thicker than water
Title: Thicker Than Water
Author: Brix
Rating: R
Pairing: Sark/Sydney
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Imitation is the highest form of compliment. Huge apologies (or not, because it’s a shitty movie) to The Avengers (1998) for stealing the weather idea.
Spoilers: Nadia? What Nadia? Basic S3 plot, only I seriously scrambled the canon timeline, so just…go with it.
Feedback: Flowers need water and writers need feedback. Be kind, water a writer today. shadesofbrixton@yahoo.com
Archive: Take it anywhere, but drop me a line so I know where it goes.
Author’s Notes: With many thanks to gabby_silang for her visual of Sark as Captain Planet. Written for Sarkastic’s Sarkney Challenge (May 15), for quiet_rebel (Nu).
Nu's requirements:
Up to Three Things You Want to See in the Fic:
1. Sark playing an instrument (if i had to pick: either a guitar or piano or both!)
2. A black and white movie
3. Sarkney in the rain (talking, walking, whatever)
Up to Three Things You Don't Want to See in the Fic:
1. Fluff
2. Sensitive Sark
3. A crying Sydney
Thicker Than Water
She knew Dixon was nervous from the way he kept wiping out the wine glasses. Sharp, quick twists, as if he couldn’t wait to get the job done, but was helpless to return to the task nonetheless. It didn’t do a lot to calm her own nerves – uncomfortable already from the ridiculous gown she had donned to mix with the post-opera crowd. Combined with jet-lag and the total unpredictability that was her mission, she was ready to bolt.
Dixon stopped mid-wipe, the wine glass steaming from its recent removal from the sanitizer. “He’s here,” Dixon announced. “Sitting at the table nearest the door. With two women, and his bodyguard.”
Sydney could feel all of her muscles tense as she watched the opera tenor take his seat in the reflection of the picture frame that hung behind the bar. He was a large man, and barely fit behind the table. Domino Metora was Italian by descent, but all of his notoriety had come from the Paris opera – and, much more privately, his involvement with an unknown Rambaldi endgame.
“I don’t see his contact,” Dixon told her, pouring out four glasses of expensive cognac and placing them on a tray. “This could be a long night.”
“He doesn’t have time to waste. He’s got a flight in an hour,” she reasoned with him. “The contact will show.” That Metora was interested in Rambaldi’s artifacts was not enough to worry the CIA. It was that they had learned of his recently acquired flush in bank accounts that made them highly suspicious. After Marshall picked up word of him setting up a meeting with a member of the Covenant for an information exchange, they had to scramble to put a team in place to intercept the information.
Metora was heaved from his seat with the help of his two escorts, and tottered drunkenly over to the piano to abuse the performer. Dixon slid out from behind the bar. “It’s now or never, Syd,” he whispered as he passed. “We can’t afford to lose him.”
Her lack of response was affirmative enough, but she couldn’t help the crawl of her skin over the exposed part of her dress. Something felt wrong. She twisted on her stool, watching Dixon help Metora back into his seat and pass out the glasses. He pointed over his shoulder to her as he handed Metora his glass of cognac, and the singer toasted her as she flashed a flirty smile and wave. The man spoke briefly to Dixon, and he then returned, expressionless.
“He would like Madame to return tomorrow night for dinner,” Dixon said blithely, “but cannot request her company this evening, for he will be leaving shortly.”
“What?” Sydney hissed. She smiled at Metora and nodded, and he nodded back, and then she grabbed her clutch off the bar. “Something’s gone wrong here.”
Dixon was simply frowning, and the sound of Brahms washed over them as they stewed over what to do next. Outside, monitoring the conversation from the car, Weiss and Vaughn were silent. The sound of white noise hissed in Sydney’s earring. Part of Metora’s agreement to the meeting was that it would be monitored by his people, making radio silence necessary for the CIA’s operation.
“Wait,” Dixon said, squinting. Sydney looked up, hopeful. “The piano. Carlos leaves in twenty minutes. His tip jar…Metora put money in…”
Sydney was already on her feet, and threading her way to the piano. She wasn’t halfway there when she saw what Dixon had guessed: a white slip of paper in with the colorful bills. The classical music played on as she approached, but switched to a lighter tone, less jaunty. She plastered the same flirty smile on her face as she fingered the brandy snifter stuffed with money. The high mahogany gloss of the grand piano reflected her face back up at her, and Carlos played on with intent, the great instrument shifting subtly as his petal foot lifted periodically.
“Usually, Madame is supposed to put money in, not take it out,” Carlos said to her brightly, his face hidden by his long hair and beard and the significant shadow of the restaurant.
She smiled gaily as her fingers closed around the slip of paper. “I promise to put it back. I just haven’t seen these bills – ”
She had made to pull her arm back and stuff the slip of paper into her clutch when his hand jumped from the keys to her wrist, an iron grasp holding her in place. The awkward, abrupt silence from his butchering the song only accented her gasp.
“You,” she seethed, and yanked her arm free. It disturbed her that he let her.
