Alias season 2, episode 2
Original air date: October 06, 2002

Sydney's mother has turned herself in to the CIA, but neither Sydney, nor Vaughn, nor Sydney's father trusts her motives. They're forced to work with her, though, when the Assistant Director of the CIA, Kendall, forces them to do so. He believes that her information will directly aid their efforts to bring down SD-6. They're more determined than ever to do so, because Sloane has just been initiated as a full partner into the Alliance. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Derevko has refused to speak to anyone but Sydney. Vaughn argues against Sydney's being forced to speak to her mother, but Kendall insists. Vaughn knows what Sydney's been through with Derevko, and he's equally troubled, because Derevko killed his father. She tortured him to the point that he could only be identified by dental records.

Blackmail is the theme of the episode, though: Kendall blackmails Vaughn into asking Sydney to talk to Derevko by holding Vaughn's rescue of Sydney from the FBI over his head. Blackmail was Derevko's whole operation, and there was a disk that she kept all her secrets on. The disk is in Rabat in a senior operative's hotel room, and SD-6 wants the disk. Sloane wants to take over where Derevko left off, so he sends Sydney and Dixon to claim the disk. Sydney's counter-mission from CIA is to hand the disk over to an analyst who can scan it and make a copy of it for her to give to SD-6.

Sydney and Dixon break into the hotel room, and Vaughn confronts Derevko. Derevko tells Vaughn that if he wants to help Sydney, he needs to tell her to pull the fire alarm next to the safe holding the disk. The fire alarm, she says, is a fail-safe, and if Sydney doesn't pull it, an alarm will go off when she opens the safe. Vaughn races back to the operations center to relay the information to Sydney. She's just about to open the safe and considers the new information. She chooses not to pull the fire alarm, and when she opens the safe, an alarm does sound. She's able to escape into the hallway, where she's supposed to hand the disk off to the CIA analyst. Before she can, though, Dixon appears, drawn by the alarm, and disrupts the exchange.

Sydney's dad confronts her and berates her for even considering trusting Derevko. Sydney argues that her information about the alarm was correct, but Bristow points out that she doesn't know what would've happened if she had pulled the fire alarm - it could have been even worse than it was. Sydney ignores his warnings and agrees to meet her mother. When she does, Derevko tells her that Peter Fordson is the first person SD-6 will go after, now that they have the disk. She advises Sydney to get to Fordson first.

Derevko's right: Sloane's already on his way to Helsinki to meet with Fordson. Fordson's developed a T-wave camera that can take pictures of the inside of NORAD without being detected. He was supposed to deliver the camera to the U.S. government, but balked and claimed that it wasn't ready. In reality, Derevko was blackmailing him with some pictures of his "daughter's depravities," as Sloane puts it. Sloane uses the same information to blackmail Fordson into giving him the camera, but Sydney's gotten there seconds before Sloane and Fordson and has already stolen the camera. Bad news for Fordson, who genuinely doesn't know where the camera could have gone, but gets shot in the leg anyway by Sloane.

Sydney is shaken by the whole experience and by the fact that Derevko's been right about two pieces of intel in a row. She confronts Derevko and tells her that from there on, Derevko is to address her as Agent Bristow only, is to answer all of her questions, and is to make no comments on her personal life nor her job performance. She asks Derevko if she understands, and has to repeat herself when Derevko makes no answer. Derevko finally replies, "I understand ... Agent Bristow." Sydney leaves, and as she does, Derevko smiles a very amused smirk.

Tangentially related - Francie is getting ready to open her restaurant, and Will is picking up trash as part of his community service. Will mentions to Francie that he saw her at a gas station with an older guy. Francie admits that it was a mob connection that she was using to get a liquor license, because getting a legitimate one will take six months. Will advises her against such dealings, but she argues that she doesn't have much choice. Will offers to help her with her restaurant opening, since he's got free time and experience from when he was working the Metro beat and covering health inspections, restaurant reviews, etc.