms in place.  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re not glad to see me, after our earlier parting,” Jack answered.  “You don’t want an audience while you kill yourself?”  Irina finished unknotting the ropes and slipped them off; Jack turned around to face her as he rubbed his arms.

She couldn’t look him in the eye, so she looked past him toward the glowing red ball that filled her vision.  “It’s not just me.”  She stole a quick glance at his face and saw his confusion.  “Elena and I have been fighting against Rambaldi’s vision for our family for years.  She was ready for this.”

“Wait.”  Jack placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled so that she was facing him.  “You were going to kill Elena, too?”  Irina nodded.  “And I suppose now you want to kill me.”

She jerked away from him and looked at the Mueller device again.  “I don’t want to kill you.  I don’t want to kill anyone.”  She turned further to look at the Sphere.  “Except maybe my father.  I wouldn’t have any qualms about killing him at the moment.”  The Sphere had been singing softly to her since the moment she’d stepped on the roof, and she’d been ignoring it, but now that her emotions had turned to anger she felt the Sphere’s bloodlust come over her as powerfully as if it were her own.  She took a step forward.  Jack’s hand fell on her shoulder, and she barely resisted the urge to throw him to the ground.  With the small part of her that was still sane, she managed to say, “Jack, run.  Don’t let me catch you.”  There was no way she could stop herself from using the Sphere now – she was continuing to take slow steps forward despite trying to hold herself back with every ounce of willpower she had – but she wouldn’t take Jack with her.  He didn’t understand, he wasn’t willing, and he had to take care of their daughters.  Her future descendant, the unthought-of child who would someday be able to use this power, would have to fend for herself.

Jack’s hand left her shoulder, and she heard his footsteps retreating; with a sigh of relief, she let her body take the last few steps without hindrance.  She was shaking, whether with anticipation or fear she couldn’t say, as she placed her hands on the Sphere.  Its power surged through her once again as the world lit up, the red from the Mueller device paling in the wash of pure white light from the Sphere.  She spun around, hungry and looking for something alive on which to feed, but there was no one there.  She let out a primal cry of rage.  Someone had been here, someone whose life force would have been absolutely delicious and totally satisfying, but he was gone.  She began to walk stealthily around the Mueller device, stalking him, but then stopped.  It was Jack, she reminded herself.  She couldn’t devour Jack, he still had something to do.  But there was someone on this roof who was almost finished, who had only one more small task to carry out.

She screamed in mingled pain and joy as she focused the light of the Sphere and ripped a gash down the inside of her forearm.  She licked up the energy that was released as the blood flowed, and it didn’t take much thought to create a similar cut in her other arm.  But somehow, as she fed, she was growing weaker.  How could that be?  She fell to her knees as her legs gave out, but held tight to the Sphere despite dizziness and confusion.  The light from the Sphere seemed different now, garish and somehow menacing, and it seemed to be fading.  But she had to hold on, she couldn’t possibly let go.

Irina’s head had fallen to her chest, but a shout – her name – made her lift it up.  Jack was coming toward her, running.  No, she thought, go back, but her lips wouldn’t form the words.  The world was almost black now; the only sight left to her was a hazy circle focused on Jack’s face.  But then he touched the Sphere, and the light burst forth once again.

*****

Chapter 107

When Marshall finally announced that he was done, Sydney and Nadia practically sprinted out the hotel room door.  Sydney noticed after a few moments that Vaughn and Weiss were having trouble keeping up, but she didn’t care; she’d had a feeling of impending doom for hours now, and it was an incredible relief to finally be able to do something.

“The surveillance here isn’t as extensive as it was at his other place,” Marshall said in her ear as she and Nadia hurried down the stairs.

“So you don’t see any of the targets?” Sydney asked.

“No, don’t see them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.  I mean, they could be – wait a minute.”  Sydney and Nadia reached the bottom of the steps and hurried through the hotel lobby.  “I found somebody!”

“Who?” Sydney and Nadia asked in unison, causing the few people in the lobby to stare at them in confusion.

“Elena.  Derevko, Dvortetsky, whatever her last name is.  Wow, didn’t expect to see her here.  I mean, we haven’t heard from her in a while.”

“So she’s working with Shostakovich?”  Sydney supposed that didn’t really surprise her; she’d seemed nice, but she was, after all, a Derevko.

“I kinda doubt it.  If she is I guess she’s not doing a good job.  Uh, she’s in a cell, is what I mean.”

They were in the street now, approaching Shostakovich’s building, so Sydney changed the subject.  “Can you get us in?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.  You can just walk on into the lobby.  I’ve got the video on a loop.  It’s nice and empty, since it’s closed.”  They found the lobby doors locked; it took Sydney only a few seconds to pick the lock.  “Oh, wow, there you are,” came Marshall’s voice.  “That was fast.  Didn’t even get a chance to tell you that the doors aren’t alarmed.  Seems like he trusts his video…”

“Marshall.  What now?” Sydney asked, impatient.  Weiss and Vaughn burst through the doors behind them, both out of breath; Weiss was sweating.

“Oh.  Elevators – should be off to the right.  I opened one of the doors.”

The four of them hurried through the lobby and onto the elevator, then waited – Sydney and Nadia with much impatience – until the door closed and the elevator began to rise.  It carried them to the top floor, where they got off and, following Marshall’s directions, made their way to a locked door that required a key card.  Marshall had that one unlocked in seconds, and they hurried in to find Elena in one of the cells.  She looked surprised to see them, but said quite calmly, “Hello, girls.  These must be your boyfriends.”

“Where are our parents?  Where’s Shostakovich?” Nadia asked.

“Oh, they’re probably up on the roof.”  She frowned.  “I’m pretty sure things aren’t quite finished yet.”

***

As soon as he’d locked the door behind Irina, Andrei hurried down the stairs to the small monitoring room that he had set up.  Irina had been right – he did want to watch, so he’d placed enough cameras on the ledge that surrounded the roof to allow him a complete view of what was going on.  He wished he had sound, but the roof of a twenty story building wasn’t the best place for sensitive microphones.

His excitement grew as he watched Irina stop short when she saw Jack, but then he frowned in confusion when she began to untie him; that wasn’t how it was supposed to go.  He was almost ready to go up there and interfere, but he reminded himself that Irina had to do this in her own way – not to mention that he’d be in some serious danger if he went up there.  They talked, and then finally Irina approached the Sphere.  But then Bristow started to back away as Irina reached out for the Sphere.  She held it for a moment, and then Andrei was distracted by screams from the hallway – female, and more than one by the sound of it.  Damn it, he should have posted a guard out there.  He almost stayed put, but what if they went up to the roof?  He pulled his gun from its holster – he hadn’t been completely unprepared for the possibility of disruption – and stepped into the hallway.  He blinked in surprise at the scene in front of him: three women kneeling on the floor, holding their heads, while two men stood there looking bewildered.  He stepped past one of the women and raised his gun, intending to knock out the man in front of him, when something hard hit him on the side of the head.  The world went black.

***

Elena looked up when a loud “thump” distracted her from the pain in her head to see Nadia holding up her casted arm; she watched as Andrei crumpled to the ground.  “See, I told you this thing would be more of a help than a hindrance,” Nadia said, but her voice was shaky and tears were leaking from her eyes – she must be in as much pain as Elena.

Sydney stood, one hand to her head, and went to the door through which Andrei had apparently come.  Her eyes widened.  “Oh my God,” she whispered.  She turned to the others.  “We have to hurry.  Mom’s dying.”

“Of course she is,” Elena replied, getting to her feet with some help from the wall.  “She has to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nadia snapped.  “Let’s go.”

Sydney nodded and turned to continue to the roof, but then looked back.  “Weiss, Vaughn, don’t let him get away,” she said, nodding to Andrei.

“You won’t need help?” asked one of the men, the thinner, lighter one.  Dmitri whispered to her that he was called Vaughn.

Sydney shook her head, and Elena stepped forward as an odd sort of certainty came to her.  “No,” she said, her voice firm and clear.  “This is something that only the three of us can do.”  Sydney and Nadia blinked at her in confusion, but she merely smiled as she walked toward the stairs leading to the roof.  She knew what to do now.

*****

Chapter 108

Jack jerked back with a hiss of pain as he felt a line of fire race across his chest.  Irina’s voice had been so strange, so cold when she’d told him to run that he hadn’t known what else to do but get away from her.  He’d hurried around the Mueller device to try to get off the roof, but the door was locked, and he didn’t have anything with him with which to pick the lock.  He’d waited a few minutes, expecting that if Irina was still dangerous she’d come hunting him, but when she hadn’t appeared he’d gone back to find out what was going on.  He’d found her kneeling in a puddle of blood, shaking and pale as a ghost, but still holding tight to the Sphere.  He’d gone to her to take it from her when that sharp pain had hit.  He looked down to see a neat tear diagonally through his shirt.  Not a bad cut, he thought, wouldn’t even need stitches – but then he felt another line of pain across his thigh.  He stared at Irina and the Sphere, confused.  The Sphere seemed to be glowing, but that was impossible.

Jack reached out for the Sphere, but another cut opened on his hand.  “Jack,” Irina said in a harsh whisper, looking up.  Her eyes were bloodshot.  She was trembling and she had a white-knuckled grip on the Sphere.  “It knows you now.  I’m sorry.  Trying…”  Then she cried out as Jack felt another lance of pain down his cheek.

“Irina.”  He knelt beside her, ignoring what now felt like dozens of bee stings all over his body.  “Let go of the Sphere.  Give it to me.”

“I can’t.”  She looked up, past his shoulder, and her eyes widened.  “No!”

Jack glanced back to see three figures running toward them, Sydney in the lead.  “Dad,” she called out.  Nadia was right behind her, and bringing up the rear was Elena.  “You’re bleeding,” Sydney said as she reached him.

“Mom?” Nadia said as she reached the group, and Jack turned to see that Irina had curled into the fetal position, the Sphere in the middle.  “What’s going on?” she asked Jack.

“We have to overload it,” Elena said as she reached the group.  The rest of them blinked at her in confusion, and she sighed.  “It can only hold so much energy.  Look how brightly it’s glowing already.”  Jack looked back at the Sphere; he still wasn’t ready to admit that it was glowing at all.  But Sydney and Nadia nodded, seemingly unperturbed.

“But how do we give it energy?”  Sydney asked.

“Don’t be silly.  Blood, of course,” Elena answered.  She reached out and touched the Sphere, and Jack thought he saw a tendril of light lance out from the Sphere to her arm.  When it pulled away, she had a tear in her shirt and a line of blood down her bicep.  “Come on, girls, touch it if you want to have your parents alive when the night is over.”  That didn’t make any sense to Jack, but as he was rather lightheaded and probably had at least a hundred small cuts all over his body, he was pretty sure he was hallucinating all this anyway.

Sydney and Nadia looked at each other, then bent down and gingerly reached out to touch the Sphere.  Again he saw light flashing out at them, and they both winced.

Nothing happened for a minute or two, and then suddenly Irina sat up and stared at the four of them.  “No,” she whispered.  “Still not enough.”  Still maintaining a death grip on the Sphere, she stood and began backing up toward the edge of the roof.  “It wants to go into there,” she said, jerking her chin toward the Mueller device.  “Can’t let that happen.”  She reached the edge and climbed up onto the ledge.  “Someone still has to die.”

Jack and the others had stood while she spoke and followed her to the edge of the roof; now they stood ringed below her.  “Irina, you don’t have to do this,” Jack said.  His voice sounded hollow and far away even to him.

“Yes, I do,” Irina replied, and then suddenly Elena was on the ledge beside her, grabbing the Sphere.

“Hold her,” Elena said as she and Irina stood there, each tugging at the Sphere.  Sydney and Nadia wrapped their arms around Irina’s legs as Elena jerked the Sphere from her.

As the Sphere left Irina’s hands, Jack felt and heard what seemed to be an explosion.  Sydney and Nadia were knocked backward, pulling Irina with them, and they fell in a heap on the roof surface.  Elena, who held the Sphere between herself and the Mueller device, was also knocked backwards, but in her case there was only empty air behind her.  Jack made a grab for her, but had to fight the Sphere’s shock wave himself; he reached the ledge a second too late to catch her.  He steeled himself, then looked over the edge to see her crumpled on the pavement far below.  Then he heard a sound that made him forget about her: the whine of the Mueller device was going down in pitch.  “We’ve got to go,” he said to Sydney and Nadia, who had untangled themselves and were getting to their feet.

Sydney glanced over at the Mueller device.  “Oh, God,” she murmured.

***

“So we’re just supposed to wait here, huh?” Weiss asked after he and Vaughn had been standing there watching over the unconscious Shostakovich for a minute or two.

“I guess,” Vaughn replied.

They stood there for another minute before Shostakovich moaned.  As he opened his eyes, Weiss and Vaughn pulled him roughly to his feet.  He tried for a moment to fight them, and then alarms went off.  Vaughn and Weiss looked at each other, and the door at the bottom of the steps burst open and Nadia burst through, followed almost immediately by Sydney.  “We’ve got to get out of here now!” Sydney cried.

Then Jack came through the door as well, carrying a body thrown over his shoulder.  Elena?  No, this one had dark hair.  Must be Irina, then.  “Where’s Elena?” Vaughn asked.

“Dead,” Jack replied tersely.  “Let’s go.”

*****

Chapter 109

The ride down in the elevator was tense, all of them afraid that at any moment they would be crushed by the weight of the water above them.  Sydney had explained to Nadia and Weiss while they waited in the hotel room that the Mueller device somehow held its incredible mass of water suspended, but if Jack and Sydney were right that the device was about to shut down, that weight was about to pour down onto the roof; Nadia wasn’t sure if the building could take the weight.

She was right – as the elevator doors opened on the first floor, they heard a groaning noise from above them, the sound of metal buckling.  “What have you done?” Shostakovich asked as they ran through the lobby; at least he had enough good sense not to slow them down.  “You’ve ruined everything!”

“If I have to knock you out, I doubt any of us feel like carrying you,” Jack growled.   Shostakovich opened his mouth, then shut it again without saying anything.

Water was running down the sides of the building, forming a waterfall; one by one, they all ducked their heads and burst through it into the street.  A dozen or so people stood outside staring, either at the top of the building, where the red glow was now absent, at the water pouring down, or at the body lying on the sidewalk.  Nadia glanced over at it, then looked again with a frown: two children were standing over Elena’s body, seemingly oblivious to the water rushing over their shoes.  “Wait,” she said to the others, who were crossing the street toward the hotel.  “We have to get those children away from there.”

Sydney came to her side immediately.  “What are they doing?”

“What children?”  Weiss asked, looking puzzled.

Ignoring him, Nadia went to the children, who were standing by Elena’s head, and crouched down.  She avoided looking at Elena, whose face was curiously flattened – the back of her skull had probably been smashed against the concrete.  “You shouldn’t stay here,” she said to the children.  “It’s not safe.”

“It’s all right,” the young boy said.  “It won’t get any worse than this.  The building will stand.”  There was a groan from above, and then a crash; Nadia looked up to see the top of the building drop downward a few feet.  The waterfall down the side, which had been tapering off, suddenly sped up again, probably because all the water that had pooled on the now collapsed top floor had been squeezed out.

“How do you know that?”  Sydney asked.

The little girl stepped forward and looked past Nadia to where Jack stood, Irina still over his shoulder.  “Bring her here,” she said.

“I must be hallucinating again,” Jack muttered, but came forward anyway.  The girl touched Irina’s foot, which elicited a moan.

Without quite knowing why, Nadia helped Sydney get their mother down and helped her stand; her eyes were open and she was holding up part of her weight, but she wasn’t at all steady, and she was incredibly pale.  “You must be Nadya,” she whispered, clearly directing it at the little girl.

There was the sound of a scuffle from behind them; Nadia half turned to see Shostakovich tackled by Weiss and Vaughn as he tried to get away.  “Take him to the hotel,” Jack said.

“Fine with me, you’re all crazy anyway,” Shostakovich huffed.  Vaughn and Weiss pulled him away, and Nadia returned her attention to the children, whom she was beginning to suspect weren’t quite in the physical world.

“There’s still energy in the Sphere,” the boy said, pointing to where it lay cradled in Elena’s arms.  “You can use it.”

Irina shook her head weakly.  “It’s dead.  I can’t feel it anymore.”

“No one can put energy into it again,” said the little girl, the other Nadya, “but you can still use what’s there.  You’re using it now without realizing it.  You’d be dead by now without it.”

Irina nodded, but looked unhappy about it.  “Sydney, can you get it for me?”  Sydney nodded and went forward to pluck it from Elena’s arms.

“Wait,” Nadia said as Sydney was about to hand it to their mother.  “Are you sure we should use it?  Isn’t that thing dangerous?”

“The Sphere can heal as well as harm,” the boy said.  “It is the Sphere of Life after all, not the Sphere of Death.  Things just got a bit muddled.”

Irina looked curiously at the children.  “How much energy is in that thing?”  Nadia saw her glance toward Elena’s body, and knew what she was thinking.

The girl smiled sadly.  “What you’re thinking can’t be done.  You might be able to reanimate the body, but her soul is gone.”

“All right.”  Irina reached out and took the Sphere from Sydney, and Nadia saw it light up – not the intense glow it had had on the roof, but enough for her to see the small ball of energy that was still inside it.  Irina turned toward Jack.  “Jack, I hurt you the worst.”

“Mom, you’re still bleeding,” Sydney said.  “We’re not going to have you heal us and then fall down dead as soon as that thing isn’t feeding you energy.”

“She’s right.  Heal yourself first,” the boy said.  “There has already been too much death today.”

Irina nodded.  She held out her arm, revealing a gaping and still bleeding wound, and light flashed to it from the Sphere.  When it withdrew, there was only a thin pink line.  She repeated on the other arm, then turned back to Jack, but he shook his head.  “The girls first.”

Irina turned first to Sydney, and Nadia saw light cascade down her body from her head to her toes; all the small cuts healed instantly.  Irina turned to Nadia next, and for a moment she felt encased in warmth.  There was a sharp pain in her broken right wrist, and then that was gone, along with the dull ache that had been present since she broke it.  Then Irina turned to Jack; again, the light started at his head, but then it faded and finally died as it reached his waist.  As the light went out, Irina collapsed; Sydney and Nadia supported her until Jack lifted her in his arms again.  They looked back toward the children, but the boy and girl were fading, growing more and more transparent until they finally dissolved completely.

When they were gone, Sydney looked at the Sphere, which Nadia now held, and then back where the children had been.  “Did we all just go completely insane?”

*****

Chapter 110

As they crossed the street to the hotel, Sydney and Nadia filled Jack in on the events that had taken place since he’d been captured, including their belief that someone highly placed in the CIA was working for Shostakovich.  “That does complicate things,” Jack said.  He’d been planning to call for prisoner transport for Shostakovich and a medical evacuation for Irina, but clearly that wouldn’t work.  They would have to get Shostakovich to tell them who his lackey was before they could safely turn over either one of them.  “We’ll need to lay low for a little while, until we can find out who Shostakovich’s mole is.  The first step is to get another hotel room so that we can establish a proper scene for interrogation.”

Sydney nodded.  “I’ll do that, but in the meantime you should get Mom warm.”  She veered off to the front desk while Jack and Nadia continued to the elevators.

Jack hoped they wouldn’t have to share the elevator with anyone – Irina’s unconsciousness would draw attention – and so he was glad to see it empty when the doors opened.  Nadia hit the button for the twelfth floor, the hotel’s top floor, and the doors closed.  “Do you think she’ll be all right?” Nadia asked as the elevators began to rise.

He wasn’t sure what the true answer to Nadia’s question was; what Irina had been through in the last few months was probably enough to push any normal human being into a nervous breakdown.  Physically, though, he was pretty sure she would make a full recovery, so he replied to Nadia, “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

Nadia led him down the hall to a room.  “Where’s Sydney?” Vaughn asked as soon as they entered.  Jack saw that Shostakovich was tied to a chair; the man looked distinctly uncomfortable, which gave Jack some satisfaction.

“She’s getting another room,” Jack answered.

“So we’re staying a while, then,” Weiss said.

“We’re staying until he tells us who at the CIA is in his pocket,” Jack said, jerking his chin at Shostakovich.  He turned to Nadia.  “Let’s get her warm.”

They had just finished covering Irina with blankets when Sydney entered.  “We’ve got the room next door,” she said, holding up a key.

“Good.  Gentlemen, why don’t you take our ‘guest’ to the other room.  I’ll be over shortly.”

Vaughn and Weiss nodded, untied Shostakovich, and marched him out of the room.  Sydney waited until they were gone to ask, “Are you sure Mom will be all right?  Shouldn’t she be in a hospital?”

“Keeping her here is the safest option,” Jack replied.

“But what if she gets worse?  What if she stops breathing?” Sydney demanded.  

Nadia was staying quiet, but Jack could see that she, too, was deeply worried.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and shook Irina’s shoulder.  “Irina?”  She opened her eyes readily.  “How are you feeling?”  She started to sit up, but he pushed her back down; he was pretty sure that she didn’t have enough blood in her body for her to sit up without passing out.  “Just rest.”

She glanced around the room.  “What’s wrong?”

“Sydney thinks I should take you to a hospital.”

Irina shook her head.  “I’ll be fine.”

“Mom, you can’t even walk,” Sydney said.

“That doesn’t mean I’m about to die.”

“Get me the first aid kit,” Jack said.  “You did bring the big one, didn’t you?”  Nadia nodded and brought him a suitcase, which he opened to find full of medical supplies.  “I’m going to put in an IV, all right?” he said to Irina, who nodded.  To reassure Sydney, he said, “That’s all they would do for her in the hospital, anyway, since she can’t get a blood transfusion.”

“Hate hospitals,” Irina murmured, but Jack could see she was about to lose consciousness again.

He had taken Irina’s arm and found a vein, so now he opened an IV start kit and began to clean the skin.  “We’ll wake you up every hour.  If we can’t wake you up, then we’ll take you to a hospital, all right?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured.  Jack looked at Sydney, who nodded.  When he turned back to Irina, her eyes were closed, and he found Sydney’s worry rubbing off on him.  The puddle of her blood on the roof had been quite impressive, after all.

He uncapped the needle and slid it into her arm above the vein he’d found; her eyelids fluttered when the needle pierced her skin, but she didn’t respond otherwise.  He couldn’t find the vein at first and had to move the needle around a bit – probably because her blood volume was so low – but that still drew no response from her.  He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the needle finally slid in; if he hadn’t been able to get the line in he would have had to take her to a hospital, since she obviously wasn’t capable of drinking the volume of fluids she would need to start her recovery.

Jack flushed the line with a syringe of saline, then took one of the bags of saline out of the first aid kit and hooked it to her arm.  The kit only carried two half liter bags of saline, since it was designed only for emergencies in which someone would either be taken to a medical facility or evacuated within a few hours; he would probably need to send someone to the nearest hospital to get some more.  Perhaps Shostakovich would give them the information they needed quickly, but Jack doubted it; besides, he was pretty sure Irina would be displeased with him if he ordered a medical evacuation and she woke up later in some government hospital in shackles.

He turned away from the bed to see Sydney studying the first aid kit.  “What are you looking for?”

“I could give her blood,” Sydney replied.  “We have the same weird blood type, remember?”

“You’ve lost blood, too,” Jack replied.  He didn’t want Sydney putting herself at risk, and knew Irina wouldn’t either.

“Only a little.  I didn’t have much more than scratches,” Sydney answered.  

Jack couldn’t immediately think of how to counter that, so he merely raised his eyebrows, hoping she would back down.  Instead, she gave him a stubborn expression that he recognized well: he wouldn’t convince her to change her mind.  He glanced down at the first aid kit at his feet and realized that he had an out.  “This doesn’t have supplies for donating blood.”

“There’s a hospital a few blocks away.  I’ll go get the supplies.”

“Dad,” Nadia interjected, “Sydney’s fine.  Mom looks like she’s at death’s door, and I don’t think just fluids will be enough.  We don’t have a choice.”

One of the most important tactical skills was knowing when it was time to give up, and it was one that Jack still struggled with, but in this case he could see that his position was untenable.  “All right,” he said, and his daughters gave him relieved smiled.  “But only one unit.  That should be enough to get her in better shape.”  Sydney nodded.  “And try to pick up some more bags of saline while you’re there.”  She nodded again and headed for the door.

*****

Chapter 111

“Mom?”  Irina kept still, not wanting to wake up, but she opened her eyes when someone started shaking her shoulder.  “Just making sure you’re all right,” Nadia said.

Irina still wanted to sleep, but now she became aware that her feet were like blocks of ice; that bit of discomfort was enough to keep her awake.  She looked around to see that she and Nadia were alone in the room.  “Where are the others?”

“Sydney went out to get medical supplies, and Dad’s trying to get Shostakovich to tell him who his mole is in the CIA,” Nadia answered.

“Oh, that’s Bob Durham,” Irina answered.  “My feet are freezing.”  She pulled herself halfway to a sitting position, and then the world went black.

“Mom?  Mom!”  The words seemed to come to her as if down a long tunnel.  The thought “Someone’s upset” filtered through Irina’s mind.  “Please wake up, Mom.”

Nadia.  It was Nadia calling her.  Irina opened her eyes.  “Nadia?”

“Mom.  Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.  What happened?”  Irina was certain she should already know what had just happened, but somehow it seemed to be eluding her.

“You passed out.  Don’t sit up again, okay?  I’m going to go get Dad; he knows more about medical stuff than I do.”  Nadia watched her with a worried expression; to calm her, Irina nodded, although she was still confused, and watched Nadia leave the room.

She was about to go to sleep when her arm began to itch; she reached over to scratch it only to find the itchy spot covered by clear tape, under which was an IV port connected to a line.  She followed the line up to see a bag of clear fluid taped to the wall above the bed.  When had that been put in?  Were Sloane and Katya drugging her again?  She was feeling distinctly hazy.  She unscrewed the line and smiled with satisfaction: no more drugs.  Now she just had to get out of here, wherever “here” was.  Sitting up, she pulled the blankets off, but quickly regretted that, because her feet were freezing.  She started to get up, but got horribly dizzy.  Why was she feeling so strange?  Drugs, she reminded herself.  Someone was drugging her.  She got to her feet with support from the bedside table, despite the fact that the room was spinning.  What was she doing again?  Maybe she was going to get a drink of water; she was awfully thirsty.  She saw a bathroom through an open door a few feet away and took two steps toward it, but then the world was spinning faster and faster and she was falling.

***

“I told you, I don’t have any contacts in the CIA,” Shostakovich said with false bravado.

Jack glared at the man.  He could see the fear in Shostakovich’s eyes, so he doubted it would take long to break him once he actually started hurting him.  Shostakovich was one of those people who truly enjoyed causing pain, who got a kick out of seeing others suffer; that type usually didn’t last long.  It was entirely possible that Jack would even be able to get the information from him without the use of techniques the CIA officially did not allow.

There was a knock on the door; without turning, Jack gestured to Weiss to open it.  Still not looking away from Shostakovich – staring him down was an elementary trick, but one that Jack thought had potential in this case – he said, “Mr. Vaughn, I trust you have the equipment I asked for?”  He had described the items he wanted in detail before he’d sent Vaughn out to get them; he wouldn’t really have much use for six pairs of metal clamps or eight different sizes of knives and cleavers, and he really had no idea what he’d do with a corkscrew, but they would make an impressive display, and he had the added bonus of seeing Shostakovich sweat while the items were obtained.

“Nadia!” Shostakovich cried out; Jack was surprised into breaking eye contact and turned to see that it was indeed Nadia standing there.  “You have to help me.  He’s threatening to do terrible things to me, things I know the CIA wouldn’t sanction.”

Nadia raised her eyebrows and looked away from Shostakovich, focusing on Jack.  “I need your help,” she said simply.  

Immediately concerned, as something must be wrong with Irina, he headed for the door.  “When Vaughn gets back, help him lay everything out for me,” he said to Weiss, loudly enough for Shostakovich to hear.  “But don’t do anything until I get back.”  Anticipation of torture was, after all, the most important part of an interrogation.  Weiss nodded, expressionless; Jack had been surprised how effectively he filled the “heartless minion” role.  He would have to put Weiss’s acting skills to good use in the future.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked as soon as Weiss had closed the door behind them.  “You couldn’t wake her up?”

“I woke her up, but then she sat up and passed out,” Nadia said as she unlocked the next door.  “She seemed really out of it before and after, too.”  She opened the door, and Jack felt his heart rate speed up as he saw Irina sprawled out on the floor.  “Oh, God,” Nadia said.  “I guess I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

Jack crossed the room as he studied how Irina was lying; obviously she’d fallen, but he was checking to see if she was in a position that suggested she might have hurt herself on the way down.  She was lying near the foot of the bed, and it didn’t appear that any other furniture was near.  He checked her pulse and breathing; both seemed fine.  “Let’s get her back on the bed.”  He and Nadia lifted her together and then put her down on the bed and covered her with blankets again.

“Looks like she pulled her IV line out,” Nadia said as they were tucking the blankets around her arm.

Jack looked and saw that she was correct.  “At least she didn’t pull out the port.”  He went to the first aid kit and got another syringe of saline to flush the line again, then hooked up the IV line again.  “And her circulation’s improving,” he added as he noticed that her fingernails weren’t quite as blue as they had been.  “She’s going to be all right.  The fact that she made it to the end of the bed is evidence that she’s getting better.”  Nadia nodded, but still looked deeply worried.  “Will you be all right if I go back in the other room?  If you need me again, you can call Weiss’s cell phone; I don’t think she should be left alone.”

“Oh,” Nadia said, her face brightening.  “Mom knows who it is.  The CIA mole, I mean.  She said it’s Bob Durham.”

“Durham?  Good God,” Jack said, shocked that someone so high up in the CIA had been corrupted.  “No wonder Shostakovich had such an easy time getting your mother back.”  He thought quickly; he’d been planning to simply expose Shostakovich’s source, but with someone so highly placed as Durham, exposure would be difficult.  In fact, it might not even be the most prudent option.  “Did she say anything else?”

Nadia shook her head.  “She said it right before she passed out.”

Jack was about to wake Irina up to get more information when there was a knock at the door.  Nadia opened it to find Weiss outside, looking very upset.  “Shostakovich got away.”

*****

Chapter 112

“What happened?”  Jack demanded, noting that Weiss appeared to be out of breath and had a nice sized lump on his forehead.

“He must have gotten out of his bonds while you were working on him,” Weiss answered.  “I swear I was watching him from the time you left, but a minute or so later he just got up and hit me.  I got in a couple of hits before he knocked me out.  I don’t even know how long it’s been.”

“Just a few minutes,” Jack replied.

“Well, let’s go after him, then,” Nadia said.

Jack shook his head.  “What would you do, run around outside calling for him?  We need a plan, and for that we need to have some guess about where he might go.”  He looked over at Irina, who knew Shostakovich far better than any of the others; she had spent nearly three months with him, after all, and he had evidently trusted her at one point.  He crossed the room to her side, hoping she wasn’t as confused as she’d been with Nadia.  “Irina?” he called, shaking her shoulder.

“Jack?”  She looked around at the three of them, and then down at her arm where the IV line entered.  “Oh no, not again.”  

She reached across her body with her other hand, but Jack stopped her and held it.  “Irina, you need to leave that in.”

She shook her head.  “It’s drugs, making me confused again.”  She tried to pull her hand from his grasp.

“No drugs, just saline,” Jack replied, maintaining his hold on her hand.  “You lost a lot of blood, remember?”

She looked confused at first, but then Jack was relieved to see dawning comprehension.  “I remember,” she confirmed.  “Elena’s ghosts weren’t ghosts at all, were they?”

Jack wasn’t so sure about that – he’d seen only transparent, blurry images that he still wasn’t ready to call real – but now wasn’t the time to belabor the point.  “Shostakovich has escaped,” he said bluntly.

She looked distinctly unhappy about that.  “Where’d he go?”

“That’s what we need to ask you.  You know him better than we do.  What does he want?”

“The Sphere, of course,” Irina replied, seeming puzzled at the question.  “That’s all he’s wanted for a very long time now.”

“But Mom, the Sphere’s here,” Nadia interjected gently.

“Then he’ll come back for it.”  Irina was blinking quite frequently, and Jack suspected she was getting sleepy again; she wouldn’t be useful much longer.

“He might come back, but where would he go in the meantime?  Is there somewhere in his headquarters, somewhere on the lower floors where he keeps important items?”

“His office was on the top floor,” Irina murmured with her eyes closed; she was definitely close to losing consciousness.  “But his server’s in the basement.”

“What’s on it?” Jack asked, speaking loudly and squeezing her hand rhythmically, hard enough to cause her just a little discomfort.

“Blackmail, Rambaldi documents, a lot of things.”  She stopped talking, and her hand went limp.  Jack didn’t think he’d get much more out of her at the moment, so he let her hand fall to her stomach.

“How does she know all that?  Did he tell her?” Weiss asked, looking confused.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack answered.  “Weiss, come with me.  Nadia, stay here in case…”

“No,” Nadia said firmly.  “You lost a good bit of blood tonight too.  You stay, I’ll go.”

Jack wanted to protest, but she did have a point, so he merely nodded.  “Just bring him back.”

***

Sydney was getting close to the hotel when she heard footsteps behind her.  She turned her head just enough to catch a glimpse and was relieved to see a friendly face.  “Vaughn,” she said, slowing so he could catch up with her.

“I thought that might be you,” Vaughn said, running a few paces and then falling in step beside her.  “I thought you were still back at the hotel.”

She gestured to her backpack.  “I was picking up some medical supplies for my mother.”

“Oh.”  Vaughn was clearly unhappy to hear Irina mentioned.  Sydney didn’t say anything in response, and so they walked another half a block before Vaughn spoke again.  “What happened earlier?  By Elena’s body, I mean.”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Sydney answered, absently running her fingers through her hair.  “I thought I saw two children, a boy and a girl.  I’m guessing you didn’t see them.”  Vaughn shook his head, looking concerned.  “Well, I saw them, and Nadia and my parents did, too.  They looked just like regular kids, but they were saying some weird stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Sydney frowned, suddenly finding that her memory was not as clear as it usually was.  “I don’t remember.  It seems like it’s all gotten kind of hazy.”

“Syd, that’s not like you.”

She sighed, frustrated.  “I know that.  I should remember.  I know I gave the Sphere to Mom and she did something with it, and then the children disappeared, but I don’t remember anything anyone said.”

They walked a few more steps in silence before Vaughn broke it again.  “How is your mom?  Is she going to be all right?”

Sydney nodded.  “I think so.  She lost a lot of blood, though, so she’ll be weak for a while.”

“So your father’s planning to turn them both in after he finds out who Shostakovich’s mole is?”

“Mom has a deal, remember?  We have the Sphere now, so I guess she’ll get a pardon.”

“A pardon?”  Vaughn looked like he was thinking something over.  “Do you really think it’s a good idea to give your mother a pardon?”

Sydney had to think about that for a moment.  For a long time she had thought of her mother as the enemy, but that way of regarding her mother hadn’t occurred to her lately.  And she knew somehow that up on the roof Irina could easily had killed them all, but she had instead done her best to protect them.  Sydney still wasn’t ready to forgive everything her mother had done and doubted she ever would, but she did want Irina in her life.  And while it would be safer for the world at large for Irina to remain locked up, her formidable skills could also help the CIA as long as both Irina and the agency were willing.  “Yeah, I actually do think it’s a good idea,” she said finally.

*****

Chapter 113

A few minutes after Nadia and Weiss had left, Jack found himself bored and beginning to feel a bit tired.  Not too surprising, he supposed; it had been a long day, and Nadia had been right that he’d lost a fair amount of blood – though evidently he hadn’t been hallucinating after all, or at least not any more than his wife and daughters.  In any case, he thought it was probably safe to take a brief nap.  He considered the room’s two beds for a moment, then lay down beside Irina, on top of the blankets so that he would be able to move quickly if a situation arose.

He woke with a start what seemed like only moments later; his brain instantly analyzed the sound that had woken him and deemed it to be a car backfiring.  But his attention quickly switched: the noise had woken Irina as well, and she was half sitting up, moaning, and pulling frantically at the IV line.  “Irina,” he said firmly, grabbing her right arm and pulling it away from the IV in her left arm.  She fought him, staring right through him, so with his free hand he pushed her left shoulder down to the bed.  “Irina,” he said again, trying to get her attention.  “There are no drugs, only saline because you lost a lot of blood.  Remember?”

“Jack…no…”  She continued to struggle, her breathing ragged; Jack didn’t really know what to do other than hold her firmly and look at her with a neutral expression.  Finally her eyes became less wild; a moment later she relaxed and stopped fighting him.  They stared at each other for a moment until Jack was certain that she really was calm, and then he let her go.  “Jack, what’s wrong with me?” she said, and he could tell that she was trying to hold back tears.

This confusion of hers seemed to be worse and to last longer each time she woke up; it wasn’t just due to blood loss.  But Jack couldn’t think of a single possible cause.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything in this?” she asked, gesturing to the IV line.  “I feel like I’m drugged.  I’ve had a lot of blood loss before, and this confusion never happened before.”

“No, I don’t think it’s just the blood loss,” Jack answered.  “But I can’t imagine there would be something in the saline.  A CIA medic packed the kit, and he couldn’t know who it would be used for or in what circumstances.”  Irina nodded, though she understandably looked deeply worried.  “Sydney should be back soon with some medical supplies; we’ll get rid of the saline in the kit and just use what Sydney brings.”

“But if it’s not that?  I can’t think, even now when I know where I am and what’s going on, I just can’t think right.  There has to be something else.”

Jack nodded.  “I agree with you.  Something’s just not right.”  He tried to think of any possible way Irina could have been drugged, any reason someone might have done so, and the only thing he could come up with was that using the Sphere had poisoned her brain.  But that simply wasn’t acceptable.  “We’ll figure it out.  But the blood loss is complicating things; Sydney’s going to give you some blood, and we’ll see how you do after that, all right?”

“But I… Jack, I’m so confused and scared when I first wake up.  What if I hurt someone?”

“Honestly, I don’t think you stand much chance of hurting any of the rest of us right now, but you could hurt yourself.  The thing I’m most worried about is that you might pull that IV port out and bleed; you can’t afford to lose any more blood.”  He had an idea, but Irina wouldn’t like it.  But if she did continue to get worse, he would have to use it before too long; he would rather have her consent.  He stood, went over to the first aid kit, and pulled a package from it after a few seconds of digging.

He hadn’t thought Irina could get any more pale, but she did when she saw the package.  “Restraints?” she whispered.

He moved to her side and let her look at them more closely.  “They’re just foam and cloth.  They’re not supposed to hold anyone against their will, just to keep them from hurting themselves when they’re drugged or otherwise not in their normal mental state.  You can probably figure out how to get out of them in a few seconds when you’re thinking straight.”

She closed her eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath; Jack could tell that she was close to panic.  “When I first wake up,” she said, not looking at him, “the first thing I think of is that I’m back with Katya and Sloane.”  She took another shaky breath.  “They used to tie me down when they drugged me.  And then Sloane would just leave the restraints on when he…”  She closed her eyes, but not before Jack saw the tears in them.  

He placed a hand gently on her shoulder.  “All right.  I won’t use them.  If you get really bad, I suppose I could drug you to put you to sleep.”

“No.”  She opened her eyes, which were again clear.  “No drugs.”  She turned away from him, staring at the wall, and bit her lip.  “You can use the restraints.  Just…”  She looked back at him.  “Don’t leave me alone?”

“Of course not.  If I’m not here, I’ll make sure Sydney or Nadia is.”

Irina nodded.  “I suppose you should put them on now.”

“That would be best.”  At her nod, Jack unwrapped the package and removed the two foam restraints inside.  He kept an eye on Irina’s face as he wrapped one restraint around her left wrist; she shut her eyes tightly, but didn’t give him any signal to stop, so he knelt down and tied the cloth straps around the bed frame, making sure to leave a bit of slack.  When he looked back at her, her eyes were still closed, but her face was much calmer; perhaps she’d gone back to sleep.  At the moment, at least, her tendency to fall asleep easily was a blessing.

He went around to the other side and tied the other restraint on without difficulty, other than the strap being barely long enough to reach across the empty half of the bed and tie to the frame on that side.  When he was finished, there wasn’t as much slack on the right side as he would have liked, but the important thing was that there was no way for her right hand to reach the IV site on her left arm.  The only worry now was what would happen the next time she woke up.

*****

Chapter 114

When they reached their rooms, Sydney said goodbye to Vaughn before letting herself into one room while he unlocked the door to the other.  She stepped in, then stopped short when she saw that her father had a gun pointed at her.  “Dad?”  He lowered the gun and placed it on the bedside table.  “What’s wrong?”

“Shostakovich escaped,” her father replied.  “Nadia and Weiss are out looking for him, but we suspect he might come back here looking for the Sphere.”

“Oh.”  Sydney moved farther into the room and frowned when she saw that her mother was tied down.  “Why is Mom in restraints?”

“She’s been confused when she wakes up.  She keeps trying to pull out the IV.”

“Oh.”  Sydney still didn’t quite understand it, but she removed her backpack and began emptying medical supplies onto the other bed.

“I had her permission,” her father said.  He stood and came over to help her pull out the medical supplies.

There was a knock at the door.  Sydney went to check the peephole and found Vaughn on the other side, so she opened the door.  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Nadia and Weiss are looking for Shostakovich.  He got away,” Sydney answered.

“Maybe you and I should go help them,” Vaughn suggested.

“I can’t.  My mother needs blood,” Sydney replied, and Vaughn gave her a confused look.  “We have the same rare blood type.  I’m the only one that can give her blood.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”  Out of the corner of her eye, Sydney saw her father glaring at Vaughn.  “I mean, tactically speaking.  We’ve already lost Shostakovich as it is, and having an agent down won’t help matters.”

Sydney frowned.  She stepped forward a few steps and spoke in a low voice, though she had no doubt her father could still hear.  “Why are you being so hostile toward my mother?  I know you have your issues with her, but the last few months she’s done nothing but try to help us.”

“Help us?  Really?  I have no idea what the hell she’s been up to, but I haven’t seen much evidence of her helping us.  We’ve just been using a lot of resources to track her down.”

“She was being held prisoner.”  Sydney was trying to be reasonable, but Vaughn seemed like he wasn’t the least bit willing to give her mother a chance.

“You’re basing that on her word.  Who knows what she was really up to with Shostakovich?  She does have a history of running around with evil geniuses.  Hell, maybe she’s been sleeping with him, too.”

Sydney barely restrained herself from slapping him, or worse.  “You have no right to talk about my mother that way.”

“I have every right.  She killed my father, remember?”

Then Jack was there, slamming Vaughn back against the wall.  “That does not give you the right to call her a whore,” he growled.

“Stop,” came a voice from across the room, and they all turned to see Irina, sitting up and white as a sheet.  “Stop yelling.”  She stared at Vaughn for a moment.  “Bill?  What are you doing here?”

Jack crossed the room.  “Not Bill, Irina.  Michael, Bill’s son, remember?”

“Oh.”  She looked confused for a moment, but then it appeared to clear.  “Of course.  Silly of me.”  She continued to stare at Vaughn, this time with a thoughtful expression, and Sydney wondered how much she had heard.  “Agent Vaughn, come here.”

He hesitated a moment, then complied; Sydney suspected he might not have done so if her mother hadn’t been restrained.  “What is it?” he asked with only a hint of agression in his tone.

“You never asked me why I killed your father.”

“No, I didn’t.  I didn’t think I’d hear the truth.”

“Well, here’s the truth now.  Of course, you can choose not to believe it.”  Irina shrugged.  “In 1988, your father kidnapped Nadia from a KGB facility.”

“My father died in 1979,” Vaughn interrupted.  Sydney stared at him.  Hadn’t Thomas Brill told Vaughn that his father had kidnapped Nadia?  Since she’d been born in 1982, Bill Vaughn couldn’t have died in 1979.

“I don’t know anything about that,” her mother said.  “All I know is that I tracked him down in 1992.  I asked him where my daughter was.  He told me that she wasn’t the Passenger, and that he’d killed her.”

Vaughn stared at her.  “So that’s why you killed him?”  Irina nodded.  “But why did he say that?”

“I don’t know.  I do know that it kept me from looking for Nadia for another 11 years.”  She looked at Vaughn and seemed to be considering something.  “If he showed up here now, I would kill him again for that, and it still wouldn’t have anything to do with you.”

“So that’s the big secret, huh?  You killed him because he said he’d killed Nadia?  How is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s not.  I’m sure it would have been easier for you to believe that your father was a loyal CIA agent, murdered in the line of duty by a Russian assassin with a heart of stone.  You can go on believing that if you like; I won’t bring the subject up again.  But I thought you should at least hear the truth before you call me a whore again.”

Vaughn looked uncertain.  Sydney suspected that even the collateral information from Brill wasn’t enough to convince Vaughn of the truth of Irina’s story right away, but at least he appeared to be considering it.  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he conceded.

“I admit I didn’t hear what you said,” Irina replied, “but it must have been rather scathing for Jack to have such a reaction to it.”

“He suggested that you were sleeping with Shostakovich,” Jack supplied.

“Hmm.  I suppose that seems more scathing to the two of us than it does to them,” Irina said.  She turned her head into her shoulder and yawned.

Sydney was relieved that she didn’t seem too offended; she was very upset with Vaughn right now, but she didn’t want him dead just yet.  But her mother’s remark was confusing.  “Mom?  What do you mean?”

Her mother blinked a few times, then lay back down.  “I’ll tell you later.  You and Nadia should know.”  The last bit was so soft that Sydney had trouble hearing it, and then Irina’s eyes closed.  Sydney sighed in frustration; she suspected that whatever her mother had been about to say was important.

Jack turned to Vaughn, and Sydney could see that her father was still angry at him.  “Mr. Vaughn, I suggest you either go to assist Nadia and Agent Weiss, or go to the other room.  Sydney, you can go with him if you like.”

Sydney wasn’t particularly happy with Vaughn herself at the moment.  No matter what it was that her mother hadn’t told her, what Vaughn had said had been mean spirited and unnecessary.  “I’ll stay here,” she said.  “I’ll need some help getting the blood collection started.”  Her father nodded and went over to the medical equipment; she followed, both of them ignoring Vaughn.  After a moment, without saying anything else, he left the room.

*****

Chapter 115

Shostakovich smiled as he punched in the key code to the server room.  In the rush to escape the water from the Mueller device and the confusion surrounding whatever had happened over Elena’s body, the CIA agents had neglected to search him properly.  They’d missed a knife concealed up his left sleeve, so that he’d had an easy enough time cutting the ropes binding his hands behind his back during brief intervals when he wasn’t being watched.  He’d had to wait a bit longer before he was able to escape, but as he’d expected, Jack Bristow’s attention had been divided and he’d been left with only one guard.

His smile widened when he entered the server room and saw who awaited him.  “Yegor,” he said, clapping his right hand man on the back.  “I apologize for my lateness.  I’m afraid I ran into a little trouble with some CIA agents.”

“Did you, sir?” Yegor answered.  “Had I known, I would have sent a team for you.”

“I know you would have, but fortunately it wasn’t necessary.”  Andrei turned to the computer.  “How long until you’ve finished copying the hard drive?”

“Just a couple more minutes, sir.  What is the plan from here?  I see you did not manage to bring Irina or the Sphere with you; will we be retrieving them from the CIA?”

“We will.  Unfortunately, the CIA agents know that I have someone in the Agency.  Fortunately they don’t know who, but we’ll still need to get the Sphere and Irina from them before they leave the city.”

“Will we need to –“  Yegor’s question was interrupted by a loud bang; Andrei looked up to see that the lock had been blown off the door to the server room.

The door opened, and Andrei frowned in annoyance when one of the CIA agents entered, gun pointed at him.  “Hands up!” the man shouted.  Then Nadia came in a few steps behind him, the gun in her left hand pointed at Yegor.

Shostakovich naturally had no intention of being the agents’ prisoner again, so he reached for his gun.  He stopped in surprise, though, when something hit him hard on the back of the head.  He turned to stare in surprise at Yegor, who merely watched impassively as Andrei crumpled to the ground.

***

Irina strolled along the beach, feeling the sand beneath her toes and enjoying the salty breeze off the ocean.  There was something wrong, something she should be worried about, but she didn’t want to think about it now.  It was quiet here, peaceful, and she had no desire to deal with anything negative.  She was determined to walk along the beach and simply enjoy the solitude.

She couldn’t say how long she walked, or when she realized she was no longer alone.  She turned and smiled to see Elena walking beside her.  “Mama,”she said, reaching out to hug her, but Elena was just out of her reach.  Frustrated, she dropped her arms.  “I wish I’d gotten a chance to call you that when I knew what it meant.”

“It doesn’t matter, dear,” Elena replied.  “The names we call each other mean nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things.  There are other things you should be concerned about.”

“No.”  Irina shook her head; she’d already decided she wouldn’t think about that.  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.  You’re dying, Irina.”

Irina brushed her mother’s words aside; surely there could be no truth in them.  “I’ll be fine.  I just need rest and time.”

“Time?  Your body is dying with every moment that passes.”

“Stop.”  Irina held up her hand to Elena as she stopped walking.  “I was ready to die before, or I thought I was.  But to die now, after the danger is past – that would just be a waste.”

“Not ready to die unless you can be a martyr.”  Elena gave her a sly smile, but then her expression turned strict.  “Well, if you don’t want to die, you’d better start doing something about it.”

“How can I do something about it when I don’t even know what’s wrong?”

Elena didn’t answer, but pointed toward the ocean.  Irina turned to see that there was someone out there.  Arvin Sloane, she realized, drowning.  And the ocean was not water but blood.  She watched him fight, then give up and sink, all the while feeling nothing but cold and emptiness.  Once he was goneshe looked around and saw that Elena was gone, too; she was alone.  And the tide had been coming in.  She was surrounded by the ocean, which slowly crept up.  Now it was no longer crimson, though; it had turned green.  She could do nothing as it rose higher and higher, until eventually it reached her mouth and she began to choke on it.

***

“All right, it looks like it’s full,” Jack said after appraising the blood bag that lay on the floor.

Sydney, on the bed above it, gave a relieved smile.  “So I can get up now?”

“Not just yet, Sydney.  You’ve given blood before, you know how it works,” Jack replied as he got gauze pads and a Band-aid.  He folded up one of the pads and pulled the needle from Sydney’s arm with one hand while applying immediate presssure with the gauze pad.  “Keep pressure on this and put your arm up in the air.”

“So if this works just like a regular donation, does that mean I get cookies?”

“I don’t think cookies are included in the standard rations,” Jack answered as he disconnected the needle and the tube through which Sydney’s blood had been flowing.  “But if you really want cookies, I suppose we could try to find something.”

“It was a joke, Dad,” Sydney answered, giving him that look that let him know she thought he was hopeless.

“Ah, of course,” Jack answered as he swapped gauze pads on Sydney’s arm and then taped a Band-aid over it.  He’d known she was joking, of course, but it was funnier if he pretended he didn’t.  “When she was pregnant with you, your mother used to crave Oreo cookies,” he said, remembering how quickly she could make a package of Oreos disappear.  “That was in the days before 24 hour grocery stores, and woe betide me if we ran out in the middle of the night.  You can sit up now.”  As Sydney sat up, he saw that she was smiling.

He took the bag of blood around the bed to where a bag of saline, the second that had been in the first aid kit, hung on the wall.  He hung the bag of blood beside it, then switched the lines.  Then Irina began to thrash about on the bed, moaning; he stared in confusion for a few seconds.

Sydney stood up.  “She can’t be having a bad reaction to the transfusion so soon, can she?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s just a nightmare,” Jack answered.  He crouched down and shook Irina’s shoulder.  “Irina?  Wake up, Irina.”  Then she started to choke and gag; Jack was trying to figure out if the kit contained equipment for emergency intubation when she gasped suddenly and then sat straight up.  “Irina?”

She fought against the wrist restraints, and against the hand that he placed on her shoulder, but a few moments later she calmed.  “Jack,” she whispered, looking at him, then scanned the room.  “Sydney?”  Suddenly her face took on a worried look.  “You look pale.  Are you all right?”

“I just gave blood,” Sydney answered, and pointed at the blood bag.

“Oh.”  Irina looked confused again as she followed the line down from the bag to her arm.  “Thank you,” she said, but she still seemed puzzled.  She blinked a few times.  “Mmm.  Tired,” she murmured as she lay down.  “Think I’ll…”  She trailed off as her eyes closed.

Sydney looked at Jack, and he could see she was worried.  “Shouldn’t she be getting better by now?  It seems like she’s getting worse.”  Jack could only shrug; he didn’t have any answers.

*****

Chapter 116

Nadia stared, not quite sure what to do with what she had just seen.  The man behind Shostakovich, the man who had led the attack on her and her father a week ago and who presumably worked for Shostakovich, had just knocked out his employer.  After they had all been staring at each other for a moment, Weiss asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“Someone who wants to see this man locked up as much as you do,” the man answered in accented English.

“Don’t believe him,” Nadia said.  “He works for Shostakovich.”

“Then why’d he just knock him out?”  From the sound of Weiss’s voice, he was just as confused as Nadia was.

“I don’t know,” Nadia replied, but kept her gun trained on the man.

“I have indeed been working for Mr. Shostakovich,” the man said, apparently quite calm despite the two guns trained on him, “but I have not been a loyal employee for some time.  Your mother should be able to confirm that.  She is all right, I hope?”

“That’s none of your business,” Nadia replied.  She glanced sideways at Weiss and could see that he was waiting for her to take the lead.  “Let’s tie them both up.  Then I’ll call and find out about this guy.”

The man didn’t look happy about it, but he submitted to being restrained and searched.  When both men were tied up, Nadia dialed Sydney’s cell phone.

***

Irina jerked awake with a start, consumed with a feeling that something horrible was happening.  Then a phone rang, and she realized it must be that which had woken her.  She started to get up to answer it, but looked down at her hands in confusion when something pulled at her wrists.  She saw that she was tied to the bed; fear coiled in her stomach.  Who was doing this to her?

She heard a voice and looked over to see Sydney, who had evidently answered the phone.  That was all right, then, she thought, relaxing.  Her daughter had enough reasons to hold her prisoner, but Irina didn’t think that Sydney would ever actually hurt her.

Then the bathroom door opened, and Irina swallowed hard when she saw Jack walk out.  She didn’t have the same surety about him that she did about Sydney.  If he was mad at her about something, he could very well hurt her.  Quickly, she closed her eyes; best to pretend to be asleep.

She kept her eyes closed only for a minute or two, but when she opened them again she suspected that it had in fact been longer.  There was no evidence of Jack in the room, though she hadn’t heard him leave.  The television was on, and Sydney was sprawled on the other bed, her eyes half closed.  Irina sat up, realizing as she did that she needed to use the bathroom rather badly.

Sydney must have noticed the movement, because she sat up herself and looked over at Irina.  “Mom?  Are you all right?”

Irina nodded.  “I just need to use the bathroom,” she said, gesturing toward the bathroom with her chin and wondering if Sydney would remove the restraints.

“Oh.  Yeah, sure,” Sydney said, getting up.  “Let me just take those off.”

Irina watched in surprise and some confusion as Sydney unwrapped one restraint from her wrist, then walked around the bed to take off the other.  “Where did your father go?” she asked, trying to figure out more about the situation and wishing she could remember how she’d gotten here.

“He went to help Nadia and Weiss with Shostakovich,” Sydney answered, and Irina nearly gasped as she remembered what had happened: her father, the Sphere, the Mueller device.  Elena.  Elena was dead.  Irina fought to keep control of herself; she wouldn’t cry in front of Sydney.  Sydney removed the second restraint, and Irina automatically moved to rub her wrists, even though the cloth restraints were much easier on the skin than the handcuffs she was more accustomed to.  “It should be fine to just unhook this for a few minutes,” Sydney said as she untwisted the IV tubing.  “You will be okay, won’t you?  I mean, you’ve passed out a few times.”

“I’ll be fine,” Irina answered.  She got to her feet, keeping a hand on the wall just in case, and headed for the bathroom.

When she came out, Sydney was on the bed apparently watching television, but Irina had a suspicion she’d kept a close eye on the door.  As she made her way back to the bed, she saw the Sphere, resting on the floor in a corner.  Seeing it for some reason brought back the memory of her dream: seeing Elena, drowning in Rambaldi’s serum.  At that moment, she realized what was wrong with her, and she had an idea how to fix it.  She stepped toward the Sphere.

“Mom?  Are you okay?”  Sydney stood and came up behind her; Irina could hear the worry in her daughter’s voice.

“Fine.  I just…”  She stepped forward and started to crouch down, but that set off a wave of dizziness.  “Can you get the Sphere?”

“What do you need it for?”  Sydney came around to stand between Irina and the Sphere, and Irina saw a mix of confusion and worry on her face.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Irina answered.  “I think the Sphere might be able to fix it.”

“How?  I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.  I just need the Sphere.”  Irina swayed and reached out to support herself on the nearest wall; her thoughts were getting fuzzy again, but she needed to stay awake long enough to figure out what she needed to do.

Sydney looked at her searchingly for a moment.  “Well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” she said with a shrug.  “As long as you don’t start cutting people up with it again.”

“I won’t,” Irina answered.  “It can’t do that anymore anyway.”

Sydney nodded.  “Lie down, you’re looking pale again.  I’ll bring it to you.”

Irina lay down; it took her only a few seconds to get comfortable.  She could have gone to sleep easily, but she kept reminding herself that she needed to stay awake until she had the Sphere in her hands.  She watched as Sydney reconnected the IV, trying not to be impatient.  “Do you need to put the restraints back on?”  For what she needed to do, the restraints would make no difference, but she would still prefer not to have them on.

“It should be fine.  Dad said he put them on because you kept trying to pull out the IV, and you haven’t done that the last few times you woke up.”  Irina knew better than to point out that the only reason she hadn’t tried to pull it out had been the restraints.  While she was speaking, Sydney had retrieved the Sphere from the corner; now she held it out.

As soon as Irina took the Sphere, she knew that her vague idea would work, and that she would be all right.  She turned on her side, cradling the Sphere to her chest, and let sleep take over.

*****

Chapter 117

Jack entered the server room, Vaughn following behind him.  He had only brought Vaughn because Nadia had said on the phone that Shostakovich was unconscious, but Jack saw that he was currently awake, sitting and glaring at Yegor.  Jack then looked at Yegor, who sat with a bland expression on his face, avoiding Shostakovich’s glare.  Jack wasn’t surprised that Yegor had turned against his employer, since Irina had already indicated that the man was buyable.  He didn’t know whether Yegor had facilitated Shostakovich’s capture because he truly disliked Shostakovich and wanted him put in prison, or whether he was simply trying to stay out of trouble himself, but the truth was that it didn’t really matter; the important thing was that right now, Yegor was more useful as an ally than as a prisoner.

He looked over at Nadia, who was standing by one of the computer workstations.  “Do you have the data from the computers?”

“We do,” Nadia answered, holding up a disk, “but it’s heavily encrypted.  Marshall says he can’t do anything with it unless we bring it to him, and even then it’ll take him hours, maybe even days.”

Jack nodded and looked over at Yegor.  “I suppose you know the encryption key?”

“I might,” Yegor replied evenly.

“You traitorous son of a bitch,” Shostakovich growled.

“Pretty sure I prefer him unconscious,” Weiss said, speaking to Jack while tipping his head toward Shostakovich.  “I have a tranq gun.”

“It probably won’t work,” came from Yegor.  “He’s developed a tolerance to a large number of sedatives.  Hitting him in the head is the best way to keep him unconscious.”

“Good to know,” Jack replied.  “Weiss, Vaughn, take him back to where he was.  Make sure you search him completely and restrain him more securely this time.”  He waited while Vaughn and Weiss dragged a struggling Shostakovich from the room, then turned back to Yegor.  “Now, about that encryption key.”

“I have no particular wish to be a prisoner of the CIA,” Yegor answered.

“As long as we have your employer in our custody, and the information necessary to assure he can do no more harm, the CIA has no reason to have you as a prisoner,” Jack responded in kind.  Nadia started to say something, but stopped when Jack held up his hand.  “Agent Santos, take off his handcuffs, please.”  Nadia did so, though Jack could see she wasn’t happy about it.  “If you’ll make us an unencrypted copy of the disk, I believe we’ll be done here,” he said to Yegor.

A few minutes later, disk in hand, Jack walked with Nadia back to the hotel as Yegor hurried off in a different direction.  “I don’t understand,” Nadia said as soon as Yegor was out of earshot, her tone curious instead of hostile.  “We could have gotten the information without letting him go.”

“It would have taken longer,” Jack replied.

“Why didn’t you just tell him you’d let him go, then just not release him after he gave you the disk?”

“That would be bad form.”

Nadia frowned.  “But we lie to people all the time.”

“There’s a certain code in the espionage business.  If word gets out that you break the rules – and it always does sooner or later – then the level of trust between you and your contacts goes down.  One of the most important rules is that you don’t go back on your word in a negotiation.”

“So you let him go so that your other contacts wouldn’t think badly of you?”

