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"Color-Blind"
Original airdate: November 25th, 2001
written by Danielle C.
Sydney has just found Agent Fisher dead and runs away only to be found by an
orderly. They fight in Sydney kick-butt fashion when another orderly shows up
with a tranquilizer gun. He accidentally shoots the orderly in the stomach. But,
Sydney is shot in the back by the K-Directorate agent posing as the head of the
Mangalev institute. Sydney collapses.
Back at SD-6, Sloane tells Jack that Sydney and Fisher have missed their
scheduled check in time. Jack speculates that they might not be alone at the
Mangalev Institute; someone else could be posing as a doctor or a patient.
Sloane tells Jack that Sydney will be fine; she has seen and been through worse
things. Sloane tells Jack that he believes in Sydney and feels about her as if
she were his own daughter. Jack says that it is nice to know and questions when
Sydney�s next contact time should be. Sloane tells him it is in 10 hours, and
then they will know what is going on.
Sydney wakes up in a steel tub filled with water and hooked up to electroshock
equipment. The K-Directorate agent is sitting next to her smoking a cigarette
and another �orderly� is nearby, as well. The K-Directorate agent tells her that
he knows she works for SD-6 and that she is here to talk to Shepherd about
Parkashoff�s body(Sydney has a confused look on her face) and that she needs
Parkashoff�s DNA to break an FTL code. He doesn�t know if she has succeeded yet.
Sydney asks who he is and he tells her it isn�t important. He tells her that she
has until the machine charges to answer his question. Sydney begins to squirm
and says �Wait, this can�t be the best version of this conversation.� She tells
him that Shepherd didn�t talk and that she doesn�t know where Parkashoff�s body
is buried. She swears she is telling the truth, but the �orderly� shocks her
anyway.
Back in LA, Jack arrives at a restaurant he frequents regularly and meets with
Vaughn. Vaughn gets up to greet him, but Jack pushes him face first against a
wall, pulls out his gun and asks who he is!!! Vaughn tells him he is CIA,
Sydney�s handler, and that he cleared this meet with Devlin. Jack lets Vaughn go
and puts his gun away. He asks �if he and Sydney are switching handlers or is
this a special occasion?� Vaughn tells Jack there is a problem. Jacks says he
knows already that Fisher and Sydney haven�t checked in. Vaughn tells him that a
K-Directorate agent was already in place at the Mangalev institute. Jack says
that SD-6 does not have confirmation of this and Vaughn says the CIA does.
Vaughn wants to pull Sydney out; he has an extraction team waiting in Serbia.
Jack sits down and just looks at Vaughn. Vaughn sits and says he was hoping he
and Jack could coordinate the extraction together. Jack tells Vaughn he is young
and eager, but not wise. Jack tells him that even a minimal extraction team
couldn�t possible provide containment and that if Sloane were to find out,
Sydney would be dead. Vaughn says to retire her, pull her out of service. Jack
angrily blasts back that it would jeopardize the entire investigation into SD-6.
Vaughn says that Sydney�s life is more important. Jack yells back: �NOT TO
SYDNEY!! Taking them down is what gets her up in the morning OR did you think it
was for the meetings she had with you?� Vaughn looks up quickly and asks Jack
what his problem with him is. Jack tells Vaughn that he knows that Vaughn pulled
his CIA file; that is his problem. Jack asks �Did your curiosity get the better
of you or were you just trying to impress my daughter?� Vaughn sighs and tells
Jack that Sydney thinks he was a KGB agent. Vaughn says that Jack already knew
that so Vaughn asks �What were you doing checking up on me checking up on you?
Jack tells Vaughn the meeting is over and gets up and leaves!
Back at the institute, the K-Directorate agent tells the orderly in Russian that
Shepherd didn�t tell Sydney anything and that she would have talked by now. He
then tells the orderly to kill her. Sydney tells him that he can�t torture
Shepherd for information. Electroshock won�t work; Shepherd was programmed to
forget everything he did. Sydney asks him if he is K-Directorate. He asks her
why she would think so and Sydney tells him his accent is Georgian. The Georgian
Former Soviet Reunion is K-Directorate�s main recruiting ground. Sydney says
that Shepherd thinks she is a patient and that he is more likely to trust her
than him posing as a doctor. He says that Shepherd has already attacked her, but
she counters by saying she can use it to seal his �transference� by bringing his
guilt to the surface then forgiving him. The K-Directorate agent says, �I
suppose you would like your life in return.� He tells her that if she gets the
information regarding Parkashoff�s body, she may escape with her life in a
Chechnyan internment camp. She has until lockdown tonight to retrieve the
information. The orderly finally unhooks her from the electroshock equipment.