“It’s not nice to steal from the working class,” he told her, his blue eyes shining. “I worked hard for that.” His gaze flicked to the paper in her hand. “You can keep that.”
“What’s your game, Sark?” she demanded, wishing she could look up to signal Dixon but afraid to take her eyes off this new variable. “Game?” he asked, shifting his weight on the piano bench. “Nonsense. I fully planned on giving you the coordinates. That’s what they are – go ahead, look.” She opened the slip. Coordinates. “Who do you think released the information that a Covenant agent was meeting Metora?” he asked her. He sounded bored, and mildly disgusted that she hadn’t figured this out on her own.
The cock of a gun made them both look up. Dixon stood behind her, leveling a gun at Sark’s head. “Wonderful,” Sark said, sounding delighted and sliding off the bench to stand up. “I assume you have a van out back? I’ll go quietly. I could really use a shave.”
* * *
“That’s physically impossible,” Vaughn protested. “No one can control the weather.”
Sark said nothing. The rest of the table broke out into muttering and whispers, before Jack spoke up. “I think if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Rambaldi, it’s that nothing is impossible.” That quieted everyone down again. In the intermittent silence, Sydney watched Sark rub his newly shorn head. The dramatic difference between the scraggly piano player and the man who sat in front of them was highly disturbing.
“What you’re forgetting here is that this is entirely preventable,” Sark said patiently, although he had already explained it twice: once to Sydney and Jack, and then again after they decided everyone should hear the news. “Just because Rambaldi has discovered a way to control the weather doesn’t mean it has to be used – or even found. I’ll need a day’s time to collect some information on my own, and then will meet up with Sydney to discuss details – ”
“Oh, yeah, we’ll just leave the coordinates in your hands, and let you go free for cooperation. Right.” Weiss leaned on one arm. Sark shot him a withering glare. “Think of it,” Weiss went on. “Planes would be grounded, crops couldn’t grow, sea levels could rise or fall dramatically, flooding, drought, incredible temperatures – ”
Vaughn was disturbed. “Okay, Weiss. We get it.”
“It’s true,” Marshall piped up supportively. "I mean, it’s mathematically improbable to produce something like that, on a realistic world-wide scale, but that doesn’t make it impossible.”
“You might find this difficult to believe, Agent Weiss, but I rather enjoy the world in its current state,” Sark said. “Which is precisely why I propose that Agent Bristow and I work toward the mutual goal of containing this device.”
“How convenient,” Jack said. “You release information to draw us into finding you, you bait us with an apocalypse theory, and then you want to use our assets to help find it. You’ll have to excuse me if I find that a bit ridiculous.”
Sark smiled. “Of course it’s convenient. Which is precisely why I made sure I would not be expendable.”
Jack raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not that Metora was going to use it as ransom, Agent Bristow. He wasn’t going to threaten any governments or coerce money out of the United Nations with this device. He was simply going to release it, and sit back and watch the destruction of the world with glee. I paid him well for this information, and he meant to use it to make sure that his last days would be spent in comfort. Metora has already activated the device.”
“We’ve got to find it,” Sydney said, pushing back from the table. “We’ve got to turn it off. Destroy it.”
“Now hold on,” Vaughn said, wary. “If we could harness this, and learn how it worked…”
“Or use it as a weapon against other countries, yes, it’s all been thought of,” Sark said, waving his hand. “You had it right the first time. No one can control the weather. It can only be…urged. But that initial push will inevitably set off an uncontrollable series of events, eventually leading to the destruction of the atmosphere and terrain of the planet. This is not a toy to tinker with in your basement workshop. This is a machine of destruction.”
Vaughn glanced at Sydney. “Bring it back whole. We’ll take it apart, see how it works, see how it could help us. Okay?”
She nodded, and Sark’s jaw tensed, but he did not protest.
“You set us up to get us to Paris,” Jack said. “How can we know that you’re not making this up, to lure Sydney to a locale of your invention? How could we possibly know that this…weather machine…is real?” He said the words with an air of disgust.
Sark leaned forward and pushed his fingertips across the table. “You can wait and see, and watch things start to fall apart. But if you delay action until even the first rudimentary signs of atmospheric imbalance display themselves, there may be damage beyond repair.”
“Paradigms like that are inherently uncontrollable,” Marshall agreed with him.
“Chaos effect,” Weiss supplied. “Basic action-reaction. One aberration will effect the entire globe.”
Sark grinned at Jack. “Is that really something you’re willing to risk?”
* * *
At the movie theater, they were playing a double feature – “Vertigo” and “North by Northwest” – and the seats had nearly all emptied after the first movie. She had remained for the second, spurred by a memory of watching it with her father when she was very young. He had seemed amused through the whole film by Cary Grant’s attempts to escape capture as an alleged spy, and it wasn’t until that very viewing that she understood why.
That realization by itself was enough to make her uncomfortable watching the film. Stories of intrigue and interest, or murder, or conspiracy, held no interest for Sydney anymore. After the first five minutes, she found it difficult to watch.
Sark, of course, found it ironic.