“Partly.  The reason I offered him the deal in the first place is that I think he may be valuable in the future.  Since we have the disk and Shostakovich, he couldn’t offer us much as a prisoner.”  Nadia nodded.  They entered the hotel and stopped talking, even though the lobby was quiet and nearly deserted except for the desk clerk.  But Jack felt he’d said enough; Nadia would have to think over it for a while before she understood, and she wouldn’t truly understand unless she stayed in this business for at least a decade, but he had laid enough groundwork.

Jack planned to go check on Shostakovich soon; he suspected there was something missing in Weiss and Vaughn’s search technique that had allowed Shostakovich to retain a weapon.  But he doubted the man would attempt an escape with Vaughn and Weiss both in the room, and he wanted to check on Irina and find out just what was on this disk.

As soon as he entered the room, he had the distinct feeling that something was wrong after a brief initial scan, so he looked around more closely.  Sydney was in the process of sitting up on the near bed and looked like she’d been sleeping, but that was fine, since she hadn’t let herself sleep so deeply that she didn’t wake up when someone came in.  Irina was in the far bed, lying on her side with her back to the door; Jack studied her for a moment to make sure she was breathing.  Then he surveyed the room again and saw what had triggered his intuition: one of the restraints was lying on top of the bed, open.  He couldn’t see the other one, but he had a feeling it was also off.  He turned to Sydney.  “Did you take the restraints off, or did she?”

“I did,” Sydney answered.  “She had to go to the bathroom.  And she hasn’t seemed to want to take the IV out when I’ve seen her wake up, so I didn’t see a need to put them back on.”  Jack nodded; Sydney’s actions made perfect logical sense, especially since she hadn’t seen how out of it she’d been before Jack had gotten out the restraints.

“You had her in restraints?”  Nadia asked from beside him.  “I know she was pretty confused before, but shouldn’t she be getting better by now?”

“She should be, but she’s not,” Jack replied.

“Maybe we should revisit the idea of taking her to a hospital,” Nadia suggested.

“She seemed all right the last time she woke up,” Sydney said with a shrug.  “Except that she fell asleep holding the Sphere – that was pretty strange, but I figured it couldn’t hurt since it’s broken now.”

Jack wasn’t so sure about that, but he said nothing, though he would certainly check to make sure Irina wasn’t somehow bleeding.  “Let’s see what’s on that disk,” he said.  “If it’s got the info we need on Durham, we should be able to get your mother to a hospital soon.”

Nadia nodded and took the disk over to the laptop Sydney already had out on the bed.  Jack heard her explaining to Sydney what had happened with Shostakovich, but tuned her out as he went over to check on Irina.

*****

Chapter 118

“Irina.”  Irina moaned and tried to curl away from the hand shaking her shoulder, but the intrusion didn’t stop.  “Wake up, Irina.”  Jack’s voice.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, as long as you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.”  Jack still looked concerned.  “Really, I’m all right.”

She could tell he was still unsure.  “I can’t help but wonder why you’re holding the Sphere like a teddy bear.”

“Oh.”  She’d forgotten she had it, but as she squeezed it a bit tighter she could tell it was still doing what it was supposed to do.  Even without it she would have known – while she was far from back to normal, things were much clearer now than they had been a short time ago.  The IV line caught her eye, and she remembered immediately why it was there, which was a pleasure.  Apparently she’d gotten all the blood already, since it was again clear fluid.  “How long does this thing have to stay in?” she asked Jack, pointing at the IV line.

He looked up, across the room.  “Sydney,” he called.  “Is this the first bag of saline after the blood?”

“Yeah,” came Sydney’s response.

“Probably one more bag after this, then,” Jack said, looking down at her again.  “But you didn’t answer my question.”  She peered at him in confusion.  “Why are you holding the Sphere?”

“I figured out what’s wrong with me.”

“And how is the Sphere supposed to help that?  I thought it was dead.”

Of course he wouldn’t understand, she realized.  She now understood what was wrong with her and how to fix it on a basic, instinctual level, and she’d forgotten that such understanding wouldn’t come to others so easily.  She was about to try to explain it to Jack when a phone rang.

“It’s Dixon,” Sydney’s voice said.  Jack held a finger to his lips, and Irina nodded as Sydney said, “Hello?”

***

Sydney found herself in a curious balancing act of trying to listen to Nadia and not listen to her parents – she didn’t want to eavesdrop, and yet she wanted desperately to hear what they were saying.  Then the phone rang, and she started worrying about a million other things instead when she saw Dixon’s name on her caller ID.  “Hello?”

“Sydney.  Chase and I are getting ready to leave for Sevogda,” came Dixon’s voice.  “She asked me point blank if you were there, and I told her the truth.”

“How did she know?”  Sydney could see worried looks from her father and Nadia, and her mother sat up and turned toward her.

“I guess she got some intel about a Mueller device being active over there,” Dixon replied.  “She and I are leaving for Sevogda in half an hour.  She wanted to bring a squad of Rangers, but I told her a little about our suspicion that someone in the CIA can’t be trusted.  Have you confirmed that?”

“Hold on.”  Sydney covered the mouthpiece, then turned to her father.  “Chase is on her way.  Should I tell Dixon to tell her about the mole?”

“Not yet,” her father replied.  “In fact, it’s not necessary for her to come at all, but I imagine she won’t be convinced of that.  Better to give her the whole story when she gets here than part of it now.”

Sydney nodded and uncovered the phone.  “Dixon?  We’re still gathering information.”

“Understood.  I’m not really supposed to be contacting you, so you probably won’t hear anything more from either of us until we show up at the hotel in about twelve hours.”

“Got it.  See you soon, Dixon.”  They hung up.

“Have you got anything?”  Jack asked, coming over.  “Is Durham dirty?”

Nadia, who had continued to work on the computer while Sydney talked, nodded.  “He’s definitely Shostakovich’s man.  Looks like Shostakovich is blackmailing him – Durham’s been selling American military equipment on the black market.  No wonder he was willing to hand over Mom to keep that from getting out.”

“Is there hard evidence?” Jack asked.

Sydney looked at the screen.  “Looks like it.  This file’s probably got enough to give Durham the death penalty.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Jack replied.  “Turning this over to the proper authorities is probably not the best way to proceed, but I’ll discuss that with Director Chase tomorrow.”

Sydney didn’t quite understand, but she shrugged; as long as this whole mess was over with, she didn’t much care how it was handled – assuming, of course, that Durham’s activities weren’t allowed to continue, but she was sure her father would see to that.  “So what now?  We just wait for Chase?”

Her father nodded.  “We should probably all get some rest.  I’ll go make sure Shostakovich is secure and fill in Vaughn and Weiss on the plan.”

He left the room, and Nadia yawned.  “Rest sounds good.”

Sydney nodded, then looked over at their mother, who appeared to be asleep again.  “Looks like Mom’s already taken that advice.”

Nadia frowned.  “I hope she’ll be all right.  And I really hope Chase doesn’t just throw her in a jail cell.”

“I’m pretty sure Dad won’t let that happen,” Sydney reassured her.  “Besides, as long as she turns over that damn ball of metal, Chase will probably be glad to give her a pardon.”

“That would be nice,” Nadia said with a smile.  “I really want a chance to get to know her, you know?”

“Yeah, I do,” Sydney answered.

*****

Chapter 119

When Jack returned, he saw that Sydney and Nadia were both asleep, which didn’t surprise him given the idea that was beginning to form.  He’d been feeling increasingly fatigued over the past few hours; he’d assumed it was due merely to the day’s stresses on top of the chronic stress of the last few weeks, and had thought that the same reasoning explained why both his daughters looked exhausted.  Vaughn and Weiss had seemed fine, which hadn’t worried him at first.  But then they’d shown him Shostakovich, who had lost consciousness on the way over from the hotel and hadn’t been arousable since.

The explanation had been obvious.  They’d all been exposed to the Sphere; Shostakovich hadn’t been cut by it, but Jack had seen him holding it when he’d been taken up to the roof.  Clearly the Sphere was not dead, nor was it helping Irina recover as she seemed to believe.  Unless – Jack had definitely begun to feel significantly more tired just in the last half hour, and Shostakovich had seemed fine before he collapsed.  Perhaps Irina knew perfectly well that the Sphere was draining energy, and was using it to heal herself.  Jack wouldn’t put it past Irina to do something like that, incredibly selfish though it seemed.  In fact, as he thought about it, it seemed like a fairly sensible course of action on the surface – why not take a bit of energy from four healthy people to correct her own grievously depleted state?  But Irina might well have underestimated the danger to the others, or overestimated her control over the process.

Jack crossed the room to Irina’s side and studied her briefly.  She did still look ill, while Sydney and Nadia appeared totally healthy, merely sleeping.  As Jack glanced over at them, Sydney sighed and adjusted her position.  Jack returned his attention to Irina.  No need to wake her, he decided; he would just remove the offending object.  He reached down and tugged on the Sphere; Irina held on to it briefly, then released it easily.  He considered for a moment, then placed it in the room safe in the closet and set the code.  Now that the Sphere was secure, he could wait for Irina to wake up and explain what exactly was going on; in the meantime, he needed to replenish some of that energy.  He lay down next to Irina and was asleep after a few moments.

***

Jack woke to an unpleasant sound: someone coughing violently.  He turned on the light and saw Irina sitting up next to him and coughing, her hands cupped in front of her mouth.  Then he saw a drop of blood drip form between her fingers; it was quickly followed by another.  He was frozen for only a moment before sprinting to the bathroom.  When he returned with a pile of towels, he saw that Sydney and Nadia were awake, staring at Irina with their mouths open.

He dropped most of the towels in her lap, but held a small one up so that she could cough directly into it.  After a minute or two, during which she coughed up several alarmingly large gobs of blood, her coughing spasms finally eased.  “Water,” she whispered once she was able to get in a few good breaths.

Nadia darted into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water; Jack took it and held it to Irina’s lips, since her hands were still covered with blood.  As she drank, Sydney came over with a damp washcloth and wiped her mother’s hands, then her face when Jack took the empty glass away.

“We’re taking you to the hospital,” Jack said as soon as Sydney was done.

“No.”  Irina’s voice was hoarse.  “No one can leave this room.”  She coughed once more, weakly, as she put her hands over her eyes.  “Could someone turn out the light?”

“What’s happening?” Jack asked.  One of the girls turned out the bedside lamp, so that the room was lit only by the glow from the bathroom.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t want this to happen.  I thought the Sphere would fix it before it became a problem.”  Irina’s voice, barely above a whisper, was shaking, and Jack realized that she was barely holding herself back from sobbing.

“Irina, tell us what’s going on.”  Jack kept his voice firm and steady.

“Rambaldi’s ultimate plan,” Irina murmured.  Jack blinked, not sure he had heard her correctly.  “He wanted to make sure that his plan would succeed.  The Mueller device was never supposed to be the vehicle to distribute the virus.  It’s me.”

“What…Mom, how?” Sydney asked.

“The Rambaldi serum,” Irina answered.  “The energy released when I used the Sphere was enough to activate the virus.”

Nadia paled.  “Sydney and I both had the serum, too.”

Irina nodded.  “I destroyed the virus without realizing it when I healed you both earlier.  But since I only healed the cuts on my arms, not my whole body, the virus has been multiplying in me.  And now all of you are infected.  I was trying to use the Sphere to reverse the infection earlier.”  She looked around.  “Where is it?”  Jack could feel his ears going red, and Irina immediately zeroed in on him.  “Jack.”

“I thought you were taking energy from all of us, so I took it away.”

“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up and ask me what was going on, then?”  Irina snapped.  “Now you’ve killed us all.”

*****

Chapter 120

“Now Irina, just wait a moment,” Jack said sharply.  “How do you know all this about this plague?”  He wasn’t asking the question just to get himself out of hot water; while Irina’s coughing up blood was quite alarming, he wasn’t convinced that it meant she was afflicted with some mythical plague.

Irina sighed and bit her lip, clearly frustrated.  “I just know.”

“So because of what you ‘just know’, we’re just supposed to sit here and wait for the inevitable?  I don’t think so.”  Jack realized as his anger boiled up that he was getting quite annoyed with all this magic and mysticism drivel, and with Irina for continuing to spout it.

“Hey, hold on,” Sydney said.  “Everybody just calm down, okay?”  She glared at Jack and Irina until both nodded.  “Now.  Mom, how exactly was the Sphere supposed to help with this?  Isn’t that what started this whole thing in the first place?  Why would Rambaldi create the Sphere to destroy the world and then allow it to be used to stop that?”

“Rambaldi didn’t create the Sphere,” Irina answered.  Jack remembered that she’d told him that before, but they hadn’t discussed any details.  He waited expectantly for more.  “He discovered its existence, but he couldn’t use it.  Only women of a certain bloodline can use it, and a woman who can control it only comes along once every several hundred years.”

“So that’s you,” Sydney clarified, and Irina nodded.  “If he couldn’t use it, how could he know what it did?”

“Visions,” Irina replied.  “He saw the future, saw me.  He also saw that if things didn’t change, I would never even know about the Sphere; the knowledge of it that was supposed to be passed down got lost somewhere.  Maybe when my grandmother died too soon, maybe before that.”

Sydney and Nadia both looked confused at that.  “I thought your mother died in an accident.  You sure it wasn’t her?”

“That’s who I’m talking about,” Irina answered, sounding just the tiniest bit exasperated.  She sighed.  “But of course you haven’t heard the whole story yet.  The woman I always believed to be my mother was actually my grandmother.  Elena was my mother.”  The girls looked surprised at this, but waited for Irina to continue.  “She was very young when I was born, and her father, my grandfather, decided to pass me off as his own.  That’s why the KGB never realized I was the Passenger; they didn’t know that my father’s initials are AS, and they didn’t know my true birthdate.”

“AS?”  Nadia paled.  “Oh, God.  Shostakovich?”  Irina nodded.

“Dad, you knew about this?” Sydney asked, and Jack confirmed that with a nod.  “No wonder you were so mad at Vaughn.  Not that what he said wasn’t horrible anyway.”

Irina frowned.  “While I’m sure you’re all very happy to have heard the whole story, that doesn’t help our problem.”  The rest of them looked back at her.  “The Sphere wasn’t supposed to be used for destruction, that’s what I was originally trying to say.  It was used to transfer energies between people, usually to heal someone who had been gravely injured; the woman who controlled the Sphere could funnel a bit of energy from a large number of people to help heal the one who was injured.”

“But I thought it was broken,” Nadia said.

“Sort of.  The fastest way for the Sphere to get energy was to cut someone, because a large amount of energy is lost with blood.  But it can’t cut anyone anymore – I sort of short-circuited it by making it hold too much energy.  I don’t know if it can establish channels with new people, either.  But the channels that it already had are still working – channels to the four of us, and to my father.”

Sydney looked confused.  “He wasn’t ever cut with the Sphere, though, was he?”

Irina shook her head.  “He held it, though.  I guess that was enough to establish a channel.  I was stealing energy from him, trying to heal myself, but it was a slow process because the channel isn’t very big.  It may have been bleeding off a little energy from the three of you, too; there wasn’t any help for that, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to harm you.”

“Why can’t you still use the Sphere to heal yourself?”  Nadia asked softly.  “You’re welcome to use my energy, too.”

Irina shook her head.  “It’s possible, but I think it’s too late.  And now I’ve infected the three of you as well; five people don’t have enough energy to spare to heal four.  Even if I killed my father, which I’m not averse to doing.”

While she spoke, Jack went over to the closet and removed the Sphere from the safe.  He still wasn’t sure about this thing, but he supposed it was better than nothing, so he carried it over to Irina; she accepted it with a nod, though he still saw anger in her eyes.  “Is there anything you can do?”

She placed her hands on the Sphere and closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up, surprised.  “Nadia’s not infected.  She’s protected, somehow.”  She frowned.  “And you and Sydney just have a few viruses.  I’m pretty sure I can heal the two of you.  If there’s a way I can stop myself from infecting anyone else, the rest of you might be all right.”

Jack searched his memory.  “You told me before that your father immunized Nadia.”

Irina nodded.  “That’s right, I’d forgotten about that.  He said he was going to immunize you, too, but obviously he didn’t.”

Jack shrugged.  “I suppose he thought that I wouldn’t need it, since you were supposed to kill me.”  She frowned and wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he realized she was still upset about her failure to keep from using the Sphere on anyone else.  He changed the subject.  “What is the antidote?  Would it help you?”

She frowned.  “I don’t think so.  But it might be in time to help you and Sydney if I can’t cure you.  And if you could distribute it, you could keep the virus from getting to anyone else.”

“Is it safe for me to leave?”  Nadia asked.  “I won’t infect anyone else?”

“No, you should be fine.”  Irina grabbed a washcloth and coughed into it while the rest of them watched with concern.  “Damn,” she said when her coughing fit eased.  “Let me check and make sure you’re still all right.”  She closed her eyes again and pressed down on the Sphere, then nodded.

“Should I go find the antidote, then?” Nadia wanted to know.

“Shostakovich must have immunized himself as well,” Jack said, and Irina nodded.  “Would it help you to get energy from him if he were in the room?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about Weiss and Vaughn?” Sydney said.  “You said you don’t know if the Sphere can make new channels, but if it can, maybe their energy would be enough.”

Irina shook her head.  “They’d have to touch the Sphere to find out, and then they’d be in danger of infection.  I’m not taking that chance.”

“Couldn’t I take the Sphere to them?” Nadia asked.  “I mean, it got a channel to Shostakovich without you doing anything, right?”

Irina frowned.  “It’s just not worth the risk.  If you can find the vaccine, you can immunize them, and then we could think about it.  Although I doubt they’d be willing.”

“I’d make Vaughn be willing,” Sydney replied with more than a little anger.

“But where is the vaccine?” Jack asked.  “Would the information be on that disk?”

“I’ll look,” Sydney said, and got out the computer.  They waited a tense few minutes while she searched.  Then she sighed, looked up, and shook her head.  “It’s not here.  Nothing about a vaccine, a cure, or anything like that.”

“Where would it be, then?” Nadia asked.  “Mom, you knew where to find that disk in the first place.”

Irina shook her head.  “I don’t know how I knew that.  He didn’t tell me,” she said softly.

“Shostakovich should know.  I might be able to get him to tell me,” Nadia said.  “He has been acting strange around me; now I guess it’s because I’m his granddaughter.”

“Don’t credit him with an overabundance of family feeling,” Irina said with a frown.

“If I pretend I think he has it, maybe he’ll act like he does,” Nadia replied with a shrug.  She went to the door, then hesitated.  “I’m all right to leave?”  Irina nodded, so she opened the door a crack and slipped through.

When she was gone, Irina looked at Sydney.  “I’m going to try to heal you,” she said.  “When I tell you to leave, you need to go immediately, before you have a chance to be reinfected.”  Sydney didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded.  “Then Jack, you’ll be next.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” he responded.  No matter how many issues they had, he didn’t think he could forgive himself if he left her alone to die from what looked to be an extremely unpleasant illness.

“I’ll get Nadia when I leave,” Sydney offerred.  “Then she can come back, so Mom won’t be alone.  And then we can find the antidote.”

“It’s a vaccine, not an antidote,” Irina said.  “I don’t expect that it will help me.”

“We’re not giving up on you just yet,” Jack said firmly.

She shrugged, not looking hopeful.  “I’m going to help the two of you.  That’s all that matters,” she said, then, forestalling further conversation, lay down and closed her eyes.

*****

Chapter 121

Weiss jerked awake when there was a knock on the door.  Damn, he’d dozed off; Vaughn was asleep, and he was supposed to be keeping watch.  He went to the door, checked the peep hole, and smiled when he saw Nadia on the other side.  He opened the door and ushered her in.  “What’s up?” he asked in a whisper.

“Is Shostakovich awake?” Nadia asked at a similar volume.

“Didn’t your dad tell you?  He’s been out for hours; he passed out when we were bringing him across the street.”

She frowned.  “He didn’t mention that.  Must have slipped his mind.”

Her tone told Weiss that something bad was going on.  “What’s wrong?”

“My mother’s sick,” Nadia answered.  “The plague that we’ve all been trying to prevent – she’s got it.”

Weiss instinctively backed away a few steps.  “Wait, how do you know you’re not infected?”

“There’s a vaccine.  He gave it to me,” Nadia answered, jerking her head toward Shostakovich.  “But my dad and Sydney have been exposed.”

“So you need him to tell you how to get the vaccine,” Weiss said.  She nodded.  “Well, you’re welcome to try and wake him up.”

She frowned and went over to Shostakovich.  “Hey,” she said, shaking his shoulder.  “Wake up.”

To Weiss’s surprise, Shostakovich moaned and opened his eyes.  “What – what’s going on?”

“That virus you wanted to set upon the world,” she said, glaring.  “You succeeded.  Now my mother and my sister are sick.”

Shostakovich looked confused.  “Your mother isn’t supposed to get sick.  She’s supposed to be protected.”

“If she were protected, she wouldn’t be coughing up blood,” Nadia responded.  “And Sydney hasn’t got any such protection.”  She was silent for a moment, but Shostakovich said nothing, though he did have a thoughtful expression.  “I don’t know what you want from me – affection, whatever,” Nadia continued, and Weiss squinted at her in confusion.  Why would Shostakovich want affection from her?  “But if you’re going to have any chance of getting it, you’d better help me now.”

Shostakovich looked around, taking in Weiss and Vaughn, who was still asleep.  “What about your father?  Is he sick as well?”

Nadia shook his head.  “He’s fine.”  Weiss knew this was a lie, but was careful not to change expression; he didn’t know what Nadia’s scheme was, but he knew enough not to interfere.  “Maybe it only affects our family.  Which is why I need the antidote.”

Shostakovich gave her a calculating look.  “I don’t want to go to prison.”

“Too bad,” Nadia answered with a shrug, and Weiss wondered why she didn’t just promise to give him what he wanted; she could always take it back later.  “But if you give me the antidote and save their lives, they might just be grateful enough to come visit you.”

“You know who I am,” he said, looking up at her in surprise.  Nadia nodded, confusing Weiss further; what were they talking about?  “The formula for the antidote may be gone,” he said.  “It’s in a Rambaldi manuscript, the only actual manuscript I have left, in my office on the top floor of my building.”

Nadia gave a small sigh.  “You’d better hope I find it,” she said.  “Because if they die, I’ll make sure you do too.”

“Nadia.  Surely you wouldn’t do that to your own grandfather,” Shostakovich said, and Weiss was so surprised at that that he had to sit down.

“You bet I would,” she answered, then turned and headed for the door.

Weiss hesitated, then followed her out.  He called out, “Nadia!” just outside the door, and she stopped and turned.  “I’ll come with you.”  She looked uncertain for a moment, then nodded.  “Ok.  Just let me wake up Mike.”

***

After Nadia had gone and her mother had gone to sleep, Sydney tried to go back to sleep as well, at her father’s suggestion, but she didn’t have much success.  She kept going over the memory of her mother coughing up blood, and thinking that she couldn’t lose her mother now, not after all of this.  The thought that she might lose her father as well scared her even more.  She wasn’t worried about the possibility of her own death – she faced that every day – but after spending much of her life feeling like she was an orphan, she wasn’t ready to face that in fact.  She thought about how Nadia must feel, too – to gain a family for such a short time, only to face the possibility of losing them all.

After a while, she decided she wasn’t going to get to sleep.  She sat up and saw that her father was sitting in a chair, evidently watching her mother sleep.  She stood and went over to him.  “She’ll be all right,” she said, more to comfort herself than him.

“I hope so,” he answered.  He stood; as the light from the window shone across his face, Sydney saw the worry in his eyes.  No doubt he was having many of the same thoughts that she was.

“There’s got to be something we can do instead of just waiting,” she said after a moment.  She was itching for some action, and a bit jealous of Nadia for being able to leave the hotel room and go do something about the situation.

“If we believe your mother, then it would be far too dangerous for the rest of the world for us to leave this room,” her father replied.  His voice was flat, but she could tell that he wasn’t entirely convinced of the truth of her mother’s words just yet.  Hope rose in her – perhaps this was just some strange dream of her mother’s, brought on by the blood loss.  But then how could her mother’s coughing up blood be explained?  She sighed.

She paced across the room a few times, trying to think of something useful.  Finally, she said, “Should we contact Chase?  Give her some warning about what’s going on?”

Her father frowned.  “I’ve thought about that, but I believe I can predict her reaction.  The entire team would be quarantined, including your sister, and she would probably work with the Russians to quarantine the entire city.  Our chance of getting at the antidote would be lost; the CIA would recover it eventually, I suspect, but by then it might well be too late.”  As he spoke the last sentence, he glanced at Irina, and Sydney knew what he was thinking: if there truly was a plague, then without the antidote her mother probably had no more than a few days.

She nodded.  “So we give Nadia a chance to find the antidote, and tell Chase when she gets here in the morning?”

Jack nodded.  “There will almost certainly still be a quarantine, unless your mother somehow manages to make a full recovery by then, but it will be on a much smaller scale.”

“And Mom will have gotten the antidote while there’s still time.”

“Exactly,” her father replied.  He turned and looked out the window, and Sydney was sure he was thinking about Nadia.  She joined him, willing her sister success.

*****

Chapter 122

Surprisingly, the power was still on in Shostakovich’s office building, but Nadia and Weiss didn’t think it would be a good idea to trust the elevator.  Instead, they climbed 18 flights of stairs, picking through debris on the last flight.  At the nineteenth floor, they saw the steps continuing up, but the ceiling had fallen to only a few feet above the steps.  “Are you sure this is safe?” Weiss asked nervously as Nadia reached to open the door to the nineteenth floor.

“Not at all,” she replied.  She really didn’t want to be here at all, but her desire to get out was overruled by the desire to keep her family alive.  She reached out and tugged on the door; it gave a little, but didn’t open.  She took a deep breath and jerked it harder; it opened, and a few bits of plaster fell from the ceiling, but she was relieved when she didn’t hear groaning metal or other ominous sounds.

Pulling out a flashlight, she led the way into the darkened hallway with Weiss right behind her.  Their feet squished in the soggy carpet as they shone the lights around.  “How exactly are we supposed to find what we’re looking for?”  Weiss asked.  “The top floor where the manuscript was is crushed.”

“I don’t really know,” Nadia answered.  “If we can find a way to get up on the roof, that might make it a little easier.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then Weiss focused his flashlight on the carpet just outside the doorway.  “What’s that?” he asked, and Nadia saw the irregular dark stain that seemed to be due to something seeping out from under the door.

She approached the door and slowly opened it.  Ready for anything, she swung her flashlight around the room.  It shone on something that glimmered; she flashed back to it, then jerked back with a short scream.  “Oh, God.”

“What is it?” Weiss asked, looking concerned.

“Arvin Sloane’s head,” she answered with a shudder.  She took a deep breath, then pointed her flashlight back into the room; she still had to make sure there wasn’t anything useful in here.  The flashlight played for a moment over Sloane’s head, and she saw that it was definitely detached from his body before she moved on.  A hand protruded from the pile of rubble a little further on, and Nadia suspected it belonged to the rest of Sloane’s body.  She moved the light up, scanning the rubble, and saw as she reached the top that she could see the night sky.  “Well, there’s our way to the roof,” she said, and was glad that her voice only shook a little.

“Over Sloane,” Weiss said, sounding no steadier than Nadia.  She nodded, and together they gingerly climbed the rubble.

***

Jack sat in an armchair by the window, still watching Irina sleep.  In the next bed, Sydney had turned a light on and sat reading.  He suspected it would be better if he did some reading as well, better than sitting here with his thoughts, but he remained where he was.

His eyes had strayed from Irina to look out the window, but a bit of movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention; he swung his gaze back to Irina to see that her eyes had opened.  “Sydney.  Get out,” she said sharply, her voice hoarse.

He looked over at Sydney and could see that she wanted to linger, perhaps to say goodbye, so he reinforced the command.  “Go, Sydney.  You’ll see us both later.”  She hesitated only a moment more, then nodded and left the room.  He stood and went to the edge of Irina’s bed.  “She’ll be all right?”

Irina nodded, then grabbed a washcloth and started to cough.  Jack sat down on the edge of the bed, reached an arm behind her shoulders, and lifted her into a sitting position.  He noted with worry that she wasn’t coughing with as much force as before; she was tiring, getting weaker.  The coughing eased, and she started to say something, but then put one hand over her mouth and the other on her stomach.  “Sick,” she murmured.

Jack had anticipated the possibility, guessing that she had a headache after she’d wanted the lights turned down earlier.  The bathroom trashcan was sitting right next to the bed; he grabbed it and held it up.  She sat perfectly still for a moment, then swallowed.  “I think I’m okay,” she whispered.  “But keep that close.”

He nodded.  “Do you want anything?  Water?”

“Water would be good.”  He nodded and went to fetch her a glass.  She drank a sip, then shivered, handed the glass back to him, and pulled the blankets up around her shoulders.  “Cold,” she said.  “I think I might have a fever.”

He put a hand on her forehead.  “You do.  I have some Tylenol if you want it.”

She shook her head.  “It’s good that I have a fever.”  He looked at her in puzzlement.  “It means what I did earlier worked at least a little bit.  This virus hides from the immune system.”

“I see.”  He decided that would be a good way to segue into the questions he needed to ask.  “When Chase gets here in the morning, she’ll want to establish a quarantine, even if we have an antidote, and she’ll want to know what the symptoms of this disease are so doctors here can watch for it.”

Irina nodded.  “Fatigue first, I suppose, though I don’t know how obvious that would have been without the blood loss.”

“What about the confusion you were having?”

“I think that’s just because I was so tired.  I did get a little better with the blood.”  Jack nodded; she was right.  “Then I got a headache – a lot like after I got the Rambaldi serum, really.”  He nodded again, thinking that he had a bit of a headache himself, which would fit well with Irina’s assumption that he was infected.  “I doubt many people will go to the doctor over that, though.  The first obvious symptom I had was coughing up blood.”

“That ought to get people in to the doctor, at least,” Jack mused.  She nodded.  “When was the first time you activated the Sphere?”  The incubation period of a disease was always important; fortunately, in this case it seemed to be short.

“I didn’t actually use it until I killed Sloane this afternoon,” she answered, “but the virus might have been activated when I first touched the Sphere three days ago.”

Jack nodded.  “We’ll tell Chase that the incubation period is up to three days, then.”  It was probably shorter, since he was already beginning to experience symptoms, but it probably wasn’t wise to have a quarantine of less than three days anyway.

Irina lay in silence for a moment, her head turned away from Jack, but then she looked back at him.  “Jack, I don’t know how much longer I’ll last.  If I can’t cure you, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head.  “Don’t be sorry.  None of this is your fault.”

“Yes it is,” she answered.  “It’s all happening just as Rambaldi predicted.  He knew exactly what I’d do: use the Sphere, but not on the Mueller device.”

“Maybe he didn’t know,” Jack replied.  “Maybe this was just his backup plan.  It doesn’t seem nearly as effective as using the Mueller device as a distributor.”

Irina considered a moment, then shrugged.  “No point looking back now, I suppose.”  She coughed, but it sounded very weak, and she didn’t bring anything up this time.  She squeezed Jack’s hand.  “Tell the girls I love them.”

Jack gave her a squeeze in return.  “You’ll tell them yourself.”

*****

Chapter 123

The frame of the Mueller device still sat on the roof, mostly intact, though a few smaller pieces had broken off.  Weiss stood beside Nadia, looking at it for a moment, before he said, “What now?”  He still didn’t quite get the point of this; they were trying to find a needle in a haystack, without even much of an idea of what the needle looked like or whether it would even stand out from the hay.  But Nadia seemed to think it should be done, and that was reason enough for Weiss.

“We should have brought Shostakovich with us,” Nadia murmured.  “At least he would have some idea which part of the building it was in.”

“I doubt the old man would have made it up all those stairs, though,” Weiss replied.  Although the man was quite fit for a 72-year-old, going up the eighteen flights had exhausted Weiss, who despite his weight could still pass CIA fitness standards.  They might have been able to bring him if he hadn’t passed out earlier, but given his current state Weiss suspected he would have had a heart attack or stroke before he could provide them with any information.  “Why don’t you call Mike?”  They really should have gotten this information before they left, of course, but Weiss had failed to think things through, though he didn’t blame Nadia for her similar failure – she was, after all, under a lot of stress at the moment.

Nadia nodded and got out her phone.  She had a brief conversation, then hung up.  “The office is on the southwest corner.  Or it was,” she said, looking in that direction, where the roof sloped downwards and looked very unstable.  “I don’t think we should try to get to it over the roof.”

“It looks like that part might have collapsed down to the nineteenth floor,” Weiss said.  “We might be able to get to it that way.”

Nadia nodded.  “Let’s go back down, then.”

They made their way back down, avoiding stepping on Sloane’s head, which gazed at the ceiling disconcertingly.  Once again, they made their way through damp and dripping hallways.  When they reached the door that seemed to open the most southwest, they both hesitated before opening it.  “Well, this is it,” Weiss said since he didn’t know what to say.

Nadia nodded and opened the door.  They both stood there staring in dismay, for the door opened into nothing – only dark night.

***

After stopping in to find out from Vaughn where Nadia and Weiss had gone, Sydney headed across the street toward Shostakovich’s office building, even though she really didn’t want to go in there again.  As she crossed the street, she saw that a pile of rubble had fallen from the building and lay half covering Elena’s body.  She sighed; she hadn’t known the woman who she now knew to be her grandmother well, but it seemed inhuman to leave her lying there on the sidewalk covered in bits of mortar and metal.  She made her way over to where Elena’s feet were sticking out from the pile and began to clear off what she could.  When she could see Elena’s torso, she stopped; lying on top of it was a book, bound in leather and looking very old and abused.  Holding her breath, she bent down and picked it up; flipping through it, she saw the familiar Italian scrawl of Rambaldi.  She looked around and saw pieces of what might have been a desk lying around her, and also a smashed vial still leaking some red liquid.  Could this really be what they needed?  She picked up the phone and dialed Nadia.

***

Irina heard a phone ring, but didn’t move, nor did she bother to make any attempt to listen to Jack’s muffled words.  She felt so tired.  A tightness began to develop in her chest, and she realized that she hadn’t taken a breath for a while, so she did so.  That exhausted her, and she slipped back into a hazy half-sleep.

She woke to increased light and voices, but didn’t make the effort to open her eyes until she felt a needle pierce her arm; then she opened them a slit to see Sydney, pushing a red liquid into her veins.  “Syd… shouldn’t be here.  Get sick,” she murmured.

“It’s all right, Mom,” Sydney answered.  “We found the antidote.”

“How is she?” came a voice from across the room that Irina recognized as her younger daughter.

“Not good,” Sydney said, and Irina felt fingers on her neck, presumably feeling her pulse.  “I don’t think she’s breathing very well.”  There was the sound of a door closing, and Sydney said, “Dad.  When will they be here?”

“Chase will be here with a quarantine team in three hours,” Jack replied.

“I’m not sure she has that long,” said Sydney.  “She looks really bad.  We could take her to the hospital…”

“No,” Irina whispered.

“Mom, we need to,” Nadia said, and Irina felt a pair of warm hands close around her chilled right hand.

“No, your mother’s right,” Jack said.  “We don’t know how fast this vaccine works.  If we take her to the hospital, there’s a good chance she’ll infect others.”

“Then we’ll bring the hospital here,” Nadia said firmly.  “Sydney and I can get supplies – oxygen, a ventilator, whatever it takes.”

There was silence for a moment, and Irina was drifting away again when she heard Jack say, “All right.”  Irina felt the hands leave hers, leaving her cold again.  “Hurry,” Jack said, and she drifted away again.

The next thing she was aware of was feeling a mask put on her face.  “Breathe, Irina,” came Jack’s voice.  She tried to open her eyes, but they felt so heavy, and she managed only a glimpse of Jack’s worried face before they closed again.

Some time later, she heard, “Irina, breathe, damn it,” but she couldn’t manage it this time; her chest didn’t seem to want to move.  Even when Sydney and Nadia joined in, she still couldn’t do it, and their voices seemed to recede down a long tunnel.  She felt lips on hers, warm air being pushed into her lungs, and the voices came closer again.  But she was tired, so tired, and in a moment she’d let the world fade again.

*****

Chapter 124

The bright, warm Los Angeles sun didn’t seem to fit with the mood of the three people standing at the foot of the grave – but then, when did sunshine ever seem appropriate for a funeral?  

There was no minister, no one giving a eulogy, just Jack, Sydney, and Nadia watching the coffin lowered into the ground.  It had been a little over two weeks since they’d returned from Sevogda, and they’d spent the time in carefully constructed isolation rooms, separated from the world and from each other, each privately dreading the appearance of symptoms or the news that someone else had gotten sick.  But the six in quarantine -  Sydney, Nadia, Jack, Weiss, Vaughn, and Shostakovich – remained healthy, as did the small animals who shared their air, and no one in Sevogda developed symptoms.  After fourteen days had passed, Chase had decided that the quarantine was over.  Shostakovich had been taken to a maximum security prison where he would stay for a very long time, after Director Durham had quietly resigned once Chase had sent him copies of certain documents.  The others had been given their freedom, and were for the moment at loose ends since APO was still inactive.

The three Bristows had decided that one of their first orders of business was to bury the body that had been kept in cold storage for two weeks, wrapped in layers of plastic to prevent any possible contamination.  They suspected she would have preferred to be buried in Russia, but they had had a hard enough time getting Chase to release the body for any burial, much less take it back to a country that had barely escaped being the starting location of a global pandemic.

“I wish things could have gone differently,” Nadia said softly as two cemetery workers began to shovel dirt over the coffin.  “I feel like I barely knew her, and her death seemed so useless.”  Sydney nodded.

“She was prepared to die,” Jack said, and the other two looked at him in surprise.  He saw their looks and shrugged.  “She told me so.”  They stood there for a few more minutes in silence, and then Jack’s phone rang.  “Yes,” he said after a short conversation.  “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”  He hung up the phone and turned to his daughters.  “That was the doctor.  He wants to talk to us about your mother.”

They turned and walked toward the car, leaving behind a grave marker which bore the simplest of epithets: “Elena Derevko, 1937-2006”.

***

There was a secret subbasement under the US Naval Medical Center; to get there, one had to take the regular elevator down to the basement, walk through a series of hallways, and then swipe a card or enter an access code to board another elevator that went down two more floors.  The elevator opened onto a brightly lit hallway, not quite as bustling with medical personnel as those above, but clearly a hospital.  What differentiated this from a regular hospital was the men with machine guns stationed every few dozen feet, because some of the patients really didn’t want to be here, and other patients had deadly enemies.

Jack, Sydney, and Nadia passed through this area, the treatment center for top secret, top security prisoners and for agents under the deepest of cover, who didn’t even have civilian identities any more that would allow them admission to the upper floors of this or any other hospital.  They walked to the end of the corridor, showed their badges to the guard, and had to submit to a retinal scan to board the elevator that took them down one floor further.  This floor was nearly deserted: no armed men, only a pair of nurses who sat at a desk just outside the elevator.  The floor contained twelve strict isolation rooms, built in response to the threat of bioterrorism; until a few weeks ago, they had never been used.  Now the floor had only one patient, who remained gravely ill.

“Agents Bristow, Agent Santos,” one of the nurses said, smiling at them as they stepped off the elevator.  “Dr. Stevenson is in Room Seven now, but he’ll be out to speak to you shortly.”

The three of them nodded and proceeded down the hall, all worried.  Irina had stopped breathing about an hour before Chase’s team had arrived; they’d forced air into her lungs as they waited for the team, the first few breaths mouth to mouth until they could get a bag valve mask set up.  The three of them had taken turns squeezing the bag, afraid that at any moment her heart would stop beating, until a team of medics in hazmat suits arrived.

The medics had intubated her, and she’d remained on a ventilator ever since, never moving or attempting to breathe on her own.  Her family had expected during the quarantine to hear news of her death at any moment, but her heart had kept beating steadily.  Her fever had gone down after a few days and now hovered only two degrees above normal, but she still hadn’t moved.

Chase had met with them all immediately after she’d released them from quarantine, and she’d given subtle hints that she thought Irina should be taken off the ventilator, but she’d given up after being met with nothing but hostility from Nadia, Jack, and Sydney.  The doctors still didn’t understand why she was in this condition, and until they did her family members had no intention of giving up.

The three of them stopped outside Room Seven and looked through the window, composed of three sheets of glass and air tight.  Dr. Stevenson was inside in an airtight suit connected to the wall with a tube, adjusting something on the IV line.  Irina lay perfectly still, as always, her chest rising and falling a measured ten times per minute as the ventilator pushed air through her endotracheal tube.  The doctor looked up, waved at them, and headed toward the door that would take him back to the room where the air would cycle and he would remove his suit.

He came out a few minutes later; as he greeted them, all three watched his face closely.  He wouldn’t have called them if he hadn’t learned something important.  “Come with me,” he said, and led them down the hall to a small room with half a dozen chairs inside.

“Have you figured out what’s going on?” Nadia asked as they all settled into the chairs.

“I believe I have,” he said, and they all leaned forward eagerly.  “We got the answer from our research on animals, actually.”  They nodded; through exposing small mammals to Irina, the doctors had figured out that the vaccine did indeed work, and in fact worked on animals who had been exposed as long as they were asymptomatic when they got the vaccine.  Once the animals started showing symptoms, though, the vaccine no longer seemed to help, and the animals died within a few hours.  “Like Ms. Derevko, the animals have survived if they’re put on a ventilator, but only to a point,” the doctor continued.  “The longest they’ve remained alive before their hearts stopped beating is two days.  The virus seems to attack receptors at the neuromuscular junction, essentially causing paralysis over a few hours.”

“So why are the animals on ventilators dying?”  Jack asked.  What he really wanted to know was why Irina was still alive, but he didn’t like the idea of asking it like that.

“As far as I can tell, after the respiratory muscles are paralyzed, the virus then goes on to attack the heart muscle,” the doctor said.  “However, in your wife’s case, her heart seems to be immune.  Although we’re still picking up the virus in her bloodstream, we haven’t seen any of the signs of impending heart failure that we’ve seen in the animals.”

“But do you know if she’s going to get better?” Sydney asked.

The doctor shifted uncomfortably.  “The good news is that levels of the virus in her blood have been decreasing steadily since she came in.  Her immune system seems to be responding; in the animals, the immune system was never activated.”  He took a deep breath.  “The thing I don’t know is whether this paralysis is reversible.  I expect we won’t know that unless her immune system manages to clear the virus completely.  Her viral load is already quite low, so I expect that to happen soon.  We are working on a treatment, but I doubt we’ll find anything; I suspect her recovery is up to her.”

There was silence in the room for a moment as they all let that sink in.  Then Nadia spoke up, a frown on her face.  “So she’s paralyzed.”  The doctor nodded.  “She’s not conscious, is she?”

The doctor looked very grave and took a moment to answer.  “I don’t know.  She very well could be.”

*****

Chapter 125

Irina had long ago given up trying to figure out what was real and what was just a dream.  There was no sight, even when she was almost sure she was dreaming – only sound, and sometimes touch, but the touch was always cold and impersonal, metal, plastic, or latex, never the skin of another human being on her own.  Jack, Sydney, and Nadia came to her often, but so did Elena.  Katya came to her several times, and she was almost certain that at least once she was really there.  Her father came, but sometimes he merged with memories of the man she had believed to be her father growing up.  Occasionally Sloane was there, which was always unpleasant.  Nadya and Dmitri whispered in her ears sometimes, telling her not to give up yet – not that she had any choice in the matter.

There were also other voices, voices she didn’t know.  These voices didn’t speak to her, but about her – mostly a stream of numbers that she suspected represented her vital signs.  As time went on, she heard these voices more and more clearly, while the others faded, though they never left her completely.

Then she heard Jack’s voice, as clear as if he was standing beside her ear, and she was fairly sure it was really him.  “Irina, I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said, “but we’re trying to help you.  We…”  His words were broken off by a small sound, as if he were trying to hold something back.  “We don’t know if you’ll get better.  You’re paralyzed, although I suppose if you’re awake you’ve figured that out.”  She had known that, but it was easier to fade back into her shadowy dream world than to dwell on her condition.  “We don’t really have any way to tell if you’re awake,” Jack continued, “but just in case, the girls and I thought it would be best to give you some medicine to sedate you.  We’ll give your body some time to finish getting rid of the virus, and they’ll be stopping the sedatives once a day to give you a chance to breathe or move on your own.  We know you wouldn’t want to be like this forever, so we’ve made a decision.  They’ll keep testing your blood for the virus.  When the levels become undetectable, or if they stop going down, we’ll give it two more weeks.  If there isn’t any sign that you might be recovering by then, we’ll turn off the ventilator.”  She felt a gloved hand squeeze hers.  “I hope that’s all right.  We tried to decide what you would want, and we want to give you every chance to get better.  There are those that would like to give up now, but the girls and I didn’t think that gave you a fair chance.”  Irina would have smiled if she could, for that plan seemed like the best they could have come up with.  “Sydney and Nadia are going to come talk to you now, and then we’ll make sure that one of us is here every day when they turn down the medicine.”  He squeezed her hand again; she tried to squeeze back, but of course nothing happened.

Sydney and Nadia each came in separately then, and they said similar things, both of them saying they hoped she wouldn’t be mad at them for deciding to pull the plug when the time came.  She wished she could speak to them; she would tell them that of course she wasn’t angry with them.  The state she was in now wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t the worst thing she had endured either; she didn’t mind going through it if there was a chance for recovery, but she certainly would rather discover what death would bring than stay like this forever.

After Nadia had finished speaking, she heard an unfamiliar male voice telling her that he was going to be putting some medicine in her IV line.  Then she felt a burning sensation lance down her arm, and for the first time since all this had began she felt true sleepiness rather than just the haze of confusion she was usually in.

Mercifully, the dreams nearly stopped – now when she heard the voice of Jack, Sydney, or Nadia, she knew it was really them.  She also felt more aware when she was awake, feeling touch more clearly and able to understand and remember what was said to her.  After a few days, she realized that she was in different positions when she awoke, and sometimes those positions weren’t particularly comfortable.  Instead of being bothered by this, she enjoyed it – in a world without sight, taste, or smell, with her only human contact through gloves, any sensation was welcome, even pain.  Besides, that pins-and-needles sensation would surely induce her to move as soon as she became able.  And she did believe that she would recover movement – she had to, because the only alternative was eternal darkness.

Waking up was always surreal, with a fair amount of time spent wondering whether she was awake or asleep.  She suspected that the medical personnel withdrew the anesthetic some period of time before Sydney, Jack, or Nadia arrived and then left her alone, since all she could hear was a steady beeping, interspersed with sounds of air moving that corresponded with the feeling of her chest rising and falling.  Once she was sure she was awake, she spent the waiting time trying to move.  She wasn’t sure whether small muscles or large ones would begin to work first, so she alternated between trying to wiggle fingers and toes, trying to open her eyes, and attempting to clench her stomach muscles or buttocks.  Then Jack or one of her daughters would arrive, or sometimes two or all three.  They always followed the same pattern: first they would tell her the date and the day of the week, then she would hear how the virus count in her blood compared to that of the day before.  The girls would usually talk a bit about what they had done since they last came, everyday things like going to the grocery store or seeing a movie; Jack usually skipped that part.  She wondered if their black ops division was operating, but if so, they didn’t talk about it, not that she would expect them to.  Then they would read to her; Sydney read poetry by a variety of authors, and she wondered on occasion if Sydney were reading from the books that Jack had once given Laura.  Nadia chose a Sherlock Holmes novel; Irina had read it once before, long ago, and so already knew how it ended, but she loved listening to her daughter’s voice rolling over the words.  Jack surprised her by reading plays by Chekhov in Russian.  He had a bit of an accent, and Irina suspected he would be surprised by how expressive his readings were.  Then again, perhaps he did know; he always deferred to the girls when he was there with one or both of them.

She was surprised one day when the hand that took hers was not gloved and cold, but warm flesh.  “Good news, Mom,” came Nadia’s voice.  “You’re not contagious anymore.  You haven’t been for a while, actually, but they wanted to be sure.  They moved you out of isolation to a regular room this morning.”  Irina mentally smiled – she tried to smile physically as well, but of course nothing happened.  But Nadia’s next words sent a chill down her spine.  “They also aren’t picking up the virus in your blood.  You’ve still got antibodies, but there’s no telling how long those will last.”  She then went on to the usual daily chatter – day of the week, date, and then a mini-rant about the factual inaccuracies in the new James Bond movie – but Irina couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the countdown to her death had begun.

*****

Chapter 126

As he did three days a week, Jack made his way down to the naval hospital’s underground ward for classified patients.  The guards stationed at every door nodded at him as he passed; most of the patients down here had no visitors, and so he, Sydney, and Nadia had quickly become familiar to the guards.

He stopped at the end of the hall, a few paces short of the elevator leading down to the bioterrorism floor, and entered the last room; it was his first time visiting Irina since she’d been cleared from quarantine.  He stopped just inside the door when he saw that someone else was already there: Dr. Stevenson, doing something with one of Irina’s feet.  The doctor looked up at him, and it concerned Jack to see a frown on Stevenson’s face.  “Agent Bristow,” the doctor said.  “Would you come over here, please?”

“Something wrong?” Jack asked as he came over to the bedside.

“No, not at all,” the doctor replied.  “I want you to watch her toes very carefully for me.”  

Jack watched as the doctor took a wooden tongue depressor and ran the tip of it along the bottom of Irina’s foot; as he reached the ball of her foot, Jack saw her fourth toe twitch.  “Her toe moved,” he said.  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

 “The nurse said she thought she saw her toe move earlier,” Stevenson said.  “I couldn’t get anything when I asked her to move her toes, but her reflex is there, although it’s faint.  What’s even better is that her toe is flexing downwards, which indicates that her nervous system is grossly intact.”  

The doctor still didn’t look happy, and he hadn’t answered Jack’s question.  “So what’s wrong?” Jack asked.

“Well, we’ve been working under the theory that she’s paralyzed at the neuromuscular junction, but that her central nervous system is intact.  The fact that she’s not responding to commands may indicate that she’s truly in a coma, rather than just paralyzed.”  The doctor spoke softly, but Jack suspected that Irina would still be able to hear if she were in fact conscious.

“Is there any way to tell?”  If Irina could hear this conversation, Jack suspected it would be rather frightening, so he moved up the bed a bit and took her hand.

“We evaluated her for brain death when she first arrived,” the doctor said.  “All we can tell is that her brain is using oxygen and sugar, so it’s working to some extent, but we can’t determine her level of consciousness without any skeletal muscle function.”  Stevenson considered for a moment.  “How long was it between when she stopped breathing and when she started getting air artificially?”

“One minute,” Jack answered; he clearly remembered sitting with Nadia and Sydney watching her every breath and counting the seconds between them.  “But she wasn’t breathing well before that.”

Stevenson nodded.  “I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible there might be some brain damage.”  He brightened a bit.  “However, she seems to be getting a bit of muscle function back, so that’s a good sign.”

Jack nodded.  “Are there any other reflexes working?”

“I haven’t tested them yet,” the doctor replied.  “I’ve only been doing a full neurological exam once a week, since I haven’t been getting any positive results, but now I’ll start doing them daily.”  He turned and looked at Irina.  “If you’re aware of what’s going on at all, I’m afraid you’re not going to like me very much.”

Jack could see why, as he saw over the next ten minutes exactly what a full neurological exam entailed.  The doctor made good use of his reflex hammer, hitting Irina in several places on all four limbs, but she showed no response other than to that first test on her foot.  Then he poked several places that Jack knew were pressure points, applying quite a bit of pressure, again with no apparent response.  He then jiggled the tube that was pushing air into her lungs, though Jack wasn’t sure what the point of that was.  Next, he pried open an eyelid and shone a light into her right eye.  “Well, well,” he said; when he looked up, Jack saw that he was smiling.  “Look at this.”  Jack moved to the head of the bed and saw that when Stevenson flashed his light in her eye, the pupil got just a bit smaller.  “That’s a pupillary light reflex; she hasn’t had that before.”  He then opened the other eyelid.  “Now watch her left eye,” he said, and again shone his light into her right eye.  Jack saw that her left pupil contracted as well as the right.  “That means that she’s getting a signal from one side of the brain to the other.”  The next step was turning Irina’s head from side to side; the doctor apparently didn’t get a positive result from that, since he didn’t say anything.  “I think we’ll skip the corneal reflex and the caloric testing today.  They won’t really provide us with any new information, since we’re more concerned about the muscles working than the nerves.”  He gathered up his instruments.  “Let the nurse know if you see any bit of movement.”

“Of course,” Jack replied, and the doctor left.  Jack turned his attention back to Irina.  “That hardly seems like a way to encourage you to move again, does it?”  He picked up her hand and squeezed it, then stared in surprise when he felt the tiniest bit of pressure on his hand.  Keeping his own hand perfectly still, he said, “Irina?  Can you do that again?”  This time there was nothing.  He sighed; perhaps he’d just been imagining things.  He let go of her hand to move a chair to the bedside while giving her the usual information on what day it was, then opened the book of Chekhov plays and began to read aloud.

*****

Chapter 127

“Do you think we should get her some flowers?” Nadia asked.  Sydney glanced over at her sister, then back at the road.  “Her room is pretty bare,” continued Nadia.

“Yeah,” Sydney replied.  “There’s a florist right across the street from the hospital.”  Their father had told them both earlier that Irina had made some small movements the day before; he’d warned them not to have their expectations too high, but they were both hopeful anyway.

They stopped and bought a vase of flowers, neither of them voicing an opinion on the probability that their mother would open her eyes in time to see them before they wilted.  Flowers in hand, they made the long trip down to the basement in silence.

Sydney hesitated in the doorway as Nadia went on in.  She hated seeing her mother like this, with an absurd number of tubes going into her and a machine keeping her alive.  She would have hated seeing anyone like this, of course, but it seemed especially ill fit for her mother, who seemed the most alive person Sydney knew.

“Hi, Mom,” Nadia said, smiling and taking Irina’s hand.  Sydney could understand Nadia’s eagerness for any mother, even one who couldn’t move or speak; after all, Nadia had only met Irina twice, and on both of those occasions her mother had been worn and only a shadow of her former self.  “We brought you some flowers,” Nadia continued.  “Yellow tulips.  I’ll just put them at the foot of your bed, okay?”  She started to move, but then stopped.  “Sydney,” she said in an excited whisper, “come here.”  She turned back to Irina.  “Mom, can you do that again?”

“What’s going on?” Sydney asked, moving into the room and grabbing the vase that looked like it was about to slip from Nadia’s grasp.

“She moved, she squeezed my hand,” Nadia said, her excitement clear.  “Mom?”  She frowned briefly, but then smiled.  “She did it again!”

Sydney moved around the bed, setting the vase down on the table at the foot, and took her mother’s hand.  “Mom, I’m on your left side.”  She smiled when she felt it: just the slightest pressure against her fingers.  For the first time, she really believed that her mother would recover.

***

Irina was getting frustrated.  It had been four days since she’d managed to slightly move a toe, and she didn’t seem to be making any progress.  She could twitch her fingers and toes, but it was several minutes before she could move the same digit again, and she still couldn’t actually do anything.  It didn’t help that every time she managed a small movement she was rewarded with an intense headache.  Fortunately the worst of the pain only lasted perhaps a minute before it faded to just an annoying ache, but it still wasn’t pleasant.

One thing that did improve was that the doctor had mostly stopped poking her.  When he’d come in the second day, before he’d started pinching her to see if she responded to pain he’d had the sense of mind to merely ask her to move a finger, which she was able to do.  He’d then check a finger on the other arm, then toes on both feet.  Then he’d ask her to open her eyes, which she couldn’t do, although she tried her best each day.  That was followed by pressure in only one painful spot, apparently to try to induce her eyes to open.  He did always test her reflexes, but that was annoying rather than painful.

Then came the best part of the day, when a member of her family arrived.  After Jack’s conversation with the doctor on the first day, Sydney and Nadia came on the second.  On the third day all three of them were there, but their conversation was stilted; Irina was sure there was an outside party there, possibly Director Chase.

They never told her who was coming the next day, so at the moment she was waiting to see who her visitor would be.  She was pleased when she heard Sydney’s greeting – she would have been glad to hear any of them, of course, but it had been a while since Sydney had visited alone.  She gave Sydney’s hand the best squeeze she could manage, which wasn’t much, and got an answering squeeze.

“Good news, Mom,” Sydney said after she’d reported the day’s date.  “I talked to Dr. Stevenson, and he’s going to start a medicine that he thinks might help.  It’s used by people with a similar problem, he says, although they’re usually not in quite as bad shape as you are.”  Then, apparently not having any non-classified news to impart, she started reading some poetry as Irina continued trying to open her eyes.

*****

Chapter 128

Dr. Fred Stevenson stood in the doorway of the hospital room silently observing his patient, as he always did before examining any non-alert patient.  Irina Derevko, like most of the patients here in the classified ward, was an enigma to him, but she confused him more than most.

A few days after she’d arrived, he’d been called to look at her by the infectious disease doctor who was then handling her care.  Dr. Stevenson had been told only her name and that she had been exposed to an unknown virus – the doctors often didn’t get the patients’ real names, but since he was a neurologist it was usually essential for him to know the name his patient would respond to.  He had recognized her name; she’d recently been sixth on the CIA’s classified Most Wanted list, so he’d assumed at first that she was a prisoner.  But when he’d interviewed the other people who were in quarantine, five CIA agents and a man who was quite clearly a prisoner, it seemed she’d actually been working with the CIA.  Although that was unusual, he knew it wasn’t the first time a wanted criminal had made a deal with the CIA.

It hadn’t been until two weeks later, when the infectious disease doctor had released the others from quarantine, that Stevenson had gotten his real shock: he’d learned that one of the CIA agents was his patient’s husband, and the two female agents were their daughters.  He knew better than to ask questions, but he had done some research to the limits of what his security clearance allowed; what he’d found had confused him even more.  He still didn’t have a plausible explanation for how a woman with a distinctly Russian name, who had led a major criminal organization and had a list of crimes dating back to the 1970s, was mother to two CIA agents and wife to a third.

Now, as he stood watching Irina Derevko, he could see that the medicine he’d started the day before, neostigmine, was having an effect.  When he’d first arrived, a few minutes after the nurse had turned off the sedating medication, her arms had been down at her sides on top of her blanket.  As he watched over the next ten minutes, he saw her elbow bend bit by bit, pulling her forearm up toward her chest.  He continued watching to see if she had a goal in doing this other than the movement itself; although he knew she could follow the simplest of commands, he still wasn’t sure exactly what her level of consciousness was.  It now seemed that she was fully conscious, as this was clearly taking a great deal of concentration due to the profound muscle weakness she seemed to be experiencing.

When her arm reached the top of the blanket, she stopped moving for a bit.  Stevenson thought that she was done and was about to go in to do his exam when he saw that she was moving again, at the wrist this time.  Her hand moved up until it was entirely above the blanket and then moved back down.  It was then that he realized what she was trying to do: she wanted to get her arm under the blanket.  He watched as her hand crept down until her arm was buried to the elbow.

He was debating whether to go on in and do his exam or stay here and watch to see if she got her other arm under as well when his attention was drawn away from that as an alarm on the ventilator sounded.  He stepped into the room and looked at the screen, where he was pleased to see that the alarm had gone off because she’d taken a breath on her own.  The ventilator was set so that when she’d taken her own breath the ventilator had immediately kicked in to push in just as much air as it normally did, so he couldn’t see how much of a breath she’d taken, but this was still very good news.  He reached out and turned off the alarm.  “Irina?” he said.  “It’s Dr. Stevenson.”  If she could move her arm and her diaphragm, she ought to be able to manage her eyelids, so he wasn’t surprised when she opened her eyes for the first time.

***

By the time she got her arm under the blanket, Irina was ready to scream with frustration at the time it had taken, but she was also very happy that she’d managed to do it at all.  Her left arm, above the blanket, was still freezing, but she was confident that she could get it covered up too.  She decided to take a break first, though; her head was pounding and she felt like she didn’t have enough air – what was pushed into her lungs every few seconds didn’t seem to be enough.  So she waited until the machine was between breaths to try taking one on her own.

She winced inwardly as an alarm went off, making her headache worse – she certainly hadn’t expected that.  Fortunately it was only a moment before the alarm went silent, but her relief was short-lived, disappearing when she heard the doctor’s voice.  She was too busy to be poked and prodded, and he’d almost certainly uncover her and undo all the work she’d done.  She opened her eyes, which turned out to be relatively easy, and tried to glare at him, but that didn’t work too well as her vision was blurry and she couldn’t quite seem to focus.

“Well, hello, Irina,” the doctor’s voice said, and an indistinct face moved into position above her.  “It’s good to finally see you.”  But her eyes were getting tired, and she wanted to be able to open them later when Jack or one of the girls arrived, so she let them fall closed again.  “Irina, you took a breath a minute ago,” the doctor continued.  “I’d like you to try to do that again.”  She was stubborn enough to want to stay still to spite him, but maybe if she succeeded he’d go away.  Once the machine was done with its breath, she pulled in air again.  Again, more air than she’d really wanted was pushed into her lungs.  “Good,” the doctor said.  “The ventilator’s probably pretty uncomfortable for you, isn’t it?”  She managed to nod her head just a little, but she wasn’t sure if it was enough for the doctor to see it until he said, “All right.  I’ll go get a respiratory therapist to see what we can do about that.”

