Chapter 1

Sydney carefully maneuvered the long-handled tweezers between the thin laser beams, knowing that one small slip and the alarm would go off, making her as good as dead. "Come on, come on, straight through," she murmured to herself as she worked. The tweezers magnetically latched onto the key she was going for, and she began to draw it out. After five agonizing seconds that felt like a few years, it was laying in the palm of her hand she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Dixon, I've got it. I'm heading out," she said into her commlink. She turned to go and found a gun barrel pointed directly between her eyes. She stared past it to its owner. The man spoke with and all too familiar British accent.

"Thank you for your hard work, Miss Bristow. My hand is hardly steady enough for detailed retrievals like that. Hand it to me," Sark said.

"And if I don't?" asked Sydney rebelliously. She had just held her breath through the entire procedure, and she wasn't about to relinquish her prize that easily. Besides, the CIA needed the key to the small Rambaldi safe she recovered. SD-6 had a fake box, so they needed a key, too, but priorities certainly have to be in order. Such as the one in Sydney's face at the moment.

"Well, of course there is that option, but that would mean the janitor would be cleaning you brains off the floor and I get the key anyway. What will it be?"

"There's not a third option?" she questioned as she swung her hand up to grab the gun. As she expected, he grabbed her wrist and held it tightly. Reflexively, she changed her attack; using his focus at her hands as she struggled with her wrist, her leg shot out from underneath her, delivering him a sharp and extremely painful kick to his shin. At the same moment, she flung her head to the side. He pulled the trigger instinctively, as she knew he was going to, and the bullet missed her ear by a fraction of an inch.

His concentration being on the pain in his leg, she swiftly moved her foot up and around him. Her heavy boot collided with the side of Sark's head in a crescent kick. He crumpled to the ground. She whacked him on the skull with the handle of his gun to make sure he was out cold. The action turned out to be technically unnecessary, but it did make her feel a lot better.

She ran outside to meet Dixon, who was waiting in a black Crown Victoria. After she jumped into the car, (through the window) they sped off into the night. She was grateful for her disguise this time. It meant she didn't have to worry about being all exposed if she tripped; wearing black, heavy clothes from head to toe for Nine Inch Nails concerts was a change from all those bustiers and formal dresses. This time the object for retrieval, rather than being at the home of someone with more money than taste, was down below the stage at London's O2 venue.

Sark awoke with a pounding headache. I'm certainly going to have two goose eggs on my head tomorrow, he thought with a grimace. Bristow was good, strategically-thinking fighter, and he respected that- in principle.

With effort, he pulled himself off the floor. Surprisingly, he felt his gun lying next to him. He thought Bristow would have taken it, but she must have left it in her hurry. He felt the vibrations from the concert above. Based on that, he couldn't have been out for long.

Moving cautiously, he walked out of the underground vault. The music pounded at the bruises on his skull. He winced.

He climbed into his rental car, glad that he had no hired men with him. They were bumbling idiots, the lot of them. Before he drove out of the full parking lot, he grabbed his bottle of Advil from the glove compartment and swallowed four dry.

"Francie! Can you take out the trash? I have to leave for work, like, five minutes ago!" Sydney called to her friend in the other room.

"Sure! See you later! By the way, it's your turn to cook dinner and Will's coming over tonight," Francie called back.

Sydney walked out her front door and wished for the billionth time that she had a normal job. This job just took too much out of her. Poor Francie. Sydney didn't like lying to her at all, and she was just clueless about the whole thing, which made Sydney feel even worse.