“You’re Cary Grant, you know,” he offered, slipping into the seat next to her. He scanned the rest of the theater. “Rather empty place for a public meeting.”
“Does that make you Eva Saint Marie?” Sydney asked with a twist of her mouth.
He smiled with false mirth. “He’s always trying to pretend he’s not a spy.”
They were whispering, but it still sounded far too loud in the absent spaces of the film. “He’s not a spy. I think that’s the whole point of the movie.”
Sark shook his head. “It’s a love story. And he is a spy. Everyone is a spy. They just don’t realize it.”
She scoffed to herself, but he heard anyway. “Not everyone is a spy.”
He leaned closer to her on one elbow as they both watched the screen. “How do you define a spy, then? It’s someone who collects information for someone else. Everybody does it. It doesn’t make you special.”
“Thanks. I feel really good about myself now.” She shifted away from him.
“I attained the Rambaldi documents necessary to the completion of this mission,” Sark said without segue. “He refers to a Rambaldi heir, and that person may be the only one who can affect his designs. You may not necessarily be the heir, but you’re embroiled far enough in this game for it to be a lucky stab.”
“That explains why you need me, and not just the helicopters,” she muttered into the palm that was propping up her chin. “Why do we need you, now?”
“Because without me, your life would be so boring.” His voice lilted over the film’s dialogue. “We need to leave. Soon.” With that, he slid from his seat and melted into the shadows that were the exit doors.
She was halfway tempted to let him leave, damn the world and get herself a nice tan before she died. Her eyes flicked up to the screen; to the grainy, unrestored images of Cary Grant’s furrowed brow, and knew she couldn’t watch a single minute more of it, even if the alternative was going with Sark.
* * *
“If you get killed,” she asked him the next night, “you’ll have taken the secret to stopping this to your grave.”
“I guess you’d better make sure I don’t get killed, then,” he said before ramming his shoulder against the door of the cabin. Cape Dorset was populated, and cold, but a safe harbor, according to Sark’s resources. The helicopters had dropped them off reluctantly, acknowledging Sark’s statement that they could fly no further, and the rest of the expedition would have to be completed on foot.
“What did you tell your Covenant superiors?” She watched him back up from the door and brace his shoulder to throw his weight again, and fiddled with the base of her flashlight, causing the beam to jump. Her words wove their way from her mouth in solid, white breaths.
“That I would be bringing the device and its power sources back for them to use as they wished.” His shoulder hit the door again. “And tricking the CIA into helping me to save my own expenses.” He stepped back and looked at her. “Plus, you have really nice toys. You have no idea. On ‘three’, if you please?”
Sydney reached in front of him and jiggled the knob. The door swung open. She cast him a disgusted expression as she trudged through the knee deep snow past him, and headed straight for the cold, dark hearth in the front room, flashlight guiding the way. Sark shrugged and said, “In is in.”
“Is it safe to light a fire?” The cabin was only one room, and smelled of smoked fish and candle wax.
“Probably not. This cabin is supposed to be deserted. But the linen closets are fully stocked…” he tugged on the knob of the cupboard and white paint flaked away as it swung open. He pulled out all the blankets he could find and began tossing them behind him. He reached into the far back and found a oil lantern, which he examined for a moment before setting on the floor. “I suggest you sleep as much as you can. I’m not sure what the disarmament of the device will entail, but knowing Rambaldi, it’s not going to be daisies and kittens. Do you have any matches?”
Sydney stopped in the middle of shaking one blanket free of its folds. “Wait. I thought the whole reason we needed you was because you knew how I was supposed to stop this thing.”
He waved a distracted hand as he shut the cupboard again. “The details are hazy. Trust me, I’m needed.”
She snorted disgracefully and stooped to spread the blanket on the wood floor. “Trust you like the Covenant trusts you.”
He laughed with genuine amusement, which Sydney thought probably annoyed her more than if he had been mocking her. “Of course the Covenant doesn’t trust me. I’m simply their current funding. When my money runs out, I’m sure their tolerance for my presence will as well.”
“Which is why you’re seeding new loyalties,” she guessed, taking more quilts off of the pile he had made on a diseased-looking sofa.
“I wouldn’t say they’re new.” He was watching her, and she envied his ability to keep still. The moment of silence that followed stretched into awkwardness, and she could feel the heat of desperation rise within her. Not having a situation in her own control was something that had always made Sydney jumpy, and the fact that she could recognize it in herself only made her more impatient and angry.
“Who’s taking first shift?” she asked snappishly, and she could see the brief flicker of a smirk cross his mouth in the corner of her eye, as if he had won some battle.
He crossed the room to the door and made sure it was securely shut. “No shifts. You sleep, I don’t. I’ll wake you when it’s time to leave. I’d like some light, though, so…” He caught the matches she flung at him just before they hit him in the chest. When he looked up, she had straightened to her full height to protest.
“Sark – ”
“No arguing. Go to sleep.”
Sydney narrowed her eyes at him, measuring the consequences of disobedience. Trusting Sark enough to guard her as she slept was far beyond any reasonable means. But being well rested tomorrow while he faltered in a haze of sleep depravation might give her the upper hand.