Irina didn’t allow herself to hope that maybe the tube could come out; she doubted she was ready for that.  Instead, as she heard footsteps leaving the room, she concentrated on inching her left arm up to get it under the blanket.

*****

Chapter 129

APO had returned to active status a few days after its field operatives had been released from quarantine, but for two weeks now all of their missions had essentially been milk runs.  True, they were missions that regular CIA divisions couldn’t get away with, since they had all required breaking at least a few international laws, but they were the kind of missions that black ops divisions might normally use to train new recruits and get them accustomed to breaking laws.  For a team that had already helped to prevent the end of the world while keeping Director Chase and the rest of the CIA in the dark, they were cake.

Jack didn’t think Chase was punishing them, though.  He had a feeling she was worried that Sydney and Nadia wouldn’t perform to the best of their ability with their mother’s life hanging in the balance, and perhaps she was also concerned about Jack’s own ability to think rationally.  Jack knew that he and both his daughters were experts at compartmentalizing and would have no trouble putting personal problems aside, but Chase didn’t have years of experience with her work and personal life being inextricably entwined to see that.

Now that Irina was clearly getting better, though, Jack suspected that the more difficult missions would be coming their way.  So he wasn’t surprised when he got orders for a new mission two days after Chase had observed Irina at the hospital.  This mission would be quite a bit more difficult than the ones they’d been doing, and would require sending four agents to Paris for several days.  After some consideration, he decided to send Sydney, Dixon, Nadia, and Weiss; Sydney and Dixon had the experience to pull this off, while he hadn’t yet found the limit of Weiss and Nadia’s current abilities, and this mission would help him to find out.

The APO team spent the morning being briefed, and then at noon the four agents headed for the airport.  It was about two hours after that, when the plane had been in the air about an hour, that Jack got a call from Director Chase.  He frowned as he listened to what she had to say: Durham had apparently let some choice members of Congress know about Irina’s pardon agreement, and a senator would be meeting with several CIA and FBI agents in Washington first thing in the morning to decide whether or not to hold up their end of the bargain.  Chase was getting ready to fly to Washington now, and she wanted Jack to come along to provide his version of what had happened over the past few months.

Irina’s sedation was always turned off at 4 pm, and whoever was visiting her usually came between 5 and 6.  Obviously that wouldn’t be happening today, so as Jack sped toward the airport he tried to think of a way to let Irina know about the situation.  He couldn’t call the nurses in the underground ward – he knew the number, but he wasn’t officially supposed to know it and thus wouldn’t use it for anything other than a dire emergency.  The main hospital would have no record of a patient named ‘Irina Derevko’; if she was in the computer system at all, it was under an alias that he didn’t know.  Dr. Stevenson’s office staff would similarly have no knowledge of Irina.  No doubt the doctor had a cell phone, and Jack could probably find the number with a few hours of computer time, but he couldn’t do that while Chase was on the same plane.  He sighed.  He still wasn’t sure Irina was fully conscious; maybe she wouldn’t know the difference.  In any case, he was sure he could explain the situation when he got back.

***

When Stevenson returned after talking to a respiratory therapist, he was pleased to see that Irina’s left arm was inching up toward the blanket.  He watched for a moment, debating whether to interrupt her.  But the best thing for her right now was to get her off the ventilator if she could breathe on her own, and he didn’t want her to exhaust herself first.  “Irina?” he said, stepping into the room.  “We’re going to see about getting that tube out.”  At that, her arm stopped inching its way up and she opened her eyes.  “You do want the tube out, don’t you?”  She nodded, and her head moved just a bit more than it had when she’d nodded before, a good sign.  “Good,” Stevenson said.  “Let me explain what we’re going to do, all right?”  She nodded again, but this one was just the slightest movement again – perhaps she was getting tired.  “First I’m going to sit you up to make it a little easier for you to breathe.”  He went to the side of the bed and moved the head of the bed up so that she was half reclining.  “Comfortable?”  She nodded, and then he saw her mouth moving; he shook his head.  “You won’t be able to talk with the tube in.  Just hold on, all right?”  She didn’t look very happy about it, but she nodded anyway.

“All right,” Stevenson said.  “Do you think you can cough for me?”  She didn’t move for a moment, and he worried that she wouldn’t be able to do it, but then she managed a weak cough.  “Good.  Now what I’m going to do is change the ventilator settings so that it won’t take any breaths for you; when you do take a breath, though, the machine will help you keep your airways open.  If you have any trouble, if you feel like you’re not getting enough air, let me know and I’ll turn the ventilator back on.  I’ll also turn it on if your heart rate gets too high or if the oxygen saturation in your blood gets too low.  If you do all right for half an hour, I’ll take the tube out; if I do have to turn the ventilator on again, we’ll try again tomorrow.  Does that sound fair?”  She nodded.  “Good.  Let me know when you’re ready.”  She nodded again almost immediately, and he moved to change the settings on the machine.

*****

Chapter 130

For the first five minutes after the ventilator stopped breathing for her, Irina thought she’d get through the test with ease.  Then her chest started to ache.  She tried to take quicker, more shallow breaths, but that made her tired far too quickly, so instead she forced herself to take deep breaths through the pain.  She was still confident that she could make it through the half hour trial, but it was taking a lot of concentration, and she wondered if she should just give up and stay on the ventilator another day.  Her throat hurt, though, and every time she tried to move her tongue a little she felt the tube; she wanted it out.  So she kept her focus on breathing, in and out, one breath at a time.

Her eyes had fallen closed a few minutes in, but she knew that Dr. Stevenson was standing right by the bed.  He let her know the time every five minutes, and every now and then would say something encouraging.  She’d expected to have to fight to get the tube out, but he seemed to want it out as much as she did.  She only hoped they weren’t both overestimating her ability to continue breathing once she wasn’t focusing all of her attention on it.

As she passed the twenty minute mark, though, Irina felt the tightness in her chest begin to ease up a little.  Perhaps her diaphragm had just needed to warm up a little first.  She breathed out a little heavier than she had been; as she did so, she realized that her entire body was tensed up – not much, probably not enough for the doctor to notice, but it was evident to her.  She shifted her focus a bit; while still paying attention to her breathing, she concentrated on relaxing each part of her body, moving up from her toes.  She heard the doctor say “Five more minutes” as she was working her way up her arms; she smiled a little, certain now that she was going to make it.

She had let herself fall into a light meditative trance when the doctor spoke again.  “All right, Irina, that’s it.  Still feeling okay?”  She opened her eyes and nodded; her eyes managed to focus this time, and she saw him clearly for the first time.  He smiled.  “I was beginning to think you’d fallen asleep.  Speaking of which, once we get the tube out it’s probably best to discontinue the sedation.  Is that all right?”

Irina nodded again; now that she could move a little bit, she didn’t want to sleep; she suspected the fastest road to regaining her strength would be moving as much as possible.

“Good,” the doctor said.  “We’ll go ahead and take the tube out, then.”  He disappeared from her field of vision for a moment, then reappeared holding a small, blue plastic tube.  He put it in her mouth, where she discovered that it was a suction tube; when he had moved it around and felt satisfied, he removed it.  “When I pull out the tube, it’ll make you cough and gag a little, and then I’ll use the suction again.”  She nodded, and he said, “Take a deep breath for me.”

The moment the tube came out was indeed quite uncomfortable, but then the air she took in with her next breath felt wonderful, cool and soothing to her dry throat.  She then tried to speak, to ask for some water, but nothing came out, and her tongue and lips felt huge and sluggish.  The doctor was out of her visual field again; she tried to turn her head, but that didn’t seem to work.  She sighed; she knew she couldn’t expect to get better all at once, but limitations had always annoyed her.  But she was breathing, no longer dependent on a machine to keep her alive; at least that was something.

The doctor came around in front of her again.  “Have you tried to talk?”  She nodded, and tried once again to move her lips or make a sound, but she wasn’t any more successful.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “I’m sure that will come with time.  It’s just as well; it’ll take your voice a little while to recover from the tube, anyway.  Do you think you can swallow?”

Irina closed her lips, pushed her tongue up and forward, and then pulled the muscles in the back of her throat tight.  As she managed a small swallow, she realized she was going to have to learn to do everything again, working through it step by step.  “Good!” Stevenson said.  She opened her eyes, slightly startled; she’d almost forgotten he was there.  “I bet you’d like some ice chips.”  She nodded.

He left the room, and she closed her eyes.  She imagined torturing Milo Rambaldi – who in her mind looked a great deal like her father – and smiled.

*****

Chapter 131

After Dr. Stevenson watched Irina suck down a couple of ice chips, he left, and Irina quickly fell asleep.  When she woke, she looked around at her surroundings for the first time – although her survey was limited somewhat by the huge amount of effort it took to turn her head.  At the end of the bed was a small table, on which sat a vase of rather wilted yellow flowers; Irina realized that they must be the flowers that the girls had brought her several days ago.  Above that was a white board, on which was written, “Thursday, Oct 12”; below that was “RN: Shelly”.  Sydney, her most recent visitor, had told her it was Wednesday the 11th, so no one from her family had come yet today.  The clock next to the board read 5:43, with no indication of whether it was am or pm.  Irina was fairly certain she had only slept a couple of hours, though, and she rather doubted the doctor would be making rounds in the middle of the night, so it was probably early evening now.  She didn’t know what time her visitors usually came, but she expected it would be fairly soon.

Her hands were lying on her chest, just under the top edge of the blanket which came up to several inches below her shoulders, so she decided to try to work them down further.  As she was starting to move her right hand, though, the blanket slipped and half of it fell to her waist – not surprising since the head of the bed was up at an angle.  Irina looked around and saw a controller on a cord sitting next to her right thigh; she sighed and began inching her hand toward it.

When she finally reached the controller, she glanced up at the clock again.  5:47 – four minutes to move her hand a distance of two feet.  It had seemed to take longer.  At least she wasn’t completely helpless anymore, she reminded herself.  She had had plenty of time to memorize the configuration of buttons on the controller on the way down, so it was easy to find the one that lowered the head of the bed and press it.  She stopped when the bed was a few degrees above flat – she wanted to be able to see the clock without raising her head – and rested for a few moments before beginning the monumental task of rearranging the blanket.

She started by using her left hand, still on her chest, to pull the blanket up over her shoulders.  Her fingers kept losing their grip on the blanket, and she was quite frustrated by the time she managed the task.  Then she started bringing her right hand back up, pulling on the blanket when she reached the point where it had fallen.

She was taking a break, the blanket about halfway to its destination, when she heard footsteps near her bed.  She opened her eyes and focused on a young woman, who started when she noticed Irina’s gaze.  “Irina?  Can you hear me?”

Might as well try talking again, Irina thought, so she tried to say, “Yes.”  Her lips moved, but the nurse didn’t seem to pull any meaning from that, so Irina nodded instead.

“Good,” said the nurse – Shelly, presumably.  “The doctor said you were waking up a little.”  Irina was a bit annoyed at that, since she’d actually been awake for quite a while, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it at the moment.  “Do you need anything?”

Her throat was again quite dry, and had been since she woke up, so Irina nodded.  She tried again to speak, but the nurse just stared at her in confusion.  Irina sighed, closed her eyes, and remembered how she’d managed to swallow earlier – one tiny step at a time.  She breathed in, then, as she was breathing out, closed her lips to a small circle and then opened them, making the sound “wa”.  Then she put her tongue to the tip of her teeth and pushed off, making a “t” sound.  She tried to make an “er” sound, but wasn’t very successful.

But the nurse was nodding.  “Water?” she said, and Irina nodded eagerly.  “I can get you some ice chips, okay?”  Irina nodded again.

She was able to get the blanket up the rest of the way while the nurse was getting the ice chips, so when Shelly asked if she needed anything else, Irina was able to shake her head.   After the nurse was gone, Irina closed her eyes.  Her hands were still on her chest, but at least they were warm; maybe she’d put them back down after she’d gotten a little sleep.  She’d rather be on her side, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t ready to undertake that huge project, so she let her thoughts drift and quickly slipped into sleep.

*****

Chapter 132

When Jack walked into a meeting room at FBI headquarters with Chase, he saw immediately that the man at the head of the table was not pleased to see them.  The man was Senator Jacob Hiser; Jack had never met him, but he had a reputation for being tough on crime.  He had been one of the most outspoken in favor of renewing the Patriot Act the year before, and Jack knew that he had a history of supporting funding for CIA black ops divisions and secret, extralegal activities.  Jack knew, of course, that this meeting wouldn’t have been called if the men in charge had any intention of honoring the CIA’s agreement with Irina, so he was prepared for an uphill battle, made even harder by the fact that he had to pretend to be at least neutral toward her, if not against her.  Jack was pleased to see this particular man in charge, though; he at least knew enough about him to have an idea which angles had a chance of working.

Chase took a seat halfway down the table and motioned for Jack to sit beside her.  He did so and watched as the table filled up.  That was also a good sign; the fact that there were others on the same side of the table as he and Chase indicated that this was to be a discussion rather than an interrogation.  That didn’t mean that the key players hadn’t already made up their minds, but Jack was more likely to be able to sway them if he wasn’t forced to start out on the defensive.

Once the door was closed and everyone was seated, the senator spoke.  “Good morning, everyone.  As you all know, matters discussed here today are classified at the highest level and are not to be discussed outside this room.”  There were nods around the table.  “We are here to discuss the issue of a pardon being granted to Irina Derevko, a known terrorist who was recently ranked sixth on the CIA’s most wanted list.  We have with us Agent Chase, the director of the CIA’s Los Angeles division, who negotiated the initial pardon agreement with Derevko.  Director Chase, please introduce your guest.”  Jack realized immediately that it was to be Chase, not he, that the senator would attack, which made his job a bit easier if the others saw him as a neutral party – but whether that happened, and even whether he was permitted to remain in the room – would depend on just how Chase presented him.

“Agent Bristow is the director of the task force that Derevko will be working with when her pardon is confirmed,” Chase replied.  Jack thought she had managed to introduce him quite well, but he wasn’t certain whether he would have chosen to act as if Irina’s pardon were guaranteed.  Then again, he wasn’t even entirely sure if Chase was in favor of Irina’s deal being continued at this point; he could tell she was still very uncertain about Irina in general.

Senator Hiser frowned.  “The same Agent Bristow who was married to Derevko for ten years while she stole CIA secrets for the KGB?”  Jack winced inwardly; he’d expected that everyone in the room would have read up on Irina’s history, but he’d been hoping that no one would make the connection – or at least not announce it out loud.  There was no taking it back now, though, so he nodded.  Hiser leaned forward and glared at Jack.  “Agent Chase, explain to me, please, how putting Derevko in his charge is anything but a horribly bad idea.”

Chase remained unruffled.  “When Derevko was previously in CIA custody, Agent Bristow was the person who most strongly asserted that she was not trustworthy, and the person who went to the greatest lengths to search for evidence; only after he found none did he agree to work with her.  I am fully confident that Agent Bristow will monitor her activities with the greatest of care, and that he will both report and investigate fully any suspicious movements on her part.  And according to the terms of the pardon agreement, we can jail Derevko at any time on suspicion that she’s not behaving herself; if that suspicion is investigated and she is found to be in violation, all charges against her will become active again.”

Hiser began to look somewhat mollified as Chase spoke, but his face hardened during the last few phrases.  “And that is indeed exactly what we are here to discuss: whether Derevko has already broken her pardon agreement.  She was to stay in Los Angeles and help Agent Bristow’s task force to recover a dangerous item; instead she disappeared for several months and reappeared in Russia, captured by that task force along with the item and another known criminal.  To be blunt, I find it ludicrous that we are even considering giving the woman a pardon simply because she and the item on which her pardon was contigent were captured at the same time, on the theory that she would have turned the item in to the CIA at the first opportunity.”

“Senator, that is why I asked Agent Bristow to be here today,” Chase replied.  “When he fills in the gaps, I believe you’ll see why the two of us feel that Derevko has indeed fulfilled the terms of her agreement.”  She looked at Jack expectantly, as did everyone else in the room.  Jack took a deep breath and began to tell a very edited story about the events of the past few months.

*****

Chapter 133

Irina woke to the sound of voices.  She had long ago trained herself not to open her eyes upon waking, the better to take advantage of situations in which appearing asleep would be useful; this was one of those cases.  She remained still and listened closely to the voices, which seemed to be a few feet from her bed.  She recognized one of the voices as Dr. Stevenson, while the other was the voice of her new nurse, Becky, who had arrived after Shelly.  Becky was saying, “She’s definitely been moving a little.  Shelly said she asked for water last night, but she didn’t say anything to me.  She always went right back to sleep after I woke her up, though, so maybe she was just tired.”

Irina had indeed been tired, and a bit annoyed when the nurse woke her up.  She’d thought maybe she’d been wrong about the time when the date on the board didn’t change after twelve o’clock came around, but apparently she was right and it had been around 6 pm when she’d first noticed the clock.  That meant that Jack and the girls hadn’t come yesterday.  It was probably quite an imposition on them to come every day, she reasoned; she pushed worries that something might be wrong to the back of her mind.

“She was breathing all right, though?” the doctor asked.

“Her sats were fine,” the nurse responded.  “You could probably even take her oxygen down a little.”  Irina heartily agreed with that; the little prongs in her nose that delivered the oxygen had been driving her nuts ever since she’d noticed them sometime last night – although they weren’t as bad as the thin tube that was going down her nose.  There was a pause, and then the nurse said, “How awake and aware do you think she is?”

“Well, she was definitely moving purposefully yesterday afternoon, and I got the distinct impression that she really wanted that breathing tube out, so she’s clearly at least somewhat aware.  I’m still concerned that she might potentially have some deficits, but I suppose we won’t find out about that until she starts talking and moving a little more.”  Irina heard two footfalls, and she knew that the doctor was standing right next to her – her other senses had sharpened during the long period without being able to open her eyes, and she could almost feel his shape above her.  Then he spoke again.  “Did you put the head of her bed down?”

“I didn’t touch it.  Maybe Shelly put it down.”

“I hope not, since I told her to leave it up.  Better for the breathing.  Maybe she put it down herself.”

“That would make it seem like she’s thinking, then,” the nurse pointed out.

“Yes, it would.”  Irina felt a hand on her shoulder.  “Irina?”  He mispronounced her name as he always did, saying it ‘eye-ree-na’; she had long ago learned to deal with Westerners mispronouncing her name, but he was really starting to annoy her, especially since the nurses followed his lead.  She opened her eyes and thought about trying to get the correct pronounciation across, but she didn’t want to do that until she was sure she could get it right.  “Did you put your bed down?”  He was speaking quite loudly, which also annoyed her.  Nevertheless, she nodded; if she could convince him she was fully awake, maybe he’d start treating her like she had half a brain.  “Can you tell me where you are?” was his next question.

That wasn’t really a fair question, in Irina’s opinion, because while the girls and Jack were careful to keep her informed of the date, they had never once told her where she was.  She was pretty sure she was somewhere in or very close to LA, but she didn’t know whether she was in an actual hospital or just the medical wing of a government building.  But ‘medical wing of a government building’ was too long to say, so she opened her mouth and very carefully said the word ‘hospital’.  It came out in a whisper, but she was pleased that the word was fairly understandable.

“Yes, that’s great!” the doctor said with a big smile on his face that made him look rather ridiculous.  She raised her eyebrows at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.  “Can you tell me what year it is?”

She would have liked to make a sarcastic comment about stupid questions, but she reminded herself that the doctor was just doing his job.  Besides, a few months ago, she actually hadn’t known the answer to that question, so maybe it wasn’t the dumbest thing he could ask after all.  So, slowly and carefully, she whispered, “Two thousand six”.

“Wonderful!” the doctor said, again looking like an overgrown child.  “If you can manage that, think you can tell me your name?”  Irina licked her lips before responding, then whispered her name.  Either the first syllable got lost, or the doctor missed the difference in pronounciation, because he didn’t say anything about that.  “Good,” he said.  Then, with no warning, he reached out and pulled down the blanket to her waist, then pulled her arms out.  She glared, but he remained oblivious.  “All right, I want you to show me two fingers on your right hand, but first give me a thumbs up with your left hand.”

She was very tempted to show him one particular finger on each hand, but instead she dutifully pointed her thumb up on her left hand, then two fingers on her right hand.  “Excellent.  It certainly seems that your brain is working all right, then,” he said as she began pulling the blanket up again – she noted that she was moving quite a bit more quickly than yesterday, but still slow enough to make her impatient.  “Are you cold?” he asked when he noted her movement.  She raised her eyebrows and nodded; wasn’t it obvious that they were keeping the room too cold?  “Is that blanket enough, or do you want another?”

Her mouth seemed a bit harder to work this time, and so her “another” was agonizingly slow, but the important thing was that she got her point across.

The doctor nodded.  He crossed the room and asked the nurse to bring her a blanket, then returned.  “I started a drug called neostigmine yesterday that I thought might help with your muscle function.”  She nodded; she remembered Sydney mentioning that two days before.  “It seemed to be working,” Stevenson continued, “so I went ahead today and increased your dose to the maximum allowed.  It’s wonderful that it’s working so well, but the bad news is that you probably won’t continue to improve at this pace; from this point on your recovery will most likely be a lot more gradual.”  He paused a moment, and Irina saw in his face that he had more bad news to impart.  “Also, I can’t tell you how much of a recovery you’ll make.  You could recover fully, but you could also be stuck with some level of muscle weakness the rest of your life.”

Irina frowned, but nodded.  She’d already considered that possibility; at least he was being honest with her.  Her focus now had to be on regaining as much as she could; if her progress stopped at some point, she’d deal with it then.  She thought back to that room in Katya’s compound where she’d spent two drugged years and reminded herself that it could always be worse.

*****

Chapter 134

Faced with a roomful of men in suits, men who could probably not comprehend many of the situations he and Irina had faced, Jack was forced to think quickly.  He elected to skip over the first couple of months after Shostakovich had first taken Irina, including his own disastrous decision in Prague to let Irina go, and went straight to the point when he had been taken by Shostakovich.  He didn’t tell them that he had been kidnapped to ensure Irina’s cooperation; he suspected that they would get stuck on trying and failing to understand that reasoning and miss the point he was trying to make: that Irina had clearly been a prisoner of Shostakovich at that point.  Even then, he found it difficult to say that without describing their circumstances in detail, so he gave up and simply told them that the two of them had been kept in the same cell.

Senator Hiser pounced on that, as Jack had suspected he would.  “Agent Bristow, did you have sexual relations with Derevko at that time?”

“No,” Jack replied evenly.  Even though it happened to be the truth, he could still feel his ears going a bit pink.

He’d expected someone to be curious about why he’d been taken, but instead the committee seemed focused on the shared cell.  “How do you know you weren’t put in the same cell as part of an elaborate ruse to convince you that Derevko was a prisoner?” Hiser asked next, his tone making it clear that he was sure he had the correct answer.

Jack shrugged.  “There would have been no purpose to it,” he replied.  “If they truly had been working together, and their plan to use the Sphere had succeeded, there wouldn’t have been a CIA left to be concerned about.”

“Ah, but their plan didn’t succeed, did it?” Hiser asked rhetorically.  “Perhaps this is their backup plan: Derevko gets her pardon and goes back to work.”

Jack frowned.  “Senator, does that file on Irina Derevko give you her current condition?”  After a pause, the senator shook his head.  Chase gave him a glance that might have been a warning, but Jack ignored it.  “She’s currently in a hospital bed, unable to move.  Irina Derevko is the sole victim of the virus that Shostakovich planned to administer worldwide.  If his backup plan was for her to continue his work, if they truly were working together, then why didn’t he immunize her against the virus?”  The room was silent; it seemed no one had an answer to that.

***

Nadia laughed loudly, even though Louis Couchot’s humor was far too off-color for her tastes; the point was to keep him occupied while the APO team robbed him blind.  Dixon, playing a waiter, came by with a tray, and she grabbed a glass of champagne as she passed him the key card.  A few moments later, Weiss appeared, playing the role of the obnoxious party guest, and placed the card back in her hand.  As she slipped the card back into Couchot’s pocket, she saw that Sydney was accepting a glass of champagne from Dixon; although she couldn’t see it, Nadia knew that a copy of the card was being passed to Sydney.

Now that the card was copied, Nadia didn’t have to stick so close to the host, although she still had to keep an eye on him while Sydney committed the actual theft.  Dixon and Weiss had disappeared – Dixon to accompany Sydney, Weiss to tap into the security system – so she was the only one still at the party.  Nadia knew that her task, which was to alert the rest of the team if Couchot appeared to get any alerts from his security team, was important, but she was still just a tiny bit annoyed about not getting any action.

It was true, she reminded herself, that she was the best pickpocket in the group, after a childhood spent in an orphanage where the only “pocket money” to be had was stolen from the pockets of tourists.  Also, although she considered herself a fairly experienced agent, she had yet to prove herself to the CIA – and, specifically, to her father.  After all, she’d failed the first two assignments he’d given her – guarding the Rambaldi manuscript in Prague, and finding another manuscript in Sevogda.

Nadia’s thoughts were interrupted when a man in black came up to Couchot.  He spoke for a few brief seconds, and Couchot, eyes slightly widened, followed him from the room.  As soon as she was out of the line of sight of both Couchot and the guard, she activated her comm, her heart beating faster.  “Target has been alerted,” she said in a low voice.  As she spoke, she slipped a hand into her bag and depressed a button, causing a small explosion on the other side of the room.  As expected, the screams distracted Couchot and his guard; while they were headed toward the flames, Nadia slipped away and headed for the extraction point.

She hadn’t gotten far when her comm activated again.  Dixon’s voice, agitated, said, “Agent down.”  Nadia paused for a moment, but, knowing there was nothing she could do now but get herself out, she started hurrying toward the extraction point again.

*****

Chapter 135

“Hey, don’t look so worried,” Sydney said, giving Nadia’s hand a squeeze.  “I’ll be fine.”  But as all this was said between gasps of air, she failed to make her words very convincing.

Nadia tried to give her a smile.  “Sure,” she said.  “Fine.”

Sydney had been wearing Kevlar, but she’d been hit by a chance shot – a bullet had entered under her right arm as she’d had her own gun raised.  They’d taken her to a tiny CIA field hospital where she’d been examined and x-rayed; apparently the bullet had passed through her lung and barely missed her spine.  The doctors there had said she was stable enough to handle the 12 hour flight to LA, but Nadia had begun to wonder over the last few hours as Sydney looked worse.

Dixon came toward them.  “We’re getting ready to land.  You should strap in,” he said.  “An ambulance will be meeting us.”

Nadia nodded, sat down, and put her seat belt on, but she watched Sydney closely throughout the landing.  “You doing okay?” she asked after the plane landed and began to taxi.

“Fine,” Sydney answered.  “Quit worrying, okay?”

“Not gonna happen,” Nadia replied with a shrug.  Sydney gave her a weak smile.

A few minutes later, paramedics were bundling Sydney off the plane.  “Vaughn will be waiting at the hospital?” she asked through the oxygen mask that had been put on her face.

Nadia nodded.  “We’ll be right behind you, and Dad’s plane gets in in an hour.”  He had called yesterday and told them that he was in Washington for a “very important” meeting; knowing that he would immediately rush back to LA on hearing that Sydney had been injured, Nadia had waited to call him until it was 5 pm in Washington.

“Will you go down and tell Mom what happened?” Sydney asked.

“Of course,” Nadia replied.  She didn’t know whether her mother would be aware enough to actually understand her words, and knew Sydney wasn’t sure either, but Nadia would tell her just in case.

***

Irina’s big goal for the afternoon, after the doctor left, was to turn onto her side.  It took her several false starts, but she eventually managed it – though then she was pushed up against the rails of the hospital bed and required considerable readjustment, which took longer than the original turn had taken.  All the movement made her head pound, so she did some deep breathing exercises; once that took the edge off the pain, she had little difficulty falling asleep.

She woke with a start several hours later and immediately sensed someone in the room other than the nurse, whose presence she’d gotten accustomed to.  She rolled to her back, which was far easier than getting to her side had been, and recognized her visitor immediately.  “Nadia,” she said, her vocal cords working to produce something more than a whisper for the first time.

“Mom?”  Nadia came quickly to her bedside.  “You’re awake!”

“I’ve been awake,” Irina replied.  Her voice was hoarse – probably from the tube that had come out yesterday after being in so long.  She looked at Nadia’s face, grateful to see it for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, but immediately saw something dark.  “What’s wrong?”  She was reminded of her initial worry when no one had come yesterday.

“Sydney’s been injured,” Nadia answered, and Irina was glad she didn’t dance around the subject.  “She was shot; the bullet went through her lung.  She’s in surgery upstairs right now.”

Irina sucked in a sharp breath.  “Do they know yet if she’ll be all right?”  The last few words came out a bit slurred, but she was too upset at the moment for the intense concentration that proper speech required.

“No one seemed to think her life was in danger,” Nadia answered, and Irina could tell that she was choosing her words carefully.  “We don’t know yet if there’ll be any permanent damage.”

“She’s in this hospital?” Irina asked, and Nadia nodded.  “Are you going up there to wait for her to get out of surgery?”  Her daughter nodded again.  “I’m going with you.”

“Are you sure?  I mean, you must still be weak…”

“I am,” Irina replied.  “But I’m pretty sure I can sit up.”  She considered for a moment.  “I’ll need a wheelchair,” she added, even though she hated the idea of using one.

“I’ll get the nurse,” Nadia said.

The nurse, Shelly again, came in a moment later, closely followed by Nadia.  “You can’t go anywhere,” Shelly said.  “You need to stay right there and rest.”

“My daughter has been seriously injured,” Irina replied, glaring at the nurse, “and I’m not lying here by myself waiting for news.”

“So you’re going to go upstairs and wait for news instead?  No,” the nurse said firmly.

Irina couldn’t think of a good verbal argument, so she did the only thing she could think of: she grabbed the rails of the bed, tightened her stomach muscles, and pulled herself to a seated position.  Her head throbbed, but she showed no sign of it.  Instead, she merely said evenly, “I will be leaving this room.  If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”

She noted with pleasure that the nurse’s eyes had grown quite large, and her face was rather pale.  Nadia looked equally shocked, as well as worried.  “All right, calm down, no need to get upset,” the nurse said.  “Let me just call Dr. Stevenson, okay?”  Irina started to say that she had no intention of listening to the doctor telling her to stay in bed, either, but the nurse held up her hand.  “I’ll tell him that you’re absolutely set on going upstairs.  I just need to know from him if I can take out some of those tubes, all right?”

Irina nodded curtly, and the nurse left the room.  As soon as she was out the door, Irina released her grip on the bed rails – her hands were starting to shake – and fell back to the mattress.  “Mom, are you all right?” Nadia asked, rushing over.  “I really think you might be overdoing it.”

Irina shook her head.  “I’m pretty sure it’s good for me.”

*****

Chapter 136

Jack walked into the hospital quickly, none of his worry showing on his face.  He understood why Nadia had waited to call him – he had told her the day before that the meeting was very important, though he hadn’t mentioned the subject matter – but he still couldn’t help but be rather annoyed.  But if she had called earlier, he reminded himself, he would have simply spent the extra time worrying even more.

His cell phone rang, and he answered, ignoring a glare from a passing nurse.  It was Nadia; as she told him that Sydney was out of surgery and being moved to a room, he looked up and saw a very familiar looking group of people moving toward him.  As they approached each other, he recognized Dixon, Weiss, Vaughn, and Nadia, who was pushing a wheelchair.  He frowned, confused; they weren’t really moving Sydney to a room themselves, were they?

After a few more steps, though, he realized it wasn’t Sydney at all.  He had to blink a few times before he could convince himself that it was in fact Irina, sitting up with her eyes open, no ventilator in sight.  There was an IV stand, being pushed along by Dixon, but the number of tubes seemed greatly reduced.

“Irina,” he said when he reached them.  “You’re awake.”  She glared at him for some reason; he looked at her, puzzled.  She just sighed, obviously annoyed, though he couldn’t figure out why.  “How’s Sydney?” he asked instead.

“The doctors think she’s going to be okay,” Nadia answered.  “She’ll probably be here for a few days, but they expect her to make a full recovery.”

Jack nodded.  “Where’s her room?”

“Right next to mine,” Irina said.  Her voice was hoarse, and the words came out more slowly than usual, but Jack was amazed that she was talking at all.

They made their way down to the classified subbasement.  A few months ago, Sydney would have stayed above ground in a normal room, but she no longer officially worked for the CIA.  Sydney’s room was indeed next door to Irina’s; Jack wondered if the person who had assigned the room knew of their relationship, or if it was just coincidence.  Probably coincidence, he decided; they would both be entered in the hospital computer under aliases.

Sydney opened her eyes when they entered, but she still looked groggy.  “Hi,” she murmured.

“Hey,” Vaughn said.  He went to the side of the bed and took her hand.  “You’re going to be fine.”

“That’s good.”  Sydney looked around, and then stared at Irina in puzzlement.  “Mom?  You’re awake.”

Jack saw another expression of annoyance pass over Irina’s face, but it was gone in an instant.  “How are you feeling?” she asked as Nadia pushed her to the bedside; Vaughn grudgingly gave way.

“Okay,” Sydney answered.  “I think they’re giving me some nice drugs,” she added, gesturing to her IV lines.

“They do that here,” Jack said as he came up beside Nadia; he well remembered the easy access to morphine from the last time he’d been here.

“Hey,” said a voice from the doorway, and they all turned to see a nurse.  “There are way too many people in here.  The patient needs her rest.”  She advanced a few steps into the room.  “And you,” she continued in Irina’s direction, “need to go back to bed.”

“Well, I should go anyway,” Dixon said.  “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Weiss.  “Take care, okay?”  Sydney nodded, and the two men left.

“Dad, why don’t you take Mom back to her room?” Nadia said.  “Don’t want to upset the nurse.”

Jack nodded.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sydney.”

“Get some rest, sweetheart,” Irina said, and then Jack wheeled her from the room.

*****

Chapter 137

Jack had a rather difficult time managing the wheelchair and IV stand by himself; fortunately it was a short trip.  Irina was quiet during the walk, and when he reached her room he went around the chair and discovered her eyes were closed.  “Irina?  Are you all right?”

“Wonderful,” she murmured with a definite note of sarcasm in her voice.  He didn’t say anything for a moment, observing her; finally she opened her eyes and looked at him.  “I’m tired, all right?” she said with exasperation in her voice.

He nodded.  He glanced toward the bed, then at her.  “How did you get out of bed?”

“Sort of a controlled fall,” she replied softly.  “Sitting up is about the limit of what I can do.”

“Well, it’s an improvement, anyway.”  She nodded.  Then, for a brief moment, Jack saw utter exhaustion on her face, before she hid it again.  She needed to get into bed quickly, he realized; she was just too stubborn to ask.  He looked around to work out the logistics of the procedure, then moved the IV stand to the other side of the bed so it wouldn’t get tangled.  “All right, ready?” he asked, coming around to Irina’s side again.

She nodded, and he lifted her onto the bed.  He overestimated how much muscle tone she had, though – when he took his arm out from behind her back while she was still sitting up, she flopped backward immediately.  He grabbed her shoulders with both hands to lower her more slowly to the bed.  While he was doing that, her knees straightened as her feet slid down the bed; he didn’t know whether she was doing it on purpose or not.

“Thank you,” she murmured when she was finally laying flat.

“You sure you’re comfortable?” he asked; her position looked awkward.

“More or less,” she replied.  “I can adjust a little.”

After a moment of hesitation, Jack nodded.  He’d been in the hospital with his own difficulty moving just a few months ago, although he had been limited by pain rather than weakness; he knew that those small movements required for comfort weren’t really something someone else could help with.  “Need anything else?”

“The blanket,” she replied, gesturing toward her feet.  

He drew it up to her shoulders.  “Warm enough?”  She nodded.  “I should go, let you get some rest.”

“You don’t have to,” she answered.  “I was asleep most of the day.”  She frowned.  “I don’t know why I’m so tired.  I’ve barely moved.”

“You’re doing a lot compared to just a couple of days ago, though,” Jack replied.  “You weren’t even breathing on your own… your body isn’t used to the effort.”

“I suppose.”  She sighed.  “The doctor’s giving me some medicine – that’s why I got better so fast.  But he’s giving me the maximum dose now, so he doesn’t know if I’ll keep improving.”

“I’m sure you will,” Jack reassured her.  He had a feeling that her progression to the point of sitting up and talking wasn’t due only to the drug, but to her own determination – probably spurred on by Sydney’s injury.

There was silence for a moment, and Jack debated telling her the subject of his meeting today.  There was no point in it, he decided; Senator Hiser had dismissed him and Chase and told them to return to LA, and the final decision of what would happen to Irina wouldn’t be made until Monday.  He would wait until he had something concrete to tell her.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and then jerked open again.  “You should get some sleep,” he said, squeezing her hand.  “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“All right,” she murmured.  He could see that she was fighting sleep, so he gave her a brief smile and then left the room.

***

“Good morning, Irina,” came a voice from above, and Irina opened her eyes to see Dr. Stevenson standing above her.  “I hear you caused quite a stir last night.”  She shrugged.  She didn’t know if he’d heard the full story of why she’d caused a fuss; she’d tell him if he asked, but otherwise she had no intention of explaining herself.  “How are you feeling this morning?” he asked next; apparently he wasn’t too concerned about last night after all.

She frowned as she realized she was experiencing something she hadn’t felt in a very long time.  “Hungry,” she said.

The doctor smiled.  “I was hoping you would be.  That tube down your nose that the nurse took out last night was feeding you, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to put another one in.  Do you think you can eat something?”

Irina nodded.  The “something” would be limited, of course – she imagined she’d make a rather bad mess of a hamburger, for instance – but even some sort of bland hospital mush would be far better than having a tube down her nose again.

“Good.  I’ll go ahead and let the nurses know.  I am concerned because you’re rather underweight, though, so we’ll need to make sure you’re eating enough.”  Irina didn’t bother to restrain a sigh.  Stevenson cocked his head.  “Tired of hearing that?”

“Seems to be a recurring theme lately,” she murmured.

“Well, whoever else said something was right to be concerned.  I know eating isn’t going to be easy, especially at first, so I’m not going to try to get you to gain weight, but I don’t want you to lose any.”

Irina frowned.  “Why didn’t you just fatten me up when you had that tube in me?  It wasn’t like I was getting much exercise.”

“Because overfeeding someone who can’t tell you how they’re feeling is a very bad idea and leads to all sorts of problems,” Stevenson replied.  “Now, though, tell me how this sounds: I’ll have them bring you six small meals a day instead of three big ones.”  Irina raised her eyebrows at the idea of eating six meals a day and started to speak, but the doctor held up a hand.  “Hear me out.  If you eat less than half of it, or if you just don’t feel like eating at all, I’ll tell the nurse to bring you a Boost – that’s a nutritional supplement drink – instead.  I’d like you to try that for at least a couple of days.  If you decide after you try it that it’s still too much, we can always put the tube back in.”

Irina thought for a moment.  She did want to return to normalcy as much as she could – but then, this was a leap past normal, since she’d never eaten six meals a day in her life.  “What if I just don’t like what they bring me?” she asked, more to stall than for anything else – she’d managed maggot-ridden porridge in a KGB detention facility while pregnant with Nadia, so American hospital food should be easy.

“If you don’t like something, you can get something else.  And if there’s something particular you want for your next meal, just ask.  Hospital food’s really improved quite a bit despite the horror stories.  So you’re willing to give it a try, then?”  She nodded; in the worst case scenario, she would gain a few plates of food to be used as weapons.  “Good.  I’ve also put in an order for you to start physical therapy, so a therapist should be by today.”  That was good news, since a physical therapist would realistically do more to help her recovery now than Dr. Stevenson would.  She gave him a brief smile.  “Also, I understand your daughter’s next door?”  Irina nodded.  “If you want to go over there, that’s fine.  Just make sure the nurse knows where you are.”  That earned him a broader smile.

The doctor then moved down to the foot of the bed.  “Okay, today I’m going to test your muscles to see just how much strength you have.  Push up against my hand.”

*****

Chapter 138

“All right, that’s it for today,” said Jennifer, the physical therapist.  Irina was surprised; at the end of the first two sessions she’d been utterly exhausted, barely able to sit up straight, but today she merely felt like she’d had a good workout.  Jennifer must have noticed Irina’s confusion, for she smiled and said, “I made today a little bit lighter.  Your body needs a break to get ready for tomorrow.”  She pressed the floor pedal that lowered the table Irina was lying on.

Irina had made quite a bit of progress in the past two days; she was able to sit up now without too much difficulty and stay upright with her back unsupported.  She could only do this for a couple of minutes at a time, but at least she was doing it.  “What happens tomorrow?”

“Can’t tell.  That would be cheating,” Jennifer said with a grin.  She brought the wheelchair over from the corner of the room and locked it in place.  “Okay, whenever you’re ready,” she said.  Irina had noticed that Jennifer had never once used her name, and she suspected that the therapist didn’t know it.  It was just as well since everyone here pronounced it wrong anyway.

The maneuver she was about to do, and the reverse, had been the focus of the first two sessions, and Irina had been immensely satisfied when she’d managed it without assistance for the first time.  She swung her legs over the side of the table and put her feet on the floor, placed a hand firmly on the near arm of the chair, and stood.  She then had about half a second before her legs gave out to pivot, move her hand to the other arm, and get her butt in the chair.  This time it went well: her legs weren’t quivering when she was done, and she felt like it was more of a sit than a fall.  “Good job,” Jennifer said.  She unlocked the chair and wheeled it to the door; Irina could move it a bit herself, but it was surprisingly unwieldy, and Jennifer said it wasn’t worth working on learning how to maneuver it since she wouldn’t be in it long.

Irina’s nurse met them in the hall and took over.  When they reached Irina’s room, she said, “Your daughter wants to come over and see you.  I told her you’d be too tired after therapy and she should wait a couple of hours, but she insisted I ask.”

Irina frowned, wondering if something was wrong.  She’d had the nurse take her over to Sydney’s room each of the last two days, but she hadn’t expected Sydney to appear in her own room; for one thing, Sydney had only yesterday been allowed out of bed, and that was just to walk a couple of steps and sit in a chair.  “Of course she can come over,” she said.  The nurse prepared to lift Irina into bed, but she shook her head.  “I can do it.  We had a light session today.”  Moving from chair to bed was harder – the chair didn’t provide quite as much leverage to stand, for one thing.  Once she was sitting on the bed, Irina had to rest a moment before lifting her legs onto the bed.

The nurse moved the wheelchair back and raised the bed rail.  “I’ll go get your daughter,” she said, though she still looked dubious.

She returned in a few minutes with Sydney, who was walking on her own and really looked pretty good.  “Hi, Mom,” Sydney said with a smile.

“Sydney!  You’re off the oxygen; that’s wonderful, sweetheart,” Irina said as the nurse helped Sydney settle in the armchair by the bed.

“Yeah, those little prongs in my nose were driving me crazy.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Irina replied.  Her own oxygen had been removed when she’d gone upstairs while Sydney was in surgery and never been replaced; she assumed that meant she didn’t need it anymore and hadn’t been about to protest.  “Other than that, how’s hospital life treating you?”

“Ok, I guess,” Sydney said.  “I’ll be glad when I can get out of here.  The doctor said probably Wednesday if things go well.”

“That’s wonderful.”  Irina gave her daughter a smile; although she would miss the company, she wouldn’t wish being stuck in the hospital on anyone.

“How about you?  When are they going to let you out of this zoo?”

“Oh, I have no idea, sweetheart.  I’m sure it’ll be a while yet,” Irina replied.  Truthfully, she hadn’t even considered that, nor had she considered what would happen to her once she did leave the hospital.  She put it out of her mind; it was something she had no control over, so it wasn’t worth dwelling on.  Instead, she gave Sydney a smile.  “So, read any good books lately?”

***

Jack looked up when the door to his office opened and was surprised to see Director Chase.  He’d expected to hear from her today about Senator Hiser’s decision regarding Irina’s fate, but he’d thought she would call or e-mail.  He steeled himself for the worst.  He’d already thought through possible scenarios over the weekend; the worst possibility was that they would completely throw out the pardon agreement and give Irina the death penalty, and if that happened he thought there was a good chance he could smuggle her out of the hospital – though it was unlikely he could do so without implicating himself.  He stood, letting none of his thoughts show on his face.  “Director Chase.  A pleasure, as always,” he said, shaking her hand.

“Agent Bristow,” she said with a nod.  She took a seat and gestured for him to do the same.  “How’s your daughter?”

“Recovering,” Jack answered.  “They expect to release her from the hospital later this week, although she’ll have several more weeks of convalescence.”

“Of course,” Chase said.  “And how is Derevko doing?  I haven’t had an update on her condition since before we left for Washington on Thursday.”

She’d missed a lot – but Irina’s recovery had been rapid, so it was hardly surprising.  “Actually, she’s doing much better,” Jack said.  “The doctor tried a new drug, with impressive results – she’s off the ventilator, talking, eating, sitting up.”

Chase raised her eyebrows.  “Oh.  That’s unexpected.”  She frowned, and Jack sighed inwardly; the news from Washington was definitely bad, then.  “Has there been any discussion of when she might be discharged?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

The director nodded.  “The real reason I’m here – I came to give you the results of Friday’s meeting with Senator Hiser.”

“Oh?” he inquired, his expression showing only polite interest.

“He’s found her actions to be in violation of her agreement, and has declared the agreement invalid.  He said he’s willing to show leniency for her cooperation, though, so he’s offering her life in prison instead of the death penalty.”

Jack didn’t allow his expression to crack; he said only, “I see.”  He’d also considered this possibility; he was still willing to extract Irina from the hospital, but he’d need to discuss the situation with her and see if that was what she wanted.

“Some of the other directors and I are trying to get him to reconsider,” Chase said, and Jack looked up at that, surprised.  “If word that we reneged on our deal gets out, which it almost certainly will, it could seriously hamper the CIA’s ability to get cooperation from members of the espionage world in the future.  We’d like Hiser to at least go back to the alternate terms of Derevko’s deal, which would allow her to obtain a pardon if she worked with the CIA for a year.”

Jack nodded, remembering his conversation with Nadia on this subject after he’d let Yegor go in Sevogda.  Going back on an arrangement with someone of Irina’s renown would be a huge black mark on the reputation of the entire CIA.  “That sounds sensible.”  So he would take no action now, then, but he would still talk to Irina about whether she would want to stay in prison or not.  If they did decide to take action, it would need to be done either while she was still in the hospital or during the transfer between facilities.

“I suppose Derevko should be informed of the situation,” Chase said, looking unhappy about the prospect.

“I’m going to see Sydney this evening.  I can tell her then,” Jack said.

Chase gave him a relieved smile; she clearly hadn’t wanted to deliver that news herself.  “Thank you, Agent Bristow.”

*****

 
Chapter 139

Irina speared a piece of broccoli with her fork, put it in her mouth, and chewed and swallowed.  Like talking, the chewing and swallowing had become easy again, but she was focused today on controlling the fork, as this was only the second meal in which she’d held it in her right hand.

She chased down another piece of broccoli and paused with it halfway to her mouth when she heard someone enter the room; looking up, she saw Dr. Stevenson standing there with a look of slight confusion on his face.  “Do you ever take a day off?” she asked before popping the vegetable into her mouth.

“Well, it just so happens that I have a very interesting case at the moment,” he said, advancing further into the room.  “I thought you were left handed.”  She raised her eyebrows at him, and he clarified, “When I came in yesterday, you were eating with the fork in your left hand.”

She put the fork down.  “I’m Russian,” she said; as expected, that only created more confusion.  “It’s the custom in Europe to hold the fork in the left hand.”

“Ah, I didn’t know that,” the doctor said.  “So why were you holding it in your right hand a moment ago?”

She wondered how much he knew, or for that matter, how much she was allowed to tell him.  Well, she supposed he must have a high security clearance to be allowed access to her at all, so she might as well give him a decent explanation.  “I used to be in the KGB.  They trained me to pass as an American, and that included holding the fork in my right hand.”  Simply holding the fork in her right hand had been easy enough; the hard part had been remembering to hold it with the tines up, but there was no need to confuse the doctor with details.

“And you’ve kept it up all these years?” Stevenson asked.  Irina nodded; of course she had, and she’d passed as an American for more than one meal during the past twenty years, too.  “Well.  I suppose you learn something new every day.  So are you left or right handed?”

“Right,” Irina said with a slight smile.

“I’ll change that in my notes, then.”  Irina had no idea why he’d need to make a note of it, but shrugged it off.  “Your therapist tells me you’re making excellent progress,” the doctor continued.  He pointed to her meal tray.  “Don’t let me keep you from your food, by the way.”

“I was almost finished,” Irina said.  She’d eaten most of the fried fish filet, but the other dish on the tray besides the broccoli was macaroni and cheese, and after one bite of the hospital’s macaroni and cheese on Saturday she knew she’d have to be very hungry to ever choke down any more.  “Anyway, Jennifer does a wonderful job.  I didn’t think I’d come this far this fast.”

“Actually, she gives you the credit.  She says she has to hold you back to keep you from overdoing it.”  He smiled, but Irina wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.  Wasn’t she supposed to want to get better?  “In any case,” the doctor continued, “it’s time to start looking ahead.  Now, I’m not really supposed to know much about your life outside the hospital – classified, you understand – but in order to start thinking about when you might be discharged, I need to know where you’ll be going.”

“Oh.”  Irina hadn’t thought he’d ask her this question; she supposed she’d assumed the CIA would make whatever arrangements they were going to make.  “I don’t know, actually.”

The doctor gave her a puzzled look.  “You don’t know?”  She shook her head.  “Surely you must have some idea.  Where were you before you got sick?”

“Russia, and I can assure you they’re not sending me back there,” Irina said.

“I see.”  Stevenson frowned.  “I suppose I’ll have to contact the CIA and ask them, then.”

“Yes, that would probably be best.”

He stood and started to go, then turned back.  “It doesn’t bother you, not knowing what’s going to happen to you?”

She shrugged.  “All of life is uncertain, Doctor.  It just happens that my life is a bit more uncertain than most.”

He smiled.  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

Jack’s visit with Sydney was quite brief, since Vaughn was there and the two of them clearly wanted to be alone.  So he made his way to Irina’s room, rather apprehensive about the news he was about to deliver.  He peeked through the window first and saw that though she was sitting propped up in bed, she appeared to be asleep.  So he slipped inside as quietly as possible, but apparently it wasn’t enough, since she opened her eyes as the door closed behind him.  “Jack,” she said with a smile.

He smiled back as he came further into the room, but felt bad that he’d woken her, knowing how hard it was to get enough sleep in the hospital – even throughout the night, the nurse came in to meddle at least every few hours.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Was I asleep?” she asked, and he nodded.  “Oh…it’s all right, I didn’t mean to fall asleep anyway.”

As he sat in the chair next to the bed, he wondered what else she’d meant to be doing.  Although there was a short stack of books by the bed, there wasn’t one in her lap, and since the rooms on this floor didn’t have televisions, there wasn’t exactly a surplus of entertainment.  He took her hand, deciding to get right to the point.  “I’ve got some news.”

She studied him for a moment.  “It’s not good, is it?”

He shook his head.  “Your pardon agreement’s been declared invalid.”  He expected some reaction, but she just nodded.  “You don’t seem surprised.”

Irina shrugged.  “I was supposed to help the CIA recover the Sphere.  As far as they’re concerned, they captured me and the Sphere at the same time.”

Jack frowned to hear Irina virtually repeat Hiser’s words.  “You did give me the location of the Sphere.”

“And you didn’t find it,” she said with a sad smile.  “I didn’t know it was so well hidden, but they’ve got no way of knowing I didn’t give you the wrong location.”  Neither said anything for a moment.  “So what happens now?”

“Life in prison,” Jack said.  “The man who made the final decision felt he was being lenient.”

“Of course,” Irina murmured.

Jack pulled what appeared to be a pen out of his pocket and uncapped it.  “Bug killer,” he said.  “I’m pretty sure there are no bugs in here, but just in case.”  Irina nodded.  “I can get you out.”

“Jack…you would do that?”

He considered his next words carefully.  “You did the best you could to honor your agreement, and the CIA didn’t follow through.”  That was far from the only reason, or even the biggest reason, but it was the only one he was willing to say out loud.

She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head.  “No.  I can’t let you risk your career, your freedom.  Not for me.”

He frowned.  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But this is far more dangerous than just meeting with me.”

“The risk is greater, but so is the payoff,” Jack countered.

That drew a small smile, but her expression quickly grew serious again.  “I’m staying.”

He wanted to try to talk her out of it, but knew it would be pointless.  “Take a couple of days to think about it before you make a definite decision, all right?”

She nodded.  “I will think about it, but I can’t imagine I’ll change my mind.”

“Just think about it.”  He capped the pen, turning off the bug killer, then leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she replied, squeezing his hand.

*****

Chapter 140

“Good morning!  Ready for a great session?” Jennifer asked as Irina was pushed into the physical therapy room the next morning.  Then she looked closely at Irina and frowned.  “Maybe not – you don’t look like you’re having the best day.”

Irina pasted on a smile.  “I’m all right, just a little tired.”  In truth, she was more than a little tired; the nurse had needed to wake her for breakfast, and then she hadn’t had the slightest appetite.  She’d almost forgotten about her agreement with the doctor that required her to drink one of those “nutritional supplement” milkshakes if she didn’t eat, so she’d been rather annoyed when the nurse had brought that in, but, not feeling like making a fuss, she’d forced down about half of it before dozing off until it was time for her therapy session.  Normally she looked forward to the sessions, but today she hadn’t wanted to leave her bed; it didn’t help that the therapy room seemed far colder than usual.

“Well, we’ll go ahead and move on to the next step anyway,” Jennifer said.  “Just let me know if you need me to ease up, all right?”

Irina shook her head; no matter how bad she might feel at the moment, regaining her strength was the most important thing.  “I’ll be fine.  What are we doing?”

Jennifer said nothing, but surprised her by wheeling the chair right past the table, straight to the back corner of the room where there stood two parallel bars.  She pushed the chair right up against the ends of the bars and said, “Today, you walk.”

Irina blinked; she hadn’t thought it could possibly be so soon.  “Are you sure?”

“Your legs are ready to hold you, honey,” the therapist replied.  “That’s what we’ve been working toward.  Go on; up you go, then just to the end and back to start.  Take your time.”

Nervousness clenched Irina’s stomach, but she told it sternly to go away.  After all, the worst that could happen was for her to fall, and the floor was padded.  So she grabbed the bars and stood, swaying slightly, then took a small step.  Her legs held up, so she took another, then another.  Her arms began to get wobbly, and she realized that she was putting far too much weight on them, so she nearly released the bars, her hands lightly encircling them just for balance.  At the moment she did that, she heard, “Keep your weight on your…yes, just like that.  What do you need me for?”  She looked up to see Jennifer smiling at her, but then returned her attention to her task.  

It wasn’t the weight, she realized as she took her next few steps, for her legs could indeed hold her up.  It was balancing that was hard – she was swaying like a drunk on a ship’s deck in a storm.  She stopped, centered herself, and took one small step at a time.  “Why is it so hard to stay straight?” she ground out between steps.

“We’ve been working the big muscles, the ones that are holding you up,” Jennifer replied, “but the little ones that balance you have just been sitting there.  It’ll get better quickly.”

“I hope so,” Irina said softly.  

She reached the end of the bars and contemplated the task of turning around.  She was glad when Jennifer didn’t offer to help; the therapist simply watched as Irina considered her options, then attempted a turn.  It didn’t go well, and she nearly fell, but she managed to catch herself at the last moment.  “Good,” was all Jennifer said.

Irina began to make her way back to the other side.  It did seem to go a bit better this time, with less drunken lurching, although that might have been because she was concentrating so hard on keeping her balance.

She reached the end and allowed herself a small smile.  Even though she was exhausted, and breathing far harder than she would have liked, she had walked.  “Shall I go again?”

“I think you look like you’ve had enough for today,” Jennifer said.  “Let’s go ahead and finish up a little early.”  Irina frowned, and Jennifer said, “Really, you did wonderfully.  The way you looked when you came in, I honestly didn’t think you’d make it through two lengths.”

“But we’re done – for the day?”

Jennifer gave her a gentle smile and pointed to the clock on the wall.  “Our half hour’s almost up.”

Irina looked and was shocked to see that it was indeed four minutes before the hour.  It had taken her over twenty-five minutes to stand, walk ten feet, turn, and walk back.  She sighed, managed to turn herself around again, and fell ungracefully into the wheelchair.

The therapist came over and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.  “It’ll get easier, I promise.  You’ll be back to your old self in no time.”  After the past two and a half years, Irina wasn’t entirely sure she could remember her old self, but she said nothing.  “Let’s get you back to your room,” Jennifer continued.  “You look like you could use a nap.”

***

Dr. Stevenson headed for Irina Derevko’s room, frowning after his conversation with Director Chase.  He’d been disappointed to learn that she was going to prison upon her discharge from the hospital, for he had come to like and admire his patient over the past few days despite his knowledge of her crimes.  Chase had said she’d learned her fate the evening before, so at least he didn’t have to be the one to break bad news; still, after a moment’s consideration, he decided he wouldn’t mention discharge unless she brought it up.  He had asked Chase what kind of continuing medical and physical therapy services would be available to Irina in prison, and she hadn’t known the answer, so he couldn’t fix a discharge date anyway until the director got back to him.

He approached Irina’s room and picked up her chart to check her vitals.  His eyes widened when he saw that her temperature that morning had been 101.4; her blood pressure had been on the low side, too, only 98/65.  He looked around for the nurse and flagged her down.  “Why didn’t you call me about her temperature and blood pressure?” he asked, showing her the numbers.

The nurse, a woman who in Stevenson’s opinion should have been an accountant, shrugged.  “Orders say to call for temp above 101.5, and for BP below 90/60.”

“Any complaints?  Does she seem more tired than usual?”

Another shrug.  “Last time I was here she was intubated and not moving at all.  She’s been sleeping pretty much all morning.  Asked for another blanket, but otherwise no problems.”

“Did she eat breakfast?”

“Wasn’t interested in the food, but she drank about half the Boost I took in.”

Stevenson closed his eyes and resisted the urge to shout at the nurse.  That wouldn’t solve anything.  Instead, he took a deep breath.  “So you’re telling me she’s got increased temperature, decreased blood pressure, she’s cold, and she has a poor appetite, and you didn’t feel the need to call me?”

At least the nurse had the decency to look chagrined.  “My patient across the hall has been complaining about his pain from his three GSWs every five minutes, and she’s been so quiet…”

The doctor sighed.  “Wait here.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to have orders for you,” he said, then stepped into Irina’s room.  She lay on her side, curled up in a ball, and even from across the room he could see her shaking.  “Irina?” he called as he approached.

She opened her eyes and pulled the blankets tighter around herself, and he could see that her cheeks were flushed bright red.  “Why is it so cold in here?”

“I think you may have a fever, Irina,” he replied.

She sighed and, to his surprise, glared at him.  “I wish you’d stop saying my name wrong.”  A shudder wracked her body.

He reached out to pull the blanket back, but she resisted.  “I need to examine you to try to find out why you’re sick,” he said, but she shook her head.  “Come on, let me just look at a few things, okay?  Then I’ll leave you alone.”  She gave him a wary look, but let him pull her hand from under the blankets; her skin was hot.  Holding her wrist, he felt her pulse under his fingertips; he didn’t take the time to count, but it was definitely too fast.  Moving quickly now, he pulled down the shoulder of her hospital gown to check the place where her central IV line went in.  Under the clear bandage, faint but definitely present, was a red streak.  That was enough for now.  He covered her up again, then hurried back into the hall.  “She’s septic,” he said to the nurse.  “Put her on contact and respiratory precautions.  Her central line’s off limits; get two 16 gauge IVs in her and run two liters of normal saline.  Once that’s going, she needs a stat CBC and blood cultures off her central line as well as cutaneous blood cultures.”  It occurred to him that it was possible, though unlikely, that this could be a recurrence of the virus that had landed her here in the first place.  “Also send a culture for the R-47 virus,” he said.  The nurse looked at him like he’d grown an extra head, not surprising since he doubted she’d ever heard of the virus.  “Just send an extra culture bottle; I’ll write it in the orders,” he said in annoyance.  “And I want her on pulse ox and a respiratory rate monitor; watch her breathing status like a hawk.  Better put her on oxygen, too.”

“I think I’m going to need to grab another nurse or two to help with all this,” the nurse said.

Stevenson nodded.  “Let me know when you’ve drawn the cultures so I can take out that central line.”  He went to the computer and looked up a phone number; then, as he began entering orders, he called the infectious disease doctor who had previously handled Irina Derevko’s case.

*****

Chapter 141

At about 1 pm, Jack’s office phone rang; the caller ID showed that it was Director Chase.  He frowned, surprised to be hearing from her so soon, but picked it up.  “Bristow.”

“Jack.  You saw Derevko yesterday?” Chase asked hurriedly.

“I did,” Jack said, “and I told her about what we discussed.”

