fic: Magenta, Alias, chapter 12
Nov. 29th, 2006 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eretriaIf anyone still remembers this
Title: Magenta
Fandom: Alias
Rating: R
Spoiler: Between Counteragent and Phase One
Main characters: Sark, Sydney
You can find previous chapters here
I realise that no one really believed me when I said that I would finish this story one day. Well. I enjoy proving people wrong. ;o)
So now, here is chapter XII - Allegro Assai
“Sark?“ He holds on to her voice.
Christ, the impact had hurt. He is barely able to move. The bullet wound is a scalding thread of pain, but pales in comparison to the pain of the fall.
Once he has catalogued probable injuries, he’s grateful for the pain. This is something he’s accustomed to, something he can handle. Irina taught him to use it to his advantage, to let it clear his mind and focus.
So he does. Rises carefully, pushes the pain back. Over the comm, he hears Sydney making advances at Kemnitz. She sounds urgent, and he’s glad that she’s finally speeding things up. Sark looks back to the bridge and finds only the female half of the couple still standing there, speaking furiously into a mobile phone.
He moves away from the masses of sand on the freighter, closer to the hatch leading down into the ship’s belly. He can hear a siren, first one, then several. Looks up and freezes for a few seconds, cursing. There is the Chinese embassy, guarded by several policemen.
The girl will have notified the agents in the club, so Sydney won’t have much time. Neither will he. He sees the guard reach for his comm and tense. He readies his gun and once more draws strength from the pain and the urgency of the situation. It clears his mind in a way few things can, and finally, he’s in full mission mode, with nothing to distract him.
The guard must go. One part of his mind calculates that a gunshot is a certain kill, but the sound, even with the silencer on, will draw the guard from the other side of the door, warn him. He can't afford that. The knife is cold in his hand, almost weightless. It’s two steps to the guard, clamp a hand over his mouth, pull his head back, slice. Skin, tendon and cartilage resist then part under the blade, then a swift gush as the edge bites through the jugular. Blood runs over Sark’s fingers, the man stiffens, convulses, then drops, silent.
Sark opens the door. The guard behind it raises his gun - too late. One precise shotto the forehead and he drops as well. Sark steps over the body into the hallway. Pulling a keycard from the first man’s vest, he slips through the first hatch, pausing briefly for it to close behind him to make sure possible pursuers are locked out. He passes the second airlock on his way to the inner sanctum of the lab.
Sydney still doesn’t have the retina scan.
“Sydney, move,” he barks, sharp. The deeper he gets into the belly of the freighter, the more static he receives. By the time he gets to the the lab, he’ll have no way of getting the code from Sydney.
“Do you have your mobile phone?” he asks, overriding another airlock’s electronics.
There’s something he interprets as an affirmative noise, if an incredulous one.
“The comm’s about to become useless, I’m receiving mostly static.” He can’t hear her response, can only hope that she gets his message. With the comms down, the connection for transmitting the retina scan won’t work as well. He needs her here. Now. “I’m going to call you in five minutes. When you get the call, get out and get to the freighter. It will be under Warschauer Brücke by then. Get on and get me the scan.”
A rush of noises from the club bursts through the static and he tries again, hoping to get through to her. “Make your move. I’ve got SEK and several BND agents on my tail, and they have contacted the agents in the club.”
Before the connection to her breaks off completely, he can hear Kemnitz being called away.
Then he’s without her, cold and alone in the sterile surroundings of the freighter’s interior.
Two more airlocks, two different codes. He ignores his near success of entering the lab and gets back to the exit. The airlocks behind him are closed again, and they don’t have the time to let Sydney do all the overriding again. He’ll have to keep them open for her. The bodies he left behind prove their worth, keeping the airlocks far enough open for Syndey to slip through.
Back on deck, the next fifteen minutes are a blur. He takes out the agents near the exit: another one with the knife sliced across his throat, slippery warm blood turning sticky on Sark’s hands. He drops the knife, as he turns on a second man appearing in the airlock, bringing up his gun and firing twice, doubletap, to the head. Even silenced, the shots make the narrow room vibrate. Sark pivots. There are more coming, always more. Guards and black-dressed SEK men scrambling aboard from the policeboat next to the freighter.
The bridge comes up. Adrenaline pumps through his veins. He dials her number, not having to think about it. Shots ring through the night, sparking silver off the wheelhouse, ricocheting. The air smells of gunpowder and burnt metal. More shots. Glass splinters, showers onto him, cold, then hot where it slices his skin. He drops into a crouch, then to his knees, scrambles over the deck’s rough metal, scrapes his palms. His heart pounds when he presses the phone back to his ear.
