Hi all! I've been gone for awhile, but I've been working, I swear!

This is Part IV in the Postcard series. It is a change of pace in that there is no Charah in sight. Indeed, Chuck is mostly in the background, and Sarah isn't around at all.

However, this part is going to be very important to my overall storyline.

Additionally, this is my attempt to fill in some gaps in the backstory.

Not an easy job, considering the inconsistencies in the show, itself.

The advantage of working with Bryce and Orion: They often lie. Thus, anything that I do that conflicts with canon? I can always claim, hey, they lied! :)

Remember, this is just one person's take on the characters. You may feel they are completely OOC.

As always, thanks to my wife and Anon for taking a lot of time to edit my stuff. My wife has the tech understanding that I don't. All the stuff on how Stephen ensures security? All her.

Thanks everybody for reading this. Please review!

And finally, nothing has changed, in that I still do not own Chuck.

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All the running was for nothing.

Stephen Bartowski was an obsessive man.

He would dwell on imperfections, mistakes, and failures.

His latest failure had plagued his mind.

All the running was for nothing.

Abandoning his children; there had been a point to it. To keep them safe. To keep them from his fate.

He had lived in miserable conditions, alone, for years.

For the first five years, he had returned to work on the project, keeping himself a cipher to all while doing so.

For the second five, he had been on the run, from government organizations both in shadow and light.

And he needn't even have bothered.

They had found his family.

Stephen had stepped in, though. He had come back to save his son. And he had succeeded. Stephen had succeeded.

But he hadn't imagined what Chuck might do.

And now, Chuck was enmeshed. And Eleanor...

So far, they hadn't looked closely at Eleanor.

So far.

Stephen had done what he could, given the disaster with which he was faced.

He agreed to go back. Work for them. Be Orion.

It was the only choice he had.

Stephen knew his obsessive nature, and he knew his mistakes would continue to haunt him.

They would haunt him, until he found a solution.

He smiled grimly to himself.

When it came to finding solutions for the tough problems, doing whatever it took, Orion was the master.

He logged on to his computer in the cottage, which had a private high speed satellite uplink with his own encryption protocols. He tapped in the appropriate commands, and connected through a backdoor on a Bank of America exchange server in San Francisco, through that a web server in Thailand, over to a help-desk farm in Bombay, then a biotech company in Switzerland (a personal triumph), and waited for his contact to log in through a virtual web server set up on BBC1's server bank in England. It slowed the connection down a bit, but it was secure.

He typed, "How was D.C.?" when Stephen saw Roan was connected.

A few minutes later, a message pinged back, "Humid. My skin missed the dryness of the West Coast. The ladies love the leathery feel after I've been in the California sun for 8 hours straight."

Stephen grinned. He knew that his friend could talk, or type, at length about women. Back to business. "So?"

"Their mission went fine, their target none the wiser. Agent Walker's seduction skills are to be commended. I wish I had been her teacher, frankly."

I'll bet you do. He typed, "That's my son's, girlfriend. Besides, she's much too young for you."

A very quick response appeared as if Roan was typing right after his Walker comment, "There are no women that are too young for me, Stephen. And it is not as if they're married."

"As if that would stop you. Are you sure they didn't notice you?"

"Stephen, after seduction, the best thing that I do is disguise. Of course, they didn't notice me. Though to complete the illusion, I did have to forgo my usual martinis for some of the local ales. The sacrifices I make for you, I swear."

Stephen had a feeling that Roan was making up for that sacrifice while at the computer. Hopefully, Mr. Montgomery was being careful. He'd been known to short-out electronics with carelessly spilled drinks before. Stephen continued to type.

"Tell me more about the mission."

"What can I tell you? Simple distract, swipe, and return job. They did fine. Charles was acting a trifle strange, though."

Stephen's gut jerked. "Elaborate," he typed. This time, the message response time dragged, at least in his mind. Finally, a response:

"It was a bit hard to tell, but I'd swear that Charles was taking some type of mind-altering hallucinogens. Not drunk, per se, and he walked fine, with some assist from the Colonel."

Stephen couldn't believe he was reading this. "Roan, I have never known my son to do drugs."

Roan replied, "True, he doesn't seem the type. My guess is that Charles would be one of the few to ever listen to Nancy's 'Just Say No' tosh. But, there you have it. Still, it doesn't end there."

"Go on." He was getting tired of Roan's wordiness, since it delayed the exchange, but as much as he wanted to, now or in the past, he couldn't change the man's nature.