“Has Agent Santos seen her in the last three days?”

That question was quite odd.  “She was there Sunday.”

He heard Chase sigh.  “All right.  I need you both to go to the naval hospital immediately and report to the blood lab on the classified floor.  They should be expecting you.”

“Director, what is this about?”

“Derevko’s sick; they think it might be a recurrence of the virus.”  Jack felt his heart speed up, but Chase continued, oblivious.  “She’s been moved into isolation, and we’re vaccinating the hospital staff, but Dr. Tooms said the two of you should get your antibody levels checked to make sure you’re still immune.”  Dr. Tooms was the infectious disease specialist who had initially cared for Irina, Jack recalled.

“What about Sydney?” Jack asked, knowing she and Irina had been visiting each other.

“I believe she’s already been tested.  You can get more information from Dr. Tooms at the hospital.  In the meantime, you two need to get that test immediately, because if you’re susceptible to the virus, we’re going to have to vaccinate everyone at APO.”

“All right, Director.”  Jack hung up the phone and, ignoring the emotions stirring in the pit of his stomach, went to get Nadia.

***

Irina opened her eyes to see someone above her in what was evidently some sort of hazmat suit.  She blinked and looked around to see that she was in a different room, though still a hospital room.  Without warning, the person beside her pulled down the shoulder of her hospital gown.  She tried to reach up to stop them, but felt the blood drain from her face as she realized that her wrists were restrained to the bed.  There was a sudden, sharp pain in her shoulder, and she cried, “Ow!”

The figure stopped moving.  “Oh, Irina.  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were awake,” came Dr. Stevenson’s voice through a speaker.  Irina looked closer and saw that it was indeed him under the suit.  “I hope you’re a bit calmer than you were earlier.”

What had happened earlier?  She’d been cold, so dreadfully cold, and there had been people poking her, holding her down, and then Dr. Stevenson had been there, pushing a needle into her abdomen.  And now – she recognized the way she felt right now, exactly the way she’d felt after waking up from a whopping dose of diazepam.  “You drugged me.”

“I’m afraid I had to, Irina.  You were fighting the nurses, and you even punched one of them.”

She remembered that now, the satisfying thud of her fist against jawbone.  She had been tied down, and then gotten an arm free, and she’d struck out.  But now she was restrained again, and drugged to boot.  Looking toward her feet, she saw that she had an IV line running into each arm.  Any minute now Sloane was going to come in…no.  Sloane was dead, she remembered; she’d killed him herself.

But Katya wasn’t.  Fear coiled around her heart, a black snake, and began to squeeze.  The doctor started doing something painful to her shoulder again, and she squirmed, trying to get away.  “Irina, I need to get this line out.  I’m pretty sure it’s infected,” the man above her said.

“You’re working with her, aren’t you?” Irina spat, twisting as much as the restraints allowed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Yes, you do.  Katya put you up to this.  I don’t know what she wants this time.  Is my father involved in this?  Are you taking orders from him, too?”  As she spoke, she continued to move her shoulder so he couldn’t do whatever it was he was trying.

The figure – Irina suspected she should know who he was, but she no longer remembered – put up his hands and backed away.  “I’m going to give you some time to calm down, all right?”

When he was gone, Irina turned her head to the side and allowed a few tears to spill out, trying to hide them in the pillow.  For she was certain there were unseen watchers, as she was always being watched.  She was never alone, and that man would be back, and she was just so tired of all of it.  If she didn’t let him do what he wanted, maybe, just maybe, it would finally be over.

*****

Chapter 142

“Okay, all done,” the nurse said, smiling at Nadia as she placed a Band-aid on her arm.

Nadia gave her only the briefest of polite smiles back before getting to her feet and hurrying over to Jack, who had finished having his own blood drawn only seconds before.  “Let’s find Mom,” she said.

Jack nodded and they walked out the door of the lab, almost directly into Dr. Tooms.  “Oh!” he said in surprise.  “You two certainly got here fast.  I was just coming to tell them to cancel the test on you.”  He looked down, saw the bandages on both their arms, and shrugged.  “Well, I suppose since you’ve already had your blood drawn, might as well go ahead, for scientific curiosity if nothing else.  Chase is already throwing government money around for no good reason.”

Nadia and Jack looked at each other, then at the doctor, both confused.  “No good reason?  Chase said my mother was sick, that you thought it might be a recurrence of the virus,” Nadia said.

The doctor looked around, then said, “Let’s not talk in the hall.”  He pulled them down the hall and into the room recently occupied by Irina.  Though her books still lay on the table, the bed and its occupant were gone.  “I told her we were testing for the virus, but I never told her I really thought that was the cause of the problem.  Frankly, if I’d known she was going to make this much of a fuss, I wouldn’t have even told her we were running the test.  She’s the one that ordered Derevko moved down to the isolation floor, and she’s making everyone crazy trying to get the staff vaccinated.  It’s all completely pointless, especially since the test just came back negative; there’s no virus at all in your mother’s blood.”

“So what’s wrong with her?” Nadia asked.

“She’s running a high fever; she’s probably got a bacterial infection in her blood from her IV line.  We’ve got her on antibiotics, and Dr. Stevenson’s downstairs now taking out the line, so she should be fine.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call Director Chase and get her to call off these vaccinations,” Tooms said, then headed for the door.

Nadia followed him.  “And get my mom moved back upstairs?”

Tooms paused.  “Yes, of course, that too,” he said, then was gone.

Nadia turned back to Jack.  “Oh, Dad, I hope she doesn’t have to stay down there.  Those rooms are awful.  The way you can see the suits hanging on the wall even when nobody’s wearing them, that big window into the room, the way light reflects off the window and the glass in the suits so you can hardly tell who’s on the other side…”  She shuddered.  Jack remembered his time in an isolation room and had to agree; it had been unpleasant but bearable while healthy, but he imagined it would be far worse while already sick.  “Let’s go see her.”   Jack nodded, and they stepped into the hall.  

They pressed the button for the elevator; when it opened, Dr. Stevenson emerged.  “Am I glad to see you two,” he said.  “I was just going to talk to Sydney, but all three of you would be even better.”

“What’s wrong?” Jack snapped, fed up by now.

“Let’s go to Sydney’s room so I only have to explain once,” Stevenson said.  They both glared at him.  “I can assure you, Irina’s in no danger.”  The two of them acquiesced, but Jack wasn’t happy about it, and Nadia didn’t look too pleased either.

“Nadia, Dad, what’s going on?” Sydney cried out as soon as they entered.  She saw the doctor come in behind them and continued.  “A nurse came in to draw my blood and said it was because Mom’s sick, and now she’s not in her room, and no one will tell me anything!”

“Your mother has an infection in her blood that’s almost certainly from her IV line,” Dr. Stevenson said, addressing all three of them until he saw that Jack and Nadia already knew.  “Even though I thought it was her line right away, I ordered tests for several other problems because she got so sick so quickly; that’s standard procedure.  One of those tests was for the virus that brought her here in the first place; apparently Director Chase found out about that and ordered that your mother be put in an isolation room downstairs.  She also ordered vaccinations; I had to get vaccinated myself.”  He gave a slight grin and rubbed his arm.  “If you were vaccinated earlier, I’m guessing your blood was drawn to make sure you’re still immune.”

“It was; that’s why we’re here,” Jack said.  “And we just talked to Dr. Tooms; he said the test for the virus was negative.  But what did you want to talk to us about?”

“I need to take out the infected IV line; she’s on antibiotics, but she won’t really get better until that line’s out.”

“I thought you were just doing that,” Nadia said.

“I was trying to.”  Stevenson sighed.  “She had a very high fever earlier, high enough that she was confused, delirious, really.  We couldn’t risk using the infected line, so the nurses were trying to start a couple of new lines; they had a hard time because the infection caused her blood pressure to drop.  They had to stick her several times, and she got very agitated – completely understandable, of course, but we had to get those IVs in to give her fluids and antibiotics.  So we had to restrain her.”

“Bad idea,” Sydney muttered.

The doctor nodded.  “We used cloth restraints, since she’s never caused any trouble before and she’s still got a good degree of muscle weakness.  Well, she managed to get out of one and punch a nurse.  So I had to sedate her.  We got the IVs in, got the tests done, and I was about to take the line out when word came that she had to be moved downstairs immediately – Chase’s orders.  By the time I got vaccinated, went down there, and started to take it out, she started to wake up.  The Ativan I gave her should still be working, but she’s clearly still delirious.  She’s moving around too much for me to get the line out – not to mention ranting about her father and someone named ‘Katya’.  I was hoping maybe one of you could try and get her calmed down.”

Jack was pretty sure he knew exactly what the problem was – Irina had been thrown right back into another time.  “She’s still in restraints?” he asked to confirm.

The doctor nodded.  “Standard protocol – we keep her in them until she’s calm, particularly since we absolutely can’t risk her pulling out her IVs.  Although since the cloth restraints didn’t hold, we had to go to leather.”

“Ativan’s a benzodiazepine, isn’t it?  Like Valium?” asked Sydney.  Jack glanced over and saw that she was thinking along the same lines he was, although she didn’t know the full extent of why restraints would upset Irina so much.

Stevenson nodded again.  “You know what’s going on, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” Nadia said.  “What’s going on?”

Jack didn’t want to tell her anything, but he was certain she wouldn’t accept no answer at all.  “Your mother had a bad experience with being tied down and drugged, and I suspect she’s reliving it.”  He turned to the doctor.  “I think I can calm her down, but you’ll have to take the restraints off; they’re a big part of the problem.”  

The doctor hesitated, looking uncertain, but nodded.  “I can do that, but you’ll need to get assurance from her that she won’t take out those IV lines first.  But do you think you can calm her down if you’re in an isolation suit?”

“Dr. Tooms is getting permission from Chase to move her back upstairs right now,” Jack said.

Stevenson frowned.  “She really does have a very high fever.  It could take half an hour or more to get her moved back up here; I’d really like to get started sooner than that, especially if calming her could take a while.”

“All right, show me how to get in there without a suit and I’ll start talking to her now,” Jack said.  The doctor nodded and began to leave the room; Jack followed.

“Help me up,” Jack heard Sydney say behind him, presumably to Nadia.

The doctor turned.  “It might be better to have just your father in the room.”

“Shouldn’t we all be there?” Nadia asked.

“Although your mother doesn’t have this virus everyone’s so afraid of, she does have a very serious infection.  Everyone in the room with her should be wearing a surgical mask – I’ll make an exception for your father because of her mental state, but not for all three of you.  And since she might not recognize you with masks on, it’s better if you don’t go in at all.  I’d suggest you watch from outside, except that because of the way the lighting is in those rooms, it’s possible that might also upset her.”  Nadia and Sydney looked unhappy, but nodded.  “Hopefully you can come see her once she’s calmed down,” he added. 

For his part, Jack was glad the doctor only wanted him to go down, because otherwise he would have had to come up with his own reasons to exclude the girls, since he suspected that in her confusion Irina might say some things she didn’t want them to know about.  He gave his daughters a reassuring smile and followed the doctor out.

*****

Chapter 143

Irina opened her eyes and blinked up at the ceiling.  She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the drug and the quiet of an empty room made staying awake difficult.  Slight movements of her wrists told her that she was still restrained, which wasn’t surprising; she might not be sure what was going on, but she was quite certain that they weren’t just going to let her go.  She frowned as she became aware of a plastic tube running across her face, with prongs inserted in her nose: oxygen?  Was it oxygen being blown into her nose, or something else?  She shook her head, but was unable to dislodge the prongs.

The room’s silence was broken by a pneumatic hiss, followed by a voice, so Irina quickly closed her eyes and made her breathing slow and even.  “…have the key?” were the first words she was able to make out.  The voice was very familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it, obscured as it was by the other noise.

“On the table,” another voice said.  She knew that one, too, someone she’d trusted – the doctor.  “Make sure she’s lucid before you use it.”  Lucid?  For what?  What were they doing to her?  “Hit the call button when you’re ready, or if you need anything,” came the doctor’s voice again.  Then there was a repeat of the hissing noise.

There was silence for a moment, and Irina thought she might be alone, but then she heard footsteps.  She remained perfectly still and had to force herself to keep breathing steadily as she felt the presence of her unseen captor hovering by her right shoulder.  She was prepared to struggle again if he tried to repeat whatever the doctor had been doing to her shoulder earlier, but she was surprised when she felt him touch her hand instead.  His fingers slipped under hers, and his thumb stroked the back of her hand.  At first she had to resist the urge to give the hand a squeeze, but then she realized that it had to be a trick.  He must know she was awake, and he was just trying to get her to let her guard down.  She became aware that she’d stiffened slightly at the realization; he must have noticed it too, for the motion against her hand stopped.  She cursed inwardly, then heard, “Irina?”

This time she had no trouble recognizing the voice.  She opened her eyes and stared at her husband in shock; whatever was going on here, she hadn’t thought he was involved.  “Jack?”  Tears welled up in her eyes, and she blinked them back furiously.

He caressed  her cheek, and she turned away as a few hot tears slipped from her eyes.  Was he going to force himself on her now, just like Sloane?  She’d never thought that Jack would do something like that, but then, her whole world was wrong right now.  Maybe she’d been wrong about him; maybe she’d destroyed him more thoroughly than she thought.  Maybe this was all her fault.

“Irina, I know you’re confused,” Jack said, stroking her hand again, “but this isn’t what you think.  You’re in the hospital, remember?  You have an infection and a very high fever, and that’s why you’re so confused.  The doctor and nurses are trying to help you.”

She shook her head.  “He drugged me.  The same drug Katya gave me.”  She could see from his reaction that he’d known that already, further proof that he and the doctor were working together.

“Yes, he drugged you,” Jack said.  The admission surprised her.  “He was trying to calm you down so he could treat your infection.  He didn’t know about your history with that type of drug.”

She searched his face, wanting to believe him.  But something seemed off – the restraints, she remembered.  “So why am I still tied down?”

“See the IVs in your arms?” Jack asked.  She looked at her arms and nodded.  “Those are for fluid and antibiotics, to fight the infection.  If you promise to leave them in, I can take off the restraints.”

He was trusting her to cooperate?  Giving her some freedom, however limited, on only her word that she would behave?  He was too smart to believe that she would be complicit in her own destruction; therefore, the only logical conclusion was that he truly believed in what he was saying, that the doctor was trying to help her.  And Jack was not an easy man to fool.  She nodded.  “I’ll leave the IVs alone.”

Jack smiled, went over to a table by the wall, and picked up something small and silver.  He returned and fitted it into the right restraint; a moment later, she felt the strap go slack.  “There’s something else,” he said as he pulled the strap off completely and gently massaged her wrist.  “The doctor thinks the infection came from the old IV line in your shoulder, so he needs to take it out.”  So it did come down to her shoulder after all, Irina thought, as Jack walked around to the other side of the bed and began the same procedure on that wrist.  “He said he tried to do it earlier, but couldn’t because you were so upset.  Do you remember?”

“Yes.”  She turned her head away, but the three emptly hazmat suits facing her through three glass doors were disconcerting, so she turned back to stare at the ceiling.  Her memories seemed jumbled, not quite in order, and fuzzy; it didn’t seem like it had been like that when Katya had been drugging her.  Maybe that was the fever Jack said she had.  “I thought he was working with Katya.”

“Katya’s in prison, remember?” Jack said gently.  She did remember, so she nodded, but that knowledge seemed at a further remove than her own captivity.  “Anyway, can the doctor come take that line out now?”

Irina nodded, then sighed.  “He probably thinks I’m crazy.”  He was probably right.

“No,” Jack said, as out of the corner of her eye she saw him press a button on the bed.  “He knows you’re sick.”

They were silent for a moment.  Irina closed her eyes and fell into a half doze, but was startled out of it when she heard that hissing noise again.  She looked over to see someone in a hazmat suit entering; as he drew closer, she saw that it was the doctor.  Fear chilled her suddenly, and she stiffened.  “Irina?” Jack said.  He squeezed her hand, and she reminded herself that the fear was completely irrational, but that didn’t make it go away.

When Stevenson was right next to her, she could see that he looked nervous, too; that helped a little, although the pointless fear was still there.  “Well, ready for me to take out that line?” he asked.

“What are you doing, exactly?” Irina queried, still having a bad feeling about this whole idea.

The doctor frowned.  “You want step by step?”  She nodded.  “Well, the first couple of steps will be just a bit painful, but after that it’ll be fine.  First I’ll take off the Tegaderm, then I’ll inject you with some lidocaine…”

That was a problem.  “I’m allergic,” Irina said.  “Very allergic.  Lidocaine causes anaphylaxis.”

Stevenson raised his eyebrows.  “Your chart says you’re allergic to Novocain…”

She nodded.  “That too, but it just gives me hives.”

“So you’re allergic to both types of local anesthetics?”  She nodded.  “I don’t think I’ve ever had this problem before…I suppose I’d normally just load you up with antihistamines and use Novocain if you weren’t sick…”

“What are you doing?” Irina interrupted.  She suspected she’d said that before, but it didn’t matter.

“There’s a small scalpel incision that I’ll need to close with one or two stitches.”

Irina nodded.  “Okay.”

“We were talking about what kind of anesthetic to use, since you’re allergic,” the doctor said, sounding as if he were talking to a child.

“For stitches?”  The doctor nodded, confusing Irina.  “I don’t need anesthetic for stitches.”

“You’ve had stitches before without any local anesthetic?”  She nodded.  “Do you want a painkiller or anything?”  She shook her head this time.  The doctor looked over at Jack.  “Does this make sense to you?”

“I didn’t know about the lidocaine allergy, but I do know she has a very high pain tolerance.  A couple of stitches won’t be a problem,” Jack said.

Stevenson still looked dubious, but he shrugged.  “All right, let me just get set up.”

Once he had turned away, Irina looked at Jack.  “See?” she said.  He looked at her without comprehension.  “I knew I shouldn’t let him mess with my shoulder.”

*****

Chapter 144

“All right, finished,” Dr. Stevenson said after he’d taped down a new bandage.  He gave Irina, who had fallen asleep, an odd look.  “Did she sleep through the whole thing?”

“Just the last bit,” Jack said with a hint of a smile.  She’d maintained a slight tension on his hand throughout most of the procedure, enough for him to know that she was awake; her grip had tightened a bit when the needle went in for the stitches, but that was the only reaction she’d had to the pain, and she’d gone completely limp shortly thereafter.  “So now she should start getting better?”

“Hopefully,” the doctor replied.  “We won’t know for sure what’s causing her infection until the blood cultures we took earlier show growth, which could take a couple of days.  But chances are one of the antibiotics we’ve got her on now will take care of it, and her fever should start going down soon.  In the meantime, we’ve got her on fluids to keep her blood pressure up, and Tylenol to keep her fever below 102.”

Jack frowned.  “That still seems awfully high.”

“It was 105 earlier.  We don’t want to overload her with Tylenol just to completely get rid of the fever; we just want to keep it low enough that it’s not doing any damage.”

“I see.”  He considered for a moment.  “So the confusion she’s still having…is that from the fever, or the Ativan?”

“Probably mostly the Ativan.”  Stevenson frowned.  “I don’t really like using it to begin with, but I had to do something.”  Jack nodded; from the way the doctor had described the situation, it sounded like he’d had no choice.  “It’ll be in her system for the rest of the day, unfortunately, although the level’s already peaked.  I will make a note in her chart that she’s not to be given benzodiazepines.  Also lidocaine, of course.”  He came over and looked at where the IVs entered Irina’s arms.  “I suspect it would be unwise to leave her alone, wouldn’t it?”

“I imagine so, if you want to keep the IVs in,” Jack agreed.  “I can stay with her today; I suspect Sydney and Nadia will volunteer to help as well once she gets back upstairs.”  There was nothing going on at APO today, and if Chase found out they hadn’t gone back, well, she was the one who had told them to leave in the first place.

“It would be best to have someone she knows with her,” the doctor said, but he was frowning.  “She should have been moved by now, though.  I should go see what’s going on.”  Jack nodded, and the doctor exited.

***

Irina woke with a start and a gasp.  Before she had time to be disoriented, Jack was at her side, taking her hand and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.  “Irina, are you all right?”

“Bad dream,” she murmured.  The dream had involved Rambaldi, and her father, and she’d seen Elena fall again...she pushed it away, focusing on Jack’s face.  What was going on?  She was drugged – the realization brought a brief moment of panic before she remembered that there was another explanation, though what it was exactly escaped her at the moment.  “What’s happening?”

“You’re sick,” Jack said, and she nodded, remembering that now.  “The doctor’s gone to see if he can get you moved upstairs, so Sydney and Nadia can come see you.”

She smiled.  “That would be nice.”  Her arm itched, and she reached over to scratch it, but Jack took her reaching hand in midair and pressed it back down.  She glared.  “My arm itches.”

“You can’t mess with it.  The IV line, remember?”

She sighed, then began searching for the edges of the blanket.  “I’m cold.”  For some reason that made Jack look worried, but he didn’t say anything, merely helped tuck her arms under the blanket.  That helped, but it wasn’t enough.  “Still cold.”

“We can probably get you another blanket once you get upstairs,” Jack said.  

She didn’t really like the idea of waiting, but she didn’t have much of a choice, so she nodded.  “Can I have some water?”

She knew immediately from Jack’s expression that she wasn’t going to like this answer, either.  “I’m actually not sure if you’re supposed to have any.”  

She glared again, but he just shrugged, and she sighed in exasperation.  “I hate this,” she murmured.  “I’m so sick of all of it.  I want my life back.”  Jack squeezed her shoulder, but didn’t say anything; that was just as well, since there was nothing he could say.

Several minutes passed, and Irina would have gone back to sleep if she hadn’t been so cold.  Then Jack got up and paced to the window.  “He should be back by now,” he said, then returned to Irina.  “Still thirsty?”  She nodded.  “All right, I’ll get you some water.”  He disappeared above the head of the bed; she heard water running, and he returned a moment later holding a plastic cup with a straw in it.  “I don’t know why they’re always trying to keep you from eating in hospitals anyway,” he said as he put the straw into her mouth.

She took a long swallow of water before answering; it wasn’t very cold, but it wet her mouth, which was the most important thing.  “They haven’t been trying to keep me from eating here,” she said.  “In fact, seems like they never stop bringing me food.”  Then she grimaced as her stomach turned over unpleasantly; maybe no water was the better idea.  Jack watched her with concern.  “That’s enough water,” was all she said; she tried to raise an arm to push the glass away, but the IV in her elbow was almost as effective as a restraint at keeping her arm in place.

There was the hiss of a door opening, and the doctor came in.  He wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit this time, though, just a yellow paper gown and a mask that covered his mouth and nose.   Behind him came two unfamiliar women, similarly attired.  “How are you feeling, Irina?” the doctor asked.

She stared at him in surprise.  “You said my name right.”

“So it’s ‘Irina’, with an ‘ee’?”  She nodded.  “Ah.  Sorry about the misunderstanding, although you could have said something before.”  She shrugged; she should have, but it hadn’t seemed that big a deal.  “So how are you feeling?”

“Awful,” she replied.  “Cold.”

The doctor turned to one of the women.  “Let’s get a temp on her.”  Turning back, he said, “Irina, we’re going to move you back upstairs, all right?”  She nodded as one of the women – a nurse, she supposed – stuck a paper thermometer into her mouth.  “You’ll need to wear a mask while we move you since we can’t risk upsetting your immune system any more.”

The nurse pulled the thermometer from her mouth and studied it.  “103.8,” she said.

“Okay, let’s get her moving,” Stevenson said.  The other nurse slipped a surgical mask over her face, and a moment later the bed began to move.  Irina looked over at Jack and wondered why he looked so worried.

*****

Chapter 145

Sydney and Nadia tried to make small talk, but it became harder as the minutes passed and there was still no word from downstairs.  Nadia left the room to check her mother’s room every ten minutes, but it remained empty.

The one topic of conversation that Sydney steered away from was the one that Nadia was most curious about: their mother’s behavior.  Something had happened to her, something awful; Nadia’s father and sister had known about it, but hadn’t wanted Nadia to know.  Did it have something to do with the way her mother had been acting when Nadia had first met her?  Nadia had debated asking Sydney, but had decided that she and her father were probably only protecting Irina’s privacy; Nadia would ask her mother herself.

After over an hour, Nadia was nearly ready to go downstairs herself and see what was taking so long when Jack finally came in.  “What’s going on?” she asked, on her feet immediately.

“Your mother’s just been moved upstairs, and they’re getting her settled in now.”  Her father ran his fingers through his hair, and Nadia noted that he was showing just the slightest evidence of tiredness.

“Why did it take so long to move her?” Nadia asked.

At the same time, Sydney said, “Is she still confused?”

“I don’t know why it took so long to get her up here.  She’s still a little confused, but better than she was an hour ago.  Dr. Stevenson still thinks it’s best that she not be alone, though, and I agree.”

“She is out of restraints, right?” Sydney asked.

Their father nodded.  “That’s why she needs to have someone with her – if she should manage to pull out an IV, the doctor said he’d have to put the restraints back on.”

“How’s her fever?” Nadia wanted to know.

Jack frowned, and Nadia felt a surge of worry, overlaying the concern that had been present all day.  “Her fever’s gone up.  Dr. Stevenson’s hoping that the antibiotics will kick in soon, but in the meantime he’s calling Dr. Tooms to decide if they’re going to do anything else about the fever.”

Nadia and Sydney shared a look of frustration.  “So can we finally go see her?” asked Sydney.  Jack nodded, and Nadia went over to help Sydney out of bed.

***

Dr. Stevenson disappeared after they got off the elevator, saying he was going to call someone named “Dr. Tooms”.  Jack seemed to know who that was, and Irina meant to ask him once she got the annoying mask off her face, but he had left her at the door to her room, saying he was going to get Sydney and Nadia.  The nurse at the head of the bed watched Jack go, then glanced down at Irina with worry in her eyes; Irina wondered if this nurse was one of the ones she’d attacked earlier.

Once she was in the room, the bed back in its familiar position, the nurses began bustling around her.  One of them leaned over her and said, “I’m going to put a sticker on your chest to monitor your temperature, all right?”  Irina nodded, and the nurse pulled down the blanket and her gown and pressed down a small sticker with a cord attached.  Irina was immediately annoyed by its presence.

As the nurse pulled the gown and blanket back up, Irina asked, “Can I have another blanket?”  She was getting very tired of being cold.

But the nurse shook her head.  “You’ll have to wait until the doctor gets back.”

Irina exhaled slowly, annoyed.  “Can I get this mask off, at least?”

“All right,” the nurse said, and pulled the mask from her face.  That was better, anyway, since Irina felt like she could finally breathe freely.

The door opened and Nadia entered.  Irina smiled at her, but the nurse saw her and said sharply, “Hold on.  You need to go outside and put on a gown, gloves, and a mask.”

Nadia’s face fell.  “Oh.  Where do I get those?”  Jack and Sydney appeared behind her, looking confused at the hold up.

“I’ll show you,” the other nurse said, heading for the door.  “You’ll need them every time you come in while…”  The rest of her words were lost as the door swung shut behind her.

The nurse that remained bustled around for another minute before apparently running out of things to do, but she made no move to leave; instead, after doing nothing for a few seconds, she began wandering around the room aimlessly, occasionally making a slight adjustment to something.  Irina might have found it amusing if she hadn’t been seriously annoyed by what it represented: they didn’t trust her to be alone, even for a few minutes.  But her mind wasn’t working like it should, and she did now dimly remember fighting the nurses earlier, so she supposed they were right not to trust her.  And at least she wasn’t tied down; she supposed it was better to have a watcher than to be in restraints.

It was only a moment or two before Sydney came back in, suitably covered up.  The nurse whispered something to Sydney, then hurried out the door as if afraid something would happen to keep her there.  Sydney sat down by the bed, then reached out with a gloved hand and took Irina’s hand.  “Dad and Nadia will be in in a few minutes.  It takes a little while to put all this on,” she said.

“Are they afraid I’ll give you this infection I have?” Irina asked, remembering that Jack hadn’t been wearing any of that before – which was even stranger, now that she thought about it, since the doctor had been wearing one of those suits.

“Actually, I think they’re more worried that we’ll give you something that’ll make you sicker,” Sydney replied.

“Oh.”  It still didn’t quite make sense, but Irina shrugged it off; if hospital policy said her family had to put on all this to come into her room, there was no point in fighting it.

Nadia came in then; she came around the bed and took Irina’s free hand.  “Mom.  How are you doing?” 

“I’ve been better,” Irina replied.  In fact, in addition to being cold, she was having an even harder time ignoring her exhaustion; she suspected she’d be fighting sleep if she wasn’t fighting the urge to shiver.  She turned to Sydney.  “What’s she afraid I’m going to do?”  Sydney blinked at her.  “The nurse.  She was whispering to you.”

Irina didn’t miss the flash of guilt in her daughter’s eyes.  “We just don’t want you to pull out your IVs or anything, Mom.”

“So I need a babysitter.”  She could tell from both Sydney’s and Nadia’s eyes that they didn’t know how to respond to that, so it was just as well that Jack chose that moment to come in.

He crossed to the bed and took up a position by her head, where he brushed some hair behind her ear.  She didn’t like the rubbery feel of his glove on her hair, but she was still glad to have him there – to have them all there.  “Doing all right?” he asked.

“They won’t give me a blanket,” she griped.  She wasn’t normally one to complain, but would it really be that hard to give her a damn blanket?

“Irina, it’s because your fever’s higher than they want it to be,” Jack said soothingly.  She glared at him, but he didn’t falter.  “I’m sure when Dr. Stevenson gets here…”  He looked up as the door opened once again.  “Well, speak of the devil.”

*****

Chapter 146

“Irina, how are you feeling?” Dr. Stevenson asked as he came over to the bed.

“The same as five minutes ago,” Irina said sharply.  “Cold.  I’d like another blanket.”  Worry eased its vise-like grip on Jack’s heart ever so slightly; she couldn’t be at death’s door if her temper was still intact.

“I’m sorry, Irina, but I can’t give you another blanket,” the doctor said apologetically.

Irina looked at Sydney and Nadia.  “Do either of you have any weapons?  I’m going to kill him,” she asked with apparent calm, but Jack could tell from the tone of her voice that she was approaching true fury.  Their daughters stared at her, apparently not sure what to make of the situation.

He crouched down by the bed and said softly into her ear, “Irina, don’t threaten the doctor.  Restraints, remember?”

She glared at him, boiling with fury, but he stared her down.  They held each other’s gaze, immobile, for several seconds, and then her face crumpled, and he saw pain, fear, and exhaustion before she squeezed her eyes shut.  “Get them out,” she mouthed.

He stood and turned to his daughters.  “Your mother needs to rest.  Why don’t you two go back to Sydney’s room.”  He made it clear with his tone that it was not a request.

Sydney looked like she was about to protest, but Nadia surprised him by simply nodding.  She was on the same side as Jack, so perhaps she had seen something in her mother’s face; in any case, she immediately turned away from Irina.  “Come on, Sydney,” she said, reaching out and tugging on her sister’s arm.  Sydney gave Irina a last long look, then turned and left with Nadia.

Jack shot a brief glance at the doctor, who had retreated from the bed and looked rather pale, and then returned his attention to Irina.  “They’re gone,” he said softly.  “Are you all right?”

“All right?”  Her voice was soft, but he heard the resurgence of anger all the same.  “No, I’m not!  I’m so cold, and tired, and my head hurts, and I can’t breathe, and the room keeps swaying so much it’s making me seasick.  I just want a blanket so I can get warm, and then some damn sleep.  Why is that so hard?”

The doctor had approached as Irina spoke, and now he gestured to the screen above her head that displayed her vital signs.  Jack paled when he saw that her temperature was now 104.7; apparently he’d been wrong, and feisty was just Irina’s version of delirious.  “Irina, you have a high fever.  That’s why you feel so bad.  Let the doctor help you, all right?”

She shook her head, and tears spilled from her eyes.  “I just want to get warm and go to sleep.  I want him to leave me alone.”

“He can’t, Irina.  He has to get your fever down.”

Jack was surprised when the doctor spoke, since he could tell Stevenson had been badly startled by Irina’s earlier threat.  “Irina, give me five minutes, all right?  Then I promise I’ll let you sleep.”

She turned to look at the doctor, and Jack was relieved to see she didn’t seem to have malice in her eyes this time.  “Will I be warm?”

He sighed.  “No.  But you will feel better.”  She gave him a dubious look.  “I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.  Can I go ahead and do what I need to do?”

“Do I have a choice?”  Fortunately, there was only a hint of anger in Irina’s tone.

Jack answered this time, and he spoke bluntly.  “Yes.  You can cooperate, or you can be restrained again.”

She paled.  “You would do that to me?” she whispered.

“If that’s what it takes to get you better,” he said softly.  He leaned in closer and whispered into her ear, “Irina, I love you, and I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re not thinking straight, and you can’t decide what’s best for you right now.  You need to calm down and listen to the doctor.”  He pulled back, suspecting he’d see either rage or calm.  He was immensely relieved to see that she looked calm; a little stunned, but calm.

“You’ll stay?” she asked.  Jack knew she would never have let such open vulnerability show in her face if she’d been in control.  He nodded.  She turned to the doctor and gave him a curt nod.  “What do you need to do?”

“I’m going to have the nurses come in and give you some more Tylenol.  Then they’re going to wrap you in cooling blankets – those are blankets that have water in them that’s kept at a certain temperature.”  Irina gave a shudder and looked extremely unhappy, but said nothing.  “They’re not cold, room temperature really,” Stevenson added on quickly.  Irina nodded.  “The blankets need to be next to your skin, so they’ll have to take your gown off.  I’ll leave the room; you can have your husband leave too, if you wish.”

Irina gave him a confused look.  “We have children, Doctor.  He’s seen me naked a few times.”  Jack didn’t bother to suppress a slight grin.

The doctor nodded.  “Most people find that once they’re wrapped in the blankets, they still feel cold, but they’re much more comfortable once their temperature starts coming down.  If you’re still very uncomfortable after about fifteen minutes, we do have the option to sedate you if you want.”

Irina shook her head.  “No more drugs.”

“All right.  I’ll get the nurses now, then.”  Jack didn’t fail to note that the doctor got himself out of the room quite speedily.

He was rather surprised that the procedure of getting Irina wrapped in the blankets went quite smoothly.  But although she arched up initially when the bottom blanket was first placed under her, and looked supremely uncomfortable during all of it, she said nothing.  Once the nurses had wrapped her up like a burrito and left and Jack finally got a good look at her face, he understood why: she was exhausted, and even the strength of delirium wasn’t enough to push her through it anymore.  “I’m so tired, Jack,” she whispered.

“Then sleep,” he replied.  “That’s what you need now.”

She shook her head.  “I’m too cold.”

He reached out and stroked her cheek, wishing he didn’t have gloves on.  “Just try to relax, then.”

She closed her eyes for a brief moment, but then opened them again.  “Why is this happening?  When is this all going to be over?”

Jack sighed.  “I wish I knew.”

*****

Chapter 147

Irina woke without opening her eyes, coming to full awareness quickly from a light sleep.  She’d slept only a few minutes, she realized quickly – what had woken her?  She was still cold, but no colder than before, so that wasn’t it.  Then pressure surrounding her left bicep turned to pain, and she had her answer: the blood pressure cuff.  She’d noticed it before, squeezing her arm periodically, but it had been one annoyance among many.  Now, though…the doctor had been right, she was more comfortable.  But the cuff hurt, damn it.  Besides, it was her fever the doctor was worried about, so why should he need to know her blood pressure?  She reached over and ripped apart the velcro on the cuff, sighing with relief as the pressure on her arm eased.

“Irina?”  She opened her eyes and looked at Jack, who appeared alarmed for some reason.  “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she replied, wanting to go back to sleep.  She closed her eyes again and turned her head away from him.

“Irina.”  She felt him move the blankets on her right side, the one closer to him; surprisingly, even though the blankets felt cool, the air was colder.  He replaced the blankets, and then she heard his footsteps as he walked around the bed.  “You did something,” he said as he began to shift the blankets on the other side.

She felt cold air on the left side.  “Can you cover me back up?  I want to go back to sleep.”

“Ah,” he said, and she felt his fingers on the blood pressure cuff.  She reached over again and tried to pull it away, but he easily fought off her grasping fingers.  “Irina, you promised you would leave all this alone,” he said as he tightened it on her arm again.

Tears came to her eyes, and she blinked them back.  “I promised I’d leave the IVs alone.  I didn’t say anything about that cuff.  It hurts, and it keeps waking me up.”  She looked up at Jack to see that he was looking toward the door; she followed his gaze and saw that the doctor had come in.  “Why do you have to know my blood pressure, anyway?  I thought it was my fever you were worried about.”

“We’re worried that your blood pressure could drop very low,” Dr. Stevenson replied.  “That happens sometimes in severe infections, and if it does we need to know right away so we can do something about it.  But the cuff is bothering you?”  Irina nodded.  “There is another option.  We can put in an arterial line to monitor your blood pressure – like an IV line in your wrist, but it would be in an artery, and we would just use it to monitor your pressure instead of putting anything through it.”

“So do that, and stop trying to squeeze my arm off,” Irina replied.

“Well, there are a couple of problems.  One, we usually use lidocaine to put these lines in – there are a lot of nerves right there that are easy to hit.  Two, while the line’s in, we would have to strap your wrist to an arm board to keep you from bending it.”

“Would I still be able to move my arm around?”

“Of course.”

“Do it, then,” Irina said decisively.  She couldn’t possibly get any rest unless she got rid of the damn cuff and it stopped waking her up every few minutes.

“There’s the pain, though.  I really think I should sedate you…”  Irina shook her head.  “Some pain medication, then?”  She shook her head again.  “I don’t think I feel comfortable doing this without you having anything for pain.  If I were to hit a nerve, it could be very painful.”

Irina sighed.  “Can you have some pain medicine available, and I’ll tell you if I need it?”  The doctor looked unsure.  “I’ve had this problem with local anesthetics for a long time, and that’s usually what I do,” she explained.  “I will tell you if I need something, but I doubt I will.  I’d rather have pain than be sedated.”

“All right,” Stevenson said, though he was still frowning.  “I’ll see if I can get one of the respiratory nurses to put the line in, though – they have the most experience doing it.  And I will have some morphine available if you decide you need it.”  She nodded.  “It’ll take a few minutes to get this set up.  Can you leave the cuff on that long?”

“I suppose,” she admitted, though she wasn’t happy about the idea.  The cuff was already squeezing her arm again, presumably to get the reading it had missed earlier.

“Good.”  He paused a moment and gave her an assessing look.  “Other than being annoyed by the cuff, how are you feeling?”

“Better,” she replied.  “Still cold, though.  And tired.”

“We’ll let you get to sleep once we get this line in, then.  And hopefully you’ll feel warmer soon – the antibiotics should be working by now.  Your fever is down two degrees, so the blankets are doing their job.”  She nodded.  “I’ll go get everything set up and be back in a bit, all right?  Oh, and your daughters want to know if they can come back in.  Frankly, I don’t want to be the one to tell them no.”

Irina met Jack’s eyes and saw a questioning look; she gave him a nod.  He turned to the doctor.  “They can come in.”  The doctor nodded and disappeared out the door.  The blood pressure cuff was relaxing, too, so Irina let her eyes fall closed.

***

Sydney and Nadia entered almost immediately after the doctor was gone.  Irina remained still, eyes closed, so Jack drew his daughters into a corner and updated them on the situation in low tones.  He didn’t know if she was actually asleep or just resting, but since she’d gone ahead and closed her eyes even knowing they were coming in, he had to assume she was exhausted.  As he spoke to the girls, he occasionally glanced over at Irina, or at the monitor showing her vitals.  Yes, her temperature had dropped – it was now at 102.5 – but he had seen the look of surprise and worry that had passed over the doctor’s face when Irina said she was still cold.  What had he said?  “The antibiotics should be working by now.”  So why had her fever only dropped with the help of outside cooling by the blankets?  Why was her body continuing to try to drive it up, evidenced by her chill?  He tried to put the questions out of his mind; as much as he hated the idea, he could only sit back and wait.

***

“All right, that’s it,” the respiratory nurse said as she finished strapping Irina’s wrist to the arm board.  “Do you want me to fill out the paperwork, or…”

“No, I’ll take care of it,” Dr. Stevenson said.  The nurse had clearance to be on this floor, but she didn’t have a high enough clearance level to know anything specific about Irina’s case, so she’d been given only the barest of details; now Stevenson wanted her out of the room as quickly as possible.  “You can go.”

The nurse nodded and left, and Stevenson turned to Irina.  “Are you all right?”  Again, she’d remained perfectly still with her eyes closed throughout the procedure; he was quite bewildered by her lack of response to pain.

She opened her eyes and appeared annoyed.  “You don’t need to use lidocaine for that.  Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Still cold?” he asked.  She nodded.  He glanced up at her vital signs and saw that her temperature was at 101.6.  “Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to keep you wrapped up in those blankets a little while longer.”  She frowned, but gave him another nod.  “I’ll let you get some sleep now.”  She promptly closed her eyes.

“Doctor, can I speak to you outside?” Jack Bristow asked, and Stevenson nodded; he’d been anticipating this request.  They moved to the hall.  “Is she going to be all right?  Shouldn’t the antibiotics be working by now?” Jack asked.

“It can take a few hours for them to kick in,” the doctor replied.  “Her fever being so high is actually more indicative of her body being able to mount a good immune response than anything else.  Dr. Tooms could give you more specifics; infectious disease isn’t my specialty.”

“So where is Dr. Tooms?  We haven’t seen him in almost two hours.”

Stevenson sighed; he should have known better than to mention Dr. Tooms.  But he supposed he could tell Jack at least a little of what was going on.  “He’s had his hands full upstairs.  When I last talked to him, he had a total of eight patients with sepsis, including your wife.”

Jack blinked in surprise.  “What?  What’s going on?  Some kind of contamination?”

Stevenson shrugged.  “Irina’s the only one on this floor, so she hasn’t had contact with anyone else who’s sick.  He doesn’t know what’s going on.  In any case, I have been keeping him updated on her situation, and he’s still managing her care – he’s the one who advised the cooling blankets.  He just hasn’t had time to actually come down here, with seven new patients in the ICU.”

Jack nodded.  “But he thinks she’ll be all right?”

“She should be.  We caught it early; now we just need to control her fever until the antibiotics kick in.”  Bristow nodded.  “Any other questions?”

Jack considered for a moment, then shook his head.  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said, then turned and went back into his wife’s room.

***

Sydney watched her mother sleep, troubled.  Every time it seemed like things had a chance of working out, something always seemed to happen to wreck everything; that pattern had repeated over and over since Irina had first turned herself into the CIA four years ago.  At least lately the derailments hadn’t been due to her mother’s actions, and they’d been able to take steps in building a relationship; still, it was frustrating.

Irina shifted and sighed, then moved her arms under the blanket.  Sydney frowned, stood, and moved to her mother’s side; Nadia, who had been sitting next to her, went around to the other side.  Together they pulled down the blanket, and Sydney flushed deeply as she realized her mother wasn’t wearing a gown.  But then she saw her mother’s right hand picking at the bandage over the new line in her left wrist; she reached down and pulled it away.

Her mother opened her eyes and looked up, but Sydney could see she wasn’t really awake.  She tugged on Sydney’s hand, but Sydney held firm.  “Let go, Lena.  It itches,” she murmured in Russian.

“I know, Mom,” Sydney said in English, ignoring the mistaken identity.  She passed her mother’s left hand over to Nadia, and together they pressed her arms back down to the bed.  “Go back to sleep, okay?”  They tucked the blanket back in around her shoulders.

“Mmm-hmm,” Irina murmured, closing her eyes.  Then, only half articulated, Sydney heard, “Jack, stop hogging the blankets, I’m freezing,” as her mother shifted a little.

“I think she’s back to sleep,” Nadia said after a moment, smoothing their mother’s hair back.  

Sydney nodded and was about to sit down when their father came in.  “Something wrong?” he asked, coming quickly to the bed.

“She was pulling at one of the bandages in her sleep,” Nadia explained.  “She never really woke up.”  Jack nodded.

“What did the doctor say?” Sydney asked as she moved to sit down; her chest was beginning to hurt.  “Is her fever going to start going down soon, without these cold blankets?”

“He hopes so.  He doesn’t seem too concerned, though.”

“That’s good,” Nadia said, and Sydney heard her sigh.  “Before this happened I was really hoping she could get out of here soon.  We still haven’t had a chance to do anything normal.  I’ve never even been out in public with her, except when we all had aliases.”

Sydney noticed that her father suddenly became very interested in the far corner of the room.  “Dad, she is still getting a pardon, right?”  He didn’t respond.  “Dad?”

Finally he met her eyes, and she read the truth there before he spoke.  “No.  I’m afraid she’s not.”

*****

Chapter 148

At 7 pm, Jack sat by Irina’s bed, holding an open book but not really reading it.  Irina was asleep, as she had been for the past several hours; a couple of times she’d opened her eyes and looked around sleepily before going right back to sleep.  Her temperature had increased again about two hours before, but as soon as it hit 102.5 the nurse had come in and given her some Tylenol, which had brought it back down again.  The same nurse had ordered Sydney back to her own room at that point, reminding her firmly that she was still a patient herself.

Vaughn had appeared shortly afterward for his daily visit to Sydney, bringing with him Agent Weiss, who professed worry that Jack and Nadia hadn’t returned to APO.  Jack knew, of course, that his concern was for Nadia; he had suggested that Weiss take Nadia home.  She’d protested at first, but had finally agreed to go with his promise that he’d call her immediately if there was any change.  So he was alone, fully intending to stay the night; it was against hospital rules, but he had a feeling the nurses wouldn’t argue after Irina’s earlier behavior.  His stomach growled, and he considered that he might have asked Nadia to stay a bit longer; maybe he could ask Sydney to sit with her mother for an hour or so, if her nurse would let her, while he went home to eat and pick up a change of clothes.

He stood and put a hand on Irina’s shoulder; she didn’t stir, so he was about to leave her for just a moment to get Sydney when the door opened.  Dr. Tooms came in, surprisingly without a mask or gown, though he was wearing gloves.  “Agent Bristow,” the doctor said with a slight smile; he looked exhausted.  “You don’t really need to wear all that.”  He gestured to Jack’s mask and gown.  “The nurses tend to get a little overzealous, but as long as you’re not sick none of it’s necessary.”  Jack wasted no time taking off the mask, gown, and gloves; he’d put up with them for Irina’s sake, but they’d been driving him crazy.  When he had it all off, he turned to see that the doctor was at the computer screen showing Irina’s vitals, apparently paging back through the past results.  He returned to the current readings, and Jack saw that her temperature was 100.8, the lowest he’d seen it all day.  “How’s she feeling?” Tooms asked.

“She’s been sleeping,” Jack replied.  It had been a few hours since she’d mentioned being cold; maybe the antibiotics were finally working.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to wake her up for a few minutes.  I understand I should stay out of arm’s reach?”

“I’ll wake her up,” Jack said with a slight smile.  “She should be fine now; it’s only when her fever’s high that she gets confused.”  He went to her and stroked her cheek, glad he could finally touch her skin without gloves on.  “Irina?”

She opened her eyes quickly and focused on him; he saw confusion for only a brief moment before it cleared.  “I slept a long time,” she murmured.

He nodded, then moved aside so she could see the doctor.  “Irina, this is Dr. Tooms.  He specializes in infectious disease, and he took care of you when you first came in with the virus.”  She nodded.

The doctor came forward as Jack stepped back to give him room.  “Hello, Irina,” he said with a smile.  “It’s good to finally see you with your eyes open.  How are you feeling?”

She shrugged.  “The same.  Cold, tired.”

“Still cold?” Tooms said with a frown.  Irina nodded.  “How about muscle aches?  Headache?”

“Some.  Not bad.”

“Sick to your stomach at all?”  Irina nodded, and Jack frowned; he hadn’t realized she’d been having stomach problems in addition to everything else.  The doctor looked like he’d expected her response, though.  “One of the antibiotics you’re on makes a lot of people feel nauseated.  The nurse can bring you some medication for it; just ask.”

“Will it sedate me?”  Jack suppressed a smile at that; she refused anything that would make her tired even though all she wanted to do was sleep.  But then, perhaps she was worried that it would leave her confused like the Ativan had.

Tooms shook his head.  “Probably not – a few people say they get a little sleepy with this medicine, but most don’t.  And it would be better to be sleepy than feeling sick, especially if you wanted to eat something.  Have you had anything to eat today?”

Irina shook her head.  “Not since this morning.  I had some water earlier, but it made me feel sick.”

“Well, if you want to try something, it wouldn’t be a bad idea.  Just let the nurse know – ice chips, apple juice, Jello would all be good things to try.”  Irina nodded, but she didn’t look like the idea appealed to her.  “Now tell me, how’s your breathing?  Do you feel like you’re having any trouble at all?”

“I’m fine now,” she replied.  “It was a little hard to breathe earlier, while my fever was high.”  The doctor nodded.  “Do I have to have the oxygen on?” she continued.

“You don’t like it?”  She shook her head.  He glanced over at her vital signs.  “Well, the oxygen level in your blood looks fine.”  He followed the oxygen tube to the wall.  “You’re not on much – I think I can turn it off for now.”  He reached out and turned it off, then returned to the bed and removed the tube from her face.  “Better?”  She nodded.  “Good.  I am going to have the nurse watch your oxygen level, though, and if it gets too low she’ll need to put it back on.  And you let her know if you have trouble breathing again.”

“I will,” Irina said.  The doctor looked mildly surprised, and Irina gave him a wry smile.  “Despite what you may have been told, I am capable of cooperating, Doctor.  Particularly when people cooperate with me.”

“I see.  Well, we’ll have to work together, then.”  The doctor took his stethoscope from around his neck.  “Is it all right if I listen to your heart and lungs?”  She nodded, and he listened to several places on her chest and back.  “All right, everything sounds fine there,” he said as he hung the stethoscope around his neck again. “Now that your temperature’s stable, I’ll let the nurses know they can dress you in a gown again.  Just make sure you stay wrapped up in the blankets, all right?”

Irina nodded.  “They’re warmer than the air anyway.  Can I ask you some questions now?” she asked, and Tooms nodded.  “How much longer am I going to be cold, and when can I get rid of these damn blankets?”

“Good questions, and I wish I knew the answer.  We’ll have to keep the blankets until we can keep your temperature at a safe level with Tylenol, so we’ll probably be able to get rid of them around the time you stop feeling cold.  As for exactly when that will be, I can’t say.  You’ve been on antibiotics now for about eight hours, which really isn’t very long.  I wouldn’t be surprised if you started feeling better now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen until sometime tomorrow, either.”

“What if I still don’t feel better tomorrow?”

“Well, that would most likely mean that the antibiotics we’re giving you aren’t killing the bacteria causing the infection.  We’ve got you on two very good antibiotics that cover a lot of organisms, including the most likely causes of this infection, but we can’t cover everything.   We did culture your blood when you first got sick; I would expect the results of that tomorrow sometime, and that will tell us what kind of bacteria are causing this.  After that it’ll take another day for the lab to find out what antibiotics it’s sensitive to.”

“So I could feel like this for two more days?” Irina said with a frown.

“Possibly, but I’m hoping you’ll feel better before that.”

Irina nodded.  “I suppose I can live with this for two more days if I have to.  I must say, these cold blankets are a very creative torture method.  Not the most creative I’ve ever dealt with, but close.”  The doctor didn’t seem to know how to respond to that.  “Am I in any danger of dying from this?”

Tooms gave her a reassuring smile, back on firm ground again.  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.  We caught your illness early, before any damage occurred to your organs.  We just need to watch you very closely to make sure it stays that way until the antibiotics kick in.”  Irina nodded.  “Any other questions for me?”  She shook her head.  “All right.  Get some rest, and let the nurse know if you have any trouble at all, all right?”

“I will,” Irina said, giving the doctor a brief smile.  He returned it and left the room.  Irina turned to Jack.  “Where are Sydney and Nadia?”

“Sydney’s in her room, and I talked Nadia into going home for the night,” Jack replied.

Irina glanced over at the clock.  “You should go home, too.”  He opened his mouth to speak, but she continued, “I don’t need a babysitter anymore.  The drug’s pretty much worn off now; I’ll be fine as long as they don’t let my fever get high again, and it doesn’t seem like that’s likely with these blankets.”

He came up to the bed, slipped a hand under the blanket, and squeezed her hand.  “I wasn’t planning to stay to watch you, Irina.  I was staying so you wouldn’t be alone.”  

She smiled.  “All right.  But you are not spending the night in that chair in a business suit.  I insist that you at least go home for a more comfortable change of clothes.”

“You read my mind.  I was about to go do that before the doctor showed up.  Do you want me to ask Sydney to come in and sit with you?”

Irina shrugged.  “I’m going back to sleep,” she said, and Jack could indeed see her fatigue.  “If watching me sleep is more interesting than whatever she’s doing in her own room, fine, but promise me you’ll make it very clear that she doesn’t need to babysit me.”

“Of course.”  He leaned down and kissed her cheek.  “I’ll be back in a while.  Sleep well.”  She smiled at him, then closed her eyes.  He watched her for a moment as her breathing slowed, then left the room.

*****

Chapter 149

On Wednesday morning, Senator Hiser fixed himself a cup of coffee and a donut, then turned his TV on and flipped through the news channels.  He sipped the coffee slowly and nibbled his donut as he viewed reports of hundreds of cases of sepsis developing yesterday in hospitalized patients throughout the country; dozens had already died.  Already there was talk of intentional contamination; the terror alert level had been raised, and the pundits were debating whether the most likely responsible party was Al Qaeda or some other group.

Hiser smiled.  Support for stringent anti-terrorism measures had been waning over the past few months, but this ought to restore the people’s feeling that they needed their government to protect them.  He should have no trouble getting his $15 billion Homeland Security bill through Congress now.  All the effort and expense he’d gone to in having 2000 bags of IV fluids contaminated with bacteria and randomly distributed among the nation’s hospitals had been well worth it.

Well, almost all of the distribution had been random; he’d made sure that one bag of infected fluid had been very specifically targeted.  His smile widened as he wondered how Irina Derevko was faring.

***

“Irina?”  Irina jerked awake at the sound of her name to see Dr. Tooms standing over her.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.  “How are you feeling?”

Still a bit disoriented, she looked around quickly before answering.  Jack was still here, she noted with relief, though he was apparently just waking up as well, still tangled in the blanket her nurse had brought him last night.  According to the clock on the wall, it was a little after 7 am.  “The same as last night,” she finally said to the doctor.  “I keep sleeping, but I stay just as tired.”

He nodded.  “That’ll last as long as your temperature’s up.  Still cold?”  She nodded.  “All right.  Let me listen to your lungs.”  She let him listen in front, then sat up so he could listen to her back.  She felt weak; though sitting wasn’t difficult, she doubted she’d be able to stand at this point.  She hated the thought of losing the progress she’d made over the past few days, and she was afraid she’d end up losing even more the longer she stayed sick.

Tooms finished with the stethoscope, and she lay back down and drew the blankets around herself.  “I have some news for you,” he said.  “Your blood cultures came back positive, so we know which kind of bacteria is making you sick – Staph aureus is the name, the one I was suspecting.  You’ve been on two antibiotics; one of them, vancomycin, is usually very good for this type of bacteria, but the other, imipenem, we were using in case it was a different type.  So we’re going to stop the imipenem.  That’s probably the one that’s been making you sick to your stomach, so hopefully that’ll get better.”  Irina nodded.  “I saw you got some anti-nausea medicine last night; did that help?”

She shrugged.  “I suppose, but I still didn’t feel like eating.  I had some water.”

“I’m just concerned because you’re not getting any nutrition right now,” the doctor said.  “You’re burning a lot of calories with the fever.  I know you’ve been trying to build up your strength; we don’t want you to start breaking down your muscles for protein.”

Irina frowned.  When he put it that way, she had no choice but to agree that something needed to be done.  “So you’re saying you want me to eat.”

“Eating’s normally the best.  But the same chemicals that are causing your fever are killing your appetite.  What I’d like to do, actually, is to put down a feeding tube.  I think it would be a little easier for you to not have to worry about eating.”

She shook her head immediately.  “No.  I’ll eat.”

Tooms raised his eyebrows.  “Are you sure?  I really think a feeding tube is the better option…”

She fixed him with a firm gaze.  “I don’t want a feeding tube.  I’ll eat as much as you want me to, but no feeding tube.”

Jack came up behind the doctor.  “Irina?”  She saw him glance at the screen showing her vital signs.

“I’m not delirious, Jack,” she snapped.  He turned back to her, and she softened when she saw the worry in his eyes.  So she explained, “Kashmir.”  Jack looked surprised, but nodded.

“What?” Tooms said, looking annoyed.  He sighed when she just glared at him.  “All right, what exactly are your objections to a feeding tube?  I’m sure we can work it out.”

Irina shook her head, anger and frustration and old fear that she thought she’d dealt with long ago all warring within her.  “I’ve had feeding tubes before,” she said, wishing she didn’t have to remember.  “Once they missed and put it in my lung.  I got pneumonia and almost died.”

The doctor’s eyes widened.  “They put food in your lung?”  She nodded.  “Well, here we take an x-ray before we put anything through the tube to make sure it’s in the right place.  I can assure you that won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t, because I’m not getting a feeding tube.”  Tooms opened his mouth, and she shook her head.  “Don’t keep trying.  You won’t change my mind.  I’ll try to eat, but I won’t agree to a feeding tube.”

Tooms gave a sigh of resignation.  “I see.  I’ll order you a liquid diet, since that should be easier to digest.  Try to eat as much as you can.”  She nodded.  As she watched the doctor leave, though, she suspected the battle wasn’t over.

Jack came over to the bed as soon as the doctor was gone.  “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Irina answered, her face a perfect blank.  But Jack had no trouble reading the pain in her eyes.  She’d never before spoken about anything that had been done to her in Kashmir, and he suspected she would have preferred to keep it buried.  Whatever they’d done with feeding tubes had been horrible, more than just giving her pneumonia, and he had no doubt it was only the tip of the iceberg.

He found her hand under the blanket and took it, stroking the back with his thumb.  “You know,” he said tentatively, “if you ever want to talk, I’ll listen.”

There was a flash of surprise in her eyes, followed by a sheen of tears as she smiled.  “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered.  “I doubt I’ll ever take you up on it, but that means a lot.”  He smiled and squeezed her hand.  “And consider the offer made to you as well.  Even if you want to talk about your traitorous bitch of a wife.”

She’d spoken seriously, but Jack couldn’t help a small chuckle.  “Don’t know what to do about her,” he said, leaning down and giving Irina a kiss on the cheek.  “She keeps getting herself into trouble.”

The door opened, and they both looked up to see Nadia, loaded down with bags of food and a cardboard drink holder.  “Um, am I interrupting something?” she asked, her face flushing slightly.

“Not at all,” Jack said.  “Come in.  You don’t need to wear a mask and gown any more; Dr. Tooms said that wasn’t necessary.”

“Oh, good,” Nadia said with a smile, coming further into the room.  “I brought breakfast.  Enough for Sydney, too, since she keeps complaining about the food here.”

“I’m sure she’ll be pleased.  I’ll go see if she’s awake,” said Jack, and left the room.

Nadia put the food down on a table and turned to her mother.  “Feeling any better?”

Irina shrugged with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.  “My fever’s stayed down, so that’s good.  And Dr. Tooms was just here and said my blood culture’s positive, so at least they know now what kind of bug it is.”

Jack came back in with Sydney, who was clad in a robe and slippers.  “You brought me real food?” she said to Nadia with a grin, and Nadia nodded.  “You’re my favorite sister ever.”

“I should hope so,” Nadia said, smiling as she began opening food containers.  “I didn’t know what you two would want, so I got a bunch of stuff.  Mom, there’s enough for you, too, if you want something.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Irina said with a faint smile, catching a glimpse of what was inside the first container, “but after not eating for a day I’m not sure my first meal should be sausage and eggs.”  Then she caught the smell, and instead of making her feel sick as she would have predicted, it caused the first stirrings of hunger she’d felt since she’d gotten sick.

The others divided the food up and settled down to eat it.  Jack must have noticed Irina watching, because he hadn’t taken more than a couple of bites before he said, “Sure you don’t want some?”

“Maybe I’ll try a little orange juice,” she said.  That went down fine, so she consented to a small bite of scrambled eggs.

Jack looked inordinately pleased to see her eat, even if it was only a bite.  She doubted he’d have gotten the same pleasure from seeing a feeding tube drip nutrients into her stomach.  “Want some more?” he asked, holding up another bite on his fork.

She shook her head; that hint of appetite she’d had had been sated.  “I should probably wait for my official breakfast if I want to convince Dr. Tooms I don’t need a feeding tube,” she said.  “I don’t think he’s given up yet.”

“I agree,” Jack said with a frown.  He looked like he wanted to say more, but he glanced at Sydney and Nadia, who weren’t bothering to disguise their interest in the conversation, and said nothing.

The door opened; a nurse, one Irina hadn’t seen before, stopped on the threshold.  “What’s going on here?  And aren’t you my patient, too?” she said, gesturing to Sydney.