Shepherd is on a balcony working in a garden. Sydney climbs through a window and
goes to him shakily. Shepherd tells her to stay away from him. Sydney says she
is there to help him. He says he doesn�t want her help. Sydney tells him she
knows what�s wrong with him. Shepherd, says, �Of course you do because you are
one of them. You�re one of the voices in my head.� Shepherd says he knows he has
seen her before. Sydney tells him no and he mumbles and backs away from her.
Sydney tells him that they will kill them both if they don�t work together to
get out of there. Shepherd tells her she has a problem because he�s not leaving.
Shepherd says, �I would rather die then leave the way I am right now.� Sydney
just stands there flustered.
Sydney is being walked down the hallway by the orderly and she observes how to
get out of the institute�s main door. Two keys must be inserted at opposite ends
of each other at the same time. The orderly shoves her into a room where
Shepherd is drawing a picture of a tree overlooking a river. He tells her to
leave him alone. She tells him she knows that he is starting to remember things.
He tells her that she must have had something to do with it and she tells him
she hasn�t. He tells her to �piss off.� Sydney tells him he can�t see colors
anymore. Shepherd looks at her questioningly. He asks again, �Who are you? If
you aren�t one of the people who did this to me then how do you know that?� She
will tell him what he wants to know, but he will have to help her first. She
tells him she was sent there to get information from him, but she doesn�t care
about that anymore. She just wants to escape. He tells her he isn�t leaving and
Sydney begs him to believe her. There are people who want information from him
and when they don�t get it, they will kill them both. Shepherd questions why he
should believe her when she won�t tell him anything. He says again that he knows
he has seen her somewhere. Sydney then tells him that he was trained to follow
orders. Shepherd asks whose orders and to do what. Sydney tells him that he
killed people. Shepherd gets up and shakes his head and says NO. Sydney knows it
is hard to hear, but what he is remembering is real. He has to accept that he
did those things. She continues and tells him when he followed out his orders he
was trained to see things only in black and white. It was to protect him from
the terrible things he had to do. He was not ever supposed to remember those
things he had done, but he is. His training must be short circuiting. She tells
him that what he did was so painful to him that now he can only see everything
in black and white now. Sydney says this is good, it is a defense mechanism and
that he is starting to heal. Shepherd struggles against what Sydney is telling
him. He finally tells her to stop and calls for the guard. He wants to go back
to his room. The �orderly� says LOCKDOWN and goes toward Sydney. She tells him
to tell the K-Directorate agent that she has the information he asked for.
Back in LA, Will sees another reporter�s computer with a picture of Eloise Kurtz
with a caption that reads: WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN ECHO PARK. He goes to his editor
and tells her that Eloise Kurtz had originally told him she was Kate Jones and
that she was a source in Danny�s death. Eloise was trying to tell Will something
and now she is dead. Will wants to publish a story based on the information he
has gathered so far, but his editor hedges. She says, �The fastest way to get
discredited is to offer a conspiracy theory without background.� He asks her to
look at his notes. She will and tells him not to drop it, just develop the story
some more.
Shepherd is in his room asleep and is dreaming�hearing jumbled noises in his
head. He flashes back to seeing a man, whose face he cannot see clearly, looking
into a mirror. He hears a gunshot, opens his eyes and begins having flashes that
go back and forth to images of a man, gunshots, and then to a Happy Birthday
picture of Sydney on a nightstand. He opens his eyes again and says, �OH MY
GOD.�
The orderly is taking Sydney down some stairs and she tries to make small talk
with him. She knocks him down the stairs and takes his keys. She disguises
herself as a janitor and works her way towards the main door. She waits until
the coast is clear to take the mop head off and puts one key in the lock with it
and reaches with the other key into the other lock. She is stunned in the back
by a different orderly and the K-Directorate agent walks up and they take her
down the hallway while she struggles. Shepherd hits the K-Directorate agent with
a fire extinguisher and Sydney fights with the orderly and knocks him out.
Sydney then stuns the K-Directorate agent. Shepherd tells Sydney she was right
about him not wanting to die in the institute. They head toward the main doors
to escape. Shepherd falters, but Sydney tells him he can do it. She wouldn�t let
him escape if she thought he would kill anyone. He counters that she would if
she was going to kill him. She asks him why she would do that, he just stares at
her. Sydney smiles at him and they open the door, run out, steal a police car
and escape.