The phone still rings, she doesn’t pick up. More bullets whine past his ears, impacting in the barrel behind him. Oil begins to ooze out of the holes, a cloying reek he can taste in the back of his throat. A few more shots and the whole damn thing will go up in flames. Damn, it, Sydney, pick up the phone!
“Si, mi amor?” she asks, her voice a little too tight to sound natural.
“Lassen Sie die Waffe fallen!” one of the SEK men shouts. “Geben Sie auf!”
“Move,” he tells Sydney.
“Oh, you’ve been waiting the entire time? Darling, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I could forget.” She prattles on, nonsense about a forgotten birthday party and how she will be with her imaginary friend in a few minutes. He hangs up, cursing her.
They’re shooting strategically now, cornering him, bullets left and right, more oil trickling next to him. He needs to get away and behind a hatch, the place is too damn exposed. He’s running out of ammunitions. The graze over his lower back burns; blood is soaking his shirt, trickling down his back. He straightens enough to look over the barrels, fires over head and scrambles, in a crouch, to the open hatch he spotted. Part of him, the always professional part, is counting and marks that he only as two rounds left in his last clip. The odd bend of his spine and the sweat trickling down his back and into the wound makes the pain flare up like a wildfire. He gasps, curses.
It’s just a moment, a tiny moment in which he doesn’t pay attention and is distracted by the failures of his body. The SEK notice the sudden lapse and move in, brutal and quick. They’re fast, stronger than him and better armed. Where the hell is Sydney?
One shot, two. Impact of metal in flesh. One man drops off the side of the freighter, the other stumbles into another, bringing him to his knees. One more shot, sparking off the floor.
Click, click, click.
Sark drops the gun, reaches for the butterfly knife in his boot. The blade glints in the light of the police-boat’s headlights. Slash, feint, stab, double back, slash. The blade cuts through fabric and skin, meets bone and ligaments, fast. Three men, four men, five men. The first falls when the knife slices open his cheek, impacts with teeth. The other three are faster, and Sark’s reflexes are dragging now, muscles refusing the cooperate. In an onslaught of heavy bodies, they’re on him, smothering him with pure weight and the smell of sweat and gunpowder, overpowering him. They’re not using their guns. He’s pushed down and punched in the stomach, the face, the kidneys, hard, fast blows, again and again, clanging his head against the cold iron desk. His lip splits, his head rings. Pain explodes all over his body. Three men, working out all their aggression on him. This isn’t only about being capturing a criminal anymore, this is about retaliation. He knows that fighting back will only make it worse, so he goes limp. After a few kicks from heavy boots, he lands on his stomach. His left arm is pulled back with a brutal wrench and what the fall didn’t manage works all too well for the SEK now - his shoulder dislocates with a blinding pain. He stomach churns, bile rises in his throat as he floats, caught in the pain and the wet noise of the joint popping out of its socket.
Gunshots drive away the sickening noise and then the pressure is gone.
***
A hand swims into focus. "I'm sure mom will be very amused when I tell her I had to save your ass."
He isn’t in the mood for sarcasm now. Bile rises in his throat as he presses his arm against his body. The shoulder would have to be put back in the socket, but not now.
The boat that had been shadowing the harbour side of the freighter moves closer at a great speed now. Farther behind, police cruisers race up to them, blue light flickering over the night-dark city. It’s too close, all of it. They need to move. “Do you have the scan?”
Sydney nods, “The way to the lab?”
“The guards are down.” Pain still meanders through him in sickening waves. “We need an exit plan as soon as you have the alloy.”
“And a place to hole up until the heat dies down.”
Her gaze is accusing, and fuck, he doesn’t need this now. He knows he screwed up. “Go,” he says, giving her no more time to protest. “I’ll create a diversion.”
She turns, runs toward the lab.
Sark leans against the wheelhouse. His body sings with the pain, alive in the worst way possible. Just another breath, then he pushes off the cabin and struggles down to the engine room - too slow, he needs to be faster. On the way down the narrow iron stairs, he pulls the small explosive device from his trouser pocket.
The engine’s roar is deafening. The smell of diesel and motor oil is cloying, a bitter taste at the back of his throat.
Sark plants the charges on the engines, favouring the dislocated shoulder, considers activating the timer but decides against it. He doesn’t know how long Sydney will need, and if the charges blow the engines while she is still in the lab, then everything will be shot to hell. He activates the remote that allows his phone to act as a transmitter, instead.