"The three went out the following night to five different bars at intervals of a half-hour or less. They had already finished their mission, so I don't know exactly what they were trying to achieve. Agent Walker went ahead, the men pretending they did not know her. She would engage and seduce a mark, while they watched. I would have guessed that she was trying to demonstrate technique if there had been any female student agents with them. And the strangest thing happened. Charles appeared normal upon entering the bar. At some point after watching Agent Walker, I believe he somehow entered that other state to which I was referring, at which point, the three would leave the bar, and go to the next. Even stranger, Charles would seem normal by the time they'd get to the next place, then he'd revert to the state again after watching the seduction. And the cycle continued until the fifth bar. He didn't enter the altered state that time and the three shortly left and that was it."

Stephen's mouth was dry. What the Hell had happened?

"Impressions?"

The message came back quicker this time. "I don't know what to think, Stephen. Your son seems too wholesome to be the type to get off on watching his lover get it on with somebody else. I don't know what they were trying to achieve, but maybe they achieved it?"

Stephen felt uncomfortable. If this had anything to do with the Intersect, then Roan was witnessing something he clearly should be kept in the dark about. If Stephen was to continue to use Roan, he was risking his friend learning more than he should. He decided to change the subject.

"How are things with Beckman?" he typed.

If Roan noticed what Stephen was doing, he didn't care, "The General is insatiable, Stephen."

Yes, yes, Roan. "That's not what I was asking about."

"Of course not, Stephen. General Beckman is putting out many fires. Even my skills are wholly inadequate to sufficiently relax her. She is trying to uncover this Ring, and it seems like she is having very little success. Alas, she won't talk about Charles or his teammates at all. I do think I might be able to get her to send me on another mission with him at some point. After all, I was a benefit to them the last time. The trick is making her think it is her idea."

Stephen sent, "Good idea. Stay on that. Stay on her."

"Or under her. Or behind her."

Rolling his eyes, Stephen typed, "I think we're done here."

"You know, Stephen, General Beckman isn't the only one who needs to relax. When is the last time you had a woman, anyway?"

"Goodbye, Roan. Thanks as always."

"Goodbye, Stephen."

Stephen broke the connection and ran his standard exit protocols to check if anyone had traced him while online. He had a program that would send a very nasty virus into the computer of anyone doing such a thing; however, he would want to identify the perpetrator and track their activities for threat assessment.

He considered what he had just learned.

Chuck's reported behavior disturbed him. Could it have been the Intersect? Stephen didn't know. That bothered him. He was so used to knowing the features of the tool he had spent so much time creating.

Stephen had worked with Zarnow and Busgang on the Intersect, but neither or them knew the Intersect like he did. He was the foremost creator and authority.

Until Bryce Larkin.

Bryce, the only man Stephen had ever met whose intelligence actually surpassed his own.

Bryce, Stephen's former shadow assistant in the Intersect project.

Bryce, who had improved upon the Intersect in ways nobody, including Stephen, had ever imagined possible.

Bryce, who destroyed all his plans and records, and then died.

Bryce, who had saved Stephen's son from a fate his father hadn't wanted for him.

And Bryce, who had turned around, betrayed Stephen, and shoved Chuck into that very fate.

Now, Stephen was going to have to fix both Bryce's errors and his own.

He would protect Eleanor. He would save Chuck. Whether they liked it or not.

In order to do that, he needed to figure out the new Intersect. While he was supposedly clearing out his trailer, Stephen had actually spent most of the past week trying to track down clues that Bryce might have left behind.

It was no good. If Bryce hadn't been paranoid when Stephen first met him, then he had become very much so since. Even so, Bryce would have left something. He always had a loophole, a plan for disaster.

Stephen poured over their history in his mind, but it yielded him nothing. The past might provide a clue, but Stephen's recollections were marred by bitterness. Maybe if he looked at it all from another lens. From the perspective of the other man….

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1998

The heat of the Spring day was beginning to wane when the rising star had left the practice field.

The young man was muscular, but not bulky. While strong, his best physical attributes lay in his speed, reflexes and endurance.

He had an innate confidence in everything he did. He knew that he could have any of the girls at his high school, neighboring high schools, and at some of the local colleges if he had a mind to pursue them.

And he was gifted, a prodigy. He aced all courses with little effort.

Frankly, it was boring.