At SD-6, Marshall is visited by Sloane. He stumbles and mumbles, obviously
nervous in Sloane�s presence. Marshall says he has scanned every computer and
there is no longer a virus, the leak has been plugged. Sloane (lying) tells
Marshall that the virus was a security section drill and that he was the only
one who caught it. Marshall says the information being transmitted was over an
unsecured line. Sloane tells him that security section was monitoring the
computers the entire time and leaves. Marshall is still perplexed.
Sydney and Shepherd are at a CIA safe house. She reaches into a hidden
floorboard and pulls out a suitcase. In it is a cell phone that she uses. Jack
answers the phone and Sydney asks where Vaughn is. Jack had all of Vaughn�s call
forwarded to his number. He asks her if she is alright. She is. He is obviously
relieved. He asks if Shepherd is with her. She says yes. He is just sitting by
the fireplace staring off into space. Jack tells her where to go so she can get
out of Romania. He tells her that the hard part is over and that they will talk
when she gets back.
Shepherd asks Sydney, why him and why did Sydney have to be the one to come and
get him. Sydney tells him that they are looking for a man he killed and buried;
Garreth Parkashoff. Shepherd tells her about the first time he started to
remember things. He started to see faces and flashes of places. He thought he
was having bad dreams because they were only in black and white and they were
really vivid. He couldn�t be sure how much of it was real. A shopkeeper one day
told him he was a murderer and he just didn�t believe it, but he locked himself
away at the Mangalev institute, just to make sure. Sydney tells him it wasn�t
his fault. He feels like he was stolen from himself. He wonders what he was
really like. He asks Sydney (by name) who she is, hoping it might help him.
Sydney asks him how he knew her name. He finally says, �The banner.� �What
Banner,� Sydney asks. He tells her about the picture of her he remembers. Sydney
makes a face of utter shock and pain and now the following images as Shepherd
sees it in black in white appear. He heard water running. He watches a man in a
bathroom who turns out to be Danny washing his hands. He turns around to see
Shepherd and Shepherd shoots him at point blank range. Sydney begins to cry and
is close to hyperventilating. Shepherd says he is sorry and Sydney gets up and
runs outside where she cries uncontrollably.
She returns to find Shepherd sitting in a chair. She tells him that the man he
was ordered to kill was her fianc�. His name was Danny. She sits down next to
him and tells him that she told Danny that she was a spy because �he was the one
part of her life that she couldn�t stand to be a lie.� When SD-6 found out they
had him killed. She thinks the man who programmed him is named McCullough; he
works as a neurotech at SD-6. Shepherd repeats the name and says McCullough�s
voice is in his head. Sydney says the ironic thing is that SD-6 never lied about
what would happen if she told anyone about herself. It was the one thing SD-6
told her that turned out to be true. She tells Shepherd that she is a double
agent working for the CIA and will be until SD-6 is gone. Shepherd asks her if
knowing where Parkashoff�s body is will help her to take down SD-6. She simply
replies yes. He tells her that he left Parkashoff�s body in a marshland on the
Louisiana & Texas border off the I-10. Sydney cries.
Sydney is back in LA talking with Sloane. She tells him that Shepherd wrote down
the location of Parkashoff�s body in exchange for her help in escaping from the
institute. Sloane asks where Shepherd is now and Sydney says he committed
suicide. She says something must have gone wrong with his programming because he
started remembering what he had done and he snapped. They were crossing the
border in Bulgaria and he jumped off a bridge. There was no way he could have
survived. Sloane just stares at Sydney and finally says that if he somehow
survived they would hear about it later.
Sydney is with Vaughn telling him that she told SD-6 that Shepherd was dead. She
was going to lie to Vaughn too, but she couldn�t stand to lie to anyone else.
Vaughn smiles and appreciates it, but he informs Sydney that certain people in
the CIA will want Shepherd found. Sydney says that Shepherd was as much a victim
of SD-6 as she is. She tells Vaughn where Parkashoff�s body is and that Sloane
sent a recovery team to retrieve Parkashoff�s DNA so they could decipher the FTL
code. Vaughn tells Sydney that �we were worried.� Sydney says she knows how the
CIA hates to lose its assets. Vaughn corrects himself and says that HE was
worried for her. Sydney half smiles and looks away. Vaughn tells her that he
even contacted her father, Sydney is surprised. He tells her that Jack knows he
pulled his file and that Sydney has seen it. Sydney says it is okay. Vaughn�s
beeper goes off. He says he hopes their virus into SD-6� computer network turns
out to be a goldmine. Sydney agrees and says maybe then they can be ahead of
SD-6 for once� Vaughn tells her to go home and get some sleep, and oh yeah:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Sydney says, �Oh God.�
Sydney walks through her front door and Francie immediately asks her if she was
ever going to call her back!! Francie walks around opening windows while asking
Sydney where she has been. Sydney says her trip was extended. Francie tells her
that she can�t disappear on her like that. Sydney asks Francie what is burning.