“We’re having breakfast,” Sydney replied.  “And yes, I’m your patient, but I’m getting discharged today.”

The nurse sighed loudly as she brought the tray she was carrying further into the room.  She gestured with her chin to the table that went over Irina’s bed.  “You’ll need to clear that off for her breakfast tray.”  As Nadia and Jack got up to clear away the debris from their breakfast, the nurse turned to Irina.  “Have you been eating any of this?” she asked.  Irina just looked at her.  She sighed again, and said somewhat less abrasively, “I’m not going to be angry.  I just need to know because the doctor wants me to write down how much you’re eating.”

“I had a sip of orange juice and a bite of eggs.”

“All right.  Try to stick to your breakfast, now,” the nurse said, putting the tray down on the newly cleared table.  “I’ll come get that in a while; let me know if you need anything in the meantime.”  She turned to Sydney.  “As for you, I suppose I’ll find you here if you’re not in your room when your discharge paperwork’s ready?”  Sydney nodded.  The nurse shrugged.  “All right, then.”  She left the room.

Jack pushed the table over the bed, and Irina examined it.  Juice, ice cream, and something white and soupy.  She tried it and found it to be sweet and warm; the warmth felt wonderful, so she ate that one.

“Are we going in to work today, Dad?” Nadia asked as the rest of them worked on their breakfasts.

“I think your boss will give you the day off,” Jack said with a smile.

“But maybe we should go in, with what’s going on,” Nadia said, and got confused looks from the other three.  “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know.  It’s all over the news: Mom isn’t the only one who’s sick; there are a lot of people with sepsis, in hospitals all over the country.  They’re saying it might be terrorism.”

“Oh.”  Jack frowned.  “Well, I don’t know that there’s much APO could do; still, I suppose I’d better go in.  But why don’t you stay here?  I’ll let you know if you’re needed, and you can keep me updated if there’s any news here.”  Nadia nodded.

Irina sighed.  “I really don’t need someone to stay with me.  I’m fine.”

“But we’ll feel better if one of us is with you,” Nadia said.

Jack reached over and put a hand on her shoulder.  “Irina, we don’t have a way to find out how you’re doing if we’re not here.  We wouldn’t even have known you were sick yesterday if they hadn’t thought for a little while you might have a recurrence of the Rambaldi virus and brought us in to get our antibody levels checked.  This is just until your fever’s down, all right?”  She sighed, but nodded.

Jack glanced over at the clock and saw that it was after 7:30.  “I should get going.”  He kissed Irina’s cheek, then said, “I’ll call and check in at lunch, all right?”  Irina and her daughters nodded and watched him go.

There was silence for a moment, during which Irina felt a familiar fatigue come over her.  “I know I’m terrible company, but I’m going to need a nap now,” she said.

“All right,” Sydney said.

“Sleep well,” said Nadia.

Irina let her gaze linger on her daughters’ faces for a moment, then closed her eyes.

*****

Chapter 150

“Mom?”  Irina woke to find Nadia shaking her shoulder, looking worried.  “Dr. Tooms is here.”  Irina looked around and saw him by the door.  Sydney was sitting by the bed, also looking concerned.  Irina glanced at the clock and saw that she’d slept about an hour.

The doctor stepped further into the room.  “Ladies, I’d like to talk to your mother alone for a few minutes.”  He glanced at each of them in turn, then added, “No need to worry, I’m not here to deliver bad news.”

Sydney and Nadia looked at each other, then at Irina.  She nodded.  “It’s all right.”

“We’ll be right outside if you need anything,” Sydney said as they left the room.

“I saw you ate most of your breakfast,” Tooms said.  Irina nodded, noticing that the tray was gone – the nurse must have taken it while she slept.  “Did you actually want that much, or were you making yourself eat it?”

She could tell he already knew the answer, so she told the truth.  “Making myself, for most of it.”

“I thought so.  Think you can do that five more times today?”  She nodded, though she wasn’t looking forward to the idea – she’d much rather sleep.  “Could you do it ten more times?”

“Ten?”  She stared at him.

“What you just ate was about 200 calories.  A normal liquid diet provides about 1300 calories a day, if you eat all of it.  Now you put forth a good effort, but you didn’t quite manage to eat all of it.  With your temperature running as high as it is, you’re burning about 2200 calories a day.”

“So I’m still losing weight.”

Tooms nodded.  “And you’re still not getting much protein.  With a feeding tube, we could give you plenty of calories and protein without any effort on your part.”  Irina glared at him; she’d known it would come back around to that.  He shrugged.  “I’m not trying to manipulate you; you know my goal is to get you to agree to a feeding tube.  Since you’re here as a prisoner, I could actually tie you down and force one into you, but I’m not going to do that.”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “Why not?”

“I could pontificate about ethics, but really, I’m pretty sure that if I forced a feeding tube on you I’d lose your cooperation otherwise.”

“You’d be right.”

Tooms nodded.  “So I’ll have to stick with trying to convince you.”  She raised her eyebrows.  “What do you need me to do for you to agree to a feeding tube?”

Irina closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  She knew that he was right: it would be easier if she didn’t have to eat, and she couldn’t afford to lose muscle mass.  All she had to do was get through those few awful moments of gagging and choking as the tube went in.  “You would only need to put it in once, right?”

“Of course.”  He tipped his head to the side and looked at her for a moment.  “How many times have you had a feeding tube placed before?  If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Hundreds,” she said softly.  Twice a day for months, her head held immobile by leather straps, all because she’d been too exhausted and sick from torture to eat her first two meals in the Kashmiri prison…she shook her head.  This would be different.  “I suppose I can stand one more.”

The doctor looked surprised.  “So you’re agreeing to a feeding tube, then?”  She hesitated briefly, then nodded.  “All right.  Should I let your daughters know they can come back in before I start?”

Irina frowned.  “They don’t need to see this.”

Tooms shrugged.  “Not much to see, really.  And it might help you to have a hand to hold.”  She said nothing, and he added, “Plus they’ve been looking in through the window; I think if they see me putting a tube down your nose without explanation they might get the wrong impression.”

Irina pushed herself up on her elbows and looked over at the window, and after a moment did see Nadia’s eyes peeking in.  “Come in,” she mouthed.

Nadia came in immediately, followed closely by Sydney.  “Is everything all right?” Nadia asked.

Both Irina and the doctor nodded.  “I’m just concerned about your mother getting enough nutrition since she doesn’t have much of an appetite,” Tooms said, “so we’ve agreed that it’s best to put a feeding tube in.”

“But you ate breakfast,” Sydney said with a frown.

“I did, but apparently it’s not enough,” Irina replied.

The doctor gave a reassuring smile.  “Don’t worry, this is only temporary, a couple of days.  And your mother can still eat if she wants to, she just won’t have to.”  Sydney nodded but still looked troubled as the doctor turned to Irina.  “Ready?”  She steeled herself and nodded.  “All right, I’ll just sit you up first.”  He pressed a button on the bed, and the head began to rise.

“Mom, are you all right?” Nadia asked.  “You look nervous.”

“I’m fine,” Irina said, trying to smile, even though waves of nervousness and fear were trying to knock down the walls she’d built around her memories of Kashmir.  Nadia frowned, came to the side of the bed, and held out her hand; Irina clutched it as if it were a life preserver.  Wordlessly, Sydney came around to the other side and took her other hand.  Irina closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and reminded herself that she was not in Kashmir, that this was completely different.

“Whenever you’re ready, Irina,” came Dr. Tooms’ voice.  She opened her eyes to see him holding in his gloved hand a yellow tube, thinner than the ones she remembered.  She nodded; she was as ready as she was going to get.  He put the tip of the tube in her nostril and began to slide it down her throat.  She gagged, and for just a moment she was back in a place she’d never wanted to visit again.  The movement stopped.  “Irina?  All right?”  She nodded.  The doctor reached over to the table by the bed and took a cup with a straw in it, which he held out to Sydney.  “Could you hold that for her, please?”  Sydney nodded and took the cup with her free hand.  “Irina, I want you to take small sips of water while I put the tube in further, all right?”  She fastened her lips around the straw and took a small drink.

“Okay, that’s it,” the doctor said a few swallows later, and Irina breathed a sigh of relief.  He taped the tube to her nose, then listened to her stomach with his stethoscope.  “Sounds like it’s in the right place, but we’ll need to get an x-ray to be sure before we put any food in there.”  He looked at her carefully.  “You doing okay?”

“Fine,” she replied.  He nodded, hesitated just a moment longer, and then left.

“Mom?” Sydney said, squeezing her hand.  “You looked really upset there for a minute.”

Irina managed a real smile, now that the ordeal was over.  “The tube just made my eyes water.  I’m fine now.”  Sydney and Nadia looked at her dubiously, and she could tell they didn’t believe her, but she wasn’t about to explain.  She yawned instead, only slightly hampered by the tube in her nose.  “I think I’ll take a nap before the x-ray.”  She put the bed back down to flat, then wrapped herself up in the blankets again and went to sleep.

*****

Chapter 151

Jack put down the phone with a sigh after talking to Director Chase.  The complications never seemed to end, and he’d learned to expect them, but this one he hadn’t foreseen.  He debated handling this himself, but decided Irina ought to have a say in the decision; he picked up the phone and dialed Nadia’s cell.

“Hi, Dad,” came her voice.  “Everything ok?”  No doubt she was concerned, as it was only about 10:30, earlier than he’d said he’d call.

“Fine,” he replied.  “Things going all right there?”

“Yeah.  Sydney’s in her room getting discharged right now; she was going to call and see if you could maybe send Vaughn to pick her up, if things aren’t too busy there.  Not that she doesn’t want to stay with Mom…”

“But she wants to go home, of course,” Jack said, understanding completely; she hadn’t been home in almost a week.  “Tell her I’ll send him over.  How’s your mother?”

“Sleeping right now.  Her fever’s still up; she got some more Tylenol about half an hour ago.  About an hour after you left Dr. Tooms came and put in a feeding tube, so at least she’s getting some nutrition.”

Jack blinked in shock.  “A feeding tube?  Your mother cooperated with that?”

“Yeah – she didn’t seem very happy about it, but I probably wouldn’t be very happy if somebody wanted to stick a tube down my nose, either.”  Nadia’s voice seemed neutral, but Jack caught the undertones of worry.  Her next words were spoken barely above a whisper.  “Actually, Dad, she seemed kind of freaked out by the whole thing.  I mean, she didn’t fight back or anything, and she said nothing was wrong, but – I’m worried about her, and Sydney is too.”

Jack sighed; this wasn’t the best conversation to have over the phone.  “We’ll talk about this later, all right?  Now I need to talk to your mother.  Only if she wakes up easily, though; if she’s sleeping deeply, it can wait.”

“Ok.”  A moment later, he heard, faintly, “Mom?” and then, “Dad wants to talk to you.”

“Jack?  Is something wrong?” came Irina’s voice a moment later, sounding only slightly sleepy.

“Nothing wrong.  How are you feeling?”

“Still cold and tired.”

“Nadia said you got a feeding tube.”

“Dr. Tooms talked me into it.  The lesser of two evils.”  That only made Jack wonder what the greater evil was.  “But I hope you didn’t have Nadia wake me up just to see how I’m doing; if you’re going to start doing that you’ll need to go to medical school.”

Jack chuckled.  “No, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.  Could you ask Nadia to step out of the room for a moment?”

“Just a minute.”  Irina’s voice wasn’t diminished at all as she said, “Nadia, your father wants to speak to me privately.  Here, help me turn on my side and put the phone on the pillow.”  Nadia must have been holding the phone, Jack realized; with IVs in both elbows, Irina wouldn’t be able to bend either arm enough to comfortably hold the phone herself.

There were shuffling noises, and then Nadia’s voice, faintly, said, “Is that good?”

“Yes, this’ll be fine.  Thank you, sweetheart.”  Irina’s voice was distant, but she must have moved closer to the mouthpiece, for a moment later he clearly heard her say, “Jack?  Can you hear me?”

“Yes, just fine.  You’re not in some strange yoga position, are you?”

“No, I just can’t move my head unless I want to lose the phone.  These IV lines are damned inconvenient; my arms are practically useless.  Now what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Katya.”  Jack waited a beat for an immediate response, but there was none, so he continued, “She’s the one that gave Sydney and Nadia the information to find us in Sevogda.”

“Yes, Sydney told me.  Don’t tell me they’re letting her out of prison for that.”  Jack suspected Irina’s unspoken addendum was, ‘when they’re putting me back in.’

“No.  Her only condition at the time was that she wanted to be kept informed about what happened.  So Director Chase gave her a basic sketch of what happened in Sevogda and has been keeping her informed about your condition.”

“She knows about Elena, then.  I’d wondered about that.”  Irina’s voice was soft, but Jack could hear her grief – with all that had happened since, she had yet to mourn her mother.

After a moment, he continued, “Apparently Katya came to see you, a couple of days after we got back from Sevogda.  At the time – well, I don’t think anyone expected you to survive; that’s why Chase allowed a visit.”

“I wondered; I remember hearing her voice, but I didn’t think she could really have been there.”  Jack felt a sudden stab of guilt.  He’d never had the courage to ask her, but apparently she had been awake, lying there paralyzed for weeks.  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“I didn’t know.  Chase has been handling all of it and didn’t bother to inform me.”  Jack was annoyed at Chase for that, so annoyed he thought the director might have suspected something when he’d spoken to her.  He didn’t care about Katya himself, but Irina deserved to know that her sister – aunt, whatever – was taking an interest in her and being informed of her status.  “But Katya gets a report on your condition each Monday; the latest one says that you’re getting better, and now she wants to visit you again.  So now Chase has decided she doesn’t want to deal with it anymore and has delegated responsibility for deciding what to do with her to me.”

“Are you going to let her come see me?”  Irina didn’t sound too happy with the idea.

“I thought I’d leave it up to you, actually.  Chase would still have to approve a visit, but she told me she’d only approve one, so if you want to wait until you’re well…”

“Hmm.”  Jack could practically hear Irina thinking; no doubt she saw this as an opportunity to get a small bit of revenge on Katya for her imprisonment, and Jack didn’t blame her.  “I don’t suppose you could send her a message that says she can’t possibly visit now because I’m deathly ill?  And then nothing else until Monday?”

“Certainly,” Jack said.  “In fact, I didn’t even promise Chase I’d continue sending her the Monday reports at all; the original agreement was only for a report about Sevogda.”

“No, I think the reports should keep coming.  But they should say I’m sick so long as I have the slightest fever.  And then I’ll meet with her, just so she knows without a doubt who was responsible for all this.”

Jack smiled.  “All this is making me glad I don’t have any siblings.  Or people who I thought were my siblings.”

“It’s all right to refer to her as my sister.  I still think of her that way – it simplifies matters.”

“I see.  Well, I’ll let you get back to sleep, and I’ll see you this evening.”

“All right.  Thank you, Jack.”

“Bye.”  He hung up, then went to work composing a note that, while impersonal and technically accurate, would cause Katya Derevko the maximum amount of worry.

*****

Chapter 152

Dr. Tooms rode the elevator down to the classified floor, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and the weight of failure.  He’d ended the day yesterday with eleven patients with sepsis; now, he had six.  The last two patients to die had just been lost in the same hour.  He’d decided shortly before they’d crashed that the vancomycin wasn’t working; although hospital policy and his own training taught that he should wait until the lab told him what the patients’ bacteria were susceptible to, his instincts told him it was time to make the switch to a more powerful antibiotic.  He’d been in the middle of an argument with the director of pharmacy on the issue, trying to get the man to see past the rule book and issue doses of linezolid for all his patients, when he’d been called to a code blue, followed almost immediately by another.  After the two deaths, the pharmacy director had finally agreed; the five sepsis patients that remained upstairs were getting their first doses of linezolid now.  Knowing that there was usually a delay of several hours in getting non-standard drugs down to the classified floor, he was taking an IV bag of linezolid to Irina Derevko himself.

He gave the IV bag to the nurse and explained the situation, then headed for the room.  The younger daughter, whose name he couldn’t remember, was there, and she looked up with concern when he entered.  He gave her a reassuring smile.  “How’s she doing?”

“The same, I suppose.  Sleeping a lot.  Her fever still goes up every few hours; she got some more Tylenol about an hour ago.”  Tooms nodded.  It was a good sign, actually, that her fever was so persistent, since it indicated that her immune system was recognizing the infection and trying to fight it.

The nurse entered a few minutes behind him – following policy, she would have taken a moment to verify that the linezolid was ordered in the computer and approved by the pharmacy before bringing it in.  She hung it on the IV stand while the daughter watched with worry, and Tooms quickly explained, “I’m switching your mother to a different antibiotic.”

“Oh, good.  The other one wasn’t working.”  The doctor nodded.  “Do you want me to wake her up?”  He nodded again, and the young woman moved to her mother’s side.  “Mom?”  Irina stirred and opened her eyes.  “Dr. Tooms is here.  He says he’s switching to a new antibiotic.”

“Good,” Irina said, lifting her head to look at him.  She glanced at the clock then, and back at him.  “Wait, is it still Wednesday?”  He nodded.  “I thought you said you wouldn’t know until tomorrow.”

“I’ll have susceptibility data back in the morning, yes,” he said, moving closer to the bed so she wouldn’t have to crane her neck to see him.  “But it’s clear the vancomycin isn’t working, and this new antibiotic, linezolid, is extremely effective on Staph aureus that’s resistant to vancomycin.  I’m afraid there is a higher incidence of nausea and vomiting with this drug, so I wanted to warn you about that right away – don’t hesitate to ask your nurse for some nausea medicine if you need it.  Also, it can suppress your bone marrow temporarily, so we’ll need to check your blood counts to monitor for that, but that’s something that would take longer to develop.”

Irina nodded.  “But you’re pretty sure this will actually work.”

He smiled.  “Almost certain.  I can’t be absolutely, 100% sure until the susceptibilities come back in the morning, but I’ve never seen this drug not work for this type of bacteria.”

“So assuming this works, what’s the new timeline for me to stop feeling cold?”

“I would expect it tomorrow sometime.  Although you might have some temperature cycles first of sweats followed by chills.”  Irina glared at him, and he shrugged.  “I wish I could snap my fingers and make you better, I really do.  Any other questions?”  She shook her head.  “All right, I’ll see you in the morning.”

***

At about 5:30 pm, Jack traveled the familiar route to Irina’s hospital room.  Nadia had called a couple of hours ago and said that Irina had been switched to a different antibiotic; Jack had felt immensely relieved, and he could tell from Nadia’s voice that she felt the same way.  He knew that Irina wouldn’t start feeling better right away, but Nadia had said that the doctor expected her fever to finally come down tomorrow.

When he entered Irina’s room, Jack immediately recognized that something was wrong.  Sydney was there, now dressed in regular clothes, as well as Nadia; they sat on opposite sides of the bed, each holding one of Irina’s hands.  The back of the bed was up at an angle, so that she sat supported; her eyes were closed, but from the expression of discomfort on her face she clearly wasn’t asleep.  Jack didn’t fail to note the thin tube running into her nose, but since all that was on the IV stand was two bags of clear fluid, they evidently weren’t feeding her through it at the moment.  A sour smell permeated the room.

The girls noticed his presence as he observed all this, and Sydney said, “Mom, Dad’s here.”

Irina opened her eyes and gave him a faint smile, followed immediately by a look of pure nausea.  “Damn it.  Nadia…”  Nadia grabbed a plastic basin and held it under her mother’s chin, and Irina leaned forward and vomited.  Jack hurried to her side and put an arm around her shoulders.  When she was finished, Sydney wiped her mouth with a wet washcloth.  Nadia then took the basin and the washcloth to the bathroom sink, though Jack didn’t fail to notice that another clean kidney-shaped basin sat at the ready on the table.  Irina looked up at Jack through watery eyes.  “Apparently my stomach doesn’t like the new antibiotic much,” she said softly.

“Can’t they give you some medicine?” Jack said, sitting down and taking the hand of Irina’s that Nadia had left vacant.

Nadia came back in, carrying the now clean basin and washcloth.  “They did, about an hour ago.  Doesn’t seem to have done much.”  She pulled up a chair next to Sydney.

“The nurse called Dr. Tooms right after I got here, about ten minutes ago, to see if there’s anything else he can do,” Sydney said.  Jack nodded; he’d been going to ask why he hadn’t been called, but if Sydney had only gotten here ten minutes ago, he wouldn’t have made it much earlier anyway.  “In the meantime, she’s just not letting Mom have anything to drink.”

Irina sighed.  “I told her if I’m going to throw up, it would hurt less if I’ve got something in my stomach, but she said no.  At least I’m not throwing up that tube feeding liquid anymore.  Tastes awful.”

“Did they stop the antibiotic?” Jack asked, noting that her temperature was 101.9.

Nadia shook her head.  “She’d just finished getting it when she started getting sick.”

They sat in silence for a moment; then Irina made a sound that might have been a whimper, and Jack saw that she was about to be sick again.  He held the basin for her this time; he suspected that she was hating having them all see her like this, but he knew not one of them was about to leave.  He took the basin to the sink to wash it out afterward; when he came out, he was surprised to find the nurse from that morning glaring at him and the girls.  “You need to call me when she’s sick; don’t just rinse out the basins.  I need to know how much she’s vomiting.”

“Then you’ll need to just stay in here, because she’s thrown up three times since the last time you were here,” Sydney said, fire flashing in her eyes.

The nurse frowned and went over to Irina.  “How are you feeling, dear?”

“I’m throwing up every five minutes.  How do you think I’m feeling?” Irina snapped.

The nurse’s annoyance softened.  “All right.  Dr. Tooms ordered you some Phenergan, but he said you might not want it since it’ll make you sleepy.”

“He’s crazy.  Give me the damn Phenergan.”  If Jack hadn’t already known Irina was truly miserable, that would have told him beyond a shadow of a doubt.  When she’d been pregnant with Sydney, she’d never had typical morning sickness, but she had had nausea and vomiting with those awful migraines she’d gotten; all she could take for pain was Tylenol, and so when she hadn’t been able to stand it anymore she’d taken Phenergan to knock her out.  She used to joke that she’d never been able to stay awake long enough to find out whether the drug was actually any good for nausea.

“I thought you’d say that.”  The nurse went over to the IV stand and injected a syringe full of liquid into one of the lines.  “Dr. Tooms also said he’d be down to talk to you in about an hour.”

Irina shrugged.  “I won’t be awake, but he can talk to them.”  She got that look on her face again, indicating that vomiting was imminent, and once again Jack held the basin for her while she threw up.

When she was done, Jack started to take the basin to the bathroom, but the nurse took it from him.  “I’ll take care of it.”  When she came back out a moment later, Irina was just beginning to look slightly drugged.  “I hope you feel better soon, hon,” the nurse said to her.  She nodded and closed her eyes, and the nurse turned to the others.  “Call me if she throws up again.”  They nodded, and the nurse left the room.

*****

Chapter 153

Irina sat unmoving with her eyes closed, and Sydney would have thought she’d gone to sleep if she hadn’t maintained an expression of discomfort.  After about ten minutes, though, she opened her eyes and said, “It’s gone.”  Sydney and Nadia shared a relieved smile, while Sydney caught her father smiling at her mother.  “I need some water, though, I don’t care what that nurse says,” her mother continued, her words coming out slower than usual.  “My mouth feels like something died inside.”

“I’ll get it,” Nadia said, rising and picking up a plastic cup from the bedside table.

“The nausea’s gone completely?” Jack asked.

“I think so,” Irina replied.  “My stomach feels like it’s been wrung out and turned inside out, so it’s hard to tell.”

Nadia returned with the full cup and put the straw in her mother’s mouth, and Irina took a few sips.  “Much better,” she said, blinking heavily.  “I think I’m going to surrender to drug coma now.”  She looked around.  “You don’t all have to stay.  I’m fine now, just sleepy.”

Jack smiled and tucked the blanket around Irina’s shoulders.  “We have to stay and talk to Dr. Tooms, remember?  You volunteered us.”

Irina shrugged, clearly already slipping into unconsciousness.  “Whatever.”

They passed the next forty-five minutes in small talk; that is to say, Sydney and Nadia talked, while Jack said perhaps half a dozen words.  He’d been visiting their mother a lot before she got sick, and Sydney found herself wondering if Irina had some secret for getting him to talk; maybe she’d ask sometime.

After the promised hour had elapsed, Dr. Tooms entered.  He looked exhausted, Sydney noted; she’d watched the news for a while this afternoon and seen that this sepsis epidemic already had a mortality rate of about 50%, and she wondered how many patients Dr. Tooms had lost.  She felt a bit of guilt for her fierce gladness that her mother was all right, but only a bit.  “How is she?” the doctor asked.

“The Phenergan seems to have done the trick,” Jack replied.  “Although she’s had it before, and it knocks her out as effectively as it kills the nausea.”  Sydney wondered when her mother had needed an anti-nause medicine before, but put it aside.

The doctor nodded.  “That’s typical with Phenergan.  The Zofran didn’t work at all?”

Nadia shook her head.  “It didn’t do a thing.  She just kept throwing up every five minutes.”

“That’s unusual, but sometimes it happens that a particular medicine just doesn’t work for someone.  I’ve ordered her a different anti-nausea medicine, Compazine, to try when the Phenergan wears off; it shouldn’t make her sleepy.  ”

Sydney frowned.  “Why didn’t you just give her that earlier, instead of knocking her out?”

Tooms sighed.  “Unfortunately, that’s one of the disadvantages of being on this floor.  It takes the pharmacy a few hours to get medications down here, so I was limited to what they had in stock; for anti-nausea meds, that was the Zofran she’d already tried, and Phenergan.  But her nurse will have the other medication ready by the time the Phenergan wears off.”

“I’m assuming it was the new antibiotic that caused this?” Jack said, and the doctor nodded.  “Are you going to switch her?”

He shook his head.  “Not unless this other medication for nausea doesn’t work.  If I had a wide variety of antibiotic choices, I would go ahead and switch, but at this point there’s really only one other choice of antibiotic, and it’s got an even higher incidence of nausea and vomiting, as well as some more serious possible side effects than the linezolid.  The Compazine should fix the nausea.  If for some reason it doesn’t, though, there are other options we can try for the nausea; I’m not going to keep her knocked out on Phenergan for the next two weeks.  We can discuss it again in the morning; we’ll know then whether the other medicine work for her nausea, and we’ll also have the official results on what this bacteria’s susceptible to.”

They nodded.  “Do you want me to wake her up?” Jack asked.

“No need.  I think she’s had enough of me waking her up today,” Tooms said.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”  He left the room.

They were silent for a moment, and then Jack said, “Well, you girls should probably get home.”

Nadia shook her head.  “I’m staying tonight.”

“Me, too,” Sydney said.

She was surprised when both her father and sister immediately looked at her and said, “No, you’re not.”

“You’re recovering from a serious injury.  You need to sleep in your own bed, not in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room,” her father said.

Sydney sighed.  “Ok.”

Her father said to Nadia, “The nurse brought a pillow and blanket for me last night.  I’m sure she’ll get one for each of us tonight.”

Sydney was really shocked then when Nadia turned to their father and said firmly, “Dad, you’re going home, too.  You just said the chairs are uncomfortable; there’s no need for both of us to stay.”  Jack blinked at his younger daughter; clearly, he hadn’t expected that either.

“There’s no need for any of you to stay.”  This time it was Irina speaking firmly, though the effect was somewhat marred by the slight slurring of her words due to her sedation.  All three turned and blinked at her.  “I love you all dearly, but you’re hovering, and I’m tired of being coddled.  Go home.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Nadia said softly, “Mom, if you need to throw up again, can you hold the basin?”

Her arms moved for a moment, and then she muttered, “Goddamnit.”  She sighed heavily.  “All right, Nadia, you’ve nominated yourself to stay.  But be warned, I’m cranky.  And tomorrow I talk to the doctor about getting the IV line in my right arm out, or moved somewhere else, because this is ridiculous.  If the damn things weren’t both right in my elbows…”  Her rant was interrupted by a yawn.

To Sydney’s surprise, Jack chuckled.  Irina glared at him.  “You know, I’d forgotten what a bitch you are when you’re on Phenergan.  Sure you want to stay, Nadia?  She’s going to be like this for the next five hours.”

Nadia was suddenly looking very nervous.  “I thought she was going to sleep.”

“Be glad to, if you’ll all shut up,” Irina said.

Jack motioned to the door, and Sydney and Nadia followed him into the hall.  “I’ll stay,” he said softly as the door shut behind them.  “Nadia, you’ve been here all day, and quite frankly, she really wouldn’t want you to see her like this.”  Looking resigned, Nadia nodded.

“When’s she been on Phenergan before?” Sydney asked.

“When she was pregnant with you,” Jack replied.  “She had awful migraines, so bad they made her throw up; that’s why she took the Phenergan.  I thought it was the pain that made her so irritable, but apparently it’s a side effect of the drug.”

“Will you be all right?” Nadia asked.  “She’s not going to freak out again or anything, is she?”

Jack shook his head.  “She should mostly sleep it off; if she wakes up again, I know how to calm her down.  Now, why don’t you go back in and get your things – try to be quiet – and then head on home,” he suggested.

“I’ll stay with her tomorrow,” Sydney said, then headed off the inevitable protest with, “I’m supposed to be off work and resting, and I can do that just as well here as at home.”

After a moment, her father nodded.  “All right.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

*****

Chapter 154

Irina groaned as she came awake suddenly, bile rising up in her throat once again.  She emitted a string of Russian curse words, interrupted only when her stomach began to heave.  Jack was there, holding the now familiar little plastic basin under her chin, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up except for a small mouthful of something yellow and sour.  Finally, the spasms eased, and she collapsed back against the bed, glad for the cool of the water-filled blanket behind her head.  “Done?” Jack asked, and she nodded.  He carried the basin to the sink, and she sighed, wishing she could wipe the sweat from her forehead.

Sweat?  Her eyes widened.  For the first time in two days, she wasn’t cold; in fact, she was hot, sweating, glad of the cool blanket.  Jack returned with the basin and a washcloth and began to wipe her mouth.  “Sorry, the cloth dried out,” he said, and she nodded absently; the cool wetness felt wonderful.  “Are you all right?”

“I’m sweating,” she answered, smiling.

He smiled back.  “That’s great news.  I didn’t think we were expecting that until tomorrow.”  He glanced up above her head, then met her eyes again and said, “Your temperature’s only 100.2; that’s the lowest I’ve seen it since you got sick.”  She smiled at him a moment longer, then glanced over at the clock to see that it was about 9:30 – right about the time she’d expected the Phenergan to wear off.  “I called the nurse,” Jack said.  “I don’t know if you woke up at all when Dr. Tooms was in here, but there’s another nausea medicine you can try.”

She nodded; she’d been awake enough for that discussion to get the idea.  “I think the Phenergan’s still having some effect – I’m okay for the moment.  Before I was getting sick again right away.”  She sighed, wishing none of this were happening.

The door opened, and a nurse entered – a different one, as expected since the shift changed at 7.  “You need something?” she asked.

“I threw up,” Irina replied.  She felt nausea beginning again.  At least it was coming on more slowly this time; still, she added, “I’m feeling sick again.”

“All right.  You want to try some Compazine?”  Irina nodded.  “Ok, I’ll be right back.”  She turned and left, and Irina sighed, fell back against the blankets, and closed her eyes.

She dozed a bit, but woke when her nausea rose to a peak again.  “Jack?”  He was there instantly, holding the basin for her and brushing her hair back, but as she took a few slow, deep breaths, the nausea receded.  “It’s ok.”

“You sure?”  She nodded.  “You got the medicine a few minutes ago – don’t know if you noticed.”

“I didn’t,” Irina said, and then, to her surprise, laughed.  “Maybe she’s an assassin on the side.”

 “Somehow I doubt that.  The two careers don’t seem too compatible.”  Jack was smiling, but there was concern in his eyes.

Irina blinked, suddenly sleepy.  “What’s wrong?  You look worried.”

“Nothing.  Why don’t you get some sleep?”

She let her eyes close, but then opened them again.  “I thought this one wasn’t supposed to make me tired.”

“You’ve been exhausted since yesterday,” Jack reminded her.  “It’s probably just being sick.”

“Right.”  She closed her eyes again and let unconsciousness claim her.

***

When the nurse had brought the Compazine, Jack had asked her for a pillow and blanket.  She hadn’t seemed surprised at the request, but it was about fifteen minutes before she returned.  During that time, Jack watched Irina sleep fitfully; she moved about restlessly, moaned, muttered nonsense syllables.  Her sleep had seemed far more restful with the Phenergan; maybe it was the better choice while she remained ill.

The nurse came back in and handed Jack a pillow and blanket.  “She’s going to need a sponge bath tonight, probably in the next hour or so,” she said; Jack was surprised at first, but on reflection, he supposed it was necessary.

“I can give it to her,” he said, and the nurse gave him an odd look; perhaps she didn’t know their relationship.  So he clarified, “I’m her husband.”

The nurse still seemed dubious.  “We’ll ask her what she’d prefer when I get back in, all right?”  Jack nodded.  It was possible, he supposed, that Irina would prefer her sponge bath from the nurse rather than him; she did hate being dependent, and it might be easier to accept that care from the nurse.

The nurse left, and Jack set out the pillow and blanket and made himself as comfortable as possible.  After a few minutes, though, he realized that sleep was going to be elusive, for Irina’s restlessness only worsened.  Then he heard what sounded like crying; he sat up to look and saw that tears indeed wet her face, although she seemed to still be asleep.  He got up and went to her side.  “Irina?”  She turned away from him, still crying.  He shook her shoulder.  “Irina, wake up.  It’s just a dream.”

“No…nyet…Jack?”  She turned and blinked up at him.  “I was having the most awful dream.  You and Nadia were dead, and I was trying to kill Sydney…”

“It’s all right,” he said, squeezing her hand.  “It was just a dream.  I’m right here, and Nadia and Sydney are safe at home.”

She shuddered.  “I don’t like this drug.  I don’t want to go back to sleep.”  Her eyes darted around the room, lighting on the stack of books.  “Would you read to me?”

He nodded and smiled at her, though he was sighing inwardly; he suspected it was going to be a long night for both of them.  “The nurse said you need a sponge bath tonight,” he said as he went to get the books, bringing them over for her to choose one.  “Do you want it from me or from her?”

She tilted her head, looking honestly confused.  “Why would I want a sponge bath from a nurse when I could get it from you?  You don’t mind giving it to me?”

“Of course not,” he replied.  “Which book do you want?”  She pointed to one, and he opened it and began to read.

***

Jack looked up when the nurse came back in after about forty-five minutes.  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Better,” Irina replied, pasting a smile on her face.  “The medicine seems to have taken care of the nausea nicely.”  Jack could tell, though, that she was exhausted and had been fighting sleep for the past half hour.  

“That’s good,” the nurse said.  “Ready for a bath?”

Irina frowned.  “I was hot earlier, but now I’m cold again.  I don’t suppose we could do it later, when I’m feeling warm again?”  Then she bit her lip and glanced at Jack.  “You don’t mind waiting, do you?  I don’t want to keep you up.”

He shook his head.  “I’d much rather do it when it’s more comfortable for you.”

“You were feeling warm?” the nurse asked, and Irina nodded.  “Sweating at all?”  Irina nodded again.  “That’s good news; we were waiting to see that.”  She looked over at Irina’s vital signs, and Jack followed her gaze and was pleased to see that Irina’s temperature was only 99.8.  “How would you like to get rid of those cool blankets?”

Irina gave her a relieved smile.  “That would be wonderful.”

Jack helped the nurse remove the liquid-filled blankets.  She replaced them with a regular sheet and blanket, then said, “I’ll be watching your temperature, and I’ll come back and give you some more Tylenol when it gets up again, all right?”  Irina nodded.  “When you start feeling warm again, make sure you get that sponge bath.”  Irina nodded again, and the nurse left.

“Why didn’t you tell her you don’t like the drug?” Jack asked once she was gone.

Irina shrugged.  “It works, and at least I can stay awake.”

“You can’t stay awake all night.  You need to sleep.”

“I’ll go back to the Phenergan when this wears off.  I can take that at night and the Compazine during the day.”  She yawned.

“You’re still tired,” Jack pointed out.  “Maybe the nightmare was a fluke; why don’t you try sleeping again?”

She frowned, blinked sleepily, and nodded.  He tucked the blankets in around her; she smiled and closed her eyes.

Half an hour later, Jack was dozing when he was awakened by a sharp cry.  He looked over to see Irina sitting up, shaking slightly; he stood and went to her.  “Another nightmare?”

She nodded, then surprised him by leaning over and burying her face in his chest.  “I don’t want to be here anymore, Jack,” she said, her words muffled.  “I wish we were somewhere else, at least somewhere where we could sleep in the same bed.  You keep the nightmares away.”

“I do?” he asked, stroking her hair.

She nodded, pulling away and looking up at him.  “I had nightmares while I was getting the serum, but never while you were in the bed with me.”

He smiled and considered getting in bed with her for the briefest moments, but then discarded it.  They would both be horribly uncomfortable, and the nurse would no doubt be furious and might well kick him out of the room entirely.  “Do you want me to read to you again?”  She nodded.

*****

Chapter 155

Sydney walked into her mother’s hospital room at 7 am, carrying breakfast for herself and her father.  Her mother didn’t stir, but her father, in the bedside chair, woke instantly.  He blinked at her for a moment, then smiled.  “Good morning, Sydney.”

“Hi.”  She put the bags down and lifted out the top take-out container, a ham and cheese omelet, for her father.  “You look like you didn’t sleep very well.”

“Unfortunately, no,” he said, accepting the food.

“Was Mom sick?”

He shook his head.  “The second medicine – Compazine – worked for the nausea, but it gave her nightmares, so we were up all night.  She had some Phenergan about an hour ago, when the Compazine wore off, so hopefully she’ll sleep for a while.  You might encourage her to take another dose of Phenergan when this one wears off; she was exhausted.”

Sydney bit her lip as she glanced over at her mother and nodded.  “Has the doctor been in yet?”

“Not yet.  It seems like the antibiotic is working, though; your mother felt warm a few times last night, although she always got cold again.”

“She got rid of the cold blankets!” Sydney said, looking over again and noticing this for the first time.  Jack nodded.  Then Sydney realized she’d probably spoken too loudly when her mother’s eyes opened.  “Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, Sydney.”  She blinked a few times, and Sydney thought she might go back to sleep, but instead she said, “That smells good.”  A pause, and then, “I’m hungry.”

Sydney considered for a moment.  “You want some?”

Her father frowned.  “Maybe we should call the nurse.”

Sydney shook her head, pointing at the clock.  “Shift change.  No one would be in for a while.”

“I won’t get sick, Jack, not an hour after Phenergan.”

Jack looked a bit doubtful, but nodded.  “What do you want?”

***

Irina went to sleep again after a bit of toast and orange juice sated her hunger, but she woke when she sensed a third presence in the room.  She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to make the effort to open them.  “She could stay awake on the Compazine, but she had nightmares when she tried to sleep,” Jack was saying.  Must be Dr. Tooms, then, Irina thought.  The “awake” she’d had last night hadn’t been normal alertness, though – she’d spent it in a haze, constantly hot or cold, always trying not to fall asleep.  But she didn’t know whether that was due to the Compazine, or just because she was sick.

“I’d better take the Compazine off, then – I don’t want her afraid to go to sleep.  I’ll order her another medicine called Reglan; it usually has a fairly low incidence of side effects, but the downside is it’s not quite as effective as the others.  It probably won’t be ready by the time she needs something else, though, so she’ll need another dose of Phenergan.”

Irina decided it was time to join the conversation.  “That’s fine.  I need to sleep, anyway.”

Dr. Tooms, who was looking somewhat less haggard this morning than he had last night, gave her a small smile.  “Eavesdropping, hmm?”

“Didn’t feel like opening my eyes.”

“I see.  Well, I was reviewing your chart this morning, and there’s one more thing that may help with the nausea, but I’ll need to speak with Dr. Stevenson first.  The medication you’re on for your muscles, neostigmine, has nausea and vomiting as a side effect, and you are on a very high dose.  I know you weren’t having problems before you started the antibiotic, but sometimes these drugs can work together to cause side effects that neither would cause alone.”

Irina nodded.  She didn’t like the idea of stopping the medication that seemed to be responsible for so much of her recovery, but seemed like a better idea than either throwing up or piling on more drugs to quiet her stomach.  “It’s not like I’m using my muscles much at the moment, anyway.”

“Well, I’m not touching it until I talk to Dr. Stevenson, considering you couldn’t breathe on your own before you started it.”  She nodded; she hadn’t thought about that, and she’d rather keep throwing up than go back on a ventilator.

“I take it this means you’re planning to stick with the same antibiotic, then?” Jack asked.

“I’d like to, yes,” Tooms replied.  “The susceptibility information is back, and the bacteria you have are resistant to vancomycin, and to just about everything else.  It is susceptible to linezolid, and to one other drug we tested, but as I said last night, that one’s even more likely to make you sick.  I’m hoping that your body will adjust to the medication.  If you really want to try to switch…”

Irina shook her head.  “I actually have been feeling a little less sick every time the anti-nausea medication wears off, and I was even hungry a little while ago.”

“Really?  That’s very good news.  Are you still feeling hungry?”

“I had a bit of my husband’s toast, actually.”  Tooms raised his eyebrows; Irina just shrugged.  “I know, I’m impossible.  Anyway, I suppose you’ll want to start feeding me through this damn tube again.”

He shook his head.  “Not while we’re dealing with this nausea.  You can have some liquids to drink when you feel like it, but I want you to be in control of when food goes in.”  He smiled sheepishly.  “In fact, there’s really no reason to leave the tube in.”  Irina glared at him; he’d put her through all that difficulty putting the tube in for nothing?  “I know, I know,” he said, holding up a hand.  “Hindsight is 20/20.  We did get about 1500 calories into you through it yesterday before you got sick.”

“What happened to getting enough protein, though?” Irina asked.

“Unfortunately, if there’s no way to get it into you, there’s nothing I can do.  Once your temperature’s down for about 12 hours, if you’re still feeling sick, I can start feeding you through your IV, but I can’t do that while there are still bacteria in your blood since it will just feed the bacteria.”

Irina sighed, then remembered the other issue she’d wanted to address.  “Speaking of IVs, something has to be done about these IV lines.  I have them in both elbows, and I can’t bend my arms.  I have to have someone hold the basin for me when I throw up.  Can you take one out and put another in somewhere else?”

Tooms nodded.  “I think we could even get by with one line, now that you’re improving.  If we do feed you by IV, you’ll need another, but at that point we could put another central line in.”

“As long as it’s not in my elbow.”

He smiled.  “No, it would probably be in your shoulder again.  Any other questions, or can I actually examine you now?”

“Examine away, Doctor.”

*****

Chapter 156

Once he was done with his examination, Dr. Tooms removed the feeding tube; getting one out was almost as bad as getting it in, Irina thought, except for the relief of having it out and the feeling of freedom in her nose and throat.  “I’ll send the nurse in to take out one of those IVs,” he said.  “I’m guessing you’ll want the one in your right arm out?”  She nodded, since she still had the line in her left wrist to monitor her blood pressure.  “And I’ll talk to Dr. Stevenson, so I’m sure he’ll be in to talk to you in a little while.”  He left, and Irina fell back against the mattress, drained.

Jack came over to the bed then.  “I’m going to run home and take a shower before I go in to work.  I’ll see you this evening, all right?”

She nodded.  “Sorry I kept you up all night.”  He would probably be quite justified in taking a day off, but she knew he wouldn’t, so she didn’t bother suggesting it.

“Don’t mention it.”  He gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek, no doubt well aware of Sydney’s presence.  “Get some sleep, all right?”  She nodded, fully intending to do just that.

But he’d been out the door only seconds when the nurse came in, the same one that had been on during the day yesterday.  “I hear you’re doing a little better than you were yesterday,” she said, and Irina nodded.  “I also hear you’d like an IV line out.  Right arm?”  Irina nodded again.

She would have gladly dozed off while the nurse was taking out the IV line, but the young woman kept up a steady monologue; though Irina didn’t pay enough attention to comprehend the words, the noise combined with the ministrations to her arm kept her from losing consciousness.  She realized as the nurse finished that she was, at the moment, in a state of exhaustion so profound it would normally take her a week of sleep deprivation to reach it.  Damn this illness and the Phenergan.

Finally, the nurse put a Band-aid on her arm and seemed to be finished.  Then she looked at Irina and said something that sounded like a question; Irina blinked at her.  “What?”  She focused her mind on what was being said to her this time.

“Are you hungry?  Do you want something to eat?” the nurse said.  Irina shook her head.  “Well, I’m going to bring in some drinks for you – some nutritional shakes and some juice – for you to keep in here for when you do want something, all right?  The doctor said he doesn’t want you to push yourself, because he doesn’t want you getting sick, but he does want you to try to get some liquids down at the first hint of appetite you have.”  Irina suspected from the nurse’s tone that she was repeating herself; perhaps that was what she’d been going on about before.

“All right.  I’ll drink if I’m hungry,” Irina said to show her understanding.  The nurse smiled and nodded, then left.

“Mom, are you all right?” Sydney asked, looking worried.

“Just very, very tired, sweetheart,” Irina replied.  “I’m going to sleep now.  Don’t wake me up for anything less than the world ending.  Actually, if the world’s ending, let me sleep through it.”

Sydney grinned.  “Ok.  Sleep well.”  Finally, Irina let her eyes fall closed.

A moment later, someone shook her shoulder; she opened her eyes and scowled to see Dr. Stephenson.  “What do you want?  I just started trying to take a nap a minute ago.”

Sydney appeared beside the doctor, eyebrows raised.  “Mom, that was two hours ago.”

Irina sighed, looked over at the clock, and saw that it was indeed after 9:30.  “All right, what do you want?”

“You’re not in a very good mood, are you?”  Dr. Stevenson asked, looking far too cheerful.  “Your temperature’s only 100.4, so you’re not delirious this time.”

“I’m on Phenergan, which according to my husband makes me a bitch,” Irina replied.  “Especially when people won’t let me sleep.”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s very important that I talk to you about the neostigmine you’re on.  Dr. Tooms thinks it might be contributing to the nausea, and I agree that it’s certainly a possibility.”  She nodded.  “I know it helped your muscle function a lot when you first started taking it, but I don’t know if it’s having as great an effect now.  I’d like to start reducing the dose, just a little at first, but in order to know just how much it’s affecting your muscle function I need to test your strength now, while you’re still on the full dose.”

Irina sighed, remembering doing this a few days ago; the doctor had seemed determined to test every muscle in her body, and it had taken quite a while and left her exhausted.  But she supposed she didn’t have a choice.  “All right.  But I’d rather put up with a little weakness and not be sick or drugged.”

“I understand,” Stevenson said, “but we might be able to reduce the dose to some degree without affecting your muscle function at all.  We can’t know unless I do this exam.”

“All right,” she said grudgingly.  “Sydney, do you think you could go find something else to do for fifteen minutes or so?”  Sydney gave her an odd look, but nodded and left the room.

By the time the doctor was finished, Irina was so tired she was fighting back tears.  “Good news,” he said, and she glared at him; she couldn’t imagine any news that would make her happy other than the news that she could finally go back to sleep.  “You’ve improved since the last time I did a full strength exam; your strength is actually testing as normal, even though you’ve been sick.”

She frowned.  “It’s not normal.”

“Well, it may not be what you’re used to, but it’s at least meeting the minimum criteria for ‘normal’ strength.”

The door opened, and Sydney stuck her head in.  “Can I come back in now?”  Irina nodded.  “How did it go?”

“Apparently I’m improving.”

Sydney smiled.  “That’s great news!”

Irina shrugged.  “It can’t keep up if I keep lying in this bed.”

Dr. Stevenson appeared to consider for a moment.  “Dr. Tooms said you’re starting to recover from your infection.  I cancelled your physical therapy order for the past couple of days, but I could restart it if you like.  I could have Jennifer come in here and just do some exercises with you in the bed today and tomorrow, then have you go back to the regular therapy on Saturday.”

“I think that’s a good idea.  Can you make it after two o’clock today, though?” Irina asked.  “Hopefully that’s when I’ll be on a medicine that doesn’t make me exhausted.”

“I’ll see what I can do.  Now I think I’d better let you get some sleep.”  She nodded, and he turned toward the door.  She was asleep before he was out of the room.

*****

Chapter 157

As Nadia walked down the hospital corridor at about 3 pm, she saw a blond woman she didn’t recognize exit her mother’s room.  She hurried her steps and soon entered the room.  “Hi, Mom,” she said brightly.

Her mother smiled.  “Hello, sweetheart.  Your timing is excellent; the physical therapist just left.”  Nadia nodded; she’d suspected that was who it might be.  “But aren’t you here a little early?”

“I’m going on a trip,” Nadia replied.  Her mother nodded, no doubt knowing Nadia couldn’t give her details.  “I just wanted to stop by and say goodbye before I left.  I saw Sydney at home when I was packing, so she told me the good news about you getting tubes out and getting started on physical therapy again.”

Irina smiled.  “I have a usable arm again,” she said, demonstrating by bending her elbow up.  “Really, I think that’s made me feel better than anything else.”

“That’s good to hear.  Sydney said your temperature’s still been going up and down, though.”

Irina shrugged.  “It seems like it’s been staying down longer.  I’m sure these things take time.”

Nadia nodded.  “How’s the new nausea medicine working?”

“Pretty well,” her mother said with a smile, although Nadia had a feeling it still wasn’t perfect.  “Do you know how long you’ll be gone?”

“I’ll probably get back Saturday morning, if things work out.”  It should be a fairly simple job, a “black bag job” stealing some information from a residence in Colombia.  Nadia had a feeling her father would have preferred not to send her while her mother was ill, but she was the only member of the APO senior staff who could pass as a native Colombian without effort; it would have been obvious if he’d left her out.  “Dad promised to keep me updated on how you’re doing.”  She went over and gave her mother a hug.

Her mother returned it, and Nadia was a bit surprised at how tightly her mother gripped her; apparently what Sydney had said about her strength improving was true.  “Hopefully it’ll be good news.  You be careful, all right?”

“I will.  Bye, Mom.”

“Goodbye, Nadia.”  Nadia gave her mother’s hand one last squeeze, then left.

***

After Nadia left, Irina fell asleep, tired from her physical therapy session.  Jennifer hadn’t gotten her out of bed, but the woman still managed to exhaust her in the space of half an hour.  Irina was woken by the nurse with a meal tray; this was the fourth tray she’d gotten today, again with only a few items on it.  She’d been trying to sip liquids all day without overdoing it; fortunately, she’d only thrown up once, right before she’d gotten the newest nausea medication.

She glanced at the clock as the nurse left: 5:45.  She’d been comfortable, temperature-wise, when she’d gone to sleep and was cold now, but her chill was mild compared to what it had been in the previous two days.  Irina examined the tray and found warm broth, a popsicle, and some Jello.  They did seem to always have something hot and something cold, which was nice considering her temperature fluctuations.  She considered for a moment: she remained a bit nauseated on the Reglan, but she thought she felt a slight stirring of hunger overlaying the nausea; it might be worthwhile to try a bit of the broth.  She lifted the spoon.

She was a few bites in when the door opened; she smiled to see her husband enter.  “Hi,” he said, coming to her bedside and giving her a kiss on the cheek.  “You look like you’re feeling better.”

“I am,” she replied, kissing his cheek in return.  “I only threw up once today.  Sad when that makes it a good day, but there it is.”  Jack cracked a smile as he pulled a chair over.  “You’re not staying all night tonight,” she told him.

“I’m not?”

She shook her head.  “You’re going home and getting a good night’s sleep in your own bed so you can do whatever it takes tomorrow to keep our baby safe.”

“I see.  I think Nadia might be a little upset if she knew you don’t think she can keep herself safe.”

Irina smiled.  “I don’t think that at all.  Doesn’t mean you can’t watch out for her.  I’d help, but…”  She made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the hospital room and its contents.

Her smile turned to a frown as Jack took out what looked like a pen and uncapped it.  “You remember what we talked about a few days ago, of course,” he said, and she nodded.  “You can’t protect our daughters from a prison cell, either.  The rest of your life is a long time, Irina.  ”

“Do you really think they’ll leave me there that long?  Sooner or later they’ll want something from me, and then we’ll be back to making deals.”  Jack looked uncertain.  “I’m sure it’ll take me a while, but I suspect I can get out in a few years, especially if a certain black ops director manages to come up with situations that need my expertise.”

“Normally, that would be true, but not in this case,” Jack said.  Irina frowned at him.  “The man who invalidated your pardon is a senator who’s built his entire reputation on being ‘tough on terrorism’.  Now that he’s taken an interest in you – well, you won’t be treated like someone who’s been cooperating.  They’ll put you in solitary confinement; I probably won’t have access to you, and Sydney and Nadia won’t, either.  There’s no information they need immediately, so you’ll be interrogated, probably with barely legal and even illegal methods.  If you can hold out for months, they might consider making deals, but not until then.”

Irina stared at Jack, not bothering to hide her shock and dismay.  If such treatment had been proposed to her a few years ago, she would have said without hesitation that she could handle it – in fact, she had been prepared for the possibility of something like that when she’d turned herself in to the CIA before.  Now, though, she was so tired of all of this.  That was why she’d been willing to endure a few years of prison for the chance to live openly with her family; she wanted to rest.  But enduring months of brutal interrogation hadn’t been in the plan.  She sighed.  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I was hoping you’d agree to let me get you out,” Jack replied.

She considered for a moment.  “You’re really willing to take this risk for me?”

“My career will be at risk, but I’m not running too much of a risk of prison myself.  I should be able to tell whether I’m going to get caught and be able to get away in time, join you in hiding.”

“And then just how would we protect Sydney and Nadia?  Wouldn’t they just have to track us down?”

He smiled.  “You really think they’d try?  They’re just as upset that your pardon was invalidated.  I wouldn’t tell them what I’m planning, of course, but I know I can tell them where you are after the heat’s off.”

Irina was gratified, but oddly nervous; she was so unused to the idea of her family supporting her that she didn’t quite know how to react.  “I think…I need to think about it.”  She knew if she dug deep she could find the strength to withstand interrogation and get through prison, but it sounded like maybe there wasn’t really a point to it; maybe it really did make more sense to take Jack up on his offer.  “But in any case, I think I should stay here in the hospital as long as possible.”

Jack nodded.  “The easiest time for extraction would be when you’re being moved, anyway.”  He capped the pen.  “So I’m absolutely not allowed to stay the night, then?”

She smiled and shook her head.  “That chair has a strict two night limit.  Back to your own bed.”

“Very well then.  Sydney’s coming by in the morning?”  Irina nodded, not mentioning that she’d talked her elder daughter into only stopping by for a short visit.  She was on the mend now, and it was past time for them all to stop hovering.  “All right.  I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”  He gave her a gentle kiss, then left.

Irina returned to her soup, thoughtful, and barely even noticed that it was cold.

*****

Chapter 158

It was nearly 9 pm before Jack made it to the hospital the next night; the mission in Colombia had gone off without a hitch, but he’d stayed at APO long enough to ensure that the team’s plane was safely in the air.  When he entered the room, Irina was sitting up in bed, eyes closed; he could tell immediately that she wasn’t asleep.  “Irina?”  She opened her eyes and gave him a small smile, but she looked rather pale.  “Are you all right?”

“Just a little sick.  I tried some rice a little while ago; I guess I wasn’t quite ready for solid food,” she replied.

“Have you taken anything?”

“I’m supposed to get the Reglan every six to eight hours, and I had it last at two, so I’m trying to hold out until ten.”

“So you could have something, but you’re being stubborn.”

Irina shrugged.  “It’s not that bad.  Besides, I was planning on Phenergan next, and I was hoping you’d get here before I took it.”  

Of course – no doubt she’d been worried about why he was so late, though she evidently wasn’t going to say anything direct.  He smiled and gave her the information she needed.  “Nadia’s on her way home; everything went fine.”

She smiled, clearly relieved.  “That’s good.”

Jack sat down next to the bed.  “How about you?  Other than being sick right now, how are you doing?”

“Quite well, actually.  I haven’t thrown up since yesterday, and I haven’t had a fever since this morning.”

“That’s great news,” Jack said with a smile.

Irina nodded.  “Dr. Tooms was here a few hours ago, and he seemed pleased.  He said if my temperature stays down overnight, he’ll put in a central line in the morning.”  She gave him a wry smile.  “That’s my reward for getting better – a nice painful procedure.”

“I’m sure he’d be quite happy to knock you out if you’d let him.”

“Probably so.”  She frowned and seemed to study him for a moment.  After a moment, she said softly, “It was the KGB who made me allergic to lidocaine.”

Jack blinked at her.  “They did?”

She nodded.  “In Kashmir.  While I was recovering from the pneumonia they caused with the feeding tubes.  One of the doctors was experimenting with inducing allergies; he knew I was already allergic to one type of local anesthetic, so he figured he’d see if he could make me allergic to the other.  So that I’d have, as he put it, ‘a permanent reminder’ of my time there, every time I needed stitches or any other minor medical procedure.”

Jack grimaced as he reached out and took her hand.  “It’s a wonder you can stand to let doctors near you now.”  A little voice in the back of his mind asked why she was telling him this.  Did she want his sympathy?  She should know by now that she didn’t need it.

“It’s tough.  I don’t like it here, Jack.”  She looked away for a moment and sighed, then looked back.  “If I start acting like a stubborn fool and telling them to stop doing what they need to do, it’s because of all that, because I don’t want to remember.”  He nodded, understanding now why she’d told him.  “That’s why I try to avoid any drugs that will sedate me; I’m worried I’ll end up remembering, and reacting as if I’m back there.  The Phenergan’s all right, because I know how I react, but morphine lowers my inhibitions, and anything else is risky.”

“I see,” Jack said, a bit surprised that she was trusting him with all this.  “Do you want me to come tomorrow when he puts the line in?”

She smiled, and he suspected she’d been about to ask.  “Would you?  You don’t mind?”

“Of course not.  Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I won’t miss anything at work.  I’ll come in around seven so I’ll be sure to catch the action.  Unless you’ll let me stay tonight.”

Irina shook her head.  “I’m going to take some Phenergan, so I’ll sleep.  There’s no need for you to stay.”  She yawned.  “I’d probably sleep even without the Phenergan; I was awake most of the day today.”

“Well, I’ll leave and let you get your drugs and your sleep, then,” Jack said.  He stood and gave her a goodbye kiss.  “Sleep well.”

She nodded.  “See you in the morning.”

***

Irina woke from a deep sleep slowly; she remained motionless for a few minutes, fully intending to go back to sleep, until she heard the sound of breathing and realized that someone else was in the room, right next to the bed.  She was lying on her side, so when she opened her eyes, Jack sat directly in her line of sight, reading a book.  “Morning,” she said, sitting up and flexing her cramped limbs; she’d apparently been curled up in a rather tight ball.

“Hi there,” Jack said with a smile, putting the book down.

She glanced at the clock and saw that it was 7:40.  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Why would I do that?” Jack asked, appearing honestly confused.

“You’ve been sitting there with nothing to do for forty minutes.”

“I know how hard it is to get a good night’s sleep around here; I’m not going to interfere.  How many times did the nurse wake you up last night?”

Irina shrugged.  “I don’t really keep track.”  More than usual, last night, which was probably why she’d slept through Jack’s arrival this morning.  “But anyway, if you’d woken me, I could have told you that you don’t need to stay.  I had a fever last night, so he won’t be putting the central line in.”  She’d started shivering while getting her sponge bath; she no longer had the sticker on her chest that monitored her temperature, so the nurse had gotten her up to take it every half hour until her fever had gone high enough for her to get Tylenol after about three hours.

Jack frowned.  “Another fever?  Is it gone now?”

“The nurse said my temperature was a little high at 5:30; I’m probably due to have it checked again.”

“I see.  Well, I’d like to stay and see what Dr. Tooms has to say about why you’re still having fevers.  If it’s all right with you, of course.”

Irina nodded.  “I might go back to sleep in the meantime…or not,” she said as the door opened to admit a new nurse, carrying a tray.

“Good morning!” the nurse said cheerfully, putting the tray down on the table.  “I’m Susan, and I’ll be your nurse today.  Let me check your temperature before you have your breakfast.”  Irina opened her mouth obligingly for the paper thermometer.  Even though having the thing in her mouth was annoying, she was curious as to whether her temperature had gone back up now that the Tylenol she’d gotten a little after one had fully worn off.  After a full minute, Susan pulled the thermometer out and frowned at it.  “100.2, a little high still.  How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Irina replied, mostly honestly.  She wasn’t hot or cold; her main complaint at the moment was tiredness.  Also, perhaps, a bit of an appetite.  “I am a little hungry.”

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Susan said with a smile.  She wheeled the table over to the bed.  “Let me know if you need anything, or if you start feeling chilled.”  Irina nodded, and the nurse left.

“Anything good?” Jack asked as Irina uncovered the food.

She surveyed the tray, then shook her head with a slight smile.  “The usual fare: soft, bland, and mostly sweet.  But I know my stomach will handle it.”  She took a bite of the warm, creamy white stuff that always seemed to come with breakfast; she still hadn’t figured out what it was.  “Once I’m off this antibiotic and back to normal, I may have to see if someone’s willing to smuggle in some really spicy Indian or Thai food, just to wake up my taste buds.”