Almost defiantly, she dropped down onto the pile of bedding, ignoring the slight puff of dust that she displaced, and began stripping off her excess gear. She slid a knife between the top and second layer of blankets within easy reach, and the rest went next to her head. Her boots she kept on.
The slow, quiet flicker of the oil lamp filled one corner of the room just as she was settling down, and she heard Sark snap off the flashlight. But still her body hummed with unspent energy. She resisted the urge to turn her back to him; to shut him out completely, despite his seemingly safe distance on the far side of the cabin. The more she tried to clear her mind of the man across the room, the less she was able.
Trapped in her own restless state, she didn’t notice Sark turn his attention from her to gaze out the window, and watch with an uneasy expression the gentle snow that came settling down around them.
* * *
Sydney awoke to a shatteringly cold morning, the burnt water tang of espresso working its way beneath her sleep. With the light reflecting off the icy terrain, the room was shafted with light so harsh it reminded her of an overexposed photograph. Sark was standing over a wood burning stove, working a small espresso maker and a frying pan full of something that looked like cubed beef.
She collected her weapons blearily, and left them on a pile in the middle of the bed. It wasn’t until she stood and her joints cracked in the freezing air that Sark turned. “Good morning,” he said amiably.
He’s not tired at all. What a bastard. She felt almost worse for having slept, her muscles tight and her back aching. “I thought we couldn’t light fires?” she said in lieu of a greeting, and began to pace the length of the cabin to circulate the blood in her legs.
“During the day, there are enough fishermen burning smokehouses that one more cloud won’t make a difference. Coffee?” He pulled the pot off the stove just as it began to bubble over.
“You’re on the run from the Covenant, and you lug that around?”
He gave her a scornful glance, and took a deep, centering breath. “It was here.” He paused for a moment and she was shunned back into silence again. “I brought the coffee, though.” He didn’t say it as an admission, but she recognized his giving her a small win, anyway. She approached the kitchen carefully, purposefully stretching out her calf muscles as she sat.
The coffee burned on an empty stomach, and she eyed the frying pan eagerly. Sark favored her with a half-grin. “It’s rabbit, if you’re interested.”
“You caught a rabbit last night? That’s…ambitious.”
He made a contemplative noise. “No offense, but you’re not the most entertaining sleeper. You don’t even talk. Plus, it was snowing.” He looked up at her, mildly concerned. “I think we have less time than we planned.”
“What do you mean?” she frowned into her coffee mug, letting the bitter liquid crack her lips. It electrified her bloodstream as soon as it hit, leaving her even higher strung than she had been last night.
“It wasn’t supposed to snow last night. This is the dry season for the Cape, which is why the fishing is so low right now. The almanac doesn’t call for a good snow for another four days. There’s no reason there should have been any kind of weather above us last night. Not to mention that it should have been far too cold for it to snow.” He scraped half of the frying pan into a dish and slid it across the table to her.
She stabbed thoughtfully at the meat. “But, I mean, that’s still normal for the area.”
He nodded in agreement. “It won’t cause any irrevocable damages – maybe a higher lake level by a centimeter or two, but it won’t make much of a difference. But the shift in weather patterns indicates that the device has been activated much sooner than I was lead to believe.”
“I thought your sources were valid?”
“They were,” he maintained, a hint of anger underlying his voice. “And I paid well for them to be that way. There’s simply another explanation – an acceleration of the device itself, most likely. Another reason it’s completely unpredictable and must be destroyed.”
She frowned. “My orders – ”
His anger seemed to dissipate almost instantaneously, and he waved her off. “Of course. Dismantled. However you see fit once we get there.”
Sydney hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “We should leave soon. If we have as little time as you say, we can’t risk waiting around any more.”
* * *
The brightness of the day did not decrease at all as they trudged their way across the crusty, heavily packed snow. Plumes of loose flakes were trudged up behind them as the layer of powder that had fallen last night was broken. Beneath the powder and the heavier snow was an icy terrain, but they were far from reaching the slippery surface. Sark walked ahead, cutting a narrow path through the snow.
“If you’d told me where we were going, we could have brought a snowmobile,” she complained. “Or at least snow shoes.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his head and checked the far horizon, and then ducked his face back into the fur lined collar of his hood and slogged on.
By noon, the trees around them had thinned, leaving behind the medley of sun-warmed icicles dripping onto the snow. In front of her, in all directions, Sydney saw nothing but snow and ice. The sight stopped her for a moment, and Sark turned to see what the delay was.
“We really have no time,” he told her.
“No…look.” She pointed to his one o’clock, and he turned back to follow her gaze. Near where the horizon met the ground, there was a lone storm cloud gathering slowly.
Frowning, Sark pulled out his compass, swore, and changed their track toward the gathering cloud.
“Who did you get these directions from?” she asked, carefully leaving the malice from her voice.
“A map,” he said tersely.
She thought for a moment before offering, “I could cut the path for a while, if you need to pull the map out and – ”
“No,” he cut her off darkly. “This is the right way. Come on, we’ve wasted enough time.”