Francie replies, �Oh, it is just a little oven fire.� Francie fricasseed the
turkey�Sydney smiles and looks as if she is going to cry. Francie asks her if
she is alright and Sydney hugs her and says she is happy to be home. Francie
says, �Yeah, but the turkey is really burning.� They laugh, take out the burnt
turkey and proceed with Thanksgiving preparations. Charlie shows up with flowers
and more food. Will shows up with Jenny and introduces her to Sydney. Jenny
thanks Sydney for the invite and says she �would have brought wine, but she got
carded!� Jenny observes Will�s obvious feelings for Sydney and excuses herself
to put the cider in the fridge. Sydney says Jenny is cute. Will says she is an
intern and her parents were out of town and felt sorry for her. It is a strictly
professional relationship. Sydney hmms to herself and Will says, �WHAT?� They
all sit down to dinner and everyone is talking amongst themselves, when Will
asks Jenny if her parents are really out of town. Jenny smiles and doesn�t
answer. Will just smiles, too. Charlie says he wants to make a toast, and then
proceeds to get down on one knee and proposes to Francie!! Everyone is
surprised. Francie says yes. Jenny kisses Will and he tells her to watch her
tongue. Sydney congratulates Francie and Will congratulates Charlie.
Jack shows up at Sydney�s. Both are surprised and feel awkward. Sydney asks him
if he wants to come in. Jack blurts out that Shepherd was the man who killed
Danny; he assumes she knows by now. Sydney says that if she hadn�t known, thanks
for breaking it to her so gently. Jack says he told her because, �He didn�t want
her to believe it was his mission in life to keep things from her.� Sydney asks
him why he does it then. He presents her with an official document that clears
him of any involvement with the KGB. He tells her that after the Cold War
everyone was under suspicion. He says maybe in a way her mother�s death was his
fault since the FBI was investigating him. If he could give Sydney back her
mother, he would. Jack tells her to take the document and Sydney says she
doesn�t need to and asks him to stay. He can�t: work. Both say Happy
Thanksgiving.
The next day at SD-6, Sloane tells Sydney that they found Parkashoff�s body and
ran his DNA through the decoder and deciphered the FTL communication. It states:
�Possible location of Rambaldi artifacts in Tunisia.� Sloane says now they know
where all the FTL agents went off to. Sydney says now I know where I am going
and Sloane tells her he has already sent a team and nothing was found. The FTL
must have found what they had been searching for. They also must not know what
they have because they left it with scientists at Oxford. Sydney will be going
to a University reception for visiting professors posing as a Scout for the
Marissa foundation looking for grant candidates. Sloan warns her that the FTL
will have a large presence there and will do everything they can to stop her
from recovering the artifacts.
Will and his editor are discussing his story. She tells him he has enough for an
initial piece on why the police are not really curious into Danny�s and Eloise�s
death. Will is surprised and ambivalent. He tells his editor about his
relationship to Danny and he is worried about upsetting Sydney. His editor says
she is sorry, but that he has a legitimate piece and if he doesn�t want to
pursue it, she will give it to someone else. She tells him to not chicken out
now.
Vaughn and Sydney discuss her counter mission. She is to take photos of whatever
Rambaldi artifacts are uncovered. The CIA will plant a sub minicam in her hotel
Bible. He tells her that a CIA asset spotted Anna Espinoza leaving the Mangalev
institute after she left. He tells her to be careful because Anna is on her
trail investigating the same things. He asks how her Thanksgiving was. She says
it was good. She asks about his. He says it was typical; he spent it with his
mother. Sydney asks about his girlfriend, Alice. He says they broke up. They
both look away from each other, then Sydney looks up, smiles and they both go
their separate ways.
She arrives at her apartment and is going through the mail. She finds a postcard
from Shepherd that says, �Blue Skies Again. I owe you.� She smiles.
Sloane is in his office speaking with Alan from the Alliance about the
possibility of a mole in Sloane�s office. Alan says that it also appears that
there might be more than one mole. Sloane says that if there are any moles
McCullough will draw them out. Meanwhile, Sydney goes to a conference room where
her father is working and hands him a container of Thanksgiving leftovers. They
both smile at each other. Alan says that if there are moles they are to be made
examples of. Sloane says he knows and he will take care of it� |