“I think that could be arranged,” Jack said seriously, his face perfectly straight.  Irina had no doubt he would treat it like a mission: he would deliver the promised chicken curry, or die trying.  She hid a grin as she took another bite of her boring breakfast, reminded once again why she loved her husband.

*****

Chapter 159

“Good morning,” Irina heard, waking her from her doze.  She opened her eyes to see that Dr. Tooms had arrived; glancing at the clock, she saw that it was not quite 9.  He smiled when he saw that she was awake.  “How are you doing this morning, Irina?”

“Fine now, but I had a fever last night,” she replied.

The doctor nodded, frowning.  “Yes, I saw that.”

“Why is she still having fevers?” Jack asked.

“I have a suspicion, actually,” Tooms said.  “Any pain or swelling anywhere that you’ve noticed?”  Irina shook her head.  “Can you sit up for me?”  She did so, and he reached out and pressed on her back, right on the spot where Sloane had shot her months ago.  She was surprised when the pressure caused pain, surprised enough that she gasped and jerked away.  “That hurts, then?”

“It shouldn’t,” she said, looking at him with a frown.  “I was shot there in May, but it should be fine now.”

Jack suddenly grasped her hand, and she looked over and was surprised to see fear in his eyes.  “It’s the bullet, isn’t it?  It’s infected.”

“I believe so, given the tenderness and the continued fevers,” Dr. Tooms replied.

“Wait, the bullet’s still in there?” Irina asked, looking at Jack.  “You didn’t take it out?”

“It’s lodged in your scapula,” Jack replied.  Understanding, Irina nodded.

Dr. Tooms was giving them a confused look.  “Agent Bristow, I didn’t realize you were a surgeon as well.”

“I’m not,” Jack replied.

The doctor seemed to be waiting for more, but Irina knew that none was forthcoming, so she spoke into the silence.  “How did you know the bullet was there?”

“It showed up on the x-ray you had when you got the feeding tube,” Tooms replied.  “I was hoping it was small enough that the antibiotics would be able to get to it and it wouldn’t be a problem, but clearly it is.  It’s going to have to come out.”

Irina frowned, hating the idea of having her body cut into.  “What would happen if you just left it there?”

The doctor raised his eyebrows.  “Well, the metal’s colonized with bacteria, and will continue to serve as a source of bacteria as long as it’s in there.  If it stayed, you would continue to have fevers indefinitely even on the antibiotics, and if you stopped taking the antibiotics you’d get just as sick as you were before.  It has to come out,” he repeated.

She sighed; he was right.  “All right.  Are you going to do it right now?”

He blinked, then smiled slightly.  “Oh, no, I’m not going to do it at all.  You’ll need a surgeon for this, and it’ll be done in the operating room under general anesthesia.”

Irina had never consented to general anesthesia, not even for her worst injuries; she hated the idea of being forced into unconsciousness.  “Can’t they do it without anesthesia?”

“You’ll have to talk to the surgeon about that, but I’m pretty sure the answer’s going to be no.”

Irina huffed slightly, and Jack gave her a look that suggested he was about to say something, but he turned to the doctor instead.  “Will this be done today?”

“Well, there’s a problem with that,” the doctor said with a frown.  “Seems the surgeon on call today for the floor only has the minimum clearance for the floor; it’s not high enough for him to know specifics about your case.  Obviously he has to know specifics to do surgery on you.  I’d really like to get it done today, but I suspect it will be nearly impossible to either get in a surgeon with a higher clearance or get ahold of someone at the CIA office who can give our surgeon access to Irina.”

“Not quite impossible,” Jack said, and Irina saw a hint of a smile in his eyes.  “I have the authority to grant a temporary increase in clearance level.  I understand knowing about Irina requires Gamma Yellow clearance?”

Tooms looked quite surprised, as well he should, since Irina knew that it usually required Alpha-level clearance to grant even temporary clearance increases; there were probably no more than a dozen people in LA with the authority.  “Gamma Green for medical information only,” the doctor replied, naming the clearance level immediately below Gamma Yellow.  “The surgeon on today is only Gamma White, though.”

Jack nodded.  “That won’t be a problem.  If you’ll get me his information, I’ll get the clearance upgrade started immediately.”

Dr. Tooms nodded.  “If you’ll just come with me…”

Jack gave Irina’s hand a quick squeeze before following the doctor out.  Alone, Irina closed her eyes, expecting to nap as usual, but she was surprised to find herself truly wide awake for the first time since she’d gotten sick.  It was nerves, she supposed; she went into situations where she might get shot and killed without a second thought, but the thought of letting someone knock her out and cut into her with a scalpel was terrifying.  She wasn’t going to sleep, she decided after a few minutes, so she picked up one of the books by her bed and began to read.

It was about half an hour before Jack returned.  “I thought you’d be asleep,” he said when he entered.  

She shrugged as she put the book down.  “Did you get everything taken care of?”

He nodded.  “It’ll take a little while longer for the office to get everything in order, and then Dr. Tooms will have to talk to the surgeon, so it will probably still be a while before he comes in to talk to you – maybe an hour.  Dr. Tooms is still hopeful that this can get done today, although it probably won’t be until this afternoon.  He also said to tell you that you can’t have anything to eat or drink until after the surgery.”

She sighed.  “He’s far too concerned about my food intake.  I wish he’d make up his mind.”

Jack chuckled.  “Standard procedure for surgery, Irina.  In fact, you’re really not supposed to eat anything for eight hours before surgery, so I hope the fact that you had breakfast won’t delay things.”

“I had, what, six bites?  Besides, what difference does it make whether I’ve eaten or not?  They’re not doing surgery on my stomach.”

“It’s for the anesthesia – they don’t want you throwing up when you’re unconscious and then having it end up in your lungs.”  Irina frowned at the mention of anesthesia.  “Irina…”  She was surprised to see that he looked oddly nervous.  “Yesterday you told me to tell you if you started acting like a ‘stubborn fool’.  Well, trying to get them to cut into your back without any anesthesia – that qualifies.  Let them knock you out.  It’s really not that big a deal.”

Irina closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  “I don’t like the idea of letting them just do things to me while I’m asleep.”

“I understand, but they’re not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t suppose they’d let you be in there?”

He shook his head.  “There are rules about that – medical personnel only.  But Irina, do you honestly think they would do anything besides what they say they’re going to do?”

She considered for a moment.  It was possible that there was some vast conspiracy against her, she supposed – but even if there were, what would they do in the operating room?  She shook her head.  “I just…”  She was just afraid, for no good reason.  “You’re right.  I’m being irrational.”

“You have good reason.”  Jack sat down and gave her hand a squeeze.  “Tell you what.  Let them give you the anesthesia, and I promise I’ll scan you for transmitters and tracking devices when it’s over.”

She had to smile at that.  “I’ll get the anesthesia, and you don’t have to scan me.”  Although if she did let Jack break her out, it might be wise to revisit that idea beforehand, she considered.

He gave her a relieved smile.  “I’ll stay with you as much as I can, although unfortunately you will have to be on your own for most of it.”

“Thank you,” she said.  She reached over, pulled him to her, and kissed him, then whispered in his ear, “Ia tebya lyublyu.”

When he whispered back, “Love you, too,” she knew she had the strength to get through this – through anything.

*****

Chapter 160

While they waited for the surgeon, Jack informed Irina that her alias for the surgery would be Susan Jones.  “That’s a terrible alias,” she protested.

“They’re not supposed to think it’s your real name,” Jack replied.  “It’s just a way to identify you temporarily.”  She sighed, but nodded.  It could be worse, she supposed: the name of some famous person or fictional character.

It was, indeed, about an hour before the surgeon arrived.  He knocked on the door and entered while looking at something in a thick binder.  “Hello, Ms. Jones, I’m…”  He looked up and stopped short.

Irina was just as surprised.  “Dr. Merriman?”

He blinked.  “Yes, that’s still my name, although you had a different one the last time we met.”  He glanced over at Jack and grinned nervously.  “I suppose I should forget that one?”

She shrugged.  “That wasn’t my real name either.”  Jack was looking confused, so she clarified for him, “Dr. Merriman was my doctor when I was stabbed a few months ago.”

Merriman nodded.  “Up until you vanished in the night, that is.  I’m pleased to see you seem to have returned safely, although it sounds like you’ve had a rough time of it.”  She shrugged with a slight smile.

But Jack was frowning.  “I seem to recall that was at a different hospital.”

“I was just finishing my residency then, and Director Chase suggested I apply here.  She seemed to think I’d be good at keeping secrets, since I refused to divulge the contents of your medical record.”  Irina was surprised at that, but rather gratified.  “In fact,” Merriman continued, “I’m going to ask this gentleman to step out while I ask you some questions.”

She shook her head.  “That won’t be necessary.  He’s my husband.”  

The doctor was clearly surprised; perhaps he’d thought Jack was some sort of guard.  “I see.”  He bit his lip as he studied Jack briefly.  “I’m surprised you’re allowed to be here – I didn’t realize they allowed civilian visitors on this floor.”

Jack’s lips quirked upward slightly.  “I’m not a civilian.”

“Oh, I’m sorry…didn’t mean to assume…”

Irina could tell from Jack’s eyes that he was highly amused.  “Have you, by chance, looked at the name on your clearance papers?”

Merriman pulled out a stapled packet of papers from one of his pockets, flipped through them, and then looked up at Jack, blinking rapidly.  “Jack…Bristow?”  Jack nodded.  He switched his gaze to Irina.  “I thought you said Laura Bristow wasn’t your real name.”

“It’s not,” Irina said calmly, although she was laughing inwardly.

The poor young man was by now completely confounded.  “I…don’t get it.”

Jack raised his eyebrows.  “Didn’t you have some questions to ask my wife?”

To his credit, Merriman managed to put his confusion aside and assume a businesslike demeanor after only a few seconds to compose himself.  “All right.  This bullet we’re removing – when exactly did you get shot?”

“May 26,” Irina replied, having no trouble remembering the date of her rescue from captivity.

The doctor nodded.  “A week before you were stabbed.”

“It was an eventful week.”

“Apparently so.  I remember seeing the stitches when we examined you then, but since they appeared to be healing well we didn’t mess with them.”  Irina was surprised to feel an odd sense of reassurance; on examining it more closely, she realized it was because she’d been under this man’s care while unconscious before and had come to no harm.  “Where were you treated for the gunshot wound?”

“Rome,” Irina replied, though she was guessing that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

She was right.  “Do you recall which hospital?  It would be nice to get their records, though I understand that might not be possible.”

Jack spoke up.  “It wasn’t in a hospital, and there are no records.  I treated her injury.”

Dr. Merriman looked as surprised as Dr. Tooms had.  “I see.  Surgeons are often territorial, but I hope you don’t mind if I take over.”

“Of course not; the reason the bullet is still in there is because I didn’t have the skill to remove it.”

“Dr. Tooms said it’s lodged in the scapula?”  Jack nodded.  “I’d wondered how he knew that.”  Merriman turned back to Irina.  “I saw the x-ray Dr. Tooms took, but it doesn’t give me a very good view, so I’d like to get a couple more this morning so I can see exactly where the bullet is.  You’ll need to go to the x-ray room down the hall, either in a wheelchair or a stretcher; are you feeling up to that?”

She nodded, a bit worried that he thought she was in such poor shape.  “I feel fine; I can go in a wheelchair.  In fact, I was wondering if I would still be able to go to physical therapy today.”

He blinked at her.  “I’ve never had someone ask to go to physical therapy on the day of surgery.”  He opened the binder he’d brought in with him and flipped through it; that must be her chart, she supposed.  It was awfully thick.  “This is physical therapy for the muscle weakness from your illness?”  She nodded.  He shrugged.  “I suppose it can’t hurt if you really want to, but you know you can’t have anything to eat or drink until after the surgery.”

“I really want to.”  She didn’t want to lose a day of strengthening her muscles if she didn’t actually have to; besides, time in physical therapy would be time she didn’t spend worrying about the upcoming surgery.

Jack didn’t seem to like the idea, though.  “Aren’t you worried about her getting dehydrated, though, or burning a lot of calories?”

Merriman shook his head.  “I’ll make sure I order plenty of fluids through the IV, so dehydration isn’t a concern.  As for the calories, she’s not going to burn enough in half an hour of physical therapy to make any difference, and the activity should stimulate her appetite for after the surgery.”  Jack nodded, appeased.  “And I’ll make sure the therapist knows you’re having surgery, so it will be a light session.”

“Of course,” Irina replied; she’d expected that.  “What about tomorrow?”

He smiled.  “We usually try to get patients moving the day after surgery, so I think tomorrow will be fine.  Don’t push yourself too hard, though, all right?”  Irina sighed and nodded.  “Good.  Now, just a few more questions.  You’re allergic to all local anesthetics, right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, I’d want to do general anesthesia for this surgery, anyway.  That is going to be all right with you, isn’t it?  Dr. Tooms said you weren’t a big fan of drugs in general.”

Irina managed a slight smile.  “I’ll live.”

Merriman nodded.  “Glad to hear it.  Are you allergic to anything else?”  She shook her head.  “All right.  You’re scheduled in the OR for 4 pm today; that’s the earliest we can do it since you had breakfast this morning.  Nothing to eat or drink between now and then.  You should get your x-rays in the next hour or so, and then someone will come to take you upstairs at about 3:30.  Any questions?”

“How long will the surgery take?”

“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid; it’ll depend on just how tightly the bullet is wedged in the bone, whether there are any important blood vessels around it, that sort of thing.  Could be twenty minutes or two hours.”  She frowned, but nodded.  “Anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right.  I will talk to you again right before the surgery, so if you think of anything, you can ask me then.”  She nodded, and he left the room.

*****

Chapter 161

“Hi there,” Jennifer said, giving Irina an odd look as she was wheeled into the physical therapy room at noon.  “I hear you’re having surgery today.”  Irina nodded.  “So why are you here?”

“I wanted to be,” Irina replied.

The therapist shook her head.  “You’re crazy.”  Irina shrugged, and Jennifer smiled.  “Really, I wouldn’t mind having more patients like you.”  She pushed Irina’s wheelchair toward the parallel bars in the back of the room.  “Feel like walking today?”  Irina nodded; that was exactly what she felt like doing.

She was pleased when she managed two lengths of the bars during the session; she’d known there wasn’t really any way for her to have improved over the past five days, but at least she didn’t seem to have lost anything.  “Great job,” Jennifer said as Irina seated herself in the wheelchair, exhausted.  “Are you planning on coming back tomorrow?”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “Of course.”

“Of course,” the therapist repeated with a smile.  “Well, I hope your surgery goes well, and I’ll plan on seeing you tomorrow, then.”  She pushed the wheelchair out to the hall, where Irina’s nurse met them and took her back to her room.

Irina wasn’t surprised to find Jack not there; he’d gone to get lunch when she’d left for therapy and had told her it might be a while, since the hospital’s cafeteria was closed on weekends.  She was hungry herself, but of course she wasn’t allowed to eat.  She was also exhausted, though, and she could sleep, so she settled herself in bed for a nap.

She’d only just dozed off when she was awakened again; she looked up to see Dr. Stevenson.  “Hello, Irina,” he said.  “Sorry to wake you; I know you’ve got a busy day today.”

She shrugged.  “Do you want to test my muscles?”  He’d done so the day before and found the strength to be normal again, so he’d further decreased the dose of neostigmine then; she’d noticed no change in her strength but an improvement in the nausea, so she didn’t mind him testing her muscles again if it would mean a further dose reduction.

“I know you just came from therapy, so my timing’s terrible.  Jennifer said you worked mostly on your legs, so let me just test your arms, all right?”  She nodded, and pushed against his hands with her arms once again.  It seemed like it was a bit easier than the day before, which was a good sign, she supposed.  “Good,” he said when they were finished.  “Your strength is still testing as normal.  Have you noticed any decrease?”  She shook her head.  “How about the nausea?”

“It’s better since yesterday, but I’m still taking the medicine for it.”

Stevenson nodded.  “I’m going to go ahead and decrease the neostigmine dose further.  I also talked to your surgeon for this surgery you’re having this afternoon.  A lot of times they’ll paralyze people for surgery – “

Irina felt the blood drain from her face.  “They do what?”

The doctor held up his hands.  “Let me explain.”  Irina had to force herself to hold her tongue long enough to listen to the explanation.  “They use drugs for paralysis, only when the person is asleep.  It’s all very carefully controlled.  The reason they do it is so that there’s no tension in the patient’s muscles to interfere with the surgery.  But I talked to the surgeon, and we agreed that it would probably be better not to paralyze you.”  Irina allowed herself to breathe again.  “There is a possibility that he might need to paralyze you – sometimes when people are just unconscious without paralysis they move around a lot.  If he does need to do that, it’ll probably be fine, but there is a possibility that it might take you longer to recover from the paralysis.  I can’t say for sure, since your condition is unique.”

Irina’s mouth had gone quite dry.  After walking just a few minutes ago, planning to recover, she was not prepared to be paralyzed again.  “How long would I be paralyzed?”

The doctor smiled reassuringly.  “Certainly no more than a few hours.  If they do paralyze you, they’ll put a tube in for your breathing – that tube normally doesn’t come out until you start breathing again.  If you don’t start breathing again, they’ll know you’re still paralyzed, they’ll leave the tube in, and they’ll make sure to keep you sedated until you start breathing on your own.”  Irina sighed, but nodded; much as she hated the idea of sedation, she’d rather be knocked out than paralyzed and awake.  She’d had enough of that already.  “But I think there’s only a small chance of that happening if they do paralyze you, and they probably won’t need to do it at all.  I just wanted to warn you that it was a possibility.”

“All right,” Irina said, still not happy about this whole thing.  She was beginning to think that the earlier idea of letting them dig out the bullet with no anesthesia whatsoever was the better one.

Stevenson smiled.  “I’ll let you get some rest now, and I’m going to go find your anesthesiologist and make sure they’re fully aware of this, all right?”  She nodded, and he left.

She lay back in bed and made herself comfortable.  She was still very tired, but sleep was longer in coming this time.

*****

Chapter 162

Jack was pleased to find Irina asleep when he returned from lunch; she’d spent the morning pretending not to be nervous about the upcoming surgery, and so sleep could only be a good thing, as it would make the time pass faster for her.  So he slipped into the room as quietly as possible, sat down, and began to read a book.

He had called Sydney and Nadia while at lunch to let them know what was going on; as expected, they arrived at 3 pm, half an hour before Irina would be taken upstairs.  Jack stood quickly when they entered, holding a finger to his lips.  They both looked at Irina and nodded when they saw that she was asleep.  “How’s she doing?” Nadia whispered.

“She’s been sleeping since I talked to you,” Jack replied softly.  He gestured at Sydney to sit in the chair he’d just vacated.

She gave him a look of annoyance, but he wasn’t buying it, not a week after major surgery.  He looked at her sternly, and she sighed and sat down.  “That’s kind of a long time, isn’t it?”

He shook his head.  “She was awake all morning, probably the longest she’s been awake since she got sick.  She went down the hall for x-rays, and she insisted on going to physical therapy; I’d be surprised if she wasn’t sleeping.”  She’d gotten herself from the bed to the wheelchair for the x-rays, which had surprised Jack – as far as he knew, it was the first time she’d been out of bed since she’d gotten sick.  And yet she’d looked quite comfortable with the maneuver, even standing for a second; apparently the muscle weakness was indeed resolving.  Still, it had to be tiring to start doing so much after being in bed for four days.

Jack and Nadia headed toward the room’s other chairs, but stopped when they heard a groan.  Jack turned to see Irina awake, appearing quite distressed and apparently looking for something; he was at her side in an instant.  “Irina?”

“Sick,” she got out, then spotted an emesis basin on the bedside table and grabbed it.  Jack pressed the nurse call button as Irina closed her eyes and took several deep, slow breaths.  Nadia and Sydney came up beside him, looking worried.  He was concerned as well; there shouldn’t be anything in her stomach to make her sick.

After a moment, she opened her eyes.  “I don’t think I’m going to throw up,” she whispered, but Jack wasn’t so sure about that; she was still white as a sheet and had sweat beaded on her forehead.  “Hello, girls.”

“Hi, Mom,” Sydney and Nadia said at almost the same moment.

The nurse entered, took one look at Irina, and said, “You want your Reglan, don’t you?”  Irina nodded.  “I’ll be right back.”

“I usually ask for the medicine at the first hint of nausea, but I guess I slept through that,” Irina whispered.  “Would have been an hour ago.”

“You still have to ask?” Sydney asked incredulously.  “Why don’t they just give it to you when it’s due?”

Irina shrugged.  “I guess they want to know for sure that I’m still sick.”  She closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath.  “Maybe I need to address that with Dr. Tooms, though,” she said, eyes still closed.  “I haven’t thrown up since Thursday, and I’d like to keep it that way.”  She took another deep breath.

They waited in silence for another couple of minutes before the nurse came back.  “Ok, here’s your Reglan,” she said, injecting a syringe into Irina’s IV line.  “Did you throw up?”  Irina shook her head.  “That’s good.  Let me know if that’s not working in about fifteen minutes.”  Irina nodded, and the nurse left.

Irina sighed and put the head of the bed up, then leaned back against the pillows.  “I hope this won’t delay the surgery.”

Jack shook his head and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.  “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”  He could see when she mentioned the surgery that she was even more nervous than she’d been this morning; had something happened other than the nausea?  But he decided not to mention it in front of the girls, knowing she wouldn’t want them to know how worried she was about the surgery.

About five minutes passed before Irina’s color began to return.  “The medicine’s working,” she said, smiling.

“That’s good,” Nadia said.  Sydney, looking relieved, moved to sit down again.

“So, anything interesting happening in the outside world?” Irina asked.

“Well, the news is still all about this sepsis epidemic,” Sydney said.  “Don’t know if you want to talk about that.”

“Not at the moment,” Irina replied.  “How’s the weather?”  

They made small talk, with Sydney and Nadia doing the vast majority of the talking, for the next twenty minutes, until Irina’s nurse entered, accompanied by another nurse.  “Since I didn’t hear from you, I’m guessing your stomach’s feeling better?”  Irina nodded.  “Good.  I talked to your surgeon, and he said as long as you were feeling better we’d go ahead with the surgery, so it’s time to head upstairs.”  She and the other nurse came over to the bed.  “The three of you can come up with us, but you’ll need to wait in the surgery waiting room upstairs.”

The nurses began to move the bed, and Jack saw Irina’s look of surprise.  “We’re taking the whole bed?” she asked.

The nurse chuckled.  “Yes, hon, the whole bed.  You’ll be glad of it when the surgery’s over; you won’t be in any condition to sit in a chair.”

“She’s right, Mom, you’ll be kind of loopy for at least a couple of hours,” Sydney said.

Irina frowned, and just for a moment Jack could see the struggle in her eyes before she clamped down on it and her expression calmed once again.  He reached past the nearest nurse and put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to him and gave him a small smile.  He was reassured; she was nervous, yes, but she was in control, and she was going to get through this just fine.

*****

Chapter 163

Irina said a quick goodbye to her family in the hallway before she was wheeled into the “holding area”, a name she found rather ominous.  It turned out to be a large, empty room, the walls marked at intervals by curtains so that perhaps eight beds could be cordoned off.

The room was deserted except for one woman, wearing a poofy hat and a surgical mask dangling around her neck.  “Ms. Jones?” she asked, stepping forward and grabbing Irina’s wrist.  Irina had gotten used to being touched without permission during her time in the hospital, but she still didn’t like it.  The woman frowned at Irina’s wristband.  “There’s no name on here.”

Irina’s nurse gave an annoyed huff.  “Damn.  Forgot about that.”  She went to the foot of the bed, opened Irina’s chart, which had traveled up with them, and removed another wristband.  “They left your name off this one,” she said, fingering the band on Irina’s wrist, “so we’ve got you a new one that says your name is Susan Jones.”  She winked at Irina.  Irina ignored it; it was either that, or get very annoyed at the nurse for acting like espionage was just a game.

The nurse snapped the new wristband onto her wrist, then took a pair of scissors from her pocket and cut off the old one.  “All right, hon, we’ll see you back downstairs soon,” she said, and she and her companion left.

Irina was left with the woman in the poofy hat, who was checking the new wristband.  It appeared to be satisfactory, for she looked up and smiled.  “I’m Kim, and I’ll be one of your nurses during the surgery today.  Theresa, the other nurse, is already in the operating room getting things ready.”  Irina nodded.  “Can you tell me what operation we’re doing today?”

Irina stared, utterly horrified.  “You don’t know?”

Kim smiled.  “Of course I know; I just need to make sure that what Dr. Merriman’s told me we’re doing and what you think you’re having done are the same.  It’s procedure, and I’ll ask you again later once we get in the operating room.  Helps to avoid mistakes, like doing surgery on the wrong patient.”  She gestured at the empty room.  “Although as you can see, that’s pretty unlikely at the moment.”

That did make sense, and Irina relaxed a bit.  It also helped to avoid the possibility of anything else happening to her while she was knocked out, since the entire operating room staff would have to be in on the conspiracy – not that that wasn’t a possibility, of course.  “I’m having a bullet removed from my scapula,” she said.

Kim nodded.  “Right side or left?”

“Right.”

“Good!”  She held up a marker.  “Now I’m going to make a mark over where you’re having the surgery – again, just a precaution to keep us from cutting into the wrong side.  Can you sit up for me?”  Irina did so, and felt the marker glide over the sore spot in the right side of her back.

As she was putting the cap back on, another woman entered the room, attired similarly to Kim.  “Ms. Jones?” she asked, and Irina nodded.  “I’m Dr. Temple, and I’ll be your anesthesiologist today.  I understand Dr. Stevenson talked to you earlier about the possibility of a complication with paralysis?”  Irina nodded again.  “I talked to him after he spoke to you.  I understand he told you that the plan was that we wouldn’t paralyze you unless it became necessary during the surgery.”

“That’s right,” Irina said, but she had a feeling that plan had been changed.

“Well, the big problem with that is that the surgery’s on your back, so you’ll be lying on your stomach during the operation.  You see, if we paralyze you, I’ll need to put a tube down your throat for your breathing, and I can’t do that if you’re lying on your stomach.  And Dr. Merriman thinks there’s a good chance that he will need you paralyzed to finish the surgery.  So we both sat down with Dr. Stevenson and talked about it; Dr. Stevenson thinks there’s only a very small chance that you’ll have any problems with the paralysis at all, and we all agreed that it would be better just to paralyze you at the beginning of the surgery.”  Irina didn’t like the idea at all, but it didn’t seem she was going to get a choice in the matter, so she nodded.  Dr. Temple smiled.  “I can give you some extra sedation to make you stay asleep a little longer, just in case – “

Irina shook her head.  “Dr. Stevenson said you’d be able to tell if I’m still paralyzed.  I’d rather you only sedate me then.”

The anesthesiologist nodded.  “I can do that.”  She picked up Irina’s chart and flipped through it.  “Now, you’re allergic to all local anesthetics?”  Irina nodded.  “That’s something I’ve never seen before.  A rather unfortunate set of allergies to have.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Irina murmured.

Dr. Temple chuckled, then turned back to the chart.  “It also says here that you’re not to have Zofran – what happens when you take that?”

That was the first nausea medicine they’d tried, Irina recalled.  “Nothing.”  The doctor peered at her, confused.  “It doesn’t work.”

“I see.  How about Compazine?”

“Gives me nightmares.  I had some Reglan at three, though, so my stomach should be fine for a while.”

“Reglan’s not very strong; anything else work for you, in case you feel sick after the surgery?”

“Phenergan, but it knocks me out.”

“We’ll keep that in reserve, then.”  Dr. Temple glanced at the chart once again.  “And what happens when you take benzodiazepines?”

Irina suppressed a shudder and tried to think how to best explain it without going into detail.  “I get confused, and angry, and very uncooperative.”  Hopefully that would discourage her from trying any Valium-like drug, since doctors did not like uncooperative patients.

“Hmm.  That’s sort of the opposite of the usual reaction.”  Temple studied Irina for a moment.  “You’ve seemed a bit nervous to me since we started talking.  Most patients I see are nervous about the surgery, but often patients from the floor you’re on are more nervous about the drugs, about being knocked out or ‘doped up’.  Is that true for you?”  Irina didn’t like being read so easily, but on the other hand, it seemed like the doctor understood at least something of her issue and was sympathetic.  She nodded.  “I thought so,” Temple said with a nod.  “Normally I would give a drug called Versed at this point – it makes people pretty loopy, and they usually don’t remember anything about the time after they get it – but I’m guessing you’d rather remember everything that happens when you’re awake.”

“Yes,” Irina answered immediately.

“All right.  That’s all the questions I have,” Dr. Temple said, looking at Kim and nodding.  “I think we’re ready to head back to the operating room.”

*****

Chapter 164

The operating room was very bright; it contained a narrow bed in the center, a bank of machines at the head of the bed, and a table draped in green on which an array of metal instruments were laid out.  It reminded Irina far too much of a torture chamber, so she resolutely looked away from the table and took a deep breath.  “You okay?” Dr. Temple asked, and Irina nodded reflexively.  She wasn’t, but she wanted this over with as quickly as possible.  Maybe she should change her mind about that medicine that would make her forget – but no.  She didn’t like the idea of gaps in her memory.

“Ok, tell us your name, your date of birth, and what we’re doing today,” Kim said.

Irina blinked, wondering which date of birth they wanted – the one she’d believed all her life, or the true birth date she’d discovered a few months ago.  They probably had her records from her time in CIA custody, so they’d have the old birth date, she reasoned.  “Susan Jones,” she said, feeling ridiculous.  “March 22, 1951.”

Kim’s brow furrowed over her mask, and she lifted Irina’s wrist and looked at her wristband.  “That’s not the date of birth we have down for you.”

“Oh, June 20, 1952, then,” Irina corrected.  Kim and Dr. Temple blinked at her in confusion.  “I have two.  It’s a long story.”

“Okay…”  Kim said, but then shrugged.  “What are we doing today?”

“Removing a bullet from my right scapula.”

“Good.  Okay, let’s have you move over to the table.”

As she was moving from the bed, Dr. Merriman and another man entered, both wearing masks.  “How are you doing this afternoon?” Dr. Merriman asked.  “Is that nausea all better?”  Irina nodded.  “Good.  This is John; he’ll be assisting me during the operation today.”  The other man waved.  “Any questions or anything before we get started?”  She shook her head; she just wanted it done.  “All right; I’ll let Dr. Temple get you off to sleep, then.”

Dr. Merriman moved away, and Dr. Temple appeared over Irina, standing at the head of her bed.  “All right, Susan, first I’m going to put a mask over your face; it’s just got some oxygen in it, all right?”  Irina nodded, and a mask went over her mouth and nose.  The plastic smell was terribly familiar, but she couldn’t place it.  “Take some deep breaths for me.”  She did so.  “I’m going to put some medicine in your IV to make you sleepy; it’ll make your arm burn a little.  Think about a nice warm beach somewhere, ok?”

There was a line of fire down her arm for just a moment, and that was definitely familiar; Irina remembered that same sensation from when she’d been sedated while she was paralyzed.  Suddenly she remembered the smell, too – when she’d first gotten sick in Sevogda, she’d noticed that plastic scent in her half awareness, shortly before she’d felt her mouth being opened wide and a tube pushed down her throat.  “Susan?” she heard.  She tried to answer, but she couldn’t move.  And then she felt it again – her mouth opened, something hard in there, and then a tube; it made her want to gag, but she couldn’t.  Then suddenly she could gag, and did; the tube was withdrawn, and she coughed as it was replaced with a mask again.

She opened her eyes and blinked, confused; the world just wasn’t right.  There had been bright lights above her, and now there weren’t.  After a moment’s consideration, she realized that was because she was looking at a wall – she was lying on her left side.  That was good, because there was a red-hot ball of pain situated in the right side of her back.  She looked around and focused on Dr. Temple, still at the head of the bed.  “What?”

“The surgery’s over, Susan,” came Dr. Temple’s voice soothingly.  “It went just fine.”  How was that possible?  It had just been a minute.  Irina closed her eyes, deciding not to care.  It was over, and she was tired.  “We’re going to move you to the other bed.  Just lie still and let us do the work.”  It wasn’t hard at all to remain motionless while they half lifted, half rolled her back to the bed; she didn’t feel like she ever needed to move again.

But…she twitched a finger experimentally.  She could move, so she wasn’t paralyzed.  That was the important thing.  She ignored the bustle around her and fell into a doze.

When she woke, it was after a much more normal sleep; she was aware of the passage of time this time and knew that about half an hour had passed.  She was in a different room, still on her side; the pain in her back seemed distant, and she had the peculiar sensation of drifting that only came with morphine and other similar pain medications.  She sighed; if someone had asked her if she wanted the medicine, she would have said no.  On the other hand, she supposed it was nice not to be bothered by the pain, and it wasn’t like she was doing anything else at the moment.

After a moment, a woman approached and smiled at her.  “Hi there.  How are you doing?”

“All right.  Cold,” Irina said, just realizing how chilly she was.  “I don’t have a fever, do I?”

The woman shook her head.  “It’s normal to feel cold after surgery.  I’ll get you another blanket.”  She disappeared from view.

While she was gone, Irina realized that she was sharing the bed with a rather large number of pillows: her arms were wrapped around one in front of her, there was one between her knees, at least one, possibly two, supporting her back, and probably two under her head.  When the woman returned and began to spread a blanket over her, Irina asked, “Why are there so many pillows?”

“Just to keep you comfortable.  We don’t want you tempted to roll onto your back.  Are you comfortable?”  She finished with the blanket, which warmed Irina quite pleasantly, and came around where she could see her again.

Irina nodded, then noticed another change.  “Is the bed softer?”

“We put a pad under you, so yes, it’s a little softer.  Those hospital beds are pretty hard – bad enough when you’re on your back, horrible on your side.”  Irina had to agree; whenever she slept on her side, she always woke up sore and stiff.  “How’s your pain?” the nurse asked next.

“Not bad.”

“Give me a number.”  Irina blinked in confusion, and the nurse clarified, “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no pain and 10 is the worst pain you can imagine, how much are you hurting right now?”

The pain existed, but it wasn’t worth bothering with, so Irina said, “One.”

The nurse looked surprised.  “Well, that’s better than we were expecting.  I’ll show you your PCA anyway, since the pain will probably get worse when your morphine wears off.  Have you had a PCA before?”  Irina had no idea what the woman was talking about, so she shook her head.  “Okay, basically it’s just IV pain medication that you control.”  She held up a button attached to a cord.  “Just press this button if you want some pain medicine, and it’ll put some morphine into your IV.  It’s not on yet; they’ll turn it on downstairs for you in about an hour when your current dose of morphine wears off.”

“So if I don’t press the button, I won’t get any morphine?” Irina clarified.

“That’s right,” the nurse said, “and no one should press the button except you.”  Irina nodded; she was glad that she apparently wouldn’t have to have pain medicine if she didn’t want it.  “Now that I’ve seen that you’ve woken up all right, we can go ahead and get you moved back to your room downstairs, all right?”

“Fine,” Irina said, and the nurse left her field of vision again.  Too late, Irina realized she was thirsty, but then there was probably some rule that she couldn’t have anything to drink yet anyway.  She closed her eyes and dozed off again.

*****

Chapter 165

Irina walked down a roofless hallway with Elena, a Mueller device rotating lazily overhead.  “I’m glad you’re doing better,” Elena said.

“More or less,” Irina replied; she could still feel the pain in her back from the surgery.  “It would be nice if things would just get better and stay better.”

Elena gave her a sympathetic smile.  “Soon it will be time to begin seeking why these complications have occurred.”

Irina frowned.  “But how can I?  I’m going to prison.  Besides, isn’t the entire US government trying to find the source of this sepsis epidemic?”

“Don’t be so sure about prison, Irushka.  And you have already accomplished what governments could not; why should this be different?”  Elena patted her arm.  “Now rest, and regain your strength.  You’ll need it soon.”  She vanished, and her surroundings with her.

When Irina woke, she saw that she was back in her room; Jack was sitting next to her.  He immediately noticed that she was awake.  “Hi,” he said.  “How are you feeling?”

“They gave me morphine,” she replied.  “I wish they hadn’t.”  She still felt drugged, not surprising since she’d slept only another twenty minutes or so.  She glanced up at the clock and saw that it was nearly seven – so the surgery had taken a while, then.

When she looked back at Jack, he had a slight smile on his face.  “Only you would get annoyed about getting morphine.”  She shrugged.  “Other than that, did everything go all right?”

“Well enough,” she replied.  It had had its unpleasant moments, but it was over now.  She looked around the room and saw that it was empty aside from her and Jack.  “Did Sydney and Nadia go home?”

“They went to get some dinner right after we talked to Dr. Merriman after the surgery.  They should be back soon.”

“What did Dr. Merriman say?”

“The bullet was wedged in the bone pretty firmly, but he was able to get it out.  He said he’d stop in and see how you’re doing about eight.”

She nodded, then licked her lips.  “Can I have some water?”

Jack glanced up at the clock.  “The nurse said you could have liquids at seven; I think we’re close enough.”  He stood and went into the bathroom; a moment later he returned with a cup of water.

She took a few sips, then smiled at him.  “Thank you.”  The water had stirred her appetite, so she asked, “Did she say when I can eat?”

Jack shook his head.  “The shift changes at seven, but she said your new nurse would be in about 7:15.  I doubt it’ll be sooner than that.”

“All right.”  She yawned.  “I think I’m going to take another nap.  Wake me when the girls get here.”  Jack nodded, and she closed her eyes.  The morphine kept her right on the edge of sleep, and so it was easy enough to slip over once again.

***

Jack watched as Irina’s eyes closed and her face smoothed out.  She was clearly drugged – her speech slightly slurred, her pupils smaller than normal – but it didn’t seem to be affecting her thinking much.  He saw that she had a PCA pump, similar to the one he’d had after he’d been shot in the chest, and hoped she would overcome her aversion to morphine enough to use it rather than simply pushing through the pain.  She’d gotten through the initial bullet wound without painkillers, it was true, but she’d also been doped half out of her mind on diazepam; although it didn’t actually dampen pain, it did reduce how much one cared about it.

He picked up a book – he suspected he was reading them more than Irina these days – and read for a few minutes, until the nurse came in.  “How’s she doing?” she asked.  “Has she woken up?”

Jack nodded.  “She was awake for a little while.  She wants to know when she can eat.”

“Well, she can have clear liquids now.  When she can have more solid foods will be up to Dr. Merriman.  I can order her some broth now if she wants it, but it’ll have to be right away since the kitchen closes in fifteen minutes.”

Jack reached out and touched Irina’s shoulder; she came awake instantly.  “Do you want some broth?” he asked.  “The kitchen’s closing soon.”  She nodded immediately.

“All right,” the nurse said.  “I’ll go let them know, and then I’ll be right back.”  She left, and Jack looked over at Irina to ask her how hungry she was, but her eyes had fallen closed again.

The nurse came back a few minutes later.  “The broth will be down in about ten minutes.”  She frowned when she saw Irina asleep again.  “Is she going to be able to stay awake to eat it?”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“Well, I won’t wake her up now.  I’m just going to turn on her PCA – that’s her pain medicine.  They told her how to use it in the recovery room after her surgery, but she can call me if she has any questions.  The important thing for you to know is that no one should push the button but her.”  Jack nodded; he had absolutely no intention of pushing that button.  He didn’t want to think about what Irina would do to him if he gave her morphine against her will.  The nurse had been fiddling with the IV machine as she spoke, now she said, “All right, it should be ready now.  I’ll be back in with her broth.”

The door had barely shut behind her when it opened again to admit Sydney and Nadia, carrying Chinese takeout.  “How’s she doing?” Nadia asked softly.

“Fine.  Annoyed that they gave her morphine,” Jack replied.

“She’ll change her mind when it wears off,” Sydney said as she dug in the bag and handed Jack a carton of food and pair of chopsticks.  “When my morphine first wore off, I was so happy to have that little button…”

“Her surgery was a lot less extensive than yours, though.”  Jack touched Irina’s shoulder, and again she woke immediately.  “They’re back.”

Irina twisted her head around to see the girls, as lying on her left side had her facing away from the door.  “Hi,” she said, then began trying to turn onto her back.

Jack put his food down.  “Irina, maybe you should stay still.”

She shook her head.  “I’m sitting up.  There are just too many damn pillows.”  She handed him one, and then another.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“The nurse is bringing me soup, isn’t she?  I can’t eat it lying on my side.”  Jack found two more pillows shoved at him, and Irina was finally able to turn onto her back.  Because of the pillows in front of his face, he almost missed her wince of pain when her right shoulder hit the bed.

He put the pillows down on the foot of the bed as Irina was putting the head up, came around to the other side, and lifted the top pillow.  “Here, just put this behind your lower back so you’re not putting pressure on the wound.”  She acquiesced, and then let him put a second pillow just under the top of her shoulders, so that her torso was supported above and below the surgery site.

When they were finished, they looked at Sydney and Nadia and saw that they hadn’t begun eating yet.  “Aren’t you going to eat your dinner?” Irina asked.

“We can wait until your soup comes,” Nadia replied.

Irina shook her head.  “Go ahead.  Don’t let your food get cold.”  She shifted slightly and winced again; Jack found the PCA button and handed it to her.  She glared, he raised his eyebrows, and she shook her head.  “You should eat, too, Jack.”  He shrugged and retrieved his food.  If she was going to be stubborn, there was nothing he could do about it.

It was only a few more minutes before the nurse came in with a tray.  “Here’s your broth,” she said, pretending not to notice the Chinese food being eaten around the room.  “We’ve got juice and Popsicles at the nurses’ station if that’s not enough.”

Irina nodded.  “Thank you.”  As the nurse left, she began to eat the broth.  Whatever pain she was in, Jack noted that it didn’t seem to be dulling her appetite.

*****

Chapter 166

Once everyone was done eating, Sydney said, “Well, we should go, let you get some rest.”  Nadia nodded.  The two of them came over and gave Irina gentle hugs and a promise to be back the next day before leaving.

Irina watched the door for a few seconds after they’d left, a bit bemused.  “I’m surprised they left so easily,” she said.

“I think Sydney got rather annoyed with Vaughn and me for hovering too much after her surgery,” Jack said with a slight smile.  After a moment, he added, “Do you want me to leave, too?”

Irina shook her head.  “Not unless you want to.”  Jack knew better than to coddle her, and so his presence was comforting rather than stifling.

He smiled and squeezed her hand.  “I’ll stay as long as you want.”

“Not all night,” she said, not wanting him to spend another uncomfortable night in the chair.  “Maybe until after Dr. Merriman comes.  I’ll probably go to sleep after that.”  She would if the pain in her back settled down, anyway; the morphine had definitely worn off.  She felt as if a red hot sword was sticking into her back, just like she’d been shot all over again.  She sighed and sat up straight, taking all pressure off her back; that helped marginally, so she put the back of the bed down and turned back to her left side.

Jack stood and began putting pillows into place as soon as she turned.  “Is your back hurting?” he asked.

“Just a little,” she replied, accepting the pillow he held out to her and wrapping her arms around it.

“Mmm-hmm,” was his response; clearly he didn’t believe her.  He pulled down the blankets and put the last pillow between her legs, covered her up again, and then handed her the morphine button.

She handed it back.  “It’s not that bad.”

“Irina, don’t be stubborn,” Jack said, looking annoyed.  “It only gives you a little morphine; pressing the button once probably won’t even make you sleepy.  There’s no reason to lie there in pain.”

She sighed.  “If I can’t sleep, I’ll press it.  But I’m fine right now.”

Jack shook his head and sat down.  “The morphine is not going to bite you, Irina.  I had one of those buttons after I got shot, I used it, and it didn’t hurt me.  Sydney had one, and used hers.”

“Jack, I know it’s not going to hurt me, I just don’t want it,” Irina snapped.  The worst part of it was, now she did want it – her back was only hurting worse – but pressing the button now would be giving in.  She’d already had her choices taken away too many times since she’d been in this hospital; this, at least, was something she had control over, and she would not give in.  She and Jack stared each other down angrily for a few minutes, until finally she said, “Maybe you should leave.”

“I think maybe that’s a good idea,” Jack said tersely.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”  He stood and left Irina’s field of vision; a moment later she heard the door open and close.

Irina blinked back a few tears.  He just didn’t understand; she’d already had far too much of people telling her what to do, and she didn’t need it from him, too.  She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but her back hurt too damn much.  But she simply would not press that button, so she stilled her mind and worked on getting herself into a meditative trance.

That worked quite well – she’d managed over the years to hone her meditation skills into an extremely effective pain control technique, and had used that ability to get through the medical procedures she’d required over the years without anesthesia.  She did still sometimes require some pain medication during the procedure itself – when Sydney had shot her, for instance, she’d accepted a small dose of morphine during the surgery on the wound – but she needed far less than she would have otherwise.

After about ten minutes, she heard the door open, but stayed still.  If it was a doctor, he’d “wake” her, but it might just be the nurse here for something that didn’t require Irina’s cooperation.  But her visitor neither woke her nor bustled around the bed; instead, Irina heard footsteps cross to the chair next to her head, then the sound of someone settling down.  Probably Jack had come back, she guessed, but she didn’t want to talk to him at the moment.  She’d slipped out of her meditative trance with her focus on the outside world, so she recentered herself and walled the pain away once again.

*****

Chapter 167

He hadn’t handled that well, Jack realized almost immediately after leaving Irina’s hospital room.  He’d meant to merely be encouraging, but she’d seen it as pushing, and pushed back.  And turning it into a confrontation was not the way to get Irina to do anything.  Well, there really wasn’t any good way to get her to do something once she’d made up her mind not to do it, but he’d probably set her even more firmly against using her pain medicine.

Leaving had been the best course of action, he told himself in the elevator on the way up.  It gave them both a chance to calm down; they’d both learned early in their relationship that once a fight got emotional it wouldn’t be resolved until they separated for a bit.  Once Jack reached the hospital lobby, though, he had to amend his earlier thought.  He had needed to leave, but he shouldn’t go home and let this fester until morning.  He needed to go back.  As much as it galled him to admit it, he was in the wrong here; yes, she was being unduly stubborn, but it was her body, and her right to endure the pain if that was what she really wanted.  He turned and headed back to the elevator he had just left.

When he reached Irina’s room, he found her with her eyes closed, but he could tell from her breathing that she wasn’t asleep.  He settled into the chair by her bed and was debating whether to say something when her breathing slowed and evened out.  The fact that she’d calmed down enough to go to sleep was a good sign; it also indicated that she’d either pressed her button or was telling the truth about not being in much pain.

He picked up a book and read for about twenty minutes before Dr. Merriman entered.  “How’s she doing?” he asked Jack after walking around the bed and seeing that Irina was asleep.

“Fine,” Jack replied.  “Says her pain’s not that bad.”

“Well, that’s good, although I hope she’s not just being stoic,” the doctor replied.  He went over to the IV pump and pressed a couple of buttons.  “She hasn’t used any pain medicine.  Do you think she’ll wake up?”

Jack nodded; in fact, he was pretty sure from the sound of her breathing that she was awake already.  He gave her arm a gentle shake; as he expected, she immediately opened her eyes.  Her gaze slid past Jack to focus on the doctor, and he sighed inwardly; she was still annoyed with him.  “Doctor?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“On a scale of 0 to 10, how much pain would you say you’re in right now?”

She frowned.  “Three,” she said after a moment, though Jack suspected she was downplaying it.

Dr. Merriman nodded.  “I see you haven’t used your pain medicine yet; I want you to feel free to use it.  There have been studies that show that people that have better pain control after surgery actually recover faster.”

Irina raised her eyebrows.  “Really?”

The doctor nodded.  “Pain activates the body’s stress response, which interferes with healing.  If you’re in pain, you also move less and don’t take as many deep breaths.  So think of the medicine as an aid to healing.  I’m not saying you should take it when you’re not in much pain, of course, but as soon as you feel like it hurts to much to move, or to breathe, or you feel like you can’t sleep or are on edge because of the pain, that’s when you should think about pressing that button.”

“I see,” Irina said, and Jack could see that she was thinking about it in a whole new light.  He couldn’t help but feel annoyed that this doctor, who didn’t even know her, had somehow managed to find a way around the stubborn blockade she’d put up – but if it got her to use the morphine, it was worth it.

“Good,” Merriman said with a smile.  “I’ll be back in the morning, and I’ll change the bandage then and take a look, but until then try not to put weight on it, all right?”  Irina nodded.  “Any questions or anything?”  She shook her head.  “Ok, I’ll see you in the morning.”  He left.

Irina looked at Jack.  “You came back.”

He nodded.  “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard about the morphine.  It’s your decision.”

She smiled, looking far more pleased than his almost apology seemed to indicate.  “Thank you.”

*****

Chapter 168

When Dr. Merriman woke Irina the next morning, she blinked up at the clock and frowned to see that it was only 6:35.  “Do you always wake people up this early, or are you just excited to stick more sharp objects into me?” she asked.

He chuckled.  “Most of my patients aren’t up to cracking jokes at this hour, so you must be feeling all right.”  She shrugged.  “I see you only pressed your button once last night; I hope that’s because you didn’t need it more than that.”

“I had Phenergan; it knocked me out,” Irina replied.  Mindful of what the doctor had said about the pain medicine helping with healing, she’d decided to see how much the morphine affected her after Jack left, so she’d pressed the button once.  It had made the pain fade somewhat, and she’d also felt sleepy, but if she was honest with herself that might have been normal tiredness rather than the morphine.  In any case, when she’d woken up with nausea in addition to renewed pain at eleven, she’d decided to take only the Phenergan rather than mixing the drugs.  She’d had another dose at three, and she still was feeling sleepy from that; she wished Merriman hadn’t shown up quite so early.

“I see,” the doctor said.  “How’s your pain now?  On a scale of 0 to 10.”

She might as well be honest, she supposed.  “Four.”

He nodded.  “I’m going to change your bandage and take a look at your incision.  Go ahead and press your button if you need to while I’m doing it, all right?”  

She nodded, although she suspected she’d be fine with a little meditation.  “Do you need me to sit up?”

“No, you’re just fine as you are.”  Merriman walked around the bed, and Irina closed her eyes and settled into a meditative state.  The doctor’s activities really weren’t that painful, so she was actually in less pain by the time he finished than she’d been when he started.  “You didn’t go back to sleep, did you?” she heard a moment after he’d finished putting on the new bandage.

She opened her eyes.  “No.  Are you done, then?”

He nodded.  “Everything looks fine.  Today, you can eat whatever your stomach can handle – don’t push it, but I know you’ve pretty much been eating foods that are easy on your stomach anyway.”  She nodded.  “And your physical therapy is scheduled at eleven…if you’re feeling like it beforehand, it wouldn’t hurt to get out of bed and sit in a chair this morning.”

“I can do that.”  She had yet to get out of bed except for her therapy sessions and her trip to get x-rays yesterday, but now that she was walking, it really was time for that anyway; she’d speak to Jennifer about it later this morning.

“Good.  I’ll see you tomorrow, then, and I’m pretty sure Dr. Tooms is planning to come in sometime today.”  She nodded, and he left.  She closed her eyes and went promptly back to sleep.

She woke next when the nurse entered at about 7:30, carrying a breakfast tray.  “Good morning,” the nurse said cheerfully.

Irina was surprised to find that she didn’t feel sick to her stomach, even though she was half an hour overdue for her next dose of antinausea medicine, so she gave the nurse a smile in return.  The smile disappeared, though, when she realized that she’d rolled to her back sometime during the last hour; Dr. Merriman must have moved the pillows keeping her on her side.  She sat up; as soon as she moved, the pain in her back increased exponentially.  She took a deep breath, hoping the pain would fade to a more manageable level in a few seconds.

“Are you all right, dear?” came the nurse’s worried voice.  Irina held up a finger.

A few breaths later, the pain hadn’t faded.  Now, then, was the time for morphine, so she found the button and pressed it.  She looked up to see the nurse watching her with concern.  “I rolled onto my back,” she explained.

The nurse nodded.  “Do you think the morphine will be enough?  I can call the doctor if you think you might need something else…”

Irina shook her head.  “It’s already working,” she said truthfully.  She tried to arrange the pillows so that she could sit relatively comfortably – she still wasn’t strong enough to sit without back support long enough to eat – but the pain limited her movements.  “Could you give me a hand with these pillows?”  The nurse arranged the pillows quite nicely, then left so that she could eat.

She didn’t have much of an appetite – the pain saw to that – but she swallowed a few bites of food anyway.  At the first hint of nausea, though, she stopped, not wanting to precipitate vomiting.  As she leaned back against the pillows, she wondered when Jack would get here – he’d promised to come this morning, though he hadn’t given her a specific time.

Well, he would be here when he got here.  In the meantime, the morphine and the food combined were making her sleepy, so she settled back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

*****

Chapter 169

Irina finished her second length of the parallel bars, then looked up at the clock and was pleased to see that she had ten minutes remaining in her session.  She started to turn around for one more pass, but Jennifer said, “Hold on.”  Irina looked up with a frown.  “It’s time to move on to something a little different.”  So Irina remained where she was while Jennifer opened one of the room’s closets.

She returned with a pair of forearm crutches.  “Let’s see how you handle these; if it goes well, you can take them with you and use them in your room.”

Irina raised her eyebrows, thinking that that would be a very good thing.  But she said nothing as Jennifer adjusted the crutches to her height, then fitted them on her arms.  Once they were on, Irina took her first steps away from the bars, slowly and carefully.  It was a bit difficult to coordinate the crutches with her steps, but she wasn’t about to complain; they were the best shot at independence she’d had since she’d arrived in the hospital.  She wished she didn’t need them, but she’d found when getting up to sit in a chair this morning that even supporting herself with the wall on one side wasn’t enough; she needed support on both sides.

She’d only walked about half a dozen steps when Jennifer said, “Good.  I think you’ll do fine with those.  I do want you to call your nurse the first few times you use them, though, all right?  Just a precaution until you get used to them.”  Irina nodded.  “Now, I think it’s best if you sit in the chair for the trip back to your room.”

As much as Irina hated consigning herself to the wheelchair again, it was a good fifty feet from the therapy room to her room; she’d best practice with a few trips to the bathroom before she tried to propel herself down the hall.  She sat down in the chair and gave Jennifer a smile.  “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” the therapist replied, beaming back at her.  “You’re the one doing the hard work here.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

Jack made his way down the hospital corridor at 3 pm, trying not to worry – but after the way his day had gone so far, it was hard not to be concerned.  The armed men in the hall, with their usual attitude of mild boredom, were rather reassuring; it certainly didn’t seem as though anything unusual had happened since he’d left the night before.

As soon as he entered Irina’s room, though, the worry became full-fledged fear, for the room was empty.  He froze on the threshold, not breathing, for several seconds.  Then the bathroom door opened, and he breathed again as Irina came out.  
Walking, he realized, balancing on a pair of crutches, and followed by a nurse pushing her IV stand.

She looked at him curiously, but said nothing as she made her way slowly but steadily to the bed.  She waited until after the nurse had helped her to arrange the pillows and left to speak.  “Are you all right?”

“Just surprised to see you walking,” Jack said as he approached the bed and sat down.

But Irina wasn’t fooled.  “You looked worried.”

He sighed; he did need to give her the news.  “There’s been a development.  That’s why I’m so late today.”  She raised her eyebrows and waited for him to continue.  “There was a prison break last night.  Shostakovich is gone.”

Irina went pale.  “Dyorimo,” she murmured.  “Any leads?”

“Someone with a lot of resources,” Jack replied.  “He was in a maximum security prison; whoever broke him out knew exactly where his cell was, found the easiest way to get through the layers of security.”

Irina frowned.  “He’ll go after the Sphere; he doesn’t know it’s broken.”

Jack nodded.  “We’ve anticipated that possibility.”  The DSR had examined the Sphere when they’d first returned from Sevogda and had been unable to make anything of it, and so it had been relegated to a shelf in their Rambaldi room.  He’d spent the last several hours coordinating with the DSR to put extra, hidden security around the Sphere, hoping to catch Shostakovich or his unknown accomplice when they came for it.  “But I’m actually more concerned that he’ll come after you.”

She sighed.  “He already kidnapped me from a hospital once.”

Jack gave her a grim smile.  “This one should be a little more difficult to get you out of.”

“I should hope so.”  

“We’re adding extra security to the hospital, but I wanted to have a backup plan as well.  A tracking device.”

“He scanned me and found the tracker last time,” Irina pointed out.

Jack nodded as he removed a small case from his briefcase.  “That’s why I thought a passive transmitter would be a better idea this time.”

Irina smiled.  “You are fond of those.”  She looked at the case, and Jack could see her slight apprehension.  “Is it going to require another surgery to put in?”

He shook his head.  “I’ve had Marshall busy today, making a transmitter that can be injected.”  He opened the case to reveal a needle and syringe.  “It is a rather big needle, but the good news is that the tracker’s biodegradable – in about a month, whether it’s activated or not, it’ll dissolve.”

“So it won’t need to be removed.”

“Precisely.”  Jack lifted the needle.  “Are you all right with this?”

She raised her eyebrows.  “I have a choice?”

“I won’t put it in if you don’t want me to.”

Irina considered for a moment.  “Thank you for asking me, but I’ve spent enough time as a guest of my father.  Put it in.”

He nodded.  “Where do you want it?”

“Somewhere he won’t notice a mark if he should happen to come tonight,” Irina answered immediately.  “My shoulder should do it.”  She untied her gown and lowered it, and Jack injected the transmitter into her right shoulder.  The moment it went in, he instantly felt more secure – now, even if Shostakovich did manage to get to her through the hospital’s security, Jack would have her location 24 hours later.  He wouldn’t lose her again.

*****

Chapter 170

Andrei Shostakovich smiled as he sipped a drink, the first alcohol he’d had in nearly six weeks.  Two weeks in medical quarantine, followed by nearly a month in prison – he had no longer thought that any help was coming, so the appearance of his rescuer last night had been quite a pleasant surprise.  He reminded himself to stay on his guard, though, as he still didn’t know why Olivia Reed had gotten him out – with him behind bars, she should have been the one poised to take over the Covenant’s vast resources, and should have been quite content to leave him where he was.

Olivia had left the room a few moments ago, and now she re-entered; Andrei felt a surge of desire as he saw that she was carrying the Sphere of Life.  “The Sphere,” he said, standing and reaching out to take it from her.  To his surprise, she gave it up without resistance.  “You were able to retrieve it from the US government?”

She nodded.  “They don’t know I have it.  I obtained it several days before I broke you out and replaced it with a facsimile.”

He smiled.  “Excellent thinking.  Now all we need is Irina, and we can realize Rambaldi’s greatest vision.”

Olivia shook her head.  “Not quite yet.  The Sphere isn’t working properly, as we were able to discover with certain tests.  Fixing it is your job.”  She held out a manuscript to him; opening it, Shostakovich immediately recognized it as Rambaldi’s work, though he hadn’t seen this manuscript before.

Two hours later, after thorough study of the manuscript, he knew how to repair the Sphere.  He smiled, excited at the thought of finally, finally reaching his goals.  And this time, Irina wouldn’t be permitted to interfere.  Requesting her cooperation had failed, coercion had failed, and so it was time to employ what had always been his most powerful weapon.  This time, he would brainwash her.

***

After he inserted the tracking device, Jack removed the pen that Irina now recognized as an anti-bugging device; she frowned as he uncapped it.  Now didn’t seem like the time to discuss breakout plans.  But he said, “This may be the last chance we’ll have to talk for a while, so we need to make some decisions.”

She frowned.  “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t intend to visit you here as long as Shostakovich is missing.”  She raised her eyebrows; he’d better have a good explanation.  “His escape has focused the attention of my superiors at the CIA on the next two likely targets, the Sphere and you.  I don’t want them to have any idea that I’m anything other than an agent concerned about protecting a valuable asset.  If they know…”  Jack cleared his throat.  “If they know how we feel about each other, they may well use it against us.”

She nodded; that was a concept she understood quite well, much as she disliked it.  “I suppose Sydney and Nadia should stay away as well.”

He shook his head, giving her a slight smile.  “It’s already well known that they’re working on forging relationships with you, so they should continue to do so.  Besides, it gives credence to the idea that you’ve reformed.”  The apparent double standard made an odd sort of sense; a relationship with Jack would be seen as deceitful on her part, going back to her old tricks, whereas “reform” for her daughters’ sake was noble and, perhaps, worthy of being believed.

“I’m glad they can still come,” she said, returning the smile.  “But should we really be discussing breaking me out while I’m in a net of extra security?”

“Considering it’s a net of extra security I designed, yes,” Jack replied.  “Besides, they may well be moving you earlier than they otherwise would have.  Personally, I think you’re just as safe here as you would be in a prison, but Chase thinks otherwise; she’s planning to contact your doctors tomorrow to find out when they think you’ll be stable enough to be out of a medical facility.”

