PERUN - Lord of the Whole World

If Khasinau and Cuvee sensed her shift of focus, they didn't show it. They continued to view and treat her as someone to be dealt with, but despite nearly twenty years of domination, they continued to underestimate her position. No longer relying on her organization, she struck out on her own. Since seeing the information contained in page 47, her research shifted. She was no longer interested in finding out what Rambaldi hoped to accomplish and set her sights on what it all meant. The prophecy, the greatest power, and Sloane swirled in her head. Past, present and future meshed together in a symphony of destruction so thorough she could hardly breathe for her oppressive fear.

*SydneySydneySydneySydney*

What began as a simple journey for power had taken an awful turn, becoming more cosmic and more intense as the layers were peeled.
The most horrific revelation came when she finally understood that she was but an outsider - she had no ability to effect change. She could only watch, and guide. She would watch Jack watch Sydney be destroyed.
She knew she would ruin everything, everything she had worked for, to spare them from this. It was the only thing she believed unequivocally.

***

She returned to her home in mid-2002. Ostensibly she was resting, having been winged in a firefight in South America. Truthfully, she was finishing up her research. Sark did not accompany her; she could feel his loyalty pulling away from her as he became more and more enamored of the power Cuvee and Khasinau celebrated together. He lived for shows of prowess and domination, unable to appreciate her subtle leadership.

Once her knowledge was complete, she planned to attend a meeting in Taipei. During the previous year they had constructed to Circumference and would now begin testing. She arrived to news that her daughter was enroute.

The time in those bare rooms and storage facilities would become an elaborate play within a play. Irina, playing to her daughter for the benefit of her business partners. They, in turn, pretending their own brand of loyalty, backing her up and pushing her forward. It would be the first time they had ever truly worked at cross-purposes. It was an elaborate scheme to confuse Sydney on the powerbase of the organization, as well as test Irina one last time.

Find out why she has come, they said, and then kill her. Irina could sense the unspoken request: Be at your most ruthless. The time had come for her to face what, in their eyes, had been the weakness she had been allowed to entertain for more than twenty years. Her protestations to the contrary would now be fully tested.

You say you never loved them. Now prove it.

Armed with a gun and a flagging shield around her heart, she walked into an empty storage room. Blue-headed and bleeding, the young woman chained to the chair was still so much the vivacious six-year old. The sight of the familiar brown eyes and slightly trembling lower lip steeled her will and it was without question or regret she raised the gun and shot her daughter in the shoulder. Blood spilled and pooled and there was a shriek of pain that etched across Irina's soul.

Without a backward glance she walked out of the room, down the hall and away from the facility. She slid behind the wheel of her sedan, drove 10 miles and boarded a private jet back to France. She trusted that her daughter would have the ability and sense borne of her father and the willfullness and lack of fear borne of her mother. The girl would be gone in twenty minutes and Irina...would be on her own. By the time Cuvee and Khasinau realized she had left the facility, she was in the air.

Rambaldi and Sydney. Jack. Rambaldi and Sydney. The KGB, contrived marriage, real love. Lives collided in a messy wash of blood and tears, new wounds and old pain. It was a coagulation of life blood, staunched only by Irina's singular will to fix everything. Not heal the world, not own it or even save it.

Sydney.

Jack.

She made several phone calls on the flight, ensuring an adequate cover story. She would be covertly assasinated by Sark as a show of loyalty to Cuvee and Khasinau. Her home in France would be destroyed and all the artifacts moved to a secure location. Power aside, Sark's malleable loyalties could be purchased for the right price. Word would spread that she was dead, the facility Sydney would eventually destroy would leave their organization in tatters. Irina's beloved Bible, the key to everything, would be lost in the shuffle.

Step, by precarious step she executed her plans.

***

She had not expected Sydney in Barcelona, although she wasn't sure why. It was naive not to forsee her child's tenacity.

It was also a prime opportunity for many things, not the least of which was a sort of mindless and vicious repayment of Khasinau's gracious friendship. A bullet through his heart seemed too easy, too quick. But the devastated and shocked look on his face was precious; the dawning realization on Sydney's of her mother's complexity was worth the throw-away action. Irina had placed the seed of doubt in Sydney's mind, the seed that would pave the way for future promises and admissions. Admissions that Sydney would not believe, or care to hear, but that Irina would make because she had been twenty years without confession. And she would unload the secrets of her life and heart on her daughter. Not for redemption, never that, but for the simple fact that she needed them to know.

Scooping up her Bible in the case, she brushed a hand over Sydney's head, six inches from actually touching. A promise made and a promise broken in that one movement.

I'll save you.

Sydney would not appreciate her methods, but the end result would be enough.

***

Before she headed to the joint task facility she stopped at a place that was indelibly marked on her brain.

The skid marks had long since disappeared, as much victims of time and erosion as was everything else. But the water still lapped at the shore gently, dancing beneath the sound of the wind through the evergreens. The sun still glinted fire, reflecting off unending waves. The world still revolved on a busy road behind her.

Removing her shoes, she stepped barefoot into the lake and waded to her knees.

Caught between an old life and a new destiny, she was once again alive. Hidden pains and lost dreams and enough regrets to fill the universe's vast emptiness twice over, she armed herself to face the past and recreate the future.

Ice and stone would protect her passionate heart and she would lead Sydney to her own destiny. She would lie, steal, kill, and cheat. And she wouldn't regret it - it was who she was.

She was a woman who tasted power and enjoyed it. Feasted on violence and sustained herself on the dregs of human nature.

Her heart and her soul were wrapped up in two people and she hoped upon hope that during this final trek together, they would bear witness to her truth at least once.

To hold her child.

To touch her husband's lips.

To fulfill their destiny.

To achieve her final will to power.