So, he amused himself through various illegal activities. Nothing that would harm anybody, really. Over the last few years; however, he had graduated from petty theft to burglary. He hadn't yet been caught.

He had also become an adroit hacker, skipping through sites where he had absolutely no business intruding. (He was a fan of War Games, and fancied that some day, he might enjoy nearly causing his own world war.) This was a particularly enjoyable pastime, given that he could illegally discover new and exciting places from the comfort of his own home, thrilled with the underlying possibility that his activities might eventually be traced back to his address. The chance of being caught wasn't so much a fear, as it was a way to add extra spice.

Indeed, Bryce Larkin was well on his way to becoming a professional criminal, when he got in his car and he heard a male voice say calmly, "Start the car, please."

Bryce stopped, staring at the pistol in the rear-view mirror in disbelief. Was that a silencer? He imagined it was.

Bryce should have been scared. The problem was, for all he had learned in his life, he had never learned fear.

He didn't recognize the man in the mirror, but it was an adult. Presumably in his 40's or 50's, except, this wasn't the man's actual face was it? Bryce thought he could smell makeup. If he ever had seen this man before, the identity would probably be unknown.

Bryce quietly said, "Some say that if you ever get in this situation, you're supposed to get out of the car and scream."

"Do that, and you're dead."

Bryce shrugged. "I don't scream, anyway." He started the car, and they drove off.

The man continued to point his weapon at the teenager while he gave driving instructions, directing Bryce where to go.

Bryce casually commented, "First time I've ever had a gun pointed at me. It's pretty cool."

The man made some kind of noise that sounded like it might be a strangled chuckle. "It stops being cool very fast. And you are very stupid."

"That's not what my folks, my teachers, my friends, my enemies, and what everybody else thinks. You'd be the first.... Mr. Bartowski? Or should I say, Orion?"

Bryce looked in the mirror to see the reaction, and noticed the hand on the gun tightening, as his would-be killer said nothing. Bryce heard the pregnant pause.

They kept driving.

Half-an-hour later they were at another field, this one abandoned. The man had Bryce stop the car. For five minutes, they just sat there regarding each other. Bryce finally decided to break the silence.

"Did you come all the way to Connecticut just to kill me, Sir?"

The man considered him for a moment, then said, "War Games?"

Bryce shrugged. "Favorite movie."

"Glad to see that certain films don't go out of style for new generations. My personal favorite is Tron." He paused, then added, "I don't suppose you'd care to share how you found me?"

"Orion is kind of a legend in the government circles. I managed to compile a list of about 500 people you could be." He smiled. "You're only the 47th, I checked."

"What circles do you travel in, Son?"

"I've got an Aunt on the Intelligence Sub-Committee. I love to visit her and look through her things."

Orion frowned. "I find that depressingly easy to believe. Your name is Bryce Larkin."

"And yours is Stephen Bartowski."

"I don't want anybody knowing that, Bryce. I should leave your body here, so I never have to worry about it."

"So, why don't you?"

"I don't like the idea of killing a 16-year-old boy. I have one of those at home. He likes War Games too, though, like me, not as much as Tron. What do you plan on doing with this information if I let you live?"

"Sir, I've just met a legendary hacker and spy. I think I've gotten as much as I can out of this research." He paused. "Unless, of course, you're in need of an intern? Pre-college courses are too easy. I could use a challenge."

There was silence in the back seat.

"If you ever pass on this information, I will kill your whole family, and anybody else that you care about."

Bryce nodded. "Yeah, I believe you."

"Get out of the car and walk away from the road. Leave the keys. You won't be needing them."

Bryce's confidence flickered for a moment. He got out of the car, and walked through the dry grass, hands raised.

Orion got out of the back seat and stepped behind him. Bryce felt the barrel of the gun resting against the back of his skull.

Five seconds later, the weight of the gun was gone, and Bryce heard, "I'll be in touch. Take care of that."

Bryce turned around. Orion was back in the car, this time in the driver seat, his gun now out of sight. At Bryce's feet rested a small briefcase.

He looked from it back to Orion, and said, "Uh, are you going to leave me out here?"

"You're in good shape, and it's only a few miles to a phone. Do you have auto insurance?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll make sure your car is nice and totaled."

"Um, thanks?"

"You're welcome. I'll be in touch."

The man smiled, and then drove off.

Bryce kneeled down and considered the briefcase, wondering if it might explode.

"Oh well, nothing ventured…" He clicked open the latches.

It was a small portable computer.

"Cool."