Confused, Sydney had no choice but to follow him toward the gathering cloud mass. Their labored breathing cut easily through the thin, cold air, and Sydney realized that Sark must be stronger than he looked, to have cut through the snow for so long on no sleep and still soldier on as quickly as he was.
That, she reasoned, or something else is driving him. Fear. Ambition.
The anticipation of walking into a completely unknown situation was beginning to take its toll on her nerves – especially after last night, which had not been the most restful situation she’d ever found herself in. Sydney began contemplating the sun-washed landscape, trying to tame her rolling thoughts, but she kept returning to the same question.
“Sark?”
He didn’t answer, instead checked the compass again and maintained their deviated line.
“Why are you doing this?”
There was no answer for a moment, as their feet crunched steadily through the packed snow. And then his voice came to her over his shoulder, clear and steady in the empty air. “To save the world.”
She smiled, not entirely sarcastically. “Really. You could have given the information to someone else, you know?”
“No,” he said, his voice shuttering again. There was a silence as they crested a small hill, and the cloud became clearer – darker, Sydney noticed.
“But why would you care?” she persisted.
His laugh was muffled by the heavy down hood. “Don’t you know the evil villain isn’t supposed to reveal the master plan until the very end?”
She fought to keep from rolling her eyes.
“As you mentioned earlier,” he continued, sounding somewhat reluctant, “I may be…‘seeding alliances,’ that was how you put it, yes?”
“That explains your remarkably calm attitude over the past few days,” she said wryly. She could hear him laugh quietly again.
“I find, in most cases, I cannot moderate my temper. If I was to allow myself to become angry with you, I would end up killing you.”
A flash of indignation crossed her. “That’s awfully cocky.”
She saw his shoulders go up and then down again. “It’s true.” He didn’t clarify what was – his being cocky, or the threat. “Just the same, I think you’ll agree that your staying alive is mutually beneficial.” There was a reflective beat. “Be that as it may, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t purposefully antagonize me. At least, until this is over.” The last was delivered in a voice that gave Sydney the impression that he didn’t expect much, but thought it was worth a shot asking anyway.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she permitted, and they lapsed into silence again.
The snow terrain brought them closer and closer with each passing hour to the growing cloud bank, until Sydney thought that it might have been made up of only black air, or the thickest smoke she had ever laid eyes on. It lay as a condensed stain on the dazzlingly blue sky, shielding the sun from them.
As they passed into its shadow, the temperature dropped severely, and Sark stopped short in front of her. “Is it…do you see that?”
She kicked aside some of the snow so she could come and stand next to him. “Where?”
“There.” He pointed straight ahead. “That. It looks like the cloud is…draining into that hill.” He sounded awestruck.
“Then I suppose that hill is where we need to be,” she said ruefully.
Sark shook himself. “Yes, of course. He glanced up at the sky, and then at her. “And quickly, if this is any indication.” Now that they had pulled off their goggles, she could see how tired his eyes were.
She stepped in front of him decisively. Ignoring his protest, she started plodding through the snow. Over her shoulder, she called, “You’re going to be useless as backup if you keep up like this.”
As they neared the hill, Sydney could see strange shapes dusted in a layer of snow waiting for them outside. They were monstrous and geometrical, and it wasn’t until she was closer and the shadows grew more steady that she realized what they were: vast digging equipment.
“Someone’s already been here,” she said, surprised.
“Metora activated it, I told you that.” Sark sounded weary and farther behind than he should have been. She waited for him to catch up, and, looking back, could see the last of the daylight in their range of sight being taken over by the cloud.
“I really don’t like the looks of this,” she whispered to him, and he turned momentarily, and when he turned back his face was a grim set of stone.
“Inside,” he clipped. “Fast.”
Once they were inside the entrance to the cave, walking was significantly easier. Metora’s crew had laid a rudimentary floor on the ice, and the passage was lit with blue emergency light strings, washing the space with a cold, ethereal glow.
“Is this what it’s like letting the CIA do all the work, when you follow me around?” she asked. His smile was as tense as her joke, as they edged their way down the tunnel. “What is it we’re supposed to be looking for, here?”
“It’s close,” Sark said in a low voice, his eyes sweeping back and forth. “Can’t you feel it? The vibrations in the ice?”
She could, now that he had mentioned it. “Is it coming from…below us?” She glanced down, confused, and when she looked up she saw Sark had gone ahead, to a gap in the tunnel. He was staring ahead, his mouth open, with little puffs of his heavy breathing freezing in the air. “What is it…?” she asked, as she approached him, and he stepped aside to let her see without taking his eyes away from whatever was in the room.
“Oh,” she breathed.
The room was circular, a great igloo of space tinted a deep cerulean from the lights strung up on ice picks planted about eyelevel around the circumference. In the very center was a perfectly circular hole that traveled down farther than Sydney could tell from her current vantage point – a vein in the ice that dropped straight down, but had been smoothed over as if naturally occurring, not made by the drilling machines she had seen outside the cave.
