Bryce:
Turning life upside down…
I don't own White Collar or Chuck but I enjoy playing in the crossover sandbox to build my own castles ;)
The italics tell another part of the story but separate it from Bryce/Neal's direct history. (This chapter has Bryce in the title because the first two chapters are from his side of the story while the second two are from Peter's perspective).
Everything was spiraling out of control.
It started with my betrayal of my best friend, again. Only this time, it was my other best friend. A friend who has taken so much because of me and yet, somehow, he keeps giving me another chance… until now.
You see from Peter's perspective I was getting impatient to be freed from my anklet and suddenly I disappeared. He suspected that there may have been foul play, I left Mozzie behind after all, but he had no idea what was really occurring. Then, I returned out of the blue with no forth coming explanation, which was enough to give him reason to question me. The clincher that sealed our partnership's fate was when he next discovered that I had betrayed him. My offense was the ultimate betrayal, he couldn't forgive me this time.
To explain my betrayal I have to go back farther and explain what caused the situation.
At Stanford, in my freshman year, I met my future antagonist.
There was a student on campus by the name of Danny Wilson. We were considered to be similar because we were both known to have interests in computers and art, could charm our way into any social circle, were athletes, and we each had our own party collection of sleight of hand tricks. But that was where the similarities ended. When it came down to character we were as different as night and day.
I got to know him because we had some of the same classes, a few mutual fiends (not Chuck, although he knew him as well), and we ended up meeting from time to time.
Over the years we were in school together, he never did sit quite right with me. There was an instinctual feeling that he would be the person to literally stick a knife into someone's back should he be given the opportunity. Unluckily for me… I was the one who took that knife in the place of another.
To tell what brought that about we have to skip forward a few years.
After I was recruited in the CIA my life took some unexpected twists. First, there was the betrayal of Chuck to save him from the CIA/Military Operation Omaha, then Orion showed up and enlisted my help to protect the Intersect, and eventually I found myself briefly having a nemesis.
My first big role was the legendary con artist Neal George Caffrey. He was fun to play and had a variety of purposes. First, he was intended as a means of getting into the criminal world undetected as a fellow criminal. He was a white collar criminal because the role wouldn't be confused for my actual identity due to the difference in circles that I work in as Bryce. Second, he was a means of righting wrongs. To do that, he was able to find out about crimes that had been committed and find a means of reversing them via reporting them to the law, or by simply stealing stolen possessions back in order to ensure their future safe return to their rightful owners. Finally, he was a means of protection. Most of the criminal world didn't see Caffrey conning criminals, like Wilkes, out of their money as a means of protecting his intended victims, they saw it as a young criminal making stupid decisions that would eventually cost him his life. Still, conning a criminal out of their means of gaining supplies to commit crimes counts as a means of protection in my book.
I had been being partnered with Sarah from time to time for a few years and there came a point where Director Graham wanted us to work more closely as a full time partnership. In order to pull me from my cover of Caffrey, my orders were to get arrested by Agent Burke.
Surprisingly, Peter made it easy.
He had discovered where Kate was located and put the word out on the streets with the hope that I would be love struck enough to simply walk into his trap. Despite our relationship being over, I walked in and talked to Kate. Before the police raided she agreed to a contract to visit me once a week for the duration of my sentence. For her there was payment, for me, my cover had an element of depth in my absence.
Sarah and I worked, dated, and then our relationship ended as I was put under cover to go after the traitorous organization of Fulcrum. Over the course of my sentence I appeared to betray everything, twice I was killed in action while protecting the Intersect, and then after my second death I was to remain dead to my past and those it included in it while moving on to tackle other enemies.
Then I was put back into the Caffrey role.
By this point Kate solely functioned as my asset and, despite our contract, she wanted a meeting to conclude our working relationship. As our meeting came to its conclusion, Kate signaled me that there was trouble and that an old case might be opening up again. She wouldn't tell me anything else, so Beckman gave me permission to follow my plan to work as a consultant in the FBI and search to discover what Kate had meant about an old case opening up again.
It was quickly arranged at the DC level for my role to transition into the FBI office. On the local level the arrangement took a break out, arrest, and a meeting with Peter in order to convince him to handle red tape for the change.
Peter has always been the type of agent I could trust and work well with so it was no wonder that we defeated enemies and solved cases at an impressive rate. The work was enjoyable and we did a lot of good work, then things took a downhill turn after I was abducted.
Danny Wilson had also been recruited in college, but he was a part of the dark side, if you will. Where my job was to protect, his was to destroy.
The organization he joined was called Leverage. An organization that was large, evil, and determined to cause trouble. In ways, it was like fighting another version of Fulcrum and the Ring with an unknown number of agents and plans that we wanted stopped.
They put Danny into their operation in the New York City FBI office. Danny's front was to be an FBI Tech Analyst who was "one of the good guys" on the surface while being a mole for Leverage behind the scenes.
His job was to analyze the technology and information transferred via technological means for cases as his job dictated. He did his job well as far as the records were concerned, but unbeknownst to the office he misappropriated his access to classified information. The intelligence he copied was either passed to his bosses or sold on the street for a personal profit that Danny kept hidden in a secret cache.
