OOM: Sky of memory and shadow

[geeky_agent]

July, 15, 2012
4:32pm

"Our intel on Hassan was wrong. He's wasn't in the building," Milo tells her as walks past to his station.

Chris glances up from her screen, narrowing her eyes. "What? Who was there?"

"Don't know," he says with a shrug, not looking at her, only at his computer. "The field teams just pulled up to the location in Valencia. If you have that new security packet, send it over to my screen."

"Yeah, all right," is the murmured reply. A few taps and it's done. Looking up over her screen, Chris has a clear into the conference room where Nadia and Bill are talking. From this distance, she can't hear anything and from their body language, it's hard to say what's happening. Chris focuses on her screen, frowning as she waits for the satellite to update with new images for their site in Valencia. Finally, it updates to the teams approaching the building but she knows this isn't real time, the lag is usually about 30 seconds.

After a week of consecutive attacks, there'd been nothing. Palmer's assassination didn't appear to be connected and even though they had leads on the groups involved, they hadn't made any headway. There was no reason for this calm, even if everyone wanted to believe it was over now.

The satellite images were updated, now she was looking at the empty CTU cars outside the building, the teams already inside.

Caiti had been too quiet these past few days. It was like before, after their father -- died, when she didn't talk and moved around the house like a ghost. Unlike last time, though, she was anxious to get back to her normal routine, wanting to go back home to DC as soon as possible. This time it was Chris who didn't want to let go.

She blinked at her screen, wondering if the lag was longer than usual or if --

It went blank. No image. From the mumblings around her, she wasn't the only one having problems.

"Is the network down?" Chris asks Milo and he just shakes his head in confusion.

Standing up from her desk, she walks over to the conference room where Nadia and Bill are standing silently, their backs turned to her. "Hey, I think there's a problem..."

The rest of the sentence is forgotten as she looks at the mushroom cloud filling the screen. She notices the words 'Valencia, California' at the bottom but refuses to believe them or the image. "What is that? Where is it from? When is it from?"

Nadia turns around, looking at her with shock and before she can answer Chris is heading back towards her station. She looks at the television screens in the bullpen, all turned to FoxNews, all showing the same image of a mushroom cloud, all saying the same thing. Forcing herself to move forward, she collapses clumsily into her chair, banging her elbow. Before she can even think about it, Chris is picking up the phone and dialing the numbers to her apartment.

"We're sorry, all circuits are busy right now. Please hang up and try again."

So she does. Twice more to the apartment, once more to Caiti's cell phone and always getting the same response. Slamming the phone down, she hears Milo's voice and she realizes he's probably talking to her but she keeps moving, out of her seat and she's not even sure where she's going to go. The only thing that keeps her from heading out that door and trying to get to Valencia is Milo telling her that someone is on the phone for her.

Turning back, she grabs the phone from him, "Caiti?"

Comments

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

For a moment they'd stood there in silence, too stunned to move, before everyone had started moving, climbing into the cars and van. Whether it's to get back to CTU or to get away from that sight as quickly as possible, Jack isn't really sure.

At first he can't stop looking back over at it, as though there's some doubt in his mind that it actually is what he thinks it is. But every time he looks, it's still there, like a nightmare he can't wake up from.

They're getting stuck in traffic as people panic, throwing what they have in their cars and trying to flee. Jack digs his cellphone out of his pocket, dialling CTU, a tinny, computer-automated voice telling him what he knows he should have expected: the system is busy, overloaded with calls. He knows CTU is likely even busier than most offices at the moment, that they'll be calling out to HAZMAT, law enforcement, rescue teams, FEMA, DoD, Homeland Security...

It doesn't keep him from hitting the redial button, over and over again. He needs to know where the bomb went off--though part of him already does of course--needs to know if Chris has heard from Caiti. Needs to just hear her voice, and let her know that he's okay, that they're on their way back.

"Son of a bitch," he mutters, pulling the phone from his ear again, hitting redial one more time. This time, finally, the phone rings, and he breathes a small sigh of relief even as he hears Chris greet him with her sister's name, hears the desperation in her voice.

"No, it's Jack. You haven't heard from her?" he asks, his relief fading, his stomach sinking.

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

"No, not yet," she answers, sitting down again at her desk, her hands trembling.

If Jack was all right, maybe Caiti was too. She hadn't said she was going anywhere but she hadn't been talking that much anyway. That didn't have to mean anything. "Where are you?"

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

"We're on the 170, near Van Nuys; traffic's pretty heavy but it might lighten once we get to the 134; people will want to stay away from the city. It might take us a while to get back, though. Do we know where the fallout's headed yet?" Jack asks, looking around him, trying to focus on the essential questions, trying not to let the worry over whether Caiti's all right take over.

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

"Um, no I don't, hold on." She's almost annoyed with him for asking the question because right now she just doesn't care, all she wants to know is if Caiti is all right and that's not answering her question. Hitting a few buttons on her computer, she gets a flood of information and alerts and after three tries, she can't make sense of any of it. Just a screen full of empty words.

"I don't know. I don't know. Do you think she's out, that she went somewhere? Did she say anything to you about doing something today?"

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

"No, but we didn't talk that much," he says, rubbing his face with his free hand. Fuck, if only he'd asked. He takes a deep breath, trying to keep calm, trying to focus. It won't help either of them if he lets his thoughts run away with themselves. "She could have, it's been hours since I was there. Sweetheart...the best thing you can do for Caiti right now is to stay calm and do what you have to."

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

Chris is silent for a moment, the trembling in her hands had spread to her whole body, gotten under her skin and she wondered if she could stand right now if she tried.

"So forget about Caiti?" she asked, her voice calm even though her heart was pounding. "Forget... fuck you, Jack. Just... God." On impulse she hung up the phone before she could scream at him, before she could say more things she would soon regret.

