1
"Don't judge," Francie said, turning off the lights, "until you get the full effect."
Sydney Bristow wasn't sure what she was looking at. Then her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness of the summer evening and she noticed a luminescent glow coming from the ceiling.
Stars. Neon green glow-in-the-dark stars.
"You always talk about how you can never see the stars in L.A.," Francie said, smiling. "Not like you could in West Virginia, anyway. So . . . voil^! What do you think?"
Her roommate had done an impressive job, Sydney couldn't deny it. Francie Calfo had hung up constellations, nebulae, even a spaceship with an alien waving from the cockpit.
"I love it," Sydney said. "But it seems like a lot of work for something temporary." At least, she hoped it was temporary.
"Not really," Francie replied. "It just took a few minutes to stick them on. It's summer now. . . . We can have a little fun."
Sydney and Francie had finished freshman year classes at UCLA with a whimper instead of a bang. Sydney had stayed up for seventy-two hours straight cramming for finals, trying to catch up on all the lectures she'd missed as a result of her job. The only outlet she had allowed herself was buying a Super Soaker and chasing Francie up and down the halls of the dorm. Francie had responded by buying one of her own.
"You're insane, you know that?" Francie had asked Sydney one night as they dried their clothes and Sydney went back to studying. "You wouldn't even be in this situation if it weren't for that stupid bank."
Sydney hadn't responded. She couldn't explain to Francie that she didn't work at a bank--she was an agent for SD-6, a secret branch of the CIA. And when the CIA said you had to go to work, you skipped your classes. Period.
Sydney still couldn't believe how she had stumbled into this life. Nor could she believe how many life-threatening situations she had survived. But the trade-off for such eye-opening experiences had been another kind of education, not only in the world of intelligence, but also in the cynical world of human behavior. Sydney had discovered that good spies weren't necessarily loyal spies. She'd found out that your superiors were just as likely to sell you out as enemy agents were. And she'd decided that there was only one man she knew she could always trust: Arvin Sloane.
The director of operations at SD-6, Arvin Sloane radiated trust and confidence. He took every mission, every risk, seriously. More importantly, he took Sydney seriously. At first, Sydney had had trouble understanding why she put so much faith in Sloane. Then she had realized that it was simply because he listened.
He listened. To her.
As the youngest field agent at SD-6--and the youngest employee the agency had ever taken on--Sydney felt she was being judged at all times. Her co-workers, particularly the men whose careers had stalled because of missions that had gone south, made sure she felt their disdain, like a weight on her shoulders. What are you doing here? their eyes seemed to say. This isn't the place for you, little girl.
But Sloane was different. He believed in her. He seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. Once, when he had asked her how she liked working at SD-6, Sydney had babbled on for five minutes about how the organization inspired in her a patriotism she never knew she had. Shut up, shut up, you're making a fool of yourself in front of your boss, she'd told herself, and then ended her speech with a self-deprecating "But don't listen to me, I'm just the new kid," expecting Sloane to politely turn the conversation to something else. Instead, an odd light had shone in his eyes, and he had grabbed one of her hands with both of his. "Don't think that, Sydney," he'd told her, his voice shaking with emotion. "Don't ever think that. This organization was built by people like you. Passionate people who believe in our cause. If I had ten agents like you, we could take over the world."
That had been the moment that Sydney had realized she would die for him.
Which was why she'd listened in May when Sloane had instructed her not to take summer classes, even though a few now would have lightened her burden in the fall. And when he'd said, "Nothing out of the ordinary, I just need you to be available for a mission. It's standard operating procedure," she had waited. And waited. Sloane had termed it indefinite standby, but after weeks of waiting Sydney had been convinced she was about to be fired.
Eventually her fears melted away. In June she had traveled to Niagara Falls for a mission as well as bonding course with her fellow SD agents--and the shock of learning that one of them was a double agent had made her grateful to have a break. Before she knew it, it was mid July, and she found herself on a steady diet of sleep--eight hours a night, for a change--yoga, and bad summer movies. She had forgotten the bliss of the pure vegetative state.
Of course, Sydney wouldn't have minded sharing that bliss with someone. Francie was still spending most of her time at her summer nanny gig--she'd spent several weeks in New Mexico with her young charges. Now she was back, but Sydney had barely seen her. That made what was happening with Noah, her sometimes boyfriend, even more frustrating.
While Sydney was sitting on the sidelines waiting for her mission, Noah Hicks seemed to be doing double duty at SD-6. She knew he loved being in the field, and the last thing she wanted to do was make him feel guilty for not paying enough attention to her. But it bothered her that his idea of spending time together was talking for five minutes on a secure sat-phone once a week, if she was lucky. She wasn't even sure where they stood. Was he her boyfriend? Or were they just dating?
"Let's call it dating plus," Noah had said when she'd tried to pin him down.
"Plus what?" she'd asked. But he'd danced his way around that one, leaving her to wonder.
And now, as Sydney stared at Francie's stars glowing on the ceiling, she wondered if she could afford to have a little fun.
When the clock says 2:30 a.m., it's time to stop lying to yourself, Sydney decided.
Eight hours of sleep a night? More like four hours of tossing and turning and four of actual sleep.
Yoga? She'd hated it. Quit after three sessions.
Bad summer movies? They were just that--bad.
And Noah? Well, the Noah situation did bother her. But that wasn't what kept her awake at night. It wasn't what made her get out of bed and take long walks around campus. It wasn't what made her Krav Maga sparring partner stop her in the middle of a round and ask, "What are you taking out on me?"
Sydney was restless.
