SUMMARY: A different view of Sydney's cold suit. Silliness. Spoilers for "Firebomb."
DISCLAIMER: The recognizable characters belong to J.J. Abrams; the other guy's mine. :) Either way, no profit is being made by me.
THANKS: To Emily Meredith, for refusing to write this herself, to Kate, for laughing in the right places, and to Jo March, as always, for betaing despite never having seen the show.
***
Surveillance was not Jamil's favorite duty.
After all, he considered himself old-fashioned. Walking the perimeter with a Kaleshnikov was much more to his tastes, even if the guns were from the infidel Russians. The guns might be the only real help the Russians had ever given Arabia, and there was always the possibility that someone would try to infiltrate the compound and he'd get to use the gun when he was on guard duty. But tonight, Jamil had been assigned to man the surveillance room, watching the black and white images of hallways, and the strange, multicolored hues of the infrared cameras.
The infrared monitor strained his eyes, and he was pretty sure that he was supposed to despise such blasphemous Westernized technology, but truth be told, it was amusing to see what his fellow men looked like to the thermal camera. Blobs of color moving strangely, man-shaped with arms and legs showing, despite their modest galabeeyahs.
He leaned closer to the monitor as someone -- probably Reza -- rounded the corner and paused at the top of the staircase. Jamil wished he could see facial expressions or hear sound as the red-blob Reza gestured oddly with his free hand.
On screen, the Reza-shaped blob rushed forward, jabbing and ducking as if he were fighting someone. Some invisible opponent, Jamil thought, leaning so close to the monitor that his nose was mere inches from the screen. There was no one. Simply no one there. Reza was...
He had no idea what Reza was doing. Jamil tilted his head from side to side, searching for a perspective that would make Reza's strange, dance-like movements make sense. Nothing worked, but his eyes were starting to hurt as he strained to focus on--
By the grace of Allah!
A head!
A disembodied head was fighting Reza. A red blob floating in the air, bobbing and weaving opposite Reza on the screen.
Jamil shoved his chair back, moving instinctually away from the devil on the screen. He realized that he was making a strange, keening noise, but couldn't seem to stop.
A head.
What in Allah's name could it be but the devil? The devil was loose in the compound. They were all going to die.
He covered his mouth with one shaking hand, trying to contain the shriek that was struggling its way out. And then on the monitor, Jamil saw Reza's red blob of a body fall to the ground, motionless.
He was dead. Reza was dead.
And then the head, its features indistinguishable but awful. Menacing. The head paused, tilted up to the camera in a distinctly threatening manner. And then it fled, moving eerily in midair.
Jamil took one last look as it appeared on another screen in the adjacent hallway -- the hallway just around the corner from his location -- and he ran, screaming, into the night.
THE END