So she really couldn’t put off the decision any more, Irina realized as she mentally ticked off the reasons for needing medical care.  She hadn’t had a fever since the night before last, the one that had triggered her surgery; her pain from the surgery had greatly improved, and so she’d managed all day without morphine since that one dose this morning; and she’d managed to eat without any nausea medicine.  She was even walking now.  Really, the only issue was the antibiotics she was getting through her IV, and those could probably be given in pill form.  If given the choice, the doctors would probably want to keep her here for a while longer, but…  “If Chase is persuasive, it could be very soon – within the next couple of days.”

Jack nodded.  “I thought so.  So the question is whether you want me to do anything.  Despite the extra security, it would be easy enough to get you out during the transport, and we just happen to have the perfect scapegoat.”

“What about the tracking device?”

“Remember how I said it would dissolve on its own in a month?”  Irina nodded.  “I can give you a pill that will accelerate that to about twelve hours.”

Really, when Irina considered the new circumstances, the choice was easy.  Her father had managed to get her out of CIA custody twice already, and his unknown accomplice had broken him out of a maximum security prison; she had no doubt that Jack could hide her and protect her far better than the CIA ever could.  She nodded.  “Get me out.”

Jack smiled as broadly as he ever did, his eyes full of relief.  “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand.  “I don’t trust the CIA, Jack, but I do trust you.”  Then her expression hardened.  “Not that I’m going to stay in hiding forever, you understand.  As soon as I’m recovered, I’m going to find him and make sure he’s never a threat again.”

Jack surprised her by taking her head in his hands and locking his lips with hers, kissing her hard until she finally had to pull away, gasping for air.  “You are going to let me help, I hope?”

“Of course,” she replied, still breathless.  “After all, he did try to kill you – twice – and he is your father-in-law.”

He smiled at that, then glanced at the pen, which had begun to flash.  “When the transport comes, be ready for anything.”  She nodded, and he re-capped the pen.

*****

Chapter 171

The next day, Jack blinked at Director Chase in surprise.  “You want to move her tonight?  I can’t believe her doctors agreed to that.”

“They said at first that she wasn’t ready,” Chase replied, “but I finally got them to admit that she should be fine under the care of the prison doctor.  The hospital just isn’t secure enough given Shostakovich’s disappearance.”

“And you think prison will be?”

Chase frowned.  “I hope so,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced.  More firmly, she said, “I’d like you to oversee the transfer.”

“Of course,” Jack replied, glad that she didn’t seem to have any inkling that he might remove Irina from the situation himself.

Chase gave him a nod, then turned and left Jack’s office.  Jack picked up the phone; he had a lot of work to do.

The official arrangements for the transfer took him several hours, but he managed to finish those with some time left in the workday and began working on some of his own arrangements to spirit Irina away from the transport route.  He’d done what he could last night, and would have more to do tonight, but he would be ready when the time came despite the brief notice.  He would have preferred to have more time – he still didn’t have a final destination for her, only a temporary hiding place here in LA – but far too much had happened in the last week that he couldn’t possibly have predicted.

Jack quickly hid his work when his office door opened and looked up to see his younger daughter, her expression grim.  “Nadia.  Is everything all right?”

“You know Mom’s being transferred to prison tonight, right?”

He nodded.  “I’m overseeing the transfer.”

Nadia frowned.  “How can this possibly be a good idea?  She just had surgery two days ago, and she’s still on antibiotics.  There’s no way she’s ready to leave the hospital.”

“Apparently her doctors feel differently,” Jack replied blandly.  He wasn’t so sure about that – it sounded like Chase might have bullied the doctors into releasing Irina earlier than they felt was wise – but there was nothing to be done about that now.

“But…”  Nadia shook her head as she fell into a chair.  “How can we just let her go to prison?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.  “Even if she deserved it, which she doesn’t – you know they should have honored her pardon agreement – she won’t be safe there.”

All of her points were quite valid, and Jack didn’t know how to reassure her.  The one thing that would make her feel better, the truth about what he was planning, he had to withold for her own safety.  “The security at the prison will be enhanced,” he said instead.

“That’s not going to matter!” Nadia exclaimed.  “He already got her out of CIA custody twice, and whoever got him out has inside information.  She’s not going to be safe in prison.”  She fixed him with a piercing gaze.  “You can’t possibly tell me you’re not worried about her.”

Jack sighed, wishing he dared tell her the truth, but no.  If something should go wrong, it would be disastrous.  “Nadia, I’m sure your mother will be fine.”

She glared at him, and in that moment she was even more the image of her mother than usual.  “Sydney said you wouldn’t tell me.  You probably think you’re trying to ‘protect’ us.  Well, here it is, then: we think you’re planning something to get Mom out, and we want in.  If you don’t let us help, we’re going to get her out on our own.”

Jack was so shocked that for a couple of seconds he could do nothing but stare.  Then, as rational thought began to reassert itself, his first thought was to throw her off the scent.  “What are you thinking, saying things like that?  What if this place is bugged?  Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get us all in?”

Nadia arched an eyebrow.  “I know perfectly well that you and Marshall have made very sure that this entire facility is saturated with the latest bug killers.  Stop trying to distract me.”

Clearly, keeping Nadia – and by extension Sydney – in the dark wasn’t going to work, so Jack switched tactics.  “Yes, I am planning something, but I can’t allow the two of you to become involved.”  Nadia started to speak, but Jack continued, “I won’t run the risk of all four of us going to prison – or worse, if Shostakovich should become involved.  There are simply too many variables, too many chances of something going wrong.”

Nadia frowned and shook her head.  “But Dad, you’re doing this by yourself.  When you try to pull off an op solo, of course it’s going to have way too many variables.”

“I’m using freelancers,” Jack pointed out.  He hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t wanted to get anyone else involed, but Nadia was right about that – he simply couldn’t do it entirely on his own.

“How many freelancers?”

Jack didn’t want to answer, knew what her next point would be, and yet he surprised himself by giving in after she’d glared at him for only a few seconds.  “Two.”

“Two people you don’t know and can’t trust.  Why the hell don’t you get rid of them and use me and Sydney instead?”  He frowned, and she must have seen that he was considering it, for she pressed further.  “Dad, we face danger all the time, and we want to do this.”  She frowned briefly.  “If you really want to protect us – if something does go wrong, if the CIA catches us, we can all say that you told Sydney and me that it was an APO op, okay?  But letting us help is the best way to protect Mom.”

She was, as much as he hated to admit it, absolutely right.  He sighed.  “All right.  You can help.”  Nadia smiled broadly.  He opened his desk and removed what looked like a pen.  Handing it to Nadia, he said, “Go to the hospital and see your mother, tell her the transfer’s tonight.  That’s a bug killer; open it to activate it.  You can use that to let her know that you and Sydney will be participating in tonight’s events.”

“So she knows the plan, then?”

“Not details, but yes, she is aware that I’m extracting her before she reaches the prison.”

Nadia nodded.  “So when do Sydney and I get details?”

“Once I’m done getting everything set up, I’ll come to your apartment and fill you in – probably seven or eight tonight.”  The transfer would begin at midnight, so that would give them plenty of time for whatever preparations they needed to make.

Nadia nodded.  “I’ll see you tonight, then.”  She started to turn away, then turned back.  “Thank you, Dad.  You won’t regret it.”

He was sure they would perform admirably; it was outside forces that had him worried.  But there was nothing to be done for it.  He gave her a tight smile.  “I’ll see you later.”

*****

Chapter 172

Irina sat in bed, waiting; with only ten minutes until she was to leave, she was too edgy to do anything else.  She’d spent most of the afternoon and evening trying to nap, so that she would be well rested tonight, but she hadn’t been able to sleep.  Transferring a prisoner that someone else might want was always risky, and the prisoner, restrained and incapable of self defense, often didn’t fare too well.  And she, too weak to run or throw a punch even without restraints, was even more helpless than most.  If her father had any inkling that she was being moved tonight, he was surely planning something; her only consolation, the hope that kept her from getting up and pacing to the limit of her ability to walk, was the knowledge that Jack would most likely pull her out before Shostakovich had a chance to get to her.

The door to her room opened, and her nurse entered.  She smiled at Irina.  “How are you doing, dear?  Ready to get out of here?”  Irina shrugged.  “Well, I’m here to give you your instructions.”  Holding up four bottles of pills, she continued, “These are your medications.  Normally we’d give you prescriptions and have you fill them at the pharmacy on the way out, but – funny thing – the pharmacy’s not open at midnight.”

Irina gave her a ghost of a smile.  “Sorry about that.  I didn’t pick the time.”

“Oh, honey, we do midnight discharges down here all the time,” the nurse replied cheerfully.  “I don’t mind a bit as long as it gets you safely to your destination.”  She handed Irina one of the pill bottles.  “This one – linezolid – is your antibiotic.  One pill every twelve hours.  Your next dose is due at eight am.  Take all the pills in that bottle; that’ll get you two weeks out from your surgery.  Dr. Tooms also wants you to take your temperature twice a day, and call him if it’s higher than 101.”  Irina nodded; they’d discussed that this afternoon.  If she did have further fevers, he wanted to x-ray her and make sure the infection from the bullet hadn’t spread to the bone.  But he’d also told her that the treatment if that had happened would simply be more antibiotics, until she was fever free for two weeks, so if she did have a fever she’d just have Jack obtain some more linezolid for her and keep taking it.

The nurse continued, “Because the linezolid can cause problems with your blood count, you’ll need to get that checked once a week; that information’s been sent on to your new doctor.”  Irina nodded, hiding a frown.  Dr. Tooms hadn’t mentioned that; she’d have to discuss it with Jack later.  “The other medications are pretty straightforward: Percocet for pain, as needed – you’ve got ten of those; and Reglan and Phenergan for nausea, also as needed.  Dr. Tooms went ahead and gave you enough pills to last you the whole two weeks, but there are refills ordered if you need them as well.”  Irina nodded, glad that she probably wouldn’t need refills – Jack could probably get her whatever she needed, but it would be better if he didn’t have to.  “Now, I am going to need to take all these back,” the nurse continued briskly.  “I’ll need to give them to the representative who comes to sign you out, but you’ll get them back when you get where you’re going.”  Damn.  Irina did hope that the “representative” was Jack.

The nurse had put the pill bottles in a bag, combined them with a sheaf of papers, and was stuffing the whole thing in a larger bag when the door opened and Jack entered, followed by four US Marshals.  Irina watched him, keeping her expression neutral; Jack barely glanced at her before going to the nurse and holding up his badge.  “I’m here to sign her out.”

The nurse checked his name against a paper she had, then nodded.  “Here are her medications and discharge forms.”  She handed the bag to Jack.  “I’ve already given her her instructions.  Did you bring clothes for her, or do I need to get her some scrubs to wear out?”

Jack shook his head.  “I have clothes for her.”  He turned to the Marshals.  “Gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the hall?”  He held up the small duffel bag he’d brought in as the Marshals obediently trooped out.

Irina had never had this nurse before, so she doubted the woman knew of Jack’s relationship to her, but she didn’t ask Jack to leave.  Irina supposed that must be part of the procedure of discharging a prisoner; if so, she was doubly glad that it was Jack who was signing her out.

The nurse helped Irina out of her hospital gown and into the clothing Jack had brought, a black shirt and pants that she recognized from her shopping excursion with Sydney months ago.  Simply changing clothes was enough to exhaust her, so Irina was quite glad to collapse into the wheelchair once she was dressed.  That done, the nurse retrieved her crutches and tucked them into the chair beside her.  “Those go with her,” she said to Jack.  “She can walk short distances with them, but she’ll need the chair for anything more than a few feet.”

Jack nodded.  “Thank you.  I’ll take it from here.”  The nurse gave him a nod and left the room.  Jack crouched beside the wheelchair and held out a pair of handcuffs; repressing a sigh, Irina held her hands out.  He snapped the cuffs around her wrists, then held out something to her; she took it and saw that it was a handcuff key.  Surprised, she smiled at him.  He returned the smile as she slipped the key into her pants pocket.  “Ready?” he asked.  She nodded, and he pushed the wheelchair out of the hospital room.

***

A few miles away, Andrei Shostakovich and Olivia Reed prepared for this evening’s operation.  They had only received word a few hours ago that Irina was to be transferred from hospital to prison, but of course they couldn’t let this opportunity pass them by.  Without much time to prepare, their mission plan had been hastily assembled; there would be a bit more bloodshed than Shostakovich would have liked, but that couldn’t be helped.  The only important thing was that he achieve his objective.  Tonight, Irina would be his again.  She would come to him in physical chains, but tonight he would begin the process of forging chains around her will, invisible chains that would give him absolute control over her mind.  And then she would use the Sphere, the way Rambaldi had meant for it to be used – and together they would rule the world.  He smiled and waited for Irina to be delivered into his hands.

*****

Chapter 173

Sydney and Nadia waited tensely in the darkness for the convoy carrying their mother.  The plan was for the two of them to bring the three vehicles to a halt – it seemed far too ambitious in theory, but thanks to their father’s planning they should not only manage it, but stop the convoy and get their mother out without killing any of the agents or marshals guarding her.

Set up all around them were automatic machine guns,  most loaded with blanks, controlled by remote.  A few, though, were loaded with real bullets, and it was these that would be activated first.  Using computers to control the weapons, Sydney and Nadia would shoot out the tires on the third vehicle, which held only guards.  Following procedure, the other two vehicles would continue; since it didn’t contain the prisoner, the third vehicle was expendable.  Once the other two trucks had traveled several hundred meters, the women would use the second set of loaded weapons to disable the tires on the second vehicle, which also didn’t hold their mother.  Only when the first truck was separated from the other two would they disable it as well.  As soon as any of the guards inside the vehicles showed signs of coming out, they would activate the guns loaded with blanks, which would keep them pinned down inside the trucks while Sydney and Nadia, dressed all in black with hoods covering their faces, went down to the road, opened the first truck with the code their father had given them, shot the two guards inside with tranq darts, and got Irina out.  Jack, in the cab of the first truck, would be in full sight of another CIA agent the entire time.

“Here they come,” Nadia said unnecessarily, for Sydney, watching another computer screen, could see the same view of the lookout camera they’d placed a quarter mile up the road.

Suddenly there was the distant sound of a gunshot, followed quickly by another, then dozens more.  The sisters stared at each other, eyes wide, then scrambled to their feet and sprinted toward the sound.

***

Irina heard the muffled sounds of gunfire through the truck’s armor, and then the vehicle lurched sharply, surprising her; Jack wasn’t playing around.  There were more gunshots, and then a sudden jolt as something slammed into the side of the truck.  The truck rolled, coming to rest upside down. Irina, who was both chained to the side of the truck by a waist chain and belted in with a harness passing over both shoulders, found herself to be unharmed, except for hanging upside down.  Her guards, who hadn’t been wearing any sort of safety belts, hadn’t been so lucky; one was unmoving, either unconscious or dead, while the other was moaning in pain, apparently with broken bones.

This wasn’t Jack’s plan; that was now obvious to Irina.  He wouldn’t be nearly this messy.  Her father, though – he wouldn’t care if he killed every US Marshal and CIA agent in the convoy, nor would he care if he injured Irina, just as long as she had a mind to brainwash and a hand to work the Sphere.  This was his work.

The injured guard was paying no attention whatsoever to Irina, so she wrestled the handcuff key from her pocket and unlocked the wrist cuffs.  She then undid her harness; supported by nothing but the waist chain and without the strength to hold herself up, she fell the length of the chain, jerking to a stop with her head only a couple of inches from the truck’s ceiling.  She twisted to get her feet under her, which took far more effort than she’d expended thus far.  Finally she was standing, and had to lean against the wall for several moments to catch her breath.  As she unlocked the waist chain with the same handcuff key, she looked over at the guard, sure that he must have noticed something, but luck was with her – he’d evidently fallen unconscious.

Once she’d recovered her equilibrium, she looked around for her crutches.  Spotting one on the other side of the truck, she staggered a few unsupported steps to collapse against the opposite wall before leaning down to pick it up.  Once she had one crutch under her, it was much easier to walk the next few feet to where the other one lay.  With both of them, she had no problem at all getting to one of the downed guards; she removed his sidearm and tucked it into the waistband of her pants.

The doors of the truck didn’t open from the inside; that was one thing Jack hadn’t been able to fix for her.  So Irina backed herself into the darkest corner, sat down to conserve her strength, and pulled out the gun.  She would still almost certainly lose the upcoming battle, she supposed, but at least she was putting up a fight.

*****

Chapter 174

Jack woke and pressed a hand against his pounding head, trying to figure out why everything seemed to look so strange.  He’d hit his head, he remembered, but had he hurt it so badly that it was skewing his vision?

No, he realized after a moment, the problem was that he was upside down, hanging in his seatbelt.  He looked over at the driver, who had been shot shortly after the gunfire erupted – Jack’s first clue that this wasn’t his planned attack.  The man had been gasping for air when Jack had fallen unconscious, but he was now silent, his eyes glazed over.

The truck shuddered: a small explosion coming from the back.  Irina.  Shit.  Jack braced himself in his seat and unbuckled his seat belt, then lowered himself and flipped over; although he tried to be careful, the movement aggravated his head injury and left him dizzy and once again disoriented.  He had no choice but to rest a moment while he got his bearings.

Jack heard gunfire from the back of the truck, which encouraged him; apparently at least one of the guards was still functional.   Finally, he felt that he could stand without falling over, so he checked his own weapon, opened the door of the truck, and rolled out.

Reaching the back, he saw two dead bodies on the ground, along with two live men under cover at the sides of the opening they’d created.  One of them leaned out to take a shot; before he could fire, he fell back with a bullet between his eyes.  Jack took care of the other assailant with a bullet to the back, then stepped forward.  “It’s Agent Bristow,” he called out.  “Any more hostiles inside?”

“No,” came the response – Irina’s voice.  Jack was surprised for only a brief moment, before realizing that it made sense; he wouldn’t have expected either of the guards to manage that head shot she’d just pulled off.  “The guards are down.”

Jack pulled a flashlight from his belt.  “Don’t shoot.  I’m coming in,” he said.  Making sure the light illuminated his face – she’d have recognized his voice, but he wasn’t taking any chances – he stepped into the opening.  Once he’d given Irina a chance to make a visual ID, he swung the flashlight around, catching the two guards – one clearly dead, the other perhaps only unconscious – before finding Irina in the corner, holding a gun at the ready, though not aimed.  “Are you all right?”

She nodded.  “That’s a nasty looking bump on your head.”  She started to get to her feet, awkwardly; he hurried over to help her.

“Concussion, I think.”  She stood, steady enough with one hand on the wall and the other on his arm, but he knew she couldn’t walk with any speed, even if she could manage the distance from the truck to safety.  He wasn’t the most steady on his feet at the moment, but still, there was only one real option.  “I’ll have to carry you.”

He could see that she didn’t like the idea, but she nodded, and gestured to the gun.  “I’ll shoot.”  Her marksmanship might well be better than his at the moment, so that was quite an acceptable solution.  He saw Irina glance down at the crutches and frown, but she knew as well as he did that they couldn’t afford to take them; they could get more later.  He turned the flashlight off and put it away, then lifted her and carried her from the truck.

They rounded the corner of the vehicle, keeping in the shadows, and almost ran into a figure hooded and clothed in black.  Irina raised her gun, and the words, “Don’t shoot!” emanated from the figure in a very familiar voice.  The hood was removed to reveal Nadia, eyes wide.

Irina lowered the gun, hands shaking.  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, fury barely masking fear.

Jack frowned at Nadia.  “You didn’t tell her you were coming?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Nadia said sheepishly.

Irina whipped her head around and glared at Jack.  “What were you thinking?  I thought you weren’t going to tell them!”

“We need to get out of here; we can discuss this later.”  Irina continued to glare at him, but gave him the tiniest of nods.  He looked past her to Nadia.  “Where’s Sydney?”  He felt Irina’s glare intensify at the news that Sydney, too, was involved.

Nadia pointed off the road, ahead of where the convoy had stopped.  “She had to stop running; she couldn’t breathe.  Her injury.  So she went for the car.”  Of course; Jack’s plan had been for the ambush to take place on this stretch of road, so his daughters must have heard the gunfire and come running.  Sydney wasn’t fully recovered from her lung injury yet, and sprinting hadn’t been in his plan.

“All right,” Jack said.  “Getting from here to the side of the road will be when we’re most exposed.”  All three of them were wearing all black, which would help, but their heads and hands would stand out.  He looked up at the sky, where there was only a sliver of moon, but even the starlight was enough to illuminate his hair.

“Here, Dad, you take this,” Nadia said, handing him her black hood.  He blinked.  “Mom and I can hide under our hair.  You can’t.”

He nodded and handed the mask to Irina, who slipped it over his head.  “Let’s go,” he said.

*****

Chapter 175

Irina sat tensely in Jack’s arms, scanning the perimeter in the darkness as he hurried toward the side of the road.  It was difficult, being a burden instead of a help, but she would do what she could by watching for assailants.  She wouldn’t mention how tired her trigger finger was, not while she could still get off a few more shots.

She caught a flash of movement, turned to see a man raising his gun.  She dropped him before he could fire, but the roar of the gun would bring others.  She felt Jack speed up.  They reached the edge of the road as she saw a pair of assailants come into view; she and Nadia each squeezed off a shot, and the men fell.

There was a moderate incline at the side of the road, and Jack stumbled and fell halfway up; Irina, unused to falling from this position, instinctively threw out a hand.  There was an audible crack as she landed on her right wrist, and she bit her lip to suppress a cry of pain.

Nadia scrambled back down to them.  “Are you all right?”

Jack nodded curtly as he lifted Irina again.  She debated whether to mention the injury and decided against it; Jack had no doubt already noticed her cradling her arm against her chest, and Nadia would only worry.  Besides, it wouldn’t affect the plan, which was to get out of here as fast as possible.  “Hand me the gun,” she said to Nadia, gesturing to where she’d dropped it; she could still shoot with her left hand, albeit with reduced accuracy.

Once she had the weapon, they started up the slope again, slower this time – Jack wasn’t risking another fall.  Finally, they reached the top.  But then they heard, “Stop!” Irina turned to see her father with a gun pointed at her.  But he wouldn’t shoot her, and Nadia was on the other side of her.  She was about to tell Jack to turn, to put her between himself and her father, when he did just that.  “Irina, I don’t want to have to hurt you…”

She fired her gun, aiming for the heart; unfortunately, she only hit his shoulder.  “The feeling isn’t mutual,” she said as he fell, staring at her in shock.  She would have loved to try another shot, but didn’t protest when Jack began moving again; his henchmen would no doubt arrive on the scene momentarily, and they didn’t need any more complications.

They ran for perhaps another two minutes before a vehicle drove up and screeched to a stop in front of them.  Irina was worried for a moment, until she saw the relief on Nadia’s face.  Then the passenger side door opened, and she could see Sydney illuminated inside.  Jack sat her in the front seat and shut the door, and then he and Nadia got into the back.

As Sydney pulled away, Irina reached across with her left hand and pulled her seat belt on.  Sydney glanced over and gave her an odd look.  “Is something wrong with your arm?”

“Broken,” Irina replied.  Now that the adrenaline rush was fading, it was starting to throb rather badly.

Sydney frowned.  “Any other injuries?”

There was no response from the back, so Irina replied, “Your father has a concussion.”

“I’m fine,” Jack protested.  “Considering the odds we were up against, I think we came out rather well.”

When no one said anything else for a moment, Irina closed her eyes and tried to wall off the pain, to no avail.  She looked back at Jack.  “I don’t suppose you happen to have my discharge materials from the hospital,” she said, not expecting that he would.

He raised his eyebrows.  “I do, actually.”  He took a black messenger bag from over his shoulder; he must have been carrying it throughout their escape.  “Do you need something?” he asked as he removed the plastic bag from the hospital.

“A Percocet,” she replied.

To her relief, Jack didn’t comment on her request, merely handed her the pill; at the same time, Nadia passed her a bottle of water, already uncapped.  As she swallowed the drug, Jack said, “There’s a doctor I can contact who can take a look at your arm, x-ray it at his office, but we can wait until we get to the safe house to call him.  Sydney and Nadia will need to get home so they’re there when the CIA calls to tell them what’s happened.”

“What about you, Dad?” Nadia asked.

“I’m going to have to disappear as well; there’s no way around that now,” Jack replied.  “The assumption will be that Shostakovich was behind the attack, and that he’s taken both of us.”  Irina couldn’t see Nadia’s face, but Sydney looked decidedly unhappy at that.  But Jack was right; he could probably avoid trouble with the CIA if he returned with Irina and said he’d removed her from the situation emergently, but that would mean sending her to prison, where her father would surely make another attempt to get her.

And while Irina felt for Jack, in a way she was relieved; she’d been worried at the prospect of going into hiding on her own, weak as she was, and it would be so much easier with Jack at her side.

*****

Chapter 176

Andrei Shostakovich hissed as the lidocaine went in.  “That burns!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the doctor said, “but it’s necessary.  As I said, I could still put you to sleep – even with the lidocaine, there will still be quite a bit of pain as I operate on this bullet wound.”

Shostakovich gritted his teeth.  “No.  I need to stay awake in case there’s any word.”

Olivia Reed, standing by the surgical table, looked at him with concern.  “Andrei, I really don’t think there will be any word.  Our men are looking, but they’ve lost the trail.  It looks like they made a clean getaway.”

He sighed.  “They might take her back to CIA custody.”  He doubted it, but it was the one hope he had left – for he was certain that the masked man had been Jack Bristow, and if Bristow chose to take Irina and disappear, Shostakovich didn’t have a chance of tracking her down.

“Even if they do, my contact won’t report it to me until morning,” Olivia said.  “You might as well let the doctor put you to sleep and do his surgery properly.”

“I can’t believe that bitch shot me.”

Olivia shrugged.  “Just goes to show she considers you a proper part of the family, from what I hear.”  He glared at her, but she merely smiled.

He turned to the doctor.  “All right, knock me out.”

***

Irina woke from a light doze when the car engine turned off.  Looking out, she saw that they were parked beside a building that looked oddly familiar, though she couldn’t identify it in the darkness.

She unbuckled her seat belt and waited as the others got out of the car; with only one arm to support her and an unknown condition of the ground, trying to stand on her own would be folly.  It was only a moment before Jack opened the door and lifted her once again.  

As he carried her around the back corner of the building, a light came on inside, and she gasped in surprise, recognizing the location easily now.  “Jack…”

He smiled.  “Welcome home.”

The house she and Elena had shared was indeed the closest she’d had to a home for the past twenty-five years, but…  “How did you find out about this place?”

“Property records search for ‘Elena Sokolov’,” Jack replied as he carried her into the kitchen and placed her in a chair.  Sydney and Nadia were by the freezer, apparently making up ice packs.  “It was done through the CIA, but after we got back from Sevogda I went in and erased all their records of this place.  I also changed the name on the original property tax records, so we should be unsearchable.  Although no one has any reason to look for us here anyway.”

Irina nodded.  The CIA would think her father had them, and her father had no idea this place existed.  “Are we staying here, then, or going somewhere else?”  Nadia came over and handed her a bag of ice, and she gave her a smile of thanks as she put it on her arm.

Sydney handed another bag of ice to Jack, who nodded in acknowledgement and held it to his head.  “I was planning to send you out of the country, but I hadn’t established a location yet.  Now that it’ll be both of us, it should be a little easier.  But we can discuss that later; we need to see about getting that arm taken care of.”  He stood, pulled out his cell phone, and stepped out of the room.

Irina turned to her daughters.  “Could one of you get something for me?”  They nodded.  “Inside the front door, there’s an umbrella stand.  There should be a cane in it – black, gilded at both ends.”  Sydney nodded and headed into the front hall.

She returned in a moment carrying the cane.  “Mom, this is gorgeous.”

Irina took it and fingered the delicate metalwork that covered the ends.  “It’s a family heirloom.  Belonged to my great-great-grandmother.  She was a lady in waiting and bodyguard to the Czarina – not the last one, the next to last one.  She was really quite agile; the cane was a disguise.”  Irina pressed the secret catch in the top and withdrew a well-balanced throwing knife, a ruby embedded in the hilt, and held it up for the girls to see.

“Wow,” Sydney whispered.

Irina didn’t want to risk jostling her arm while turning the cane, so she simply told them, “There’s an identical knife in the bottom.  Family legend has it that my ancestor originally had a very simple cane with bare bones knives – not even throwing knives – but after she saved the Czarina’s life with it, the Czarina presented her with this one.”  She slipped the knife back into place and closed the catch.

“That’s really cool,” Nadia said.

Irina smiled.  “It’s traditionally passed down to the eldest daughter, but Nadia, there’s plenty of weaponry for you to inherit as well.”

“Um, yeah,” Sydney said.  “We’ve seen the attic.”

“And the basement,” Nadia added.  “But let’s not talk about inheriting anything, okay?  Right now, you keep hold of that cane, though hopefully you won’t have to use it.”

“It is strong enough to actually use as a cane, isn’t it?” Sydney asked, looking worried.  “I mean, if it’s a fake cane…”

Irina shrugged.  “If it’s strong enough to bludgeon a man’s skull, it ought to support my weight.”

*****

Chapter 177

After the girls left in Sydney’s car, which had been left at the house prior to the evening’s activities, Jack took Irina back out to the car to take her to the doctor.  Dr. Michaels was in his seventies; he had been employed as a physician by SD-6 back when it was operating, but hadn’t known the organization’s true purpose.  When SD-6 had been brought down, he’d elected not to join the CIA, choosing instead to go into private practice.  He did, however, occasionally take a case that Jack brought to him, operating with complete discretion – in return for a hefty payment, of course.  But then, Jack would offer nothing less than a large sum for getting an old man who was now basically a civilian out of bed in the middle of the night.

When Jack arrived at the Urgent Care that the doctor had directed them to, the building was dark and the parking lot was empty.  Irina had dozed off, but she sat up when he turned off the engine; she looked around in confusion.  “Doesn’t look like he’s here yet,” Jack said.  “If you want to go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up when he gets here.”

Irina shrugged.  “It doesn’t matter.  It’s just the Percocet.”  Jack wasn’t so sure about that; she’d looked exhausted before she’d gotten the Percocet – before she’d broken her wrist, in fact.  She’d had far more activity tonight than she’d had in weeks.  But he didn’t say anything; as soon as they got her arm taken care of, he’d take her back to their temporary home, and then she’d have plenty of time to rest.  Tonight’s unexpected complications had had one positive outcome: Jack was quite glad for the opportunity to stay with Irina for a while without permanently severing his ties with the CIA.  He could, whenever he chose, “escape” from Shostakovich – during transit, he would say, so that he wouldn’t be expected to provide his supposed captor’s location – and return to his job.  Right now, though, Irina couldn’t take care of herself, and he’d been quite concerned about her ability to manage on her own even before her injury.  He had seen the clear relief on her face when he’d announced that he would be staying with her; his presence would help her recovery immensely.

They sat in silence for a moment, and he thought maybe she would drift off again, but then she said, “Why did you involve the girls tonight?”

“They involved themselves, actually,” Jack replied with a slight smile.  “They suspected that I had a plan to get you out, and threatened to do something on their own if I didn’t let them participate.”

“I see,” Irina said, but she still looked unhappy.  “I just wish I’d have known they were coming.  I could have killed Nadia tonight.”

Jack reached out and took her hand.  “But you didn’t.  She’s fine.”

“I know.”  She gave him a halfhearted smile.

A car pulled into the parking lot and stopped next to Jack’s vehicle.  “Looks like Dr. Michaels is here,” he said.  He got out of the car and went around to Irina’s side.

When he started to pick her up, though, she shook her head.  “Just help me up.  You must be getting tired; I can walk for a bit.”

She hardly weighed enough to tire him out, but he understood her desire to walk; he couldn’t imagine being dependent upon being carried.  So he helped her to her feet, but then, worried about her stability with only the single cane to support her instead of two crutches, he stayed right next to her, ready to grab her if she showed any sign of losing her balance.

“Evening, Jack.  Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Dr. Michaels said as they moved slowly toward the building, where he was unlocking the door; he seemed in good enough spirits considering it was now after 2 am.  He watched Irina walk for a moment, then said, “I’m treating a broken arm, correct?”

“Yes,” Jack said, and then grabbed Irina as she swayed dangerously to one side.  Once he got her straightened up again, he decided it might be wise to keep a steadying hand on her right upper arm.

“We know why I can’t walk,” Irina told the doctor as they finally reached the door of the clinic.  Then she added, with a disarming smile, “Well, we know what’s wrong with my arm, too, but we need some help fixing it.”

He nodded.  “That I can certainly help you with.  I do want to take some x-rays, see how bad it is.”

It turned out to be not very bad; though Irina’s wrist was indeed broken, it was a simple, clean fracture that should heal with no complications.  An hour later, her arm had been put in a temporary cast to the elbow, and they were on their way with instructions to return in a week – preferably during daylight hours.

They got back to the house at about 3:30.  “I am going to need to carry you inside,” Jack said, forestalling any expression of a desire to walk.  “I’ve got some warning systems set up to let me know if anyone comes near the house, and I don’t want you tripping any of them by accident.  I can show them to you tomorrow when it’s light, but for right now…”

She nodded.  “It’s easier if you just carry me.”  She frowned as he lifted her.  “The cat won’t set off your warning systems, will it?”

“No, there’s a weight minimum – at least 80 pounds.  I thought there would probably be small animals around, although I haven’t seen a cat.”

“Well, maybe she’s finally left.  We were always hoping she’d do that, find someone who would take care of her full time – she’s very affectionate when we’re here.”

So Irina and Elena had a pet, Jack mused as he took her in through the back door, which he noted had a small pet door in it.  He sat her down on a kitchen chair while he reset the security system.  As he would have expected in a house owned by Derevkos, the system did not call a security company if there was a breach; instead, it put the entire house into lock-down mode, with each room individually sealed off.  Codes were then required to move between rooms – a different code for each room – and the system wouldn’t be reset until the master code was entered in the attic.  Fortunately, Jack had managed to guess the correct code for the back door – Nadia’s birthday – when he and the girls had first come here, and they’d then found a book detailing the security system on one of the bookshelves in the living room.  “I’m impressed with the security system,” Jack said as he finished resetting the back door.

Irina shrugged and smiled.  “Paranoia at work.  I take it you already know never to come in through the front door.”

Jack nodded.  “We found the guidebook.  I’m guessing you didn’t have the neighbors over very often.”  The code for the front door could only be inputted from the inside, and if the door were opened without it, the security system would automatically be set off.

Irina chuckled.  “I don’t think the neighbors are entirely aware that there’s a house back here.  Which always suited us just fine.”

“Probably for the best,” Jack replied.  “Do you want to get ready for bed?”

“I’m a little hungry, actually.”

Jack was glad to hear that.  “What do you want?  I tried to get some of the same things you were eating at the hospital – we’ve got Popsicles, chicken soup, juice, Jello, ice cream, and Cream of Wheat.  I got some of those nutritional drinks, too – I know they’re not your favorite, but…”

“But I can use the calories,” Irina completed with a sigh.  “Do you have any strawberry?  The strawberry ones aren’t too bad.”  Jack nodded.  “I’ll have one of those, I suppose.”

“In a glass?” he asked with a slight grin.  She nodded, smiling back.

*****

Chapter 178

By the time Irina finished her drink, she was definitely feeling sleepy.  She put a hand on the cane to stand, but then thought better of it.  “I haven’t done stairs yet,” she said.  “I’m not sure I can make it all the way up tonight.”  Her legs were tired; just the walking she’d done into and out of the doctor’s office was far more than she’d managed so far.

Jack turned from depositing her glass in the sink.  “No need.”  She stood, and he came over and put a steadying hand on her right arm.  She wondered, as she began to walk alongside him, if he realized how incredibly helpful that was in aiding her balance.  He took her into the living room, and she smiled when she saw that the furniture had been pulled to the edges of the room to make space for a queen size bed.  “The mattress is an air mattress, but it’s quite comfortable,” Jack said as he led her over to sit on the edge of the bed.  Irina nodded, noting that the bed frame was cheap, and probably therefore light, but it served its purpose, elevating the mattress to a comfortable height.  She sat down as Jack continued, “You’ll still need to go upstairs to bathe, since there’s only a half bath down here, but this way you won’t have to worry about climbing the stairs if you want a nap.”

“Or late at night when I’m tired,” Irina added.  “Thank you, Jack.”  She started to pull off her shirt, more than ready to sleep now, but was stymied when she was unable to get the right sleeve of her shirt off over her cast.  The doctor had cut the sleeve to just above her elbow when he’d put the cast on, so the shirt was already ruined; with a shrug, she removed the knife from the top of the cane and slit the sleeve the rest of the way.

Jack blinked at her.  “Your cane has a knife in it?”

She smiled.  “Two.  Handy, aren’t they?”  She handed him the shirt.  “Could you throw that away for me?”

He took the shirt wordlessly and disappeared into the kitchen.  By the time he returned, Irina had gotten her bra, socks, and shoes off, and was working on her pants.  “I saw that you have clothes here, so I didn’t bring what I’ve got at my house, just in case anyone gets suspicious and checks,” he said.  She nodded absently, most of her attention still on trying to get her pants off with one hand.  “Do you have shirts that will fit over the cast?”

She got one leg free of the pants, then looked up and nodded.  “Tank tops, mostly, not much that’s appropriate for October, but then I don’t expect to be leaving the house much.”

“We should both stay put unless absolutely necessary, at least for the first few days.  The girls won’t visit right away, either, although they’ll call.”  Jack had been going through a dresser that was positioned at an odd angle in the only nook where it would fit; now he looked up with a frown.  “I can only find one nightgown in here, and it won’t fit over the cast.”

“I only had that for cold nights,” Irina replied.  She had succeeded in removing all her clothing; now she balled it up and tossed it at the laundry basket that sat on the couch.  It went in perfectly.  “Are you coming to bed now?” she asked as she slid between the sheets.

“I can sleep upstairs if you’d be more comfortable having the bed to yourself, with your arm and everything,” Jack replied.  

She glared at him.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He undressed down to undershirt and boxers – with far more speed than she’d managed – turned out the light, and got in bed with her.  Irina leaned into him with a sigh of contentment.  Finally – no cameras, no guards outside the door, no interfering nurses, what she’d been waiting for for months – and she was too tired to take advantage of the opportunity.  She turned her face to his and gave him a gentle kiss.  “I love you,” she whispered sleepily.

“Love you, too,” he replied.  Irina smiled as she drifted into sleep.

***

“Irina.”  Irina moaned and turned away from the sound, entirely uninterested in waking up.  “Irina, wake up.”  Her shoulder was shaken.

She still probably wouldn’t have given in if it weren’t for the ache in her arm, which further contributed to pull her out of sleep.  As it was, she sighed and opened her eyes to see Jack looking down at her.  “Jack?”  Sitting up, she saw that light was spilling through the gaps in the drapes; it must be morning, then.  But they hadn’t gone to sleep until after four.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but I was going through your papers from the hospital, and you were supposed to take your antibiotic at eight.  It’s after nine.”

“Oh.”  She blinked a few times, still not entirely awake.

“It says you’re supposed to take it with food.  What do you want?”  She shrugged.  “Is a nutritional drink all right, then?”

“That’s fine.”

“I can bring it if you don’t want to get out of bed.”

The thought was tempting, but she wanted to return to normal as much as possible, and that included not eating in bed.  “No, I’ll get up,” she said.  “Is my robe down here?”  Jack nodded, and helped her out of bed and into a bathrobe.

In the kitchen, surprising them both, a black cat sat on the table twitching its tail.  “Well, hello, Sasha,” Irina said as she sat down; the cat purred when she reached out to pet it.  “So you are still around after all.”

“Sasha, hmm?” Jack said as he got her drink and poured it into a glass.

“Elena named her.  She named every cat she ever had Sasha, male or female.”

“Charming.”  Jack placed the beverage in front of her, along with a pill.  “Do you need any anti-nausea medicine?”

“Not at the moment, but keep it handy,” Irina replied.  “I haven’t tried the pills, so I don’t know if they’ll be harder on my stomach.”  She nudged the cat off the table and took a sip of the strawberry shake.  “Would you mind to put out some food and water for her?  Her bowls and some cans of food are in the cabinet to the right of the sink.”

“Canned food?  So you and Elena pamper your pet,” Jack said with a slight grin as he got out the food.

Irina shrugged.  “We usually weren’t here long enough to go through a bag of food, so canned food just made more sense.”

“I see.”  Jack put out the food, and Irina watched as the cat attacked it eagerly.  She swallowed her pill as Jack sat down next to her, then took another sip of the drink.  “So if Elena named her, she must be pretty old.”

Irina calculated quickly.  “Elena found her as a kitten in the spring of 1989, so she’s about seventeen and a half.  Old for a cat, I suppose, especially one that lives outside most of the time.”

Jack seemed to consider for a moment.  “If you want to take her with you when we leave, we could do that.”

“Hmm.  Maybe…she’s lived here all her life, but then, she might like to be taken care of in her old age.  I’ll have to think about it.”

He smiled.  “Whatever you want.”

*****

Chapter 179

By the time Nadia finally got home, it was noon, and she was exhausted.  Chase had called her with news of the transport convoy’s ambush only a few minutes after she and Sydney had gotten home the night before, and they’d both gone into APO to aid in the search for clues.  Chase hadn’t tried to send Sydney home right away, but she had relegated her to only work that could be done sitting down, and had convinced her to go home about 9 am; Nadia, though, had spent the night and the morning at the scene of the attack.  She had searched diligently for clues to Shostakovich’s whereabouts; she really did want him found.  Even though it would cast suspicion when her parents weren’t found with him, it would make them safer at the same time, since she knew perfectly well the CIA wouldn’t be able to find her father.

Wearily, Nadia dragged herself up the stairs, digging in her bag for her keys – then stopped in front of her apartment door when she saw she didn’t need them.  The door gaped open; inside, she could see a mess.  Furniture was overturned, loose objects scattered: a struggle.  Nadia’s breath caught in her throat when she saw three drops of blood on the floor leading to the door.  She didn’t bother going inside to look for Sydney, knowing her sister was no longer there.  Instead, she dug in her purse for her cell phone.

***

As soon as Nadia told him what had happened, Jack immediately began an inner monologue of self-recrimination.  He should have predicted this, should have known that Shostakovich would make a grab for one of the girls.  He instructed Nadia to go to APO, where she was to have Marshall connect her cell phone to his computer and prepare to trace any calls she received.  Shostakovich didn’t know that Sydney had been involved last night, so hopefully he would contact Nadia and try to arrange a trade – it was the one chance they had of learning his location.  The worst possibility was that he would try to obtain their location from Sydney directly… Jack pushed the thought away.  He couldn’t deal with that right now; he had to stay focused.

After he got off the phone with Nadia, he went into the living room, where Irina had gone back to sleep after her breakfast.  As he approached the bed, though, she sat straight up and stared at him, her face as white as paper.  “He has Sydney.”

Jack stared at her incredulously.  “How did you know that?”

“He has the Sphere, too, and he’s fixed it.”  Jack’s stomach flipped over.  They’d been assuming he didn’t have the Sphere; it appeared to still be safe in DSR custody.  If he did have it, he’d really be desperate to get Irina.

She stood and wobbled her way over to the dresser; he stood staring at her for a second, until she turned her head and gave him a look of exasperation.  “Can you come give me a hand?  We have to go get our daughter.”

“We don’t know where she is.  I’m hoping Shostakovich will call Nadia and we can trace it…”

Irina shook her head impatiently.  “He’s going to drug Sydney for our location.  And I know exactly where he is.”

“How?”  As he said it, he knew the answer.  “The Sphere’s telling you or something, isn’t it?”

“I can feel it,” Irina corrected.  “Now give me a hand, will you?”

*****

Chapter 180

Sydney groaned as she opened her eyes, squinting against the bright light.  Her head hurt terribly, and she felt so strange – heavy, as if she were made of lead.

“Hello, Sydney,” said a voice, and she opened her eyes a bit further to see a white-haired man in front of her.  She knew him from somewhere, she ought to remember, but her brain was sluggish.  The man reached out and placed his hand on top of another hand that presumably belonged to her, since she could feel it dimly.  “Sydney, tell me where your mother is.”

She blinked.  That was how she knew him – he was connected to her mother somehow.  “My mother?”  Although the idea of moving any other body part seemed impossible, her mouth moved easily enough.

“Yes, Sydney, your mother.  Irina Derevko.  I need to know where she is.”

“But I can’t remember who you are.”

He smiled.  “I’m your grandfather, Sydney.  Your mother’s father.  Do you remember now?”

Yes, that was right.  Her mother’s father.  “Yes,” she said.  But there was something else about him that she needed to remember, something very important.

“So you see why I need to find your mother,” he continued.  “It’s a terrible thing for a parent to lose track of his child.  Won’t you tell me where she is?”

Sydney opened her mouth to tell him, but then thought that maybe she shouldn’t, not yet, not until she figured out what was bothering her about him.  She licked her lips instead.  “Can I have some water?”

He shook his head, looking at her sadly.  “I’m afraid not, Sydney.  Maybe in a little while.”

“Why not?”

“You’re sick, and you’ve had some medicine.  The medicine could upset your stomach if you have water.”

Had she been sick?  She couldn’t remember.  Then she did: medicine – drugs – brainwashing.  He was Andrei Shostakovich, and he was bad.  She opened her mouth to say so, but no, no, couldn’t tell him that.  “I’m thirsty, though,” she said instead.

He gave her a sad smile and stroked her hand.  “I’m sorry, Sydney, not just yet.  Soon you can have a nap, and then you can have some water when you wake up.  But first, Sydney, tell me where your mother is.”

She was about to say the address, but caught herself just in time.  Instead she said, “France.”

He smiled broadly.  “France?  And where in France, Sydney?”

She shook her head, only slightly because it was so heavy.  “I don’t know.  My father’s going to call and tell us later.”  She blinked and swallowed; she was tired, and her throat was dry.  “Can I have some water?”

But the man in front of her was scowling.  “No,” he practically growled.  “Go to sleep.”

***

Jack had managed to contact Nadia before she reached APO, and had directed her to his storage facility – of which Sydney didn’t know the location.  As they sped toward it, Irina sat in the car’s passenger seat, trying to get her mind off an endless cycle of worry.  She was well aware of how vulnerable they were, going into her father’s secure facility; her condition was a huge liability, and the only advantage they had was surprise.  And if her father got his hands on her…she couldn’t think about that.  But she had to go in with them, because she had to direct them using the extrasensory awareness provided by the Sphere.

The Sphere: she turned her thoughts to that instead.  If she could get to it, she was pretty sure she could fix her physical condition.  Assuming it could still heal – it had been fixed, but she could tell that it was different now.  For one thing, her awareness of it and ability to pick up what was going on around it seemed far stronger than it had been before.

Perhaps she could use that new ability to figure out what was going on with Sydney.  She closed her eyes and settled into a meditative trance, turned her attention to the Sphere, and at once became aware of exactly what was happening.

“In France?  And she doesn’t know where?” Olivia Reed was saying.  Irina frowned; apparently the woman had survived the blow Irina had dealt her in Marseilles back in May.

“That’s right,” Shostakovich replied.

“Are you sure she’s telling the truth?” the blond woman asked.

Shostakovich nodded.  “The drugs don’t work on occasion, but I’ve never had someone lie to me under their influence before.  Irina is headed to France with her husband, and they haven’t divulged their location to either of their daughters yet.  I’m certain of it.”  Irina smiled, glad that Sydney had managed to outsmart her grandfather; that was what came of being overconfident in his techniques.

“So what now?” Olivia asked.

“Now we go to plan B – convince Irina to trade herself for her daughter.  If she doesn’t agree promptly, I’ll give them a web address, on which I’ll start posting photographs of Sydney with parts chopped off.  I suspect she won’t lose more than a finger or two, perhaps an ear, before Irina gives in.”  His blonde partner in crime smiled approvingly.  “Now, where is Sydney’s cell phone?  I’m sure she has her father’s cell number in there.”

Irina came out of the trance abruptly.  “Jack, don’t answer any calls from Sydney’s cell phone,” she said.  He gave her a sharp look, but nodded.  Then, as nausea rose up in her, she added,  “And pull over, I’m going to be sick.”

*****

Chapter 181

Nadia paced impatiently at the location her father had directed her to – a self-storage facility, of all places.  She really hoped he would show up and tell her what was going on, what he was planning, soon.  First he’d told her to go to APO and use Marshall’s resources to trace calls made to her phone; only a few minutes later she’d been directed here instead.  Then, ten minutes ago, he’d called again and told her that she was absolutely under no circumstances to answer any calls from Sydney’s cell phone number – or, in fact, from any number other than her father’s.  Only a few minutes later her phone had indeed rung and showed Sydney’s number; she’d followed instructions and left the call unanswered, though it had been painful to do so.  The phone had rung again just moments ago, and again she’d ignored it.

Finally, a vehicle pulled up – the black SUV in which they’d made their escape from the ambush last night.  Nadia hurried up as her father got out of the car.  “Dad, what’s going on?  Why aren’t we answering calls from Sydney?”

“It’s not Sydney calling,” her father replied as he went toward the facility’s gate.

“But what if she escapes and needs our help?”

“If she escapes, she can get herself to APO.  But in the meantime, the calls are coming from Shostakovich.”  Nadia frowned at him, confused; he merely punched in the gate code and hauled it open.  This place was incredibly low tech – no attendant or automatic gate – which probably had something to do with why it was deserted.  “Get in the car.  Your mother can explain better than I can.”

Her mother was here?  That was certainly a surprise – but then, she supposed her father couldn’t have left her mother at the house, in case Shostakovich managed to induce Sydney to give away the location.  Nadia climbed into the back seat and gave her mother as much of a smile as she could manage, under the circumstances.  “Hi, Mom.”

Her mother gave her a small smile in return.  “Hello, sweetheart.”

Nadia’s phone rang again; Nadia got it out, despite knowing she couldn’t answer, and saw that it was again Sydney’s number.  “Why aren’t we answering calls from Sydney?”

“She’s not the one calling,” her mother replied.  “Shostakovich has her phone.  He wants to arrange a trade – me for her.”

Nadia can see how that was one possible conclusion for the phone calls, but there was no way they could be certain of that.  And even if it were true… “So why would it be such a bad thing to talk to him?  We could distract him, delay him…”

Her mother shook her head.  “As long as he hasn’t made contact yet, he won’t hurt Sydney.  As soon as he’s reached us, though, he’s going to give us a website and start posting pictures of Sydney, and he’s going to start hurting her.  Permanent damage.”  Irina shuddered.  “I would just agree to a trade immediately, but he’d suspect that.  So it’s better if we don’t allow him to make contact.”

“But Mom…you sound so sure about all of this.  I mean, it seems like a plausible hypothesis, but…”

“It’s not a hypothesis,” Irina replied, looking like she wished she were somewhere else.  “I know exactly what’s going on there.  You see, he’s fixed the Sphere, and he’s having his important conversations in front of it.”

“And you can listen to them?” Nadia asked incredulously.

Her mother nodded.  “I know it sounds crazy.  You don’t have to believe me.  Just don’t answer the phone.”

Her father, who had gotten into the car as they spoke and was now driving through the lanes between the storage buildings, glanced back.  “She is getting information from the Sphere.  She knew Shostakovich had your sister before I told her, and she knew I’d be getting a call from Sydney’s cell phone before it rang.”

Nadia blinked.  She remembered Sevogda, remembered the strange premonitions she and Sydney had had, and seeing the children over Elena’s body.  It was certainly possible, she supposed.  She nodded.  “Mom, do you know where Sydney is?”

Her mother gave her a small smile and nodded.  “We’re going to get her.”

***

Shostakovich paced his study, growing more and more furious.  Why weren’t they answering?  Surely Jack Bristow should be answering phone calls from his missing daughter, and Nadia from her missing sister.  Unless…shit.  They’d apparently known where his ambush would be last night, since Nadia had been there, and they must know now what his plan was regarding Sydney.  Which meant he must have a mole, and his study must be bugged – and they must know where he was.  He picked up the Sphere, then hurried to get Sydney.  He couldn’t trust anyone, not even Olivia Reed, so he would take his granddaughter out of here himself, and come up with another plan to find Irina.

*****

Chapter 182

Jack was getting the three of them set up with gear for their mission – nothing fancy, just Kevlar, basic comms, and plenty of weapons – when he saw Irina’s eyes unfocus in a way he’d seen a time or two before when her attention focused on the Sphere.  “He’s moving it,” she said, looking at him properly once again.

“The Sphere?” Jack asked.

She nodded.  “I might be able to get an idea of why.  Give me a moment.”  Ignoring the fact that her Kevlar vest was hanging off one shoulder, she sank down onto a rickety folding chair and closed her eyes.  Jack and Nadia exchanged worried glances as she sat motionless for nearly two full minutes.  Finally, though, she smiled as her eyes opened.  “Well, it seems our operation may be somewhat anticlimactic,” she said.  Her husband and daughter blinked at her in confusion.  “He thinks he’s got a mole, so he’s taken the Sphere and Sydney and left his heavily fortified, well guarded compound.  He’s on his own, and we can beat him to his destination.”

“Let’s go, then,” Jack said simply.  He helped Irina to her feet and helped her get the sleeve of her vest over her cast, then slipped the cast into its sling.  Beside the cast he tucked a small handgun; she already had a throwing knife slipped between the cast and her arm, and another in a wrist sheath on her left arm.  Those weapons, plus the two knives in her cane, would have to suffice; with the weight of the Kevlar, he hadn’t wanted to add more weight with weapons and risk keeping her from what little walking she was able to do.  Besides, once they got to the Sphere, that would be her weapon.

“So you read minds now?” Nadia asked as they made their way toward the car.  She seemed quite nonchalant about the idea; perhaps she, like Jack, had simply decided she might as well accept what was previously thought impossible rather than trying to rationalize what didn’t seem to have a logical explanation.

“Only if someone’s touching the Sphere, I think,” Irina replied.

Nadia raised her eyebrows.  “Remind me never to touch that thing.”  Jack had to agree with that sentiment; even though he’d made his peace with Irina, it didn’t mean he wanted her knowing his innermost thoughts.

But she merely chuckled dryly.  “Believe me, Nadia, I have no intention of reading anyone’s mind any more than is absolutely necessary.  It’s a decidedly unpleasant experience.  I can assure you, if you ever should happen to pick up the Sphere, you’ll be quite safe from me poking around in your head unless it’s essential for your safety or your sister’s.”

“Maybe it’s just Shostakovich’s mind that’s so unpleasant,” Jack pointed out as he helped Irina into the car.

She shook her head, then waited for him to get in on his side before saying, “It was very disorienting – made me dizzy, and rather nauseated.  And I really didn’t pick up much besides what I went in there to find out, which was where the Sphere was going and why.”

He frowned when she mentioned nausea.  “If you need to throw up again – “

She shook her head.  “I’ll be fine.  Just get us to Sydney.”

***

Andrei Shostakovich smiled as he reached his destination: an abandoned motel that had once belonged to one of his companies.  He wouldn’t remain here long, of course, but it would be safe for a few days, until he could make some contacts and arrange to get himself and his hostage out of the country – along with his prize, he thought as he reached over to pick up the Sphere.

Cradling it in one arm, he shoved his car keys into his pocket and made his way to the hotel office, where he grabbed the key to the nearest room.  He made his way there quickly, turned the key, and stepped inside – and promptly felt something hard crash down on his head.

***

“Where’s Sydney?” Jack demanded as soon as Shostakovich lay in an unconscious heap at his and Nadia’s feet.

“Trunk of his car,” Irina replied.  Jack headed out immediately.  “Jack,” she called after him, “do you want his keys?  They’re in his right pocket.”

“Of course,” he murmured, hurrying back.

As he dug through the pocket, Nadia mutely held out the Sphere to Irina, who sat in one of the motel room’s worn chairs.  She shook her head.  “Put it on the table.  I’ll pick it up when you two are gone.”  She couldn’t forget the hunger, the need to kill, that had engulfed her when she’d touched the Sphere before it had been broken; she was sure she could turn it toward her father at first, but what about when he was dead?  “Shut the door behind you, and wait for me to come out.”

Jack, who had seen her at her worst with the Sphere, nodded and drew Nadia toward the door.  “Just make sure you heal yourself before you come out.  We need you back at full strength.”  She nodded and watched as they left.

Leaning on her cane, she stood and hobbled toward the Sphere, glad the curtains were closed.  For the first time, no one would be watching the show – even her father wouldn’t be conscious for his own death.  It seemed fitting, somehow.  She took a deep breath, dropped the cane, and reached out for the Sphere.

*****

Chapter 183

Jack’s heart rate quickened when he opened the trunk to find Sydney lying limp, her hands bound behind her back.  She was breathing, though, he saw quickly; he felt her neck and was relieved to find a pulse.

“Is she all right?” Nadia asked, coming up beside him.

“Unconscious,” Jack replied.  He removed the cuffs quickly, then checked her over for injuries.  A few minor cuts and bruises – and a bandage on the inside of her elbow.  Irina said she’d been drugged, he remembered.  He shook her shoulder.  “Sydney?  Sydney, wake up.”

She opened one eye and squinted up at him.  “Dad?”  She licked her lips.  “I’m thirsty.”  He glanced at Nadia, who dashed for the SUV, where there were bottles of water.  “What’s going on?”  Her speech was slurred; she was still clearly under the influence of whatever drugs Shostakovich had used.

“You’ve been drugged,” Jack replied.  “Can you stand?”

She seemed to think about that for a moment, then shook her head.  “Too heavy.”

Jack wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but shrugged it off; Nadia was back with the water.  He supported Sydney in a sitting position, and Nadia levered a small sip of water into her mouth.  “Better?” he asked.  She nodded.

There was a loud creak, and they looked up to see Irina emerging from the motel room, still leaning on the cane; Jack could see the Sphere in her sling, resting atop her casted arm.  He lay Sydney back down in the trunk; she promptly slipped back into unconsciousness, and he and Nadia approached Irina with a certain wariness.  “Did you use it?” Jack asked.

She nodded.  “He’s dead,” she said, jerking her chin back toward the motel room.

“But you didn’t heal yourself.”  That was obvious enough; she still clearly needed the cane.

Irina shook her head.  “I’m going to heal Sydney.”

Jack frowned, confused.  “She’s fine.  Drugged, but that’ll wear off.”

“Not that.  Her lung injury.  She’s got permanent damage; she’ll never be able to run again, not without the Sphere.”

“And what about you, Irina?” Jack asked.  “Will you make a full recovery without the Sphere?”

“No,” Irina replied simply.  “I won’t get much better than I am right now.”

Nadia tilted her head.  “So…Sydney can’t run, you can barely walk, and you’re going to heal her instead of yourself?  Mom, that’s ridiculous.”

Irina leaned against the wall, already tiring.  She shook her head.  “This isn’t even enough energy to heal me.  Every muscle in my body is weakened; it would take another person’s energy added to this to fix it all.  But it is enough for Sydney.”

“For God’s sake, Irina, we’ll go to his compound and take out a couple of his business partners, all right?” Jack said, torn between severe annoyance and anger at the absurdity of all this.  “There’s enough energy out there for both of you.  But for right now, use what you’ve got to heal yourself as much as you can.  Nadia’s right, Sydney’s fine for now.”

Irina blinked and frowned, then looked at Nadia.  “It’s just…I haven’t had a chance to give much to either of you.”

“You will,” Nadia replied, smiling at her mother.  “But you’ve got to fix yourself up first.”

“All right,” Irina said.  “I’ll use this, but then we have to go after Olivia Reed.”

“Olivia Reed?” Jack said with a frown.  “I thought she was dead.”  Irina, though, wasn’t listening; her eyes were unfocused and she was touching the Sphere.

She stood like that for a moment, and then her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head and she slumped, dropping the Sphere and knocking over her cane, which had been leaning against the wall.  Jack caught her and lifted her as Nadia grabbed both Sphere and cane.  “I don’t think we should be going after anyone at the moment,” Nadia said.

“I agree,” Jack responded.  “Let’s get your mother and your sister back to the house.”  He began carrying Irina to the SUV.

“What about the body?” Nadia asked as she walked beside him.

Jack considered for a moment.  “Best to leave it here; we’ll go back in and make sure to wipe any prints before we leave.  I’m not sure what an investigation would make of his manner of death, anyway.”

He lay Irina in the back of the SUV, and then moved Sydney to lie next to her; Sydney half woke when he lifted her, but went back to sleep as soon as she was settled.  Jack hoped the drugs wouldn’t last much longer, and wondered if Irina would be able to tell them when she woke, since she seemed to be able to use the Sphere to gauge medical conditions.

As he and Nadia were wiping down prints on Shostakovich’s car and in the motel room, she asked, “So after Mom and Sydney wake up, we go to Shostakovich’s base and take care of his partner, and then what?  You and Mom go into hiding?”

“Possibly,” Jack replied.  “I’ll have to think about it a bit, but now that she has the Sphere, if we play our cards just right she may be able to get her pardon back if she turns it in to the CIA.  We’ll have to tread very carefully, though.”  Nadia nodded.  They finished wiping off any surface that one of them might have touched, then headed back to their vehicle.

