“Prelude”

Alias season 3, episode 7
Original air date: November 09, 2003

Sydney has a dream about waking up in the hospital with tubes in her stomach and blood seeping through her hospital gown. She also sees some psychedelic images of a church steeple and doves, superimposed with church bells clanging in the background. She approaches the CIA psychiatrist who has urged her to be in the group for agents who have lost time and tells him that she can't take it anymore. She wants to take more drastic measures to learn what's happened to her, but to dissuade her, he shows her a patient on whom the NSC performed their invasive surgery to recover his memory. He's in a straitjacket and has to be confined in solitary confinement because he's a non-functioning human being now. The psychiatrist lets Sydney know that he is considered a success by the NSC's standards.

Javier, Simon's companion, has been captured by police in Mexico. He tries to bargain with them for his freedom, saying that he can offer information about a CIA agent who killed a Russian diplomat. Lauren and Vaughn are sent to Mexico to discuss Javier's information. Jack tries to interfere with Vaughn's trip, so that Lauren won't find out about Sydney's double life. Vaughn refuses, so Jack hires thugs to kidnap Lauren and Vaughn just to get them out of the picture, while he visits Javier himself and kills him.

Sloane visits the CIA offices for a briefing and a new assignment. He explains that Sark and the Covenant have tasked him to steal a maser from the Chinese Defense Minister's office, while he's there for a charity function. A maser is apparently a microwave laser that is capable of sending a pulse from space that can deliver hemorrhaging, tissue damage, etc., and make it look like the victim died of natural causes. Sloane suggests that Sydney accompany him to the charity function, posing as his assistant, so that she can help him steal the device.

Marshall sets Sydney and Sloane up with a small, remote-controlled optical cloaking device that they can send into the Defense Minister's office and use its internal modem to disable the alarm systems. He also gives Sydney a PDA phone that she can use to call Marshall once she's in the Minister's office, so that he can download the maser operating system, as well as giving her a chip onto which he'll put a corrupted version of the system that Sloane can give the Covenant.

At the event, Sydney places the remote-controlled device down, and Marshall guides it into the office, disables the alarm system, and then Sydney stages a fight with Sloane — complete with a face slap — so she can excuse herself from the dance floor and break into the Minister's office. After Marshall downloads the maser system, Sydney gives Sloane the corrupted chip. He, in turn, gives her a letter and a key that she had mailed to him during her two-year absence. The letter contains numeric codes, which Sloane says he was unable to decipher.

Lauren gets held hostage by Sark when she goes out to her car in the parking garage. He gives her information about Lazarey's murder: photos of Sydney, incognito as Julia Thorne, killing Lazarey. He lets her know that he's sure she'll use it well. Lauren confronts Vaughn with this information, and he can't keep things secret any longer. She's furious that he knew all this time and never told her.

Jack tells Sydney that the code in the letter Sloane gave back to her was encoded with a sequence that Sydney's mother developed. Sydney's confused about how she would have even learned such a code, but Jack says that Irina never mentioned that she was in contact with Sydney during those two years. In any case, Jack has deciphered the numbers and found that they are an address for an apartment in Rome. Vaughn, knowing that the NSC is on to her, helps Sydney get to Rome, where she goes to the apartment and, of course, the key Sloane gave her works on its lock. Looking out the window, she hears church bells and sees doves flying around a steeple. She finds prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet with the name Julia Thorne on them, but as she's going through things, the NSC arrives and arrests her.