Back up on the freighter’s deck he inches over to the oil drums that have been placed on the freight deck as cover and slaps two charges on them as well.
The police cruisers have almost reached them and the boat that had been shadowing them clanks against the freighter’s bow. Only seconds, and the deck will be crawling with agents.
Sark reaches for the phone, flips it open.
He hates that he hesitates. It would be so much easier if he just pressed the button now. He could escape, and she’d be –
“How many?” Sark barely manages to hide a flinch. He hadn’t heard her coming, and damn it, since when was he so unobserving? That could have been a BND agent.
“Too many,” he snaps, voice tight. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asks, irritation thick in her words.
Sark manages a smile before he presses the connect button.
The freighter, for something as big as it is, reacts fast. It shudders to a stop, metal screams, the entire ship groans, tilts, then begins to drift without direction, too fast.
There is a crash in the aftermath of the explosion in the engine room,. Sark hears the frantic shouts of the policemen, trying to get the BND agents away from the freighter’s murderous pull. The ship doesn’t lose speed, doubles it instead. The next bridge comes closer and closer. Sark tugs at Sydney’s wrist and they rush to the other side of the deck, away from the barrels.
A second press of the connect button and the oil drums explode into a blinding ball of fire, triggering ever more explosions as the fire licks at the next drums.
The shockwave hurls Sydney against him, pushing him to his knees. His ears ring. When he looks up, she is haloed by the fire, the reflection from the flames licking over her carefully neutral face.
“That means swimming now, doesn’t it?” she asks when they already move between the burning barrels.
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need for him to say it, has been in enough situations that called for a creative way out. Swimming to shore from a moving, burning freighter wasn’t one of the wilder ones.
“There is a warehouse on the other side of Stralau peninsula.” He doesn’t say the rest. She doesn’t need to know that he is in no shape to swim.
Another explosion behind them, voices on the freighter.
Sydney jumps.
Sark stuffs the gun he’s taken from one of the SEK men before into the back of his trousers, then tucks his injured arm tight against his body. Jumps.
The impact on the surface makes him black out for a few seconds, and it’s only the water’s chill that makes him revive fast enough to avoid getting pulled in by the freighter’s screw.
He submerges, resurfaces. Struggles blind against the current, one-armed.
He doesn’t remember how he makes it to the shore.
***
tbc
Title: Magenta
Fandom: Alias
Rating: R
Spoiler: Between Counteragent and Phase One
Main characters: Sark, Sydney
You can find previous chapters here
I realise that no one really believed me when I said that I would finish this story one day. Well. I enjoy proving people wrong. ;o)
So now, here is chapter XII - Allegro Assai
“Sark?“ He holds on to her voice.
Christ, the impact had hurt. He is barely able to move. The bullet wound is a scalding thread of pain, but pales in comparison to the pain of the fall.
Once he has catalogued probable injuries, he’s grateful for the pain. This is something he’s accustomed to, something he can handle. Irina taught him to use it to his advantage, to let it clear his mind and focus.
So he does. Rises carefully, pushes the pain back. Over the comm, he hears Sydney making advances at Kemnitz. She sounds urgent, and he’s glad that she’s finally speeding things up. Sark looks back to the bridge and finds only the female half of the couple still standing there, speaking furiously into a mobile phone.
He moves away from the masses of sand on the freighter, closer to the hatch leading down into the ship’s belly. He can hear a siren, first one, then several. Looks up and freezes for a few seconds, cursing. There is the Chinese embassy, guarded by several policemen.
The girl will have notified the agents in the club, so Sydney won’t have much time. Neither will he. He sees the guard reach for his comm and tense. He readies his gun and once more draws strength from the pain and the urgency of the situation. It clears his mind in a way few things can, and finally, he’s in full mission mode, with nothing to distract him.
The guard must go. One part of his mind calculates that a gunshot is a certain kill, but the sound, even with the silencer on, will draw the guard from the other side of the door, warn him. He can't afford that. The knife is cold in his hand, almost weightless. It’s two steps to the guard, clamp a hand over his mouth, pull his head back, slice. Skin, tendon and cartilage resist then part under the blade, then a swift gush as the edge bites through the jugular. Blood runs over Sark’s fingers, the man stiffens, convulses, then drops, silent.
Sark opens the door. The guard behind it raises his gun - too late. One precise shotto the forehead and he drops as well. Sark steps over the body into the hallway. Pulling a keycard from the first man’s vest, he slips through the first hatch, pausing briefly for it to close behind him to make sure possible pursuers are locked out. He passes the second airlock on his way to the inner sanctum of the lab.