*****

Chapter 184

Irina’s dreams were colorless and silent, the action stilted, like an old silent film.  Still, she knew full well what was happening; when what she saw was confusing, her guides, Elena’s Nadya and Dmitri, were there to whisper explanations in her ear.  She saw the women who had come before her, using the Sphere to heal – and, on occasion, to kill.  But never had they experienced the hunger, the need for blood, that Irina had felt when she’d first used the Sphere in Sevogda.  That had been Rambaldi’s doing; he hadn’t been able to use the Sphere, but he had tampered with it, dampening her psychic awareness of it and causing the bloodlust.  When her father had repaired it, though, he had truly repaired it without realizing it, restoring it to its original state.

Once the full history of the Sphere was made clear to her, Irina’s dreams shifted to more ominous ones.  She dreamt of a man she’d never seen before tying her to a stake and setting fire to it; just as the flames began to lick at her ankles, the scene shifted, and she was standing in a pool at the base of a waterfall.  The same man stood at the top; he opened a bag and poured out something black and ugly, and it blackened all the water.  The black water in the pool around her rose quickly, and she soon began to choke.

She sat up, gasping, and after a moment’s disorientation determined that she was in bed in the living room at Elena’s house.  She was alone in the room, but after only a moment Jack entered, looking concerned.  “Irina?  Are you all right?”

She nodded.  “Where’s Sydney?”

“Upstairs, still sleeping off the drugs.  How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she replied.  She got to her feet, and was quite pleased when she was able to balance easily – there had been enough energy in the Sphere to heal herself from the waist down, so walking would no longer be an issue.  “Hungry.”  She started toward the kitchen.

Jack came with her, the worried look reappearing on his face.  “Why did you pass out?”

“The Sphere’s different since it was fixed; it’ll take some getting used to,” Irina replied.  “I tried to pull energy too fast and overdid it.”  As they prepared some soup, she told him the rest of what she’d learned, about how she was now fully in control of the Sphere; she saw distinct relief in his eyes when he learned that.  “Where’s Nadia?” she asked as she sat down with the soup and began to sip it.

“Also upstairs, taking a nap; she hadn’t slept.”  He seemed to consider his next words for a moment, and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like them.  “We thought perhaps it would be best if we waited to go after Olivia Reed until tomorrow, or at least late tonight.”

He raised his eyebrows when she nodded without protest.  “That makes sense.  We should wait until Sydney’s recovered and Nadia’s had a chance to rest.”

***

Olivia Reed stalked through the compound, absolutely furious.  After all she’d done to get him out of prison, Shostakovich had taken the Sphere and Sydney Bristow and simply left.  He must have suspected that she was planning to make a move against him just as soon as he had Derevko in hand.  Well, she would still find a way to outsmart him, she told herself.  After all, she controlled the resources of the Covenant now, and his former loyal employee, Yegor, had appropriated the profits of all his other legitimate businesses; he had no resources.  He would turn up with the Sphere soon enough.  As for Derevko – well, the woman did have another daughter.  All she had to do was wait, give Derevko and Jack Bristow time to notify Nadia of their location, a day or two perhaps, and then she would pounce.

Her phone rang, and she frowned when she saw the number.  The Covenant had done one simple and quite profitable job for this man, but now he was making a nuisance of himself.  She sighed and answered the phone.  “Hello?”

“Mrs. Reed!  This is Senator Hiser!  So glad I could reach you.  How are you doing?”

“Just fine, Senator.”

“Wonderful, wonderful.  Things are going quite well here,” he continued, even though she hadn’t asked.  “I suspect my new bill will pass without any trouble, and it’s all thanks to your support.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Listen, if you’re going to be in the Washington area on Friday, I wonder if you might like to have dinner?  I have another business proposal for you.”

She suspected there was very little “business” he actually wanted to talk about.  “I’m terribly sorry, Senator, but I’m afraid I’ll be out of the country on Friday.”

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry to hear that.  Perhaps another time, then.”

“Perhaps.  Goodbye, Senator Hiser.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Reed.  I hope to see you soon.”

*****

Chapter 185

Sydney woke from a very deep sleep; she sat up and looked around, trying in vain to clear her head and figure out where she was.  Her surroundings were familiar – she’d been in this room before, but no more than once or twice, and she couldn’t quite place it.  She tried to remember what had happened, how she’d gotten here, and became aware that she was incredibly thirsty; any attempts to remember seemed to be blocked by her thirst.

She stood, noting that she was dressed in her own clothes but shoeless, and padded to the door.  She found it unlocked, so she eased it open and peered out.  A perfectly ordinary hallway greeted her, empty, with three closed doors and a stairway at the end nearest her.  Search for a bathroom up here, or try the stairs and hope for water down there?  There’d be a kitchen, surely; she went for the stairs.

Halfway down, one of the steps creaked loudly.  She froze and immediately heard brisk footsteps approaching; she was about to dart back up the stairs when a face came into view.  Her mother.  “Sydney?”  She looked up at her daughter quizzically.  “Are you all right?”

Something was decidedly not as it should be about this situation.  Was her mother an enemy?  Sydney cursed her inability to remember.  Best to play along, she decided.  She gave her mother a smile.  “Fine,” she replied.  “Just thirsty.”

“Well, come down and have something to drink, then,” her mother replied.

Sydney nodded and came the rest of the way down the stairs, noting as more of her mother came into view that her right arm hung in a sling from her shoulder.  That was good; it would give Sydney the advantage in a fight, if it came down to it.

Then her father came into the hallway, surprising Sydney.  “Dad?”

He looked at her oddly; her mother turned to him and said, “I think she’s still a little out of it.”  He nodded.

“Out of it?” Sydney asked, blinking at them.

“You were drugged,” her father said.  “Do you remember?”

She debated a moment whether to fake it or tell the truth, then shook her head.  “What’s going on?”

Her mother gave her a sympathetic smile.  “It’s all right.  Come in the kitchen and have some water; we’ll explain.”

Sydney felt relieved, comforted that her parents were taking care of her.  She nodded and followed them into the kitchen.

***

Half an hour later, once she’d drunk two large glasses of water and had everything explained to her, Sydney’s world was making much more sense.  She still had no memory of anything that had happened since she’d returned home from APO that morning, but the tale of her kidnapping and drugging seemed to ring true.  She was having a bit of trouble wrapping her brain around the suddenness of Shostakovich’s death, though.  She knew now what had struck her as odd about her mother, too: her mother had been walking without assistance.  The Sphere’s doing, she supposed; she could see it sitting on the kitchen counter alongside a collection of guns and knives, and wondered if they were planning to use it as a weapon in the coming attack on Olivia Reed.

Her parents were just finishing with the explanations when Nadia entered the kitchen.  She smiled at Sydney.  “Feeling better?”

“I guess so,” Sydney said with a shrug.  “Since I don’t remember how I felt before, I can’t say for sure.”

“Hmm.”  Nadia turned to their parents.  “We’re not doing anything else tonight, are we?”

Jack shook his head.  “We’ll wait until morning.”

“Good,” Nadia replied.  “I’m hungry.”

“I am, too, actually,” Sydney added, noting her hunger for the first time.

Their father stood.  “Well, let me see what I can make for dinner, then,” he said, giving them a small smile.

*****

Chapter 186

Irina walked toward the open doorway, smiling at the sunshine and green fields outside.  Just as she reached the threshold, though, a gate slammed down, shutting her in behind iron bars.  A man stepped into view on the other side of the bars: the same overweight, balding man who had appeared in her dreams last night.  He held up a key on a heavy iron ring and began to laugh.

The view shifted then, and she found herself lying in a hospital bed; when she tried to move, she found that her limbs were once again too heavy.  She turned her head and saw that there was a window in the wall; on the other side was a forest of IV stands, with bags of IV fluids hanging down.  The same man appeared with a handful of syringes, and began injecting the bags with something that made them turn black.  Irina shuddered, knowing what was coming.

She wasn’t at all surprised when the door opened a moment later and Olivia Reed entered, pushing an IV stand with one of the poisoned bags of fluid.  Irina tried to fight back, but to no avail; in short order the deadly liquid was flowing into her veins.

Irina sat up with a start, barely keeping back a scream.  A dream, she realized within a few seconds.  She drew several deep breaths and tried to calm her racing heart as she reoriented herself to reality.  The living room was dark; Jack remained asleep beside her.

After a moment’s thought, she got carefully out of bed, trying not to wake Jack.  She paused a moment when he grunted and rolled toward where she’d been, but then he settled again.  Because of the girls’ presence in the house, she’d worn a tank top and sweat pants to bed, so she didn’t bother with a robe, just made her way to the kitchen.

She turned on the light and got out the tea kettle.  As she was filling it with water, she noted the time on the kitchen clock: just shy of 3 am.  The thought came unbidden that it was almost 6 am in Washington.  Washington… the man who had invalidated her pardon was a senator, Jack had told her – and if her dreams were to be believed, the same man who had caused the sepsis epidemic, working with Olivia Reed.  She shook her head.  Silly – they were just dreams, her mind trying to fill in the gaps and creating conspiracies.  It was ridiculous to think that the sepsis epidemic had been targeted at her; if this senator were behind it, why would he poison all those people to get to her when he was already sending her to prison?

But she’d had too many dreams and visions that were more than just random firings of the neurons in her brain to simply dismiss this out of hand.  She’d have a few questions for Olivia Reed tomorrow, she decided.

The tea kettle began to whistle just as a floorboard creaked behind her; she whirled to see Nadia, wearing one of the old-fashioned nightgowns that Elena had favored.  “Sorry, Mom,” Nadia said, smiling sheepishly.  “Didn’t mean to startle you; I didn’t think anyone else would be up.”

“It’s all right,” Irina replied.  “Want some tea?”  Nadia nodded, and Irina got out a second mug and spooned some tea leaves into it, then poured boiling water into both mugs.  “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked as she worked on the tea.

Nadia shook her head.  “It was that nap I took; it’s got my schedule all screwed up now.”  She seemed to consider for a moment.  “Do you ever get used to it, all the changing schedules?”

Irina leaned against the counter.  “The body never really does, I suppose, but the mind does to some extent.  You can learn how to make yourself sleep when you have the chance – although more often you end up pushing yourself on not enough sleep.  There are other techniques that can help; I’ve found meditation to be very useful.  Once you’ve become proficient at it, half an hour of meditation can make you feel as rested as a night’s sleep.”

Nadia raised her eyebrows.  “Really?”  Irina nodded.  “If it’s that great, why sleep, then?  Why not just meditate all the time?”

Irina chuckled.  Examining the tea, she determined that it had seeped long enough, so she strained it as she spoke.  “It’s not quite the same as sleep.  It’s like reading the Cliffs Notes instead of the whole book; like the teacher, the body is able to tell.  It’s fine for a night or two, but the longest I’ve ever used it is four nights, and I was very glad to get a chance to sleep at the end.  Sugar?”  Nadia shook her head.

“It still sounds useful,” Nadia said as they carried their mugs to the table.

“Oh, it is,” Irina replied.  “I can teach you if you like.”

“I’d like that,” her daughter said with a smile.

By the time they’d finished the tea, Irina had started to explain the basics of auto-circadian meditation to Nadia, and they were both feeling ready to head back to bed.  They bid each other a second goodnight, and Irina headed back to the living room and climbed back in beside Jack, her concerns about the senator and Olivia Reed faded into the background.

*****

Chapter 187

At eight am, Jack pulled the SUV up a few blocks away from Olivia Reed’s compound, a block of previously abandoned buildings in the worst part of downtown Los Angeles.  He normally would have preferred a night assault, but Irina had advised waiting until morning instead, insisting that the area was lit with floodlights at night to drive away the neighborhood’s normal inhabitants.

She’d also taken care of the security system; an hour ago, she’d hacked in with the information she’d gotten from Shostakovich’s mind and set the system’s alarms to go off every five minutes.  By now they’d either shut the system down for diagnostics, turned the alarms off, or at the very least were ignoring them.  Jack turned to her to see that she was already accessing the system on a laptop.  She looked up with a smile.  “They’ve shut the alarms down.”

“Good.  Let’s go,” he replied, and the four of them got out of the car.  He and the girls immediately moved into position flanking Irina, who was carrying the Sphere; although she did have a gun, she’d most likely have to drop the Sphere to use it, and Jack doubted she’d do that.  The Sphere, although a very dangerous weapon, worked slowly, and the only reason she had it out at all was because she so badly needed to use it to obtain energy to heal herself and Sydney.

They made their way through the city streets into an alley, where Nadia quickly picked a lock on a nondescript door.  Although the outside of the building was just as run-down as everything else in the neighborhood, it was clear that the inside had been recently renovated.

Irina directed them to the left, but they had gone only a few feet when they heard footsteps.  They ducked into a side corridor and waited; a guard came into view a moment later.  Jack and Nadia fired simultaneously, taking out his gun hand and his knee.  He opened his mouth as if to call out, but then made a strangled sound before falling unconscious.  Jack glanced at Irina, who had her eyes closed and a slight smile on her face.  He turned his attention back to the corridor, making sure it remained empty, until Irina said, “All right.”  He turned to see that she had a slightly dazed look.  Gesturing with her chin toward the hallway they’d hidden in, she said, “The first door on the left is a storage closet.”  Jack nodded, and he and Nadia lifted the body and began to carry it toward the closet.  Behind him, he heard Irina say to Sydney, “Hold still.”

“Don’t pass out this time,” he called back, but there was no response.  He and Nadia shared a worried look; they stowed the body quickly and hurried back out.  They found both women still standing, though Irina was very pale and was leaning on Sydney.  “Are you all right?” he asked.  Irina pulled herself upright, swallowed, and nodded.  “Sydney?”

“I feel terrific,” his daughter replied.  She looked great, better than she had since she’d been shot.

“Let’s go,” Irina said.  Jack was still a bit concerned about her, but if she said she was ready, he knew better than to argue.

Over the next ten minutes, Irina directed them deeper into the building.  They met with no further guards, which suited Jack just fine.  Finally, Irina paused outside a door.  “Olivia Reed is in here,” she said.  “Don’t shoot her; I have some questions for her.”  Jack blinked, but nodded.  He prepared to charge into the room with guns drawn, but then Irina surprised him by simply opening the door and walking in as if she were expected.

By the time he got in, Olivia had a gun out and pointed at Irina, though her eyes were wide with fear.  Irina simply smiled.  “Mrs. Reed, put that down.  Don’t be an idiot,” she said calmly.  

To Jack’s surprise, Olivia lowered the gun.  “Where’s Andrei?”

“Dead.”  Olivia merely nodded; no doubt she’d assumed as much when she saw Irina with the Sphere.  Then Irina surprised Jack again.  “You were involved in the sepsis epidemic.  Who hired you?”  Jack glanced at the girls and saw that they were as confused as he was.

Olivia tilted her head.  “Why, Irina, whatever makes you think I was involved in that?”

Irina shifted the Sphere ever so slightly – only half an inch or so – but managed to make Olivia blanch slightly.  “I have sources that you can’t even dream of.  Who hired you?”

The blonde woman smiled nervously.  “Senator Jacob Hiser,” she said, and then her left hand came up from under the desk.  Jack caught a glimpse of something silver in her hand just before pain exploded in his neck and the world went black.

*****

Chapter 188

Nadia heard a gunshot, then saw her father fall, blood spurting from his neck.  She raised her gun and pointed it toward Olivia Reed, but hesitated when she saw that the woman’s eyes were staring and glazed over; she was already dead.  As the realization hit, there was a gunshot, and a neat bullet hole appeared in Olivia’s forehead.  She turned to see Sydney with gun raised, trembling.

Paying no more mind to the corpse, Nadia knelt down by her father and put a hand onto his neck, applying pressure even as she probed for the wound.  She was relieved to see him draw in a shaky breath, but she felt no breaks in the skin under her fingers – she wasn’t in the right spot.  Impatiently, she wiped away the blood, only to find intact skin from his jaw down to the top edge of his Kevlar vest.  Where the hell was the bullet wound?  She met the eyes of Sydney, who was now on their father’s other side; her sister appeared equally confused.

The door opened, and they both raised their weapons and pointed them in that direction, only to see half a dozen guards fall in a heap – from their wide open eyes, apparently dead, without a mark on them.  Nadia exchanged another glance with Sydney, then turned with some trepidation toward the only other person in the room, her mother.

She had to close her eyes and look away at first, as the Sphere was glowing too brightly to look at directly.  She put a hand over her eyes and turned back, eyes watering as she peered through the slits in her fingers, and saw with surprise that it wasn’t just the Sphere; light seemed to be emanating from her mother as well.  She turned back to Sydney.  “We have to get it away from her.”  Sydney nodded, and the sisters rose to their feet.

They approached their mother with caution, neither of them forgetting how, the last time they’d approached their mother with the Sphere, they’d ended up covered in lacerations for their trouble.  Sydney crossed behind Irina, who seemed entirely unaware of them, and prepared to grab her shoulders, while Nadia reached for the Sphere.  She pulled back when her hands got close to it, though; the Sphere was putting out so much heat that it was like reaching into an oven.  Sydney gave her a confused look.  “Too hot,” she hissed.

Sydney quickly pulled off her jacket and tossed it to Nadia, who wrapped her hands in it before moving in again.  “Ready?” Sydney asked, and Nadia nodded.  “All right…go!”  Sydney grabbed her mother’s shoulders as Nadia grabbed the Sphere, and they both pulled back.

The Sphere came loose from Irina’s hands with the same sort of shock wave that had occurred in Sevogda; it knocked all three of them to the ground.  The Sphere was still hot, so Nadia let it go; it rolled across the room and came to rest in a corner.  She sat up and turned to look at her mother, who blinked and murmured, “Oh,” before her eyes rolled up in her head and her eyelids fell closed.  She still appeared to be glowing, but as Nadia warily watched for a few seconds the glow faded and disappeared.

“Are you okay?” Sydney asked.

Nadia nodded.  “You?”

“Yeah.”

Nadia stood and went over to check on her father; Sydney was doing the same with their mother.  Jack seemed to be breathing fine, but was still unconscious.  That was a problem; they couldn’t carry both of their parents out.  Even if one of them could manage to carry Jack alone, it wouldn’t leave anyone with a gun hand free.  She shook her father’s shoulder.  “Dad?  Dad, wake up.”  There was no response.  She looked over at Sydney, who was having no better luck with their mother.  “Mom was out for hours yesterday, and that was just from healing herself, nothing like today’s display,” Nadia pointed out with regret.

Sydney sighed.  “I was afraid of that.  Mom’s hands are blistered pretty bad, too, but we can deal with that later.  Now we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to get them out of here.”  She considered for a moment.  “We could bring in Vaughn and Weiss.”  Nadia shook her head.  “They’ll keep it secret if we tell them to,” Sydney said with conviction.

“Oh, I’m sure they would,” Nadia replied.  “But bringing anyone else in makes all this just that much more dangerous.”  Sydney frowned, confused.  “That senator’s name that Olivia Reed gave Mom – he’s the same one that invalidated her pardon.”

Sydney exhaled in a rush.  “Right.  I’d forgotten all about that.”

“If he finds out that we were here, in contact with her – “  Nadia tilted her head toward Olivia’s body.  “Well, he’d probably do just about anything to protect the secret of his involvement in the sepsis epidemic.”

Her sister nodded.  “So bringing CIA agents here – even black ops agents who aren’t going to tell anyone what they’re doing – isn’t such a good idea.  Right.”  She sighed, and they both sat there deep in thought for a moment.  “Well, I came here unconscious,” Sydney said finally.  “Maybe there’s a stretcher or a wheelchair or something.  I’ll go look – maybe something will trigger my memory.  Keep trying to wake Dad up; I think Mom’s pretty much a lost cause.”  Nadia nodded and watched as her sister stepped over the tangle of bodies, gun out, and disappeared out the door.

*****

Chapter 189

Jack groaned as he came awake; his head was pounding.  And the bumps of the moving vehicle he was in weren’t helping.  “Dad?” he heard.  He sat up and saw that Nadia had spoken; he appeared to be in the back of the SUV, and she was looking over the back seat at him with concern.  Looking around further, he saw Irina lying beside him, also unconscious.  “How are you feeling?” Nadia asked.

‘Like he’d been thrown head first into a brick wall’ was the first answer that came to mind, but Jack said nothing as he searched his memory of what had happened.  “Didn’t I get shot?” he asked, feeling his neck for a bullet wound and not finding one.

“Yeah,” Nadia replied.  “Mom healed you.  She kind of overdid things, though.”

“That’s kind of an understatement,” came Sydney’s voice.  Jack sat up a little taller and peered over the seats to see Sydney in the driver’s seat, but the effort made his head hurt, so he slumped down again.

“I think she kind of lost control,” Nadia continued.  “Although she only killed the bad guys, and she didn’t hurt any of us.”

Jack looked over at Irina again.  She was breathing steadily, and her expression appeared peaceful enough.  He frowned, though, when he caught sight of her left palm and fingers, covered in angry red blisters.  The fingers of her right hand were similarly blistered where they emerged from the cast.  “What happened to her hands?”

“The Sphere burned her,” Nadia explained.  “It was hot when we took it away from her.”

Jack nodded.  He lifted her hand and was in the midst of examining it more closely when the vehicle came to a stop.  He looked out the window and saw that they were back at the safe house.  He opened the back of the SUV and stood, frowning when he found himself a bit dizzy.

Nadia came around the side of the vehicle, followed shortly by Sydney.  “Can you walk?” his elder daughter asked.

“I can,” Jack replied, “but I think it would be best if you two could get your mother inside.”  He didn’t quite trust himself to carry her through the booby traps while he was unsteady and she was dead weight.  His daughters nodded and lifted Irina between themselves, Nadia at her head and Sydney at her feet.  As Jack watched them start toward the house, he couldn’t help wondering – “How did you get us out of the building?” he asked.

“Found a stretcher,” Sydney replied.  Jack nodded, then hurried along behind them, passing them at a wide place in the safe path so that he could open the door.

Once Irina was settled in bed, he turned to his daughters.  “You two should get home.  You might have already been missed.”

They nodded.  “We can just say we were following our own leads; that’s probably what anyone who noticed our absence would think anyway,” Nadia said.  “It’s certainly in the family tradition.”  Jack gave her a small smile at that.

“Text message us when Mom wakes up, or if there’s any change, okay?” Sydney asked.  He gave her a nod.  “And what are you going to do about that senator and getting Mom a pardon?”

“I don’t know yet; we’ll talk about it when your mother wakes up.  We’ll keep you informed.”  Sydney acquiesced reluctantly, and she and Nadia headed out.

***

A few hours later, Eric Weiss placed a phone call.  “They’re back,” he said to Michael Vaughn.

“Are they all right?”

“They seem fine.  Said they were ‘working on their own leads’.”

“And what did they have to say about the mess in their apartment?” Vaughn asked.  Eric had gone over to the women’s apartment the night before and found it in disarray, as if a fight had occurred.  But although Sydney’s car was parked in its customary place, Nadia’s was gone.  He’d told Vaughn of the situation, and together they’d gone to Marshall, who had been able to tell them that both women’s cell phones had been used multiple times during the day – unlikely if they’d been kidnapped.  So the men hadn’t brought the resources of APO to bear, but they’d remained worried.

“They just said the place was a mess, wouldn’t let me in,” Weiss replied.  “They said their search didn’t pan out, but I think they’re hiding something.”

“We’ll have to keep an eye on them.”

“Definitely.  Something’s definitely up.  I mean, I don’t think they were kidnapped and brainwashed in a day, but you never know; Shostakovich is still out there.”

“Right.  Keep an eye on them tonight, and we can talk to Marshall in the morning.”

“Sure.  See you tomorrow, Mike.”

*****

Chapter 190

Jack watched as the clock ticked over to 8:30 and sighed.  It had been 36 hours since Irina had lost consciousness, and she still showed no signs of waking up.  Last night, when she still hadn’t woken after twelve hours, he’d taken her to Dr. Michaels; rather than explain the Sphere, he’d said that she’d simply collapsed.  The doctor had examined her and done blood tests, but had strongly recommended that Jack take her to a hospital so that she could have a CT scan done on her brain.  He’d called Jack this morning to tell him that the blood tests were normal and to reiterate the recommendation.

He sat down next to Irina’s still form and lay a hand on her shoulder, watching her chest rise and fall.  Her burned hands had been encased in bandages, so he didn’t touch those.  Dr. Michaels had started an IV line when Jack told him he wasn’t immediately taking Irina to the hospital; he’d still had hope then that she would wake up at any moment.  The IV fluids contained sugar, but the doctor had made it clear that it wasn’t any kind of long term solution for her nutrition.  He sighed, not knowing what to do.

His cell phone rang; he picked it up and saw that it was Sydney’s number.  Frowning, he answered, “Sydney.”

“And Nadia,” came the reply.  “We’re on speakerphone.”  He didn’t bother to ask if they’d taken precautions against listening devices; they knew well enough to do that.

“How’s Mom?” came Sydney’s voice.

“Unchanged,” Jack replied.

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, and then Nadia asked, “She’s not moving or anything?  Not waking up at all?”

“No.”

“Dad,” Sydney said, sounding distressed, “you need to take her to a doctor.”

“I did, last night.”

“What did he say?” Nadia asked.

“Her blood work was normal, and her exam showed that her brainstem is working.  He doesn’t know why she’s not waking up; he said she’d need imaging of her brain to know more.  That would have to be done in a hospital.”

“So take her to a hospital,” Sydney said insistently.  Jack hesitated a moment in replying, and she added, “Dad, if you’re worried about her getting caught, that would be better than her just never waking up.”

“Sydney’s right,” said Nadia.  “What if she gave herself a stroke or something?”

Jack sighed and considered for a long moment.  Finally he said, “If she’s still the same in the morning, I’ll take her then.”

“But Dad…” Sydney protested.

“If she has done some sort of damage,” he interrupted, “it doesn’t seem to be getting any worse – Dr. Michaels did give me some reflexes to check, and they’ve stayed the same.  And I doubt they would be able to do much to help her at the hospital; we’d be taking her to find out for ourselves, not to make her better.”

“But what makes you think she’ll be any better in the morning when she hasn’t changed in a day and a half?” asked Nadia.

“Because I’m going to give her the Sphere,” Jack said.  As he spoke, he went into the kitchen and retrieved it.

Sydney did not like that idea.  “Um, that’s what caused all the trouble in the first place, remember?”

“Well, it can hardly make things worse,” Nadia said.  “Might as well give it a try, I suppose.  If she did do something to her brain, maybe she can heal herself while she’s unconscious.”  

Jack returned to the living room and tucked the Sphere in with Irina, making sure it made contact with her skin.  “It seems like the best hope we’ve got.  Better than taking her to a hospital; once we turn her over to the doctors, they’ll hook her up to machines and leave her there for years,” he said.  “She wouldn’t want that.”

“All right,” Sydney said with some reluctance.  “Let us know tomorrow before you take her, okay?”

“Of course.”

“And call if anything happens tonight.  Even if it’s in the middle of the night,” Nadia said.

“I will,” Jack promised.  “Good night.”

“Night, Dad,” his daughters said in unison, and hung up.  Jack put the phone down and sat down beside Irina.  He had a feeling he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.

*****

Chapter 191

Jack woke, coming instantly to full alertness; he’d spent the last two nights as if he were in a crisis situation, never letting himself sleep deeply.  He looked over and felt a wave of joy when he saw that Irina’s eyes were open; she was half sitting up, supported on her left elbow, and looking around.  “Irina?”

She turned to look at him, and he instantly became just as worried as he’d been before, for there was terror in her eyes.  He didn’t fail to notice that she looked directly at him for only a moment, before shifting her gaze just a bit to his left.  She opened her mouth, seemed to struggle for a moment, and then closed it again.  The right side of her face seemed to be drooping.  “Irina, can you understand me?”  She looked at him, evidently confused.  “Blink your eyes twice if you can understand me.”  No response.  He held a hand out to the side and snapped his fingers, and she immediately looked in that direction.  So she could hear, then; she just couldn’t understand.  This wasn’t good at all.

With a grunt of effort, Irina pushed herself to a sitting position.  She lurched wildly for a few seconds before stabilizing in a rather uncomfortable-looking position, leaning to her left and rather hunched over.  She reached out her left hand to Jack and gave him a lopsided smile, though he could tell she was still just as concerned as he was.  Not knowing what else to do, he took her hand and returned the smile as best he could, at the same time putting his arm around her back to give her some support.

They stayed like that for several minutes, and then Irina took her hand back and pointed to her mouth.  He stared at her in confusion.  She sighed and pointed to her stomach.  Comprehension dawned.  “Oh!  You’re hungry?”

A look of exasperation appeared on her face, and she shrugged her left shoulder.  He gave her what he hoped was an apologetic expression; she could produce facial expressions well enough, so hopefully she could still read them.  He got up, walked around the bed, and helped her up.  Given the way her face was drooping, he wasn’t particularly surprised that she seemed unable to move her right leg.  Her right arm hung limp as well.  Her left leg, though, seemed perfectly fine, so with her cooperation he was able to get her into the kitchen without actually picking her up.

Rather than trying to go through an awkward pantomime to decide what she wanted to eat, he took her directly to the refrigerator and opened both the fridge and freezer doors.  After a moment’s contemplation, she pointed to a container of spaghetti that sat on the left side of the fridge, leftover from Jack’s dinner the night before.  He nodded, pulled it out, and helped her to the table.

He heated up the food and watched her eat for a moment, to make sure she wasn’t going to choke or anything.  She seemed fine, so he retrieved his cell phone and dialed Nadia’s number.  It was nearly one am, so he hoped she’d meant it when she’d said she wanted to be called.

“Dad?”  Nadia sounded fully alert when she answered.  “What’s going on?  Is Mom awake?”

“She’s awake,” he replied, not sure how to tell her the rest.

Nadia must have heard something in his voice, though.  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  I…”

“Hold on,” Nadia interrupted.  “I’m getting Sydney; she’ll want to hear this.”

Jack overheard, distantly, the sound of Nadia waking Sydney up and telling her that Irina was awake, and then Sydney’s voice came in clearly.  “Okay, Dad, we’re both here.  What’s wrong with Mom?”

There didn’t seem to be any way to soften the blow, so he delivered the news bluntly.  “It appears she’s had a stroke.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and then Nadia said, “How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad.  She can’t move her right side at all, there seems to be something going on with her vision…”

“She can’t see?” interjected Sydney.

“She can see, but she doesn’t seem to be focusing properly.  But the worst problem is that she can’t speak or understand anything I say.”

“Oh, God,” Nadia said softly.

“I believe her mind is working all right,” he continued, trying to be reassuring.  “She can communicate nonverbally just fine, and she seems to know what’s going on; the problem is apparently limited to words.”

“Still, that’s bad enough,” said Nadia with a sigh.

“Maybe the Sphere can still fix some of the damage.”  Sydney was trying to sound hopeful, but she wasn’t very successful.

“Maybe.  Your mother’s eating now, but I’ll give her the Sphere when she’s done.”

“Should we come over?” Nadia asked.

Jack looked over at Irina, who had been watching him curiously throughout the conversation; she looked tired, and it was probably best if she went to bed and got some real sleep rather than whatever unconscious state she’d been in.  Besides, while she would no doubt be happy to see the girls, a visit would be fairly fruitless without any meaningful way to communicate with her.  “No, I think she’ll be ready to go to bed soon.”

“We could come by in the morning before work,” Sydney suggested.

That would be all right, Jack supposed; that way their visit would be time-limited.  Besides, maybe she would be improved by then.  “All right.”  Then he had an idea.  “Would you like to talk to her?  Even though she won’t understand you, I’m sure she’d like to hear your voices.”  They both answered in the affirmative, so he approached Irina and held the phone out.

She raised her eyebrows, but took it; after listening a moment, she smiled.  She tried to speak for a few seconds, but then gave up and handed the phone back.  She then hugged herself and pointed at the phone.  Jack nodded and said to the girls, “She wants me to tell you she loves you.”

“Tell her we love her, too,” Nadia said.

“We’ll see you in the morning, about seven,” Sydney added.

“All right.  See you then.”  They said goodbye and hung up, and Jack pointed to the phone, hugged himself, and pointed to Irina.  She smiled and nodded.

He sat down next to her and looked at her plate.  She’d eated all of the spaghetti on the left half of the plate, but the right half looked untouched.  He frowned and looked up at her.  Evidently noting his interest in the plate, she pointed to her mouth.  He blinked, then after a moment’s thought turned the plate around so that the side with the food on it was on her left.  She looked at it in surprise for a moment, then picked up her fork and began to eat.  That was what was wrong with her vision, then: she couldn’t see things on the right side.  He sincerely hoped that some more time with the Sphere would fix things, because he wasn’t sure what Irina might do if she had to put up with all of this for very long.

*****

Chapter 192

Jack woke when his alarm went off at 6:30; he hadn’t wanted the girls to find them still in bed.  He silenced the alarm, then turned to look at Irina; she was sitting up with far more control than she’d had last night, yawning – and covering her mouth with her right hand.  She’d gone to bed with the Sphere last night, and clearly it had continued to work.  “Irina?”  She looked at him – directly at him, with none of that disconcerting looking to the side.  “Can you understand me?”  She nodded and smiled broadly; he returned it.  Then he asked,  “Can you talk?”

Her mouth worked for a moment, but nothing came out.  Finally she shook her head.  She pointed to her head – the gesture appearing rather cartoonish because of her bandaged hands – then held her hands widely apart.  Then she gestured to the Sphere, then held her hands close together and shook her head.  Jack watched closely and clarified, “So your brain is mostly healed, but there’s a small part that isn’t?”  She nodded.  “It must be the part that lets you speak, I suppose.”  Another nod.  “Will you be able to heal it?”  Irina looked as depressed as he’d ever seen her when she shrugged.

Deciding there was no point discussing this any further, Jack changed the subject.  “The girls will be here in about 25 minutes.  Since you’ve been unconscious for two days, I suppose you’d like to get cleaned up.”  She nodded, then started tugging at her bandaged hands.  “Can those come off?”  She gave him an affirmative nod, then pointed at the cast.  “That too?  We’d better go in the kitchen and get the scissors.”

They got up, and he was pleased to see that her right leg was functioning as well – it appeared everything was restored except for her ability to talk.  In the kitchen, he cut off the bandages and saw that her hands did indeed look perfectly fine underneath, then cut through the plaster around her arm and removed the cast as well.  When they were off, she surprised him by hunting around for a pen and paper, and for a moment he thought perhaps she would be able to write, but she didn’t seem to be able to produce words by that method either.

After that, they headed upstairs to the shower.  With only 15 minutes left before their daughters were due to arrive, Jack decided that it made the most sense for them to take a quick shower together, and Irina agreed.  As soon as they were under the spray, though, she trapped him against the wall, kissing and touching him in a way that left him no doubt that her mind was on matters other than cleanliness.  He pulled his mouth away long enough to groan out, “Irina, we won’t make it downstairs before Sydney and Nadia get here.”  She shrugged and kissed him again.  By this time, his body was firmly on her side, so he gave in to the inevitable.

A little more than fifteen minutes later, they were on to the actual “washing” part of the shower when there was a loud knock at the door, followed by Sydney’s voice.  “Dad?  Mom?  Are you in there?”

“Yes, Sydney, we’re in here,” Jack replied.  “We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Everything okay?”

“Just fine, sweetheart,” he replied.  Irina chuckled and nibbled his ear.  He was tempted to playfully swat her ass in retribution, but refrained as he knew that would only make it take them even longer to get downstairs – he wasn’t ready for more yet, but that didn’t mean Irina wasn’t.

Five minutes later, they made it into the kitchen, where Nadia and Sydney sat at the table, looking somewhat impatient; in the center of the table were a stack of carry-out containers.  “Morning,” Nadia said brightly.  “We brought breakfast.  Hope you haven’t eaten yet.”

“We haven’t,” Jack replied.  “Sorry we took so long; you could have started without us.”  They shrugged, but wasted no time in grabbing containers of food.

“So, Mom, it looks like you’re doing better,” Sydney said, glancing at Jack as she spoke, apparently unsure if Irina could understand her.  But she relaxed when Irina smiled and nodded before moving to the table to select her own food.

 “She still can’t speak, but otherwise she seems completely recovered.”  He sat down and took the last container.

“That’s really good news, Mom,” Nadia said.  Irina nodded.  “Hopefully the speech will come back soon, too.”  Irina seemed unsure how to respond to that, but after a beat decided on a simple nod.

The rest of the meal was a bit awkward, as Sydney and Nadia tried to fill the silence with small talk.  Irina took full advantage of her inability to participate in the conversation to eat her pancakes with obvious enjoyment.  Jack smiled as he watched her; sex always made her hungry.

Once everyone was done eating, they bid the girls goodbye, Jack with words and Irina with hugs and waves.  When they were gone, Irina picked up the pen and paper she’d abandoned earlier.  She drew a long, thin structure with a point at one end; Jack frowned at her.  She sighed and next drew a dome; still, Jack was confused.  Finally, her third drawing of a pentagon allowed him to put it together.  “Washington,” he said, and she nodded.  “Senator Hiser.  We need to deal with him.  I haven’t figured out what the best thing to do about him is.”

She made her thumb and forefinger into a gun and pointed it at her temple; that, at least, he could read quite clearly.  He’d considered assassination, and had been leaning toward it already.  With Olivia Reed dead, they didn’t have enough evidence to expose him, or blackmail him into resigning, and he was too powerful to come at from any other direction.  And no matter what his reasons, orchestrating the sepsis epidemic was not the work of a man who was working toward anyone’s common good.  “All right,” he said, nodding.  “But do you want to wait a few days, see if you recover your speech?”

Moving so quickly she was almost a blur, Irina reached past Jack, grabbed a knife from the knife block, and threw it across the kitchen.  It embedded itself into the wall; when Jack went to retrieve it, he found that it had speared a fly that had been buzzing around the room annoying everyone throughout breakfast.  Her meaning was clear: she didn’t need speech to kill.  “All right,” he said, returning to her side with the knife.  “I’ll make the plane reservations.”

*****

Chapter 193

Irina sighed with relief as she and Jack entered their hotel room, setting her suitcase down and moving to lie down on the bed.  She hadn’t anticipated that her inability to speak would cause so many difficulties, even with Jack there to do the talking.  But everyone – the check-in agent, the security screeners, the gate agents, the flight attendants, the woman sitting next to them – had all seemed to pick up on the fact that she wasn’t talking.  Some had seemed annoyed, some worried, and one – the woman sitting next to Jack on the plane – had actually acted annoyed at him, as if she thought he wasn’t allowing his wife to talk.

Jack sat down on the edge of the bed, and she looked up at him.  “Do you want to take a nap?” he asked, and she nodded.  They’d managed to get a 10 am flight, but with the time difference it was 7 pm here; still, they wouldn’t want to make their move for several more hours.  Since it was Friday night and people would be up later, they would wait until at least midnight to approach the senator’s home.  “That sounds like a pretty good idea, actually,” he said, and lay down beside her.  She gave him a smile; he probably hadn’t slept well the last couple of nights, since she’d been unconscious.

When Jack had been shot, she’d gotten scared; she’d pulled energy from Olivia Reed and funneled it into healing Jack at a rate far faster than she’d channeled before.  Once Jack had been healed, she’d been trying to slow the energy when the guards had entered; without thinking, she’d killed them, and their energy had added to the energy already moving far too fast in the Sphere and looking for an outlet.  Now that the Sphere was fixed, it could hold immense amounts of energy, but controlling it was more than she could handle; she’d caused a blood vessel to burst in her brain.  She hadn’t been aware of that at the time, as she’d been too busy trying to keep the Sphere’s energy from striking out wildly and hurting Sydney and Nadia.  Only when they’d pulled it away from her had she become aware of her incredible headache.

When she’d woken up last night, the energy in the Sphere was still there, but it had stilled, for without her there was no way for it to get out.  She’d been drawing from that energy, even unconscious; without it, she’d never have woken up.  Using the Sphere, she’d found that there was still quite a bit of blood in her brain, most of it on the left side.  Drawing on the energy in the Sphere slowly, she’d set it to clear out the blood while she slept and heal the damaged brain.  And the Sphere had done its work, except for that one small spot near the center of the left side of her brain.  That was right where the blood vessel had burst, and it was the worst damaged; she didn’t know if even the Sphere could fix it.

Well, it was worth a try.  She got up, opened her suitcase, and removed the Sphere.  She and Jack hadn’t been sure whether to bring it, but she’d pointed out – using pantomime – that if she used it to kill the senator, she could make it look just like a heart attack.  Jack had reluctantly agreed, as long as she promised to be careful.  She had made that promise easily; she had no intention of ever using anything more than the most delicate touch with this thing again.  Laying down with the Sphere, she noted that Jack was watching her.  She smiled at him; he returned it, though he still looked concerned.  She leaned into him and closed her eyes.

***

“Senator Hiser, wake up.”  

The voice penetrated Hiser’s sleep, and he moaned and opened his eyes – to find Jack Bristow looming over him.  He shouted and tried to get up, but found that he couldn’t move.  He stared wildly at the invader.  “What…what do you want?”

“I don’t believe you’ve met my wife,” Bristow said mildly, gesturing to Hiser’s left.  The senator turned to see Irina Derevko perched on the bed next to him, holding some sort of ball of metal that was touching his hand.  Derevko smiled, and it chilled him to the bone.

He tried once again to struggle, but couldn’t move anything below his neck.  “What have you done to me?  You can’t do this!  I’ll see you get the death penalty!” he said to Derevko, then turned to Bristow and said, “And I’ll have you put away for life!”

Bristow raised his eyebrows.  “Now, Senator, I’m only doing my job as a CIA agent.  Irina and I have found the man responsible for poisoning thousands of sick people in their hospital beds, and we’re here to make sure he isn’t a threat anymore.”

Hiser felt the blood drain from his face.  How could they know about the sepsis epidemic?  No one knew about that.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quickly.

“Nonsense,” Bristow replied.  “Why did you do it?  Was it just to get to Irina?  Seems a rather extreme method of dealing with one person, particularly since, as you can see, she’s doing just fine.”  Hiser looked back over at Derevko, who looked at him impassively, then turned to Bristow.  Though she said nothing, Bristow seemed to get her meaning.  “Irina seems to think it’s time for your life to be over, Senator.”

Summoning what bravado he could, Hiser said, “You can’t kill me; you don’t dare.  There’ll be an investigation, and you’ll be caught.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bristow replied.  “We’re professionals.  Not only will we not be caught, but once you’re dead, Irina’s going to hand over that ball of metal you see down there and get a full pardon.  Funny how life works sometimes, isn’t it?”  He glanced over at Derevko and gave her a small nod.

Suddenly Hiser felt an incredible weight on his chest, and a pain running down his left arm.  What the hell?  All this, and they weren’t even going to have to kill him – he was going to die of a heart attack?  He gasped, and suddenly he could move.  He tried to get up, to get to the phone, but only ended up falling sideways out of bed.  The last thing he saw before everything went black was Bristow and Derevko, arms around each other, watching him die.

*****

Chapter 194

Three days after they’d killed Senator Hiser, Irina stood in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup and humming.  She could tell by using the Sphere that the damaged area in her brain was slowly getting better, bit by bit, but this was the first external evidence she’d had that the healing was working – until today she hadn’t been able to make a sound.  It was still slow going; it seemed to take a lot of energy to heal damaged brain.  She supposed she should consider herself lucky that the rest of her brain had been fine once she cleared the blood out, or only slightly damaged, or recovery could take years.  As it was, it could be a month or more if she was able to repair all the damage, and she still wasn’t entirely sure that she could.  She wished she could do it faster, but she didn’t dare risk pulling any more than a trickle of energy from the Sphere, not with the huge amount of energy it still contained.  And she didn’t know of any way to empty out the energy other than by healing.

Jack entered the kitchen and came over to give her a kiss.  “Almost ready?” he asked, and she nodded.  At least he was here, the person with whom she could communicate without words better than anyone else.  And the fact that she couldn’t talk meant that tough discussions were impossible, so aside from the inevitable frustrations when she couldn’t communicate something specific, the past few days had actually been quite pleasant.

Jack sat down at the table and yawned, and Irina frowned, wondering if perhaps she was tiring him out.  Constant use of the Sphere was having a rather surprising side effect: it was driving her libido to new heights.  She and Jack hadn’t spent this much time in bed since their honeymoon.  He certainly seemed to be enjoying it, but he wasn’t twenty-two years old anymore.  Perhaps she should try to back off, or at least find ways to save him some energy.

She was ladling hot soup into a bowl when an alarm went off, making her jump and spill the soup down her front.  “Shit!”, she exclaimed, then stood there in shock for a moment when she realized what she’d just said.  Then more immediate concerns kicked in, and she opened a nearby drawer, pulled out two guns, and handed one to Jack.  The fact that she’d spoken could wait; they had intruders.

***

Vaughn and Weiss sat in tense silence as they approached the address Marshall had given them.  Their attempts to keep tabs on Sydney and Nadia had initially met with failure; their apartment was saturated with anti-eavesdropping devices, most likely courtesy of Jack Bristow, and attempts to track their movements had failed after only two days, when Weiss had gotten up at 6:30 am to discover them already gone.  After that, they’d asked Marshall for tracking devices to put on the sisters’ cars.  Yesterday their efforts had born fruit: Nadia and Sydney had gone together to a residential address on the outskirts of the city about lunchtime, where they’d stayed for about an hour.  Marshall had recognized the address as a property belonging to Elena Derevko, although it was mysteriously no longer in the CIA computer.  Vaughn and Weiss were headed there now, not knowing what they might find – perhaps it was sitting empty, and the sisters had gone simply to clean it out or inventory its contents or some such, or perhaps it was something more sinister, like the lair of Andrei Shostakovich – he’d held Elena prisoner, so maybe he knew about this place.

“So who do you think this place belongs to, now that Elena’s dead?” asked Weiss to break the silence.

Vaughn shrugged.  “I suppose one of her sisters.  Either Irina or Katya.”

“But Katya’s in prison, and Irina’s supposed to be in prison – can they inherit property?”

“Don’t see why not.  It wasn’t obtained illegally or anything.  But maybe Irina inherited it, and gave it to Sydney or Nadia.”  Weiss nodded, and they fell silent once again.  “There it is,” Vaughn said finally, driving past the address Marshall had given them.  He drove another block before parking the car; the two men got out and doubled back.

No building was visible from the road, and the driveway was lined with woods – a sharp contrast to the rest of the neighborhood, which was a fairly typical cul-de-sac.  They made their way through the woods, following the driveway, for at least half a mile, and Weiss was beginning to wish he’d worn his hiking boots by the time the house came in sight.  He sighed at the sight of the black SUV parked in the driveway.  “Looks like the place isn’t empty,” he whispered.

“Maybe,” Vaughn whispered back.  “I don’t see many signs of life.  This place certainly doesn’t look like the headquarters of a criminal mastermind.”  That was true; there were no guards, no security at all that he could see.  The house was quite small, considering that Shostakovich’s previous two headquarters had been enormous.  

But the windows…every single one was covered by either curtains or shutters.  “The windows,” Weiss pointed out.  “That’s not normal.”

Vaughn studied the house for a moment.  “Well,” he said finally, “let’s go check it out.”

“Back door?”  Weiss suggested, and Vaughn nodded.  They circled around the woods to the back, approached the house through the yard, and began to pick the lock.

***

In the attic, Jack and Irina tensely watched the security cameras trained on the front and back doors.  Jack was mentally kicking himself – just today, he’d gone to the store and purchased equipment to set up cameras outside, but he’d been planning to actually work on it tomorrow.  If Irina hadn’t been keeping him so busy…but then, they’d thought the threat was over.

The back door opened slowly, and then Michael Vaughn entered, followed by Eric Weiss.  Jack stared at the screen in shock.  “Dear God,” he said.  “What the hell are they doing here?”  A quick glance at Irina showed that she was just as surprised as he was.

He was glad that the camera had audio when Weiss said, “Look, soup.”  He went over to the stove.  “Still warm.  Somebody’s here.”

“And they know we’re here,” Vaughn said, pointing to the spilled soup on the floor.

Weiss looked around the room, but froze when he glanced back at the door.  “Uh, Mike?”  Vaughn turned.  “Security system.  And given that this house belongs to a Derevko, I don’t think I want to know what happens when the timer runs out.”

“Shit.  Ok, what code would Elena Derevko use?”

“Um, how about we run for our lives instead?”

Still watching, growing less concerned and more amused by the moment, Jack turned to Irina.  “Mr. Weiss has his moments of intelligence, don’t you think?”  Irina nodded with a grin.

“They know we’re here already.  Marshall knows we’re here, so we won’t just disappear.  I for one want to know just what the hell is going on.”  Vaughn pulled out a cell phone.  “I’m calling Sydney.  She should know the code, too, since she was here.”

Weiss stepped toward the door.  “You’re crazy, dude.  I’m leaving.”

“The backyard could be a minefield; we might have just missed them on the way in,” Vaughn said warningly.

Weiss sighed heavily.  “Fine.  But if we die, you owe me big in hell, buddy.”

“Sure.”  Vaughn dialed his phone.  “Sydney?  Hi.  Listen, I have a confession.  The other night, when you and Nadia didn’t come home, Weiss and I were worried, so we’ve sort of been following you.”  Jack could only imagine Sydney’s reply, but it was loud enough to cause Vaughn to hold the phone away from his ear.  “Yeah, we’re really sorry,” he said when she was finished, “but now we’re at Elena’s house, and we need the code for the security system before it unleashes some sort of hell on us.”  There was evidently more shouting from Sydney’s end.  “Please?  You can’t kill us yourselves if we’re dead already.”  Another pause, and then Vaughn turned to Weiss.  “She said she has to discuss it with Nadia.”

But there had already been too much discussion; as Vaughn waited for an answer, the security system timed out, and gates slammed down in every doorway in the house.  Then Jack’s phone rang; he wasn’t the least surprised to see Nadia’s number.  “Hello, Nadia,” he said.

“Dad, Vaughn and Weiss are there,” she said.

“Yes, we know.  We’re watching them on Bad Spy TV,” he deadpanned.  Irina laughed.

“Oh my God,” Nadia said.  “Sydney, Dad made a joke.”

“Yeah, he’s been known to do that on occasion,” Sydney replied.  “Anyway, has the security system activated yet?”

“Yes, it has,” Jack replied.

“Well, we can come get them and tell them we were just there going through things.  And rest assured, we will make them pay for this.  Flowers, chocolate, and fine dining for months.  And jewelry.  This is definitely a jewelry sin.”

“Or weaponry,” Nadia chimed in.  “Probably even jewelry and weapons.”

“Ooh, jewel-encrusted weapons…”

“While I’m glad you see the opportunity for profit from this,” Jack interrupted, “they unfortunately already know someone’s here.  It’s probably best if I go talk to them; I can convince them to stay quiet, and then I’ll send them home.  You can do whatever you want with them after that.”

“All right,” Sydney said, sounding happy enough with the plan.

Nadia sounded less pleased.  “You two are probably going to have to move, aren’t you?”

Jack looked at Irina and saw the agreement there.  “I’m afraid so.  But as we discussed yesterday, it’s only for a few weeks, until your mother doesn’t need the Sphere anymore and can turn it in and get a pardon.”

“When will you leave?” Sydney asked.

“Tonight,” Jack replied.  They couldn’t afford to stay now that people outside the family knew their whereabouts; it was simply too risky.  If Weiss and Vaughn did turn them in, or even let something slip, and a CIA team raided the place and captured them, all hope of a pardon for Irina would be lost, and Jack would go to prison as well.  If a CIA raid found nothing, though, that was an entirely different matter.  “We’ll let you know where we are as soon as we’re settled, but we’ll have to leave the country.”

“Well, it’s probably safer if we’re not dropping by to see you all the time, anyway,” Nadia said, sounding resigned.

“Yeah,” Sydney added.  “I suppose I’d better get back on with Vaughn.  I’ll just tell him that we’re really mad at them and we’ll see them later, and then you can go deal with them, ok?”

“That sounds fine.”

“Bye,” the girls said in unison.

“Goodbye,” Jack said, and hung up the phone.

A moment later, Vaughn said to Weiss, “She said they were pissed and they’d deal with us later, and then she hung up on me!”

“What about whoever’s here?  What are they going to do to us?” Weiss asked nervously.

“She didn’t give me a chance to ask,” Vaughn replied.

Jack sighed.  “Well, I suppose I’d better go take care of them.  Do you want to go get changed, or stay here and watch?”  Irina pointed at the screen.  He nodded.  “I don’t suppose you want to open the gates for me, then, so I don’t have to remember the codes.”  She nodded.

He headed toward the kitchen, the gates opening obligingly as he reached them.  As he approached the gate leading to the kitchen, Weiss got up from the table, his jaw hanging open.  “Jack?”

The gate opened, and Jack entered.  “You know, tailing your girlfriends is not the best way to build trust in a relationship,” he said conversationally.

“Shostakovich captured you!” Vaughn said.

“He attacked the convoy in which I was traveling, and I disappeared,” Jack replied.  “You made an assumption based on those facts.  A logical one, but not, in this case, correct.”

“And Irina?” Vaughn asked.

“What about her?”

Vaughn sighed.  “Did Shostakovich capture her?”

“It wouldn’t be wise to make any assumptions.”

“Ok, fine, you’re not going to tell us anything,” Weiss said.

“You invaded my home and interrupted my dinner, and then I received a phone call from my daughters to tell me that you’ve been following them.  Why, exactly, should I tell you anything?”

“Point taken,” Vaughn said.  “But can you at least tell us – Tuesday night, were Sydney and Nadia here?  We’ve been afraid something happened to them, that they were brainwashed or something.”

Jack decided he could give them that much, since the men already knew that Sydney and Nadia were in contact with him.  “They were here.”  Vaughn and Weiss looked distinctly relieved.  “Gentlemen, I suggest that you not tell anyone that you were here tonight.”

“But…what are you doing here?”  Weiss asked.  “Why don’t you come back to APO?”

“Mr. Weiss, I assure you that I am still functioning as a CIA agent, and I will return to APO in time.  But for now, I require your silence.  Is that clear?”  Slowly, Weiss nodded; after a moment, Vaughn followed suit.  “Good.  Then I think you’d best check in with my daughters; I believe they have some suggestions as to how you might make things up to them.”  He moved to the back door, shielded the keypad with his body, and entered the code; they might suspect Irina’s presence in the house, but they didn’t need to know it for certain.  The men left, shooting him wary glances on the way out.  He shut the door behind them, sighed, and headed upstairs to start packing.

*****

Chapter 195

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, almost a month after they’d left the US, Jack brought Irina to the CIA without fanfare; they simply walked into APO.  They’d chosen APO because her previous capture had been kept somewhat under wraps, and they were guessing Chase would want to keep to the plan of having Irina work with APO; thus, walking into the CIA proper would cause too much commotion.

As it was, there was enough hubbub to be quite satisfying.  Marshall happened to be the first to notice them; he dropped the coffee he was carrying, stared for a moment, said, “Oh, my God,” and then ran off shouting, “Sydney!  Nadia!”  Within moments they were surrounded by people, all full of questions – including Sydney and Nadia, who managed a quite credible appearance of shock despite the fact that Jack and Irina had had Thanksgiving dinner with them only four days ago.  Vaughn and Weiss didn’t seem to be trying to look surprised, but fortunately no one was paying attention to them.

“Everyone be quiet!” Jack said, and the clamor ceased immediately.  “Who’s in charge these days?” he asked, even though he knew perfectly well it was Marcus Dixon.

Dixon stepped forward.  “I am.  Jack, what’s going on?”

“I’ll explain.  But right now you need to contact Director Chase and tell her she has a walk-in.”

***

Jack sat in the interrogation room, facing Chase impassively.  He’d been separated from Irina, but he’d expected that; they’d prepared for it, and had every aspect of their cover story down cold.  Not that they would get any kind of coherent “story” from Irina; although she insisted that the Sphere told her her brain was completely healed, she still couldn’t speak more than two words together, and even then she spoke very slowly and frequently couldn’t find the words she wanted.  Her diagnosis was “new brain”, and she seemed to think it would improve with time; Jack hoped she was right.  He’d wanted to spend more time in hiding, wait until she could communicate more easily, but she wanted to spend Christmas with her daughters openly.  Besides, she’d become incredibly good at communicating with him mostly in pantomime with the occasional word; she was pretty sure she needed to practice talking in situations where she didn’t have something to fall back on if she really wanted to improve.  He had to agree with that; after a month, it seemed she could tell him anything with a few well-planned gestures.

Now, as he watched Chase warily, he hoped they hadn’t moved prematurely; Chase didn’t look at all happy.  “You say Derevko wants to cooperate, but she seems pretty taciturn for someone who’s at all interested in making any kind of deal.”

Finally he had the chance to explain.  “She’s not speaking because she can’t.  She used the Sphere while we were escaping from Shostakovich and has barely been able to speak since; I think she caused a stroke.”

“I see.  Would she be willing to undergo a medical examination to confirm that?”

Jack raised an eyebrow; he hadn’t expected the claim of stroke to be the part of the story that was challenged.  “You’ll have to ask her.  Her ability to understand doesn’t seem impaired, and she can answer questions with short answers.”  They’d discussed the possibility of Irina pretending she was entirely mute, or even pretending she didn’t understand, and decided there was no purpose to it; she might as well use all the abilities she had.

“Very well,” Chase said.  “And just how long ago did this happen?”  Jack blinked.  “The two of you were taken prisoner by Shostakovich the night of the attack on the convoy, I presume?”  He nodded.  “When exactly did you escape?”

“Three days ago,” Jack replied.  Irina couldn’t say any understandable answer to the same question – she’d tried – but she could point to the date on a calendar.

“Shostakovich himself kept you prisoner?”  Jack sensed a potential trap, but knew he had no choice but to stick with the story; deviating from it would surely doom both him and Irina.  He nodded.  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

“The day of our escape.  He told us we were being transferred to another facility; we escaped from the transport vehicle.”

“And managed to get the Sphere on the way.”

“It was in the cab of the truck, and we were in the back.  Without it, our escape wouldn’t have been successful.”

Chase nodded.  “Derevko’s monosyllables seem to fit with your story.  Unfortunately, they don’t fit with the evidence.  We found Shostakovich’s body three weeks ago.”  Jack’s stomach flipped.  “Wherever the two of you have been for the last month, you’ve obviously had plenty of time to get your lies straight.”  She leaned forward.  “I think I have an idea what really happened.  You didn’t think that overturning Derevko’s pardon agreement was fair, so you smuggled her out.  I understand your actions, but that doesn’t mean I can condone them.”  Shit.  “Officially.”  Jack felt a tiny seed of hope take root.  “I’m going to offer you a deal.  I want the truth – honest answers to all my questions.  I’ll keep them simple.  If I get the same answers from you and Derevko, you get what I imagine you came back here for – you get your job back and she gets a pardon.  If not, well, maybe I can find a prison where the men’s and women’s exercise yards share a fence.  Understood?”

Jack nodded, and steeled himself; he was going to have to, for perhaps the first time in his life, tell the complete truth.

***

“Did Jack Bristow attack the transport convoy?” Chase asked.  Irina shook her head.  “Who did?”  

Irina tried to say her father’s last name, but it was too long; she hadn’t yet managed a word of more than two syllables.  Then she tried his first name, but the word wouldn’t come.  She closed her eyes and sighed in frustration.  Chase had seen this happen several times during the previous interrogation, but she seemed to be exhibiting more patience this time; Jack must have explained what had happened.  She reached for the first name again, but “bastard” came out instead.  That happened on occasion, substitution of a wrong word, and it did tend to be a Freudian slip.

Chase raised her eyebrows.  “Close enough, I suppose.  Are you talking about Andrei Shostakovich, by chance?”  Irina nodded.  “And how are you sure it was him?”

She got the answer to that one out easily.  “Shot him.”

“Where did you go after that?”

Chase was making this easy for her, leading her, Irina realized; she must be confident that Jack had told her the truth.  And it sounded like Jack had indeed told her the truth.  “Mother’s house,” she said.

Chase stared at her, confused, and she realized that the woman wasn’t aware of the relationship.  “Your mother?”

“Lena,” Irina clarified.

“Elena was your mother.  Well, I suppose that makes sense.”  They continued in the same vein as Irina haltingly told the rest of what had happened, including how she had overused the Sphere and then gone to Greece with Jack.  They discussed the deaths of her father and Olivia Reed, but Hiser’s assassination and the involvement of Vaughn, Weiss, and Sydney and Nadia weren’t mentioned, so Irina could only conclude that Chase didn’t know about those; Irina wasn’t about to tell her.

Finally, Chase seemed satisfied.  She stood and said, “Come with me.”  Irina followed her into a hallway, and then into another interrogation room, where Jack sat waiting.  He stood when they entered.  “All right, you’ve proven that the two of you are capable of telling the truth on occasion,” Chase said dryly.  “Not that I’ll expect you to do so in the future.  In any case, I’m going to give you two your freedom, but don’t abuse it.  You made the best of a bad situation by going into hiding when the convoy was attacked, but I rather wish you’d come back sooner after dispensing your vigilante justice, or at least kept me informed of the situation.  Consider yourselves on probation for the next year, understood?”  They nodded, and Chase turned on her heel and stalked out.

Jack and Irina stared at each other, both rather stunned, and then leaned in and kissed deeply.