In the center of the vein, a machine churned black, venomous cloud out to a hole in the ceiling.
The machine itself was a combination of ancient looking wood that had been reinforced with steel joints. Welding tools had been cast aside, abandoned by anonymous workers, throughout the room. The machine was whirring away as if alive, and shaking the room slightly. Gears and belts and other moving parts were churning in overtime, but there was no clue as to what was fueling the machine, or how to stop it.
Sydney edged carefully into the room for a closer look, and she could feel Sark slide in close behind her. “Look,” he whispered, and his voice was nearly lost beneath the racket of the movement of the machine. But she saw what he meant – the two inverted vees that rested on opposite sides of the bored vein, creating a facsimile of Rambaldi’s Eye.
“Now what?” she whispered.
He cleared his throat, finally able to take his eyes off the contraption. “You…you have to turn it off.”
“How?” she asked, afraid to raise her voice. The entire room felt delicate – as though a single additional interference would bring the crystalline roof down on their heads. “How did Metora even turn it on?”
Sliding delicately toward the machine, Sark circled it. On the far side, he made a small noise, and stooped down. Sydney followed, curious, and saw what he was staring at. “The Di Regno heart?” She squinted at it, as if the blue lighting would make it easier to see. “But…Sloane has that. He used it to put together Il Dire, the doomsday prophesy timeline passed…”
Sark looked at her. “I’d say this is definitely doomsday oriented, would you?”
She pursed her lips and tried to get closer, avoiding the whirring gears of the machine. “So if Metora got the heart from Sloane, and the Covenant wants it back…”
“I’d put good money on Sloane wanting the heart back, and nothing else.” Sark shifted to a different angle, trying to make out a way to grab the heart.
“Is it the only thing that can power the machine?” Sydney saw what he was doing and moved in the opposite direction, following the rhythm of the machine’s movements and watching for a gap.
“Ah…” Sark stalled, and stood up straight. She could feel him watching her. “That’s the thing. There are…allegedly three things that could power Rambaldi’s endgame. If that’s what this is.” He sounded unsure, which was precisely what Sydney did not need to hear from her self-lauded guide.
“What are they? If I destroy the Di Regno heart, and we get this back, the CIA will need to know – ”
“You think the CIA wouldn’t use this against enemy countries, global consequences be damned? No one can control the weather. It’s chaos.” He stepped closer to her, his boots sliding carefully on the ice. “Paradigms are inherently unpredictable – you heard Flinkman. He seems to know what he’s talking about, when he gets around to saying it.”
“I have my orders, Sark,” she said quietly, and ducked around him to examine the other side. He shook his head, and glanced up at the roof of the cavern, where the cloud was siphoning off the machine. As if on cue, a rumble came from the depths of the vein, and a very small crack appeared in the ice beneath Sark’s foot. He stepped back, cautiously.
“We don’t have much time,” he said warily.
Sydney snapped in frustration, “Then tell me how to turn this thing back on after it’s turned off! What are the power sources, Sark?”
“It’s you,” Sark blurted.
Sydney stood up too quickly and nearly knocked her head on a rotating lever. “What?”
“You’re the second…your heart is a…battery. As the Rambaldi heir, I mean. You’re the second object. Di Regno is the first. The third has never been discovered – not that the Covenant knows, at least.”
Sydney stared at him.
“The prophesy tells that only the person who can power the machine again can turn it off. But that’s why you have to destroy it, Sydney.” His voice took on a desperate edge. “If you bring it back to them, it’s only a matter of time before they find out. You know they won’t honor their deal with me for amnesty – they’ll get it out of me eventually. And then they’ll cut you open, and take your heart.”
“My father would never – ”
“Even Jack Bristow is mortal,” Sark snapped. “They’ll find a way to get it out of him.”
“How do you know all this?” she demanded, crossing the room to him, ignorant of the cracks that Sark could see splitting the ice in hairline fractures. “How could you possibly know all this? And if they never got information out of you before, in the two years that you – ”
“Because of this,” Sark whispered viciously, and ripped his glove off. "I can't hide this." Sydney watched, fascinated, as he wrenched his sleeve up, and revealed burns in the skin of the underside of his lower arm, as if he’d been branded by a typewriter.
“What…” she reached forward delicately, and then drew back. “What is that?”
“That’s what happens when a Romanov is injected with Sloane’s precious serum,” he said bitterly. “Just watch – it changes.”
Sydney looked on in horrid fascination as the burns shifted and changed, moving from text to pictures – an illustration of the heart, and then a map across the tundra they had just crossed. “That’s…”
“Impossible. I know. It’s all from Rambaldi’s manuscripts.” He pulled his sleeve back down, and jammed his hand into the glove. “Some of it is even still ciphered. But from what Sloane could gather of it, you were the second power source. If the CIA doesn’t kill you, he will.”
Her face was bleak and pale in the blue light, and she kept staring at his arm as if she could see through his parka. Very slowly, she spoke. “You’ve been to see Sloane?”
He laughed harshly. “Who do you think runs the Covenant, Sydney?”