Sydney still doesn’t have the retina scan.
“Sydney, move,” he barks, sharp. The deeper he gets into the belly of the freighter, the more static he receives. By the time he gets to the the lab, he’ll have no way of getting the code from Sydney.
“Do you have your mobile phone?” he asks, overriding another airlock’s electronics.
There’s something he interprets as an affirmative noise, if an incredulous one.
“The comm’s about to become useless, I’m receiving mostly static.” He can’t hear her response, can only hope that she gets his message. With the comms down, the connection for transmitting the retina scan won’t work as well. He needs her here. Now. “I’m going to call you in five minutes. When you get the call, get out and get to the freighter. It will be under Warschauer Brücke by then. Get on and get me the scan.”
A rush of noises from the club bursts through the static and he tries again, hoping to get through to her. “Make your move. I’ve got SEK and several BND agents on my tail, and they have contacted the agents in the club.”
Before the connection to her breaks off completely, he can hear Kemnitz being called away.
Then he’s without her, cold and alone in the sterile surroundings of the freighter’s interior.
Two more airlocks, two different codes. He ignores his near success of entering the lab and gets back to the exit. The airlocks behind him are closed again, and they don’t have the time to let Sydney do all the overriding again. He’ll have to keep them open for her. The bodies he left behind prove their worth, keeping the airlocks far enough open for Syndey to slip through.
Back on deck, the next fifteen minutes are a blur. He takes out the agents near the exit: another one with the knife sliced across his throat, slippery warm blood turning sticky on Sark’s hands. He drops the knife, as he turns on a second man appearing in the airlock, bringing up his gun and firing twice, doubletap, to the head. Even silenced, the shots make the narrow room vibrate. Sark pivots. There are more coming, always more. Guards and black-dressed SEK men scrambling aboard from the policeboat next to the freighter.
The bridge comes up. Adrenaline pumps through his veins. He dials her number, not having to think about it. Shots ring through the night, sparking silver off the wheelhouse, ricocheting. The air smells of gunpowder and burnt metal. More shots. Glass splinters, showers onto him, cold, then hot where it slices his skin. He drops into a crouch, then to his knees, scrambles over the deck’s rough metal, scrapes his palms. His heart pounds when he presses the phone back to his ear.
The phone still rings, she doesn’t pick up. More bullets whine past his ears, impacting in the barrel behind him. Oil begins to ooze out of the holes, a cloying reek he can taste in the back of his throat. A few more shots and the whole damn thing will go up in flames. Damn, it, Sydney, pick up the phone!
“Si, mi amor?” she asks, her voice a little too tight to sound natural.
“Lassen Sie die Waffe fallen!” one of the SEK men shouts. “Geben Sie auf!”
“Move,” he tells Sydney.
“Oh, you’ve been waiting the entire time? Darling, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I could forget.” She prattles on, nonsense about a forgotten birthday party and how she will be with her imaginary friend in a few minutes. He hangs up, cursing her.
They’re shooting strategically now, cornering him, bullets left and right, more oil trickling next to him. He needs to get away and behind a hatch, the place is too damn exposed. He’s running out of ammunitions. The graze over his lower back burns; blood is soaking his shirt, trickling down his back. He straightens enough to look over the barrels, fires over head and scrambles, in a crouch, to the open hatch he spotted. Part of him, the always professional part, is counting and marks that he only as two rounds left in his last clip. The odd bend of his spine and the sweat trickling down his back and into the wound makes the pain flare up like a wildfire. He gasps, curses.
It’s just a moment, a tiny moment in which he doesn’t pay attention and is distracted by the failures of his body. The SEK notice the sudden lapse and move in, brutal and quick. They’re fast, stronger than him and better armed. Where the hell is Sydney?
One shot, two. Impact of metal in flesh. One man drops off the side of the freighter, the other stumbles into another, bringing him to his knees. One more shot, sparking off the floor.
Click, click, click.