Milo comes over, nattering on about the system and the servers and Chris doesn't even try to listen, every word he utters just rattles her more because she can't concentrate and she doesn't know where her sister is and no one cares.

"Shut up! There are a hundred fucking other people in this building. Ask one of them," her voice cracks on the final words. Grabbing her cell phone, she heads towards the bathroom, leaving a stunned Milo behind her.

A hundred people in this building, thousands dead in Valencia and her baby sister was just one person, just another number on the casualty list.

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

Jack winces at her reply; well, he'd fucked up this time. It's not that he isn't worried about Caiti; he's scared shitless. But Chris is going to be even more worried, and one of them needs to try and keep their head, if not both, if they're going to find her--and he has to believe that they will.

Once she hangs up on him, he tries to call Kim, but he keeps getting the same message as he did before. There was no reason for her to be in Valencia, no reason for her to be anywhere near the blast, but he keeps trying, just wanting to hear her voice, and reassure her that at least he and Chris are alive.

Doyle asks about the bomb, if CTU knows anything yet, but Jack gives him short, negative answers, too busy trying to call Kim, too busy trying to think about if there was anything Caiti had said or done that could give a clue whether she'd been planning on going out. Something that would give some hope that she hadn't been home at the time of the explosion.

Southbound traffic thins the closer they get to downtown, and they manage to pick up speed, as Jack can feel that deep, unsettled feeling that's become so familiar getting stronger. As they near CTU he forces himself to take deep breaths, trying to calm down; he can't afford to have a panic attack right now.

Pulling into the CTU parking lot they bail out, Doyle and Jack running for the main doors. As soon as they're inside and past Security, Jack looks around for Chris, but he can't see her.

Buchanan approaches them, obviously wanting information on the mission, but Jack cuts him off. "Do you know where Chris is?"

"She's in the server room," Bill says, obviously a little startled at the suddenness of Jack's question. He starts to say something else, but Jack's already turned away.

No one pays much attention to him as he hurries past them and swipes his ID card to get into the server room. "Chris, are you in here?" he says, looking in as soon as the door unlocks with a soft beep.

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

After fifteen tries, all with the same results, Nadia found her. Chris was standing in front of the bathroom, half-crying while dialing the number of an old friend of Caiti's in Pasadena. It didn't go through. Nadia gave her the option to go home and it was tempting because then she'd be free to try to find Caiti.

She said no. If she wasn't here, she wasn't sure what she would do or how far she would go but she wasn't certain all the military and all the hazmat suits wouldn't keep her from going into ground zero to look for her sister.

They gave her busy work, she had to go check the routers and servers for any problems and rewire as necessary. Any problems they had now most likely weren't with the server wiring but her she was, standing in the server room, staring at a wall of blinking lights and wires and crying.

It wasn't a question for Chris whether or not Caiti was in the blast zone. She hadn't left the house much this week and the few times she had, Chris had known beforehand where she was going. There was no reason for her to be out of Valencia and the only question now was whether she had survived or not.

She just wasn't sure which option to hope for anymore.

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

The server room is much cooler than the hall, but he hardly notices as he already feels cold all over, his stomach tied in knots, hands trembling.

There's no answer, and he walks further into the room, listening for anything above the hum of the servers. "Chris?" he says again, closing the door behind him, and he can hear a hitched breath behind one of the stacks. Moving around it, he can see her, her back turned toward him, and he reaches out, gently touching her shoulder. "Sweetheart?"

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

Chris jumps at the touch, turning she's surprised to see Jack there but she doesn't ask. The only thing she says is "I'm sorry" before hugging him, holding onto him tightly like he's the only thing keeping her standing.

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

Jack wraps his arms around her tightly, just holding her for a couple minutes, and even as he's worried about Caiti and praying that she wasn't home at the time of the explosion, part of him also has to thank God that Chris hadn't decided to go home for a change of clothes, a nap, anything, as awful as the gratitude feels at a moment like this.

"Have you heard from Caiti?" he asks, stroking her hair gently, though her emotional state is really all the answer he needs. Even as he asks, as he tries to think of where Caiti could be and how they could find out if she's all right, part of him still can't believe it's actually happened. That a nuclear bomb has gone off, and they're suddenly facing the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

[geeky-agent.livejournal.com]

She shakes her head, her mouth against his shoulder and her reply a muffled, "No."

And a part of her hates him for asking and would hated it if he didn't. Chris didn't want to hope that Caiti was still alive, still okay but she didn't want to believe that her sister was dead either. If she was then she'd have to tell Ryan, then she'd have to go back to Milliways and tell her father and everytime she tries to imagine that, she starts crying.

If she was alive, it might not matter. Chris knew enough to know what the chances of survival would be that close to the blast, even with a smaller bomb. It could take weeks to find her in the hospitals, among the thousands who were slowly dying of radiation sickness. She spent the past hour trying to think of ways she could find her quickly, anything to speed up the process and comes back to same horrible thought that even if Caiti survived she could be dead by the time Chris found her.

[action-antihero.livejournal.com]

"Okay," he says, softly, trying to sound calm though his heart is breaking for her and Caiti, and her family. "I can see how the rescue operations are going; where they're finding people and what hospitals people are being taken to." It'll probably be every hospital in L.A. County, depending on the size and yield of the bomb, but if there's a pattern to where people are being sent, it might help them find Caiti a little faster. If there's anything of her to find.

He stands there for another minute, just holding her in silence. More than anything he wants to take this pain away from her, to do something to make everything all right. But he knows that isn't possible, and so he has to focus on what he can do, even if it doesn't feel like nearly enough.

His eyes are stinging, and he blinks, quickly, trying to keep his composure. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he whispers.