The machine rumbled again, and a chasm opened up on the far side of the room, separating them from the doorway.
“Sydney,” he said gravely, “you’ve got to do it now. Or we’ll be stuck down here, and even that won’t matter much because the world will be destroyed. Do you even understand something on that grand a scale?”
“Shut up,” she growled at him, and bent to her knees, level with the heart at the core of the machine. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and reached forward.
I’m going to lose a hand.
Sark’s breath caught, and she opened her eyes.
Her hand was around the heart – the gears had opened to let her arm pass, and the machine had stilled around her.
“Pull it out,” whispered, afraid to break whatever spell was keeping her arm from being severed.
She pulled it gently free from the device that held it, and felt it pulse in her hand. Startled, she dropped it to the floor. It bounced slickly, and slid to where Sark stood. They both regarded it for a moment, pulsing eerily on the blue ice of the floor. And then Sark lifted his foot.
And crushed it beneath his boot. Sydney grimaced and turned away, looking back at the machine, and then at the cloud that had ceased its flow from the roof of the cave. An ear shattering crack brought her attention back to the present, but she had no time to find its source because Sark was pulling her bodily across the room. She was lucky to have found her footing before he threw her across the widening chasm that was forming. It was then that she looked back up, and saw the machine beginning to collapse in on itself. Bits of wood rained down on them, but it was the steel reinforcement that would be deadly as it began to fall.
Sark made the leap to the doorway, and together they raced down the passageway from which they had come.
A deafening crash followed, and a plume of snow and splintered ice enveloped their legs as they ran, the tunnel collapsing behind them as they saw the mouth of the cave. Sydney sprinted ahead, wanting to clear the earthmovers and drills before the roof of the cave trapped them inside. The walls were buckling and she had to crawl beneath the carriage of a bulldozer caked in snow and ice to clear it.
Sark was behind her.
Too far, her brain told her, and she put on the brakes and spun around just in time to see the entire cave crumple in on itself.
Panicked, she ducked back down on her hands and knees, ready to crawl beneath the dozer and dig for him. But he was there, almost, trapped beneath the bulldozer and the snow – all but one arm and his head were clear of the snow, and he looked quite annoyed as she came into his sight.
“Get a rope or something, will you?” he asked wearily. “I can’t crawl out without my second arm."
She backed out and cast about desperately for a rope of some kind, but anything of that nature would have disintegrated in the weather. Instead, she managed to find a link chain, the end of which she threw him. He wrapped it around his arm a few times, nodded to her, and she began to pull.
The chain crushed her fingers as she pulled, and she readjusted her grip to circle the chain under her elbow, putting the strain on her muscle and off the delicate structure of her hand. With one foot braced on the monstrous tire of the bulldozer, she heaved with all her exhausted might, and Sark clawed his way free of the snow and ice.
When he peaked out from under the giant machine, completely dusted in white, she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yes, very funny,” he said sourly as she helped him up. “Can we go home now?”
“Home,” she sighed, rummaging for her goggles – the cloud had dissipated, and the sun was at the end of its very bright day. “Home sounds very good.”
* * *
The destruction of the Rambaldi machine had not gone over well with anyone at headquarters, least of all Dixon or Vaughn. Jack pulled her aside after the meeting’s debrief to make sure she was more or less the same daughter who had left, and expressed his gratitude that she had come home in one piece.
“Though I notice Sark was strangely absent when you rendezvoused with the team,” he said blankly. They shared a glance, and Sydney broke the contact first. “I trust your reasoning,” he said, thought it apparently caused him significant difficulty. “I just wish you wouldn’t keep putting yourself in situations to owe international terrorists favors.”
She smiled, a little. “So do I, Dad.”
He nodded, once, as if that was the most he knew he could hope for. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll try and smooth things over here.”
“Thanks,” she told him quietly, and left to go defrost the rest of her insides.
That evening, when she was walking in the calm spring breeze of her neighborhood, she saw a narrow figure waiting at the end of her driveway for her. He was leaning on the bumper of her car, head tilted back, the graceful curve of his neck exposed to the night sky. As she drew nearer, he looked down to greet her.
“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” He was dressed in a dark suit, the crisp white shirt underneath dull in the overcast, moonless night that surrounded them. “The almanac calls for rain tonight. I think we can say we’re in the clear.”
“I was wondering what happened to you,” she said. “I was…worried.”
His eyebrow quirked up thoughtfully. “Really? How novel.”
“How’s your arm?” she asked, determined not to let him rile her.
He slid the sleeve of his jacket up, exposing the underside of his arm. “It’s gone. It disappeared as soon as we got back – just faded in the shower, like it was only ink.”
The first drops of rain that had been threatening all day fell hard and cold, and landed as dark spots in his short hair. They both blinked in surprise – Sark swiping at his head distractedly, Sydney relishing that a man unflapped by being trapped under a snowbank could be thrown off by spring showers.
No sooner had he brushed away that initial drop, came an open torrent from the sky. They both turned their faces upward: Sark’s cold and impassive once more, Sydney’s a quiet smile. She blinked rapidly as the rain fell, but would not turn away.