Sark drops the gun, reaches for the butterfly knife in his boot. The blade glints in the light of the police-boat’s headlights. Slash, feint, stab, double back, slash. The blade cuts through fabric and skin, meets bone and ligaments, fast. Three men, four men, five men. The first falls when the knife slices open his cheek, impacts with teeth. The other three are faster, and Sark’s reflexes are dragging now, muscles refusing the cooperate. In an onslaught of heavy bodies, they’re on him, smothering him with pure weight and the smell of sweat and gunpowder, overpowering him. They’re not using their guns. He’s pushed down and punched in the stomach, the face, the kidneys, hard, fast blows, again and again, clanging his head against the cold iron desk. His lip splits, his head rings. Pain explodes all over his body. Three men, working out all their aggression on him. This isn’t only about being capturing a criminal anymore, this is about retaliation. He knows that fighting back will only make it worse, so he goes limp. After a few kicks from heavy boots, he lands on his stomach. His left arm is pulled back with a brutal wrench and what the fall didn’t manage works all too well for the SEK now - his shoulder dislocates with a blinding pain. He stomach churns, bile rises in his throat as he floats, caught in the pain and the wet noise of the joint popping out of its socket.
Gunshots drive away the sickening noise and then the pressure is gone.
***
A hand swims into focus. "I'm sure mom will be very amused when I tell her I had to save your ass."
He isn’t in the mood for sarcasm now. Bile rises in his throat as he presses his arm against his body. The shoulder would have to be put back in the socket, but not now.
The boat that had been shadowing the harbour side of the freighter moves closer at a great speed now. Farther behind, police cruisers race up to them, blue light flickering over the night-dark city. It’s too close, all of it. They need to move. “Do you have the scan?”
Sydney nods, “The way to the lab?”
“The guards are down.” Pain still meanders through him in sickening waves. “We need an exit plan as soon as you have the alloy.”
“And a place to hole up until the heat dies down.”
Her gaze is accusing, and fuck, he doesn’t need this now. He knows he screwed up. “Go,” he says, giving her no more time to protest. “I’ll create a diversion.”
She turns, runs toward the lab.
Sark leans against the wheelhouse. His body sings with the pain, alive in the worst way possible. Just another breath, then he pushes off the cabin and struggles down to the engine room - too slow, he needs to be faster. On the way down the narrow iron stairs, he pulls the small explosive device from his trouser pocket.
The engine’s roar is deafening. The smell of diesel and motor oil is cloying, a bitter taste at the back of his throat.
Sark plants the charges on the engines, favouring the dislocated shoulder, considers activating the timer but decides against it. He doesn’t know how long Sydney will need, and if the charges blow the engines while she is still in the lab, then everything will be shot to hell. He activates the remote that allows his phone to act as a transmitter, instead.
Back up on the freighter’s deck he inches over to the oil drums that have been placed on the freight deck as cover and slaps two charges on them as well.
The police cruisers have almost reached them and the boat that had been shadowing them clanks against the freighter’s bow. Only seconds, and the deck will be crawling with agents.
Sark reaches for the phone, flips it open.
He hates that he hesitates. It would be so much easier if he just pressed the button now. He could escape, and she’d be –
“How many?” Sark barely manages to hide a flinch. He hadn’t heard her coming, and damn it, since when was he so unobserving? That could have been a BND agent.
“Too many,” he snaps, voice tight. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asks, irritation thick in her words.
Sark manages a smile before he presses the connect button.
The freighter, for something as big as it is, reacts fast. It shudders to a stop, metal screams, the entire ship groans, tilts, then begins to drift without direction, too fast.
There is a crash in the aftermath of the explosion in the engine room,. Sark hears the frantic shouts of the policemen, trying to get the BND agents away from the freighter’s murderous pull. The ship doesn’t lose speed, doubles it instead. The next bridge comes closer and closer. Sark tugs at Sydney’s wrist and they rush to the other side of the deck, away from the barrels.
A second press of the connect button and the oil drums explode into a blinding ball of fire, triggering ever more explosions as the fire licks at the next drums.
The shockwave hurls Sydney against him, pushing him to his knees. His ears ring. When he looks up, she is haloed by the fire, the reflection from the flames licking over her carefully neutral face.
“That means swimming now, doesn’t it?” she asks when they already move between the burning barrels.
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need for him to say it, has been in enough situations that called for a creative way out. Swimming to shore from a moving, burning freighter wasn’t one of the wilder ones.
“There is a warehouse on the other side of Stralau peninsula.” He doesn’t say the rest. She doesn’t need to know that he is in no shape to swim.
Another explosion behind them, voices on the freighter.
Sydney jumps.
Sark stuffs the gun he’s taken from one of the SEK men before into the back of his trousers, then tucks his injured arm tight against his body. Jumps.
The impact on the surface makes him black out for a few seconds, and it’s only the water’s chill that makes him revive fast enough to avoid getting pulled in by the freighter’s screw.
He submerges, resurfaces. Struggles blind against the current, one-armed.
He doesn’t remember how he makes it to the shore.
***
tbc
