ALIAS – Episode 14 – Sydney
Nightingale
“It was my daughter's life.”

The column is a little late, but here it is.

Vaughn has a very bad dream. He is standing at the wall of stars at Langley. One of them belongs to his father. He takes a penknife and starts scraping the star. Black stuff comes out and then he breaks through the wall itself. Suddenly a hand reaches out at him and he wakes up. He looks over at Sydney who is beside him.

The scene shifts to a Yakutia nuclear power plant in Siberia. They are running an experiment. Dr. Joseph Vlacho is in charge. His benefactor, Hans Dietrich, is watching. Vlacho sends a male prisoner inside and turns on the machine, known as Nightingale. The machine looks like it turns bones into mush with a high amount radiation. The man inside seems to melt. Even Dietrich turns away horrified.

Vaughn is eating breakfast and Sydney wants to know if he found anything out about Nightingale. He says he did not. Sydney tells him there might be a hundred reasons why. She wants him to take it to APO. Vaughn doesn’t want Sloane to know anything about his search for his father. He doesn’t know even if Bill Vaughn is dead.

At APO Vaughn tries to get information about Nightingale. He hits a dead end. Sydney says she will ask her father for his level 6 clearance. She does and tells him about the journal. She mentions that Irina was supposed to have killed Bill Vaughn in 1979, but according to his last entries in the journal, it was 1982.

“What if she didn’t kill him?”

Jack tells her that these can be forged. However, he gives her access to the level 6 clearance, telling her, “Feel free to come to me anytime. We haven’t talked since…”
“Mom died,” answers Sydney quickly.

Vaughn and Dixon are boxing. Sydney joins them and Vaughn stops. Dixon leaves. Sydney tells him that Joseph Vlacho took Nightingale design. Hans Dietrich, an arms dealer, has invested a million euros in the weapon. She admits she had to tell her father about the journal if she wanted the clearance.

Meanwhile Jack is talking to Sloan. Sloan warns him “we cannot be compromised, not even by your daughter.” Given their current obstacles, they decide to let Sydney and Vaughn do the intelligence and get the information they could not.

In the next scene Weiss and Nadia tell the lovers goodbye. Sydney and Vaughn are going away to the wine country, actually Munich where Hans Dietrich owns a beer hall. There, Sydney assumes a disguise as a bar maid and lures Dietrich into his office. Vaughn sitting at the bar gets a phone call from Weiss and tells him “This is not a good time.” Sydney gets the hard drive, killing Dietrich, and the pair barely escapes.

They are home when Vaughn’s phone rings. The voice on the other end tells Vaughn to say it is his friend, Weiss. Then if he wants more information on his father, he will have to go to Sherwood Library at UCLA. He is warned not to tell his girlfriend or she will be dead by the time he returns. Vaughn tells Sydney that Weiss wants to meet him for a burger and offers to get her one, which she declines saying she grab something later.

There at the library, he is called again, and told to look for an illustrated copy of Through Looking Glass. This is actually in the kid’s library section. There Vaughn finds the book and inside a hypodermic filled with a fluid. There is a tag wrapped around it that says ‘inject me’. Another call from the mysterious man states he has to do it within the next two minutes or lose valuable information. Vaughn injects himself.

Sloane and Jack about Sydney and Vaughn’s trip to Munich and about Nightingale. Jack tells Sloane that it is about molecular manipulation. Jack wants her to ask Vaughn to take it to APO and use its resources to accomplish whatever Vaughn wants. Jack knows just how to do it. Sydney gets a call from Jack inviting her dinner at Miceli’s, an Italian Restaurant that Jack goes to a great deal. She accepts as she sees the nuclear plant on Dietrich’s hard drive on her laptop screen.

Meanwhile Vaughn is sitting in a frozen position as his contact arrives who says his name is Roberts. He wants him to get him the transformer coil from Nightingale as payment for more information about his father. He gives Vaughn a name: Philip Burke. “Look him up,” he says. Roberts leaves and shortly after, Vaughn is able to stagger out of the library.

Jack greets Sydney and pours her some Pinot Noir. He asks about their investigation. Sydney tells Jack that she found the Siberian nuclear plant and Nightingale plans on Dietrich’s hard drive. Vlacho is using the power for some molecular weapon that changes DNA. Jack urges her to bring this to APO so they use that organization’s resources.

“Trust me. Proceed honestly and above-board.”

Sloane congratulates Jack, saying, “I didn’t believe you were capable of exploiting your own daughter. I certainly couldn’t do that.” They plan a course of action. Sloane says they have to interrogate Vlacho about Elena and then eliminate him. Jack thinks it is extreme, but Sloane warns that if they don’t Vlacho could warn Elena or even talk to Sydney, which would be disastrous.

At APO, Vaughn looks up Philip Burke, who was killed in Laos. The most startling fact he found however, was that the dental records matched Bill Vaughn’s exactly. Not only that, but he was killed by the same gun Irina Derevko owned. Did she kill Philip Burke in order to let Bill Vaughn live?