“Don’t look so smug,” he demanded, sounding childish with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t get angry,” she taunted him good naturedly, and finally looked down. “Wouldn’t want you to kill me.”
He scowled. “I shouldn’t have come.” He stood, and brushed his suit out, as if it wouldn’t already be damaged from the water. “Good day, Miss Bristow. May tomorrow find you a bit more grateful.”
“Grateful!” she echoed as he turned to leave. “If anyone should be grateful, it should be you! I saved your life!”
“You saved the world’s life,” he said bitterly, and turned to regard her, rain running in long paths over his skin and into his clothes. “Lucky you. Would you have accomplished any of it if it weren’t for me? No. Would you be dead right now if I hadn’t told you about the power source? Yes. Did I expose my betrayal to Sloane? Or course not. I value my life as much as you yours. So excuse me if I’m not falling to the feet of the savior of the world just because of her coincidental biology.” He turned away again, and took his leave.
“Hey!” Sydney called after a moment, letting the rain wash her anger free. “Wait!” she half-jogged after him, and tugged on his arm to have him stop. “Why did you come here?”
He smiled self-deprecatingly. “I came here to make sure you were safe. Silly me.”
“You did,” she said, her voice flat and not believing.
“Yes,” he was exasperated. “Believe it or not, Sydney, I rather enjoy having you around.” He smiled contritely. “Except for when you’re being…well. A bitch.”
“I’m not a bitch.”
He grinned. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”
She could feel her rage mount – it had been building for the past week, really, since his cocky smile had greeted her at the piano. “No, I’m not. You’re in the wrong, here, Sark. Why don’t you just – ”
“Just what?” he asked, catching her flailing hand. “Just leave you alone? To your boring little life?”
Reflexively, she slapped him across the face, hard and sharp.
When he looked back at her, the streetlight at her back was shining brightly in his eyes. Her muscles tensed, ready for the inevitable fight that had been mounting between them for days, and stepped back with her left foot to be ready to pivot.
Instead of hitting her, though, Sark yanked her forward and kissed her.
Quite well, her brain filled in as they stumbled backward to the lamp post. He tasted of rain and coffee, and her hand scraped for purchase in his hair in vain, and had to settle for the base of his skull, pulling him closer to her as her head clanged only slightly roughly against the metal of the post.
He loomed in her space, his fingers tangling in her hair as he deepened the kiss, his legs spacing hers and making her shoulders fall back – tipping her up as an offer to the sky, she thought distractedly as he pulled away.
Sark didn’t go far, though, and watched as she blinked lazily, brushing his lips over her face to catch the water that sluiced there. It was raining harder, now, and she could barely bring herself to care that her clothes were soaked through.
“This isn’t…” she started weakly.
“Yes it is,” he muttered against her ear, his other hand drawing up her side. “It very much is.”
“I should’ve hit you before,” she mused, her thoughts fractured as she found his mouth again.
He pulled away again, after a moment. “You did,” he said, pressing closer. “A lot.”
She smiled against his face, the rain melding their shirts as she raised her leg between his, and the space between them fractionalized again and again. “This is an awfully conspicuous place to do this,” she whispered.
He made a very discomposed noise, his head falling to her shoulder, and pulled back a bit. He met her eyes reluctantly, and said, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of me not getting thrown to the curb if I don’t stop distracting you.”
“Come inside,” she asked, and his eyebrows went high.
“Really,” he said.
“Really,” Sydney echoed, and tugged on his arm. “I believe you were becoming acquainted with my thigh?”
His laugh struck pure in the rain, and he wrapped both arms around her from behind, dropping his head onto her shoulder. “I should let you know, Sloane offered me redemption for delivering your skin to his office by tomorrow morning.”
“Hm,” she said. “I sleep with a loaded pistol.”
He smiled against her neck. “I’d hoped you’d talk dirty.”
They made their way through the front door without incident, and his jacket was a wet pile on the floor before she thought to ask, “Is he rebuilding the machine?”
“Of course,” Sark replied, running his hands under her shirt where the fabric met her stomach. “Which is why I have to keep you safe.”
They stumbled against a wall and she tugged at his buttons, and then had to stop to laugh and blush.
“What is it?” he pulled back, his graceful expression still damp and dark in the night-lit hallway.
“You’re still seeding your – ”
He shut her up with a bruising kiss but couldn’t help laughing against her mouth. “Filthy,” he told her, planting a kiss in between words. “Filthy, filthy. I like it.”
He found the bedroom with some creative maneuvering, and she managed to convince him to shed the clothes into a soggy pile before he destroyed the sheets with water. Outside, the rain plummeted mercilessly and without regard to the luck it had in falling; that given different circumstances it may not have existed that day, or the next, or any of the following had Rambaldi’s endgame played out.
The water pooled as innocently outside as it did inside, the discarded clothes’ moisture seeping through the cracks in the wooden floorboards of Sydney’s bedroom, and down into the foundation of her home.