He was also tasked to set the New York City FBI office up for a fall. To do that, he needed to get familiar with the agents. He spread his tentacle through the office by charming his way into their hearts and gained a good understanding of who was the upstanding variety and who could be persuaded with monetary or nefarious means.
Slowly he set up a house of cards constructed by actual bribery and blackmail as some walls while others were constructed of falsified documents and information. He put paid witnesses on record, set up doctored videos and photos, and in general did a really good job of arranging the entire office to fall.
Secretly being CIA, it was not as difficult as some would expect to escape from my captor's clutches and leave them crumbling from the inside out. A call to the agency brought in more personnel who finished the job and left me free to simply walk back into the office like nothing happened… except my anklet had been cut and I was missing for three weeks with no explanation.
This caused a whole new level of suspicion from the office which wasn't helped by the next series of events.
Before the situation with my abduction could be cleared up and resolved, I intercepted a message being sent to Peter. I recognized it as the type to be sent either by covert government agents, or enemy operatives intending to create a blackmail situation.
The communication was to set up a meeting with an anonymous person late that night. Rather than endanger Peter, I chose to step into his place (just like I had done with Chuck and, unfortunately, with similar results).
Later, I met with a man that I never saw, but instead only heard. This way I couldn't implicate him as my accomplice should I be caught in the act he wanted me to commit.
As Peter, my choice was to accept the task to hinder my team's efforts, set them up for blackmail, and commit fraud in the process. If I refused that offer, they would be set up for blackmail anyway, Elizabeth would be destroyed professionally, Peter would go to prison indefinitely, his reputation would be annihilated, and he would never make it out of prison alive.
Given the choice, I chose to appear to accept the first choice. I was given my instructions as to what I was to accomplish and my contact disappeared into the darkness.
Instead of returning to my apartment and putting the anklet back on (I had removed it to keep my meeting secret), I chose to go to my base and set up the means of dealing with the situation. After notifying Beckman, we arranged a means of proceeding and I got the go ahead to complete my plans.
Once I was settled into my computer, I subtly hacked into the office computers and set up a series of fake documents hidden in the system to create the means of blackmail. Then I proceeded to change the information for the cases I was to hinder so that even the system provided the wrong details. Finally, I made it look like Peter had trace evidence of involvement with my activities hidden in the work.
With my work completed, it was time to return to my apartment as we had a case to work in the morning.
I was excited to work this new case since I was to be playing a track star. The team figured that I was always so good at running that they might as well have me get clocked for my speed while completing a case at the same time.
Standing on the track, I stretched and relished in the feeling of the environment that surrounded me. I had been a track star in high school and earned a scholarship to Stanford. Running, working with a coach, and the whole atmosphere took me back to better days. (Better days than mine was going to be).
While I was going through my paces, Peter was sitting up in the stands with some random bystanders and people connected to other competitors. As he got into conversation with one of them, he unfortunately discovered by chance what I least wanted him to know… that I had betrayed him.
Peter had managed to strike up conversation with the only person who had happened to witness what had occurred at the meeting. He hadn't seen my face, but he had heard my voice. Talking with the man Peter learned that an "Agent Peter Burke" had meant with another man and they had discussed setting up fraud and blackmailing for the agents of the local White Collar team.
The Archeologist in Peter couldn't hear that and let it rest, so he continued to carefully interrogate the man. His prodding brought out the information that he didn't want to hear. That a man who fit my description and voice met an unseen man to make the set up.
Absolutely furious, Peter was hardly able to wait until the case was done before he slapped me in cuffs and hauled me back to the office with the promise that as soon as this was fixed, I was going back to prison… for good.
For the most part Danny had good luck setting up the office for its fall. However, his efforts remained incomplete as long as there were agents that he couldn't corrupt and who had shining reputations too difficult for him to tarnish. Ironically, most of the agents he had trouble setting up were collected in the White Collar Division.
Agents Hughes and Burke weren't the type of agents to tolerate agents that they couldn't trust so they took care of who they were willing to allow onto their team. Granted, Caffrey was an exception to that rule, but he was more of a means of getting a perspective on crime that a straight laced agent couldn't provide (or so they thought).
After several failed attempts, Danny decided to let Leverage get involved and help him with the last troublesome group. They arranged for Danny to have the meeting with Peter as a means of setting him up for fraud, the documents I created were to make it look like the team covered for each other's indiscretions, and the change of information in the database was to hinder the team's closure rate that made them stand out to the superiors. The ultimate plan was for this to be discovered and the internal turmoil to tear the team apart before the house of cards would be discovered in a domino chain of events that would spread to other parts of the building and eventually destroy the entire New York City office's reputation and creditability. No one wants to even think about contemplating how much trouble that would cause… except Leverage who planned for it all to happen of course.
Once I discovered their plans and researched into what was going on, our forces came head to head over an unlikely battle field, the FBI. Particularly, the FBI Office of New York City, starting with the White Collar Division.
Danny was the front man for Leverage, and I was his main opponent.
Thank you for reading, I hope you are enjoying this little story as much I enjoyed writing it :D