The operations group talks about Nightingale. They decide on a plan of action. Sydney and Vaughn are assigned and so is Jack who tells them that the information they brought to APO suggests that two people are needed to get Nightingale, one in the control room and one inside the other room where the machine is. (Sloane and he agreed ahead of time about that). Sydney wants someone else, but Sloane says, “Unless there is something you haven’t told us.” Sydney says no and drops her request.

Marshall is running the op from APO with Sloane listening behind him. In Siberia, the three enter the secret plant wiping out opposition right and left with guns blazing. They split up and Vaughn and Sydney go to the Nightingale room while Jack finds Vlacho at the operations security center. He kills the guard and wants to know where Elena Derevko is. Vlacho will not tell him. Jack hits him with the butt of his gun.

Meanwhile Sydney has entered the Nightingale room to get the transformer coil. Vaughn watches and suddenly is shot at by a guard. The control panel receives a burst of bullets and the door to the room shuts. The weapon is activated. Vaughn tells Marshall who is monitoring this at APO. Marshall tries to get the door open, but tells Vaughn he will try to get a bypass. However, it does not work. The countdown from sixty seconds is going and Sydney is trapped, unable to get out.

Jack has overhead this and kills Vlacho, hurrying out of the room. Marshall tells him to stay away. The radiation would kill him. He says he’s working on the problem. Ignoring him, Jack runs to the reactor room and begins working at a control panel. He uses it to shut down the machine and letting Sydney get out. Marshall thinks he was able to do it. He turns and hugs Sloane.
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Sydney grabs the transformer coil and meets Vaughn. They decide on Plan B since Jack is with them. He tells her he loves her then hits her hard. He disappears with the transformer coil, leaving Sydney to face her father. She tells Jack she couldn’t stop Vaughn.

At APO everyone knows Vaughn has gone rogue. Sloane and Jack talk about their plan after acknowledging that a third party was feeding Vaughn information. Sloane notices that Jack looks tired.

“Are you all right?” Sloane asks.
Jack says, “I’m just tired.” He leaves and Sloane watches him carefully.

At home, Sydney gets a text message from Vaughn:
‘Wish me luck. I’m okay.’

As Jack leaves APO and he is accosted by Marshall, who tells him that he did a test on information he programmed to stop the machine and discovered it really did not work. He looks at Jack and tells him, he had to do it. Not only that he had to do it from the reactor room.

“It was my daughter’s life,” says Jack. “Between us.” He warns Marshall not to say anything.

OH, OH!

REMARKS:

I guess the dance at Union Station, re-cemented Vaughn and Sydney’s relationship because there they were…in bed together…but her apartment or his?

In Tuesday and The Orphan, the two previous shows, we were all speculating that Nightingale was a person. No, not Irina or Elena, but it turns out to be a molecular weapon with hideous results. Personally, I would have preferred it to be a person.

I thought Vaughn delivered a knockout blow to Sydney. She went down but ‘bounced’ right back up as soon as he disappeared. She must have an iron jaw.

Notice Sloane’s sneaky remark that HE could never deceive his daughter as Jack did Sydney. I thought Jack was going to hit him, but he kept his cool. I am sure the season will not end well between the two men.

Funny how Sydney slid across the bar.

Bam, we are hit again with another Alice in Wonderland bit.

When Vaughn gave himself the shot, he went in too deep in his arm. He had obvious veins close to the surface. A little practice and it would have looked better. (I know, too fussy.)

DISCUSS:

Elena Derevko is being hunted by Jack and Sloane. Why? Do you think it has something to do with Irina? Does have something to do with Nightingale?

What is Sloane and Jack’s endgame? Is Rambaldi a part of their endgame?

Jack says he killed Irina, but did he? Is Irina in hiding? I know I’ve asked this before, but we’re getting closer and closer to the end of the season. Maybe you’re wiser and able to give some sort of answer.

Will Jack remain friends with Sloane or does he have his own agenda? What might it be?

With tongue in cheek I ask, since Jack was exposed to radiation, will he live until the end of the season?

About Jack, I wonder how he's feeling. He didn't seem so good in this episode. Maybe he's dying and will need a miraculous cure. After all, Marshall did say that whoever tried to do what Jack did would receive lethal radiation or something.

For Irina, if she's not dead, why would Jack cover for her and say he killed her? And if he thinks she's dead, because he killed her, I wonder how he did it. I read some fics in which he thinks he killed her but didn't...I would thnik that in the show, he checked, he was a hundred percent sure. Anyway, I'm only bringing more qestions and no answers. Who knows what JJ and the others have in mind?

Yes, we're nearing the end of the season, and there are still many questions and many things we're expecting to happen. We just don't know when or how it will happen.

man i am not sure how to answer your questions becasue they are the same as mine

I htink sydney or nadia SOMEONE will need to save jack and in doing so it will expose a big secret


callme crazy but i still tink bill vaughn is alive