Chuck vs. the Defense Contractor, Chapter 1 - Intro
Disclaimer: I don't own anything at all related to Chuck. No characters, no plots, no themes, no nothing. Enjoy!
Basement of Century City HQ of Miller-Johnson Corporation, Los Angeles, 2:30am on a weekday
A brief moment of quiet allowed Chuck to realize of the absurdity of his current thoughts. A few feet in front of him, Agent Sarah Walker was in a two-handed shooting stance and looking very fierce. Wearing her usual action ensemble of comfortable black clothes with plenty of pockets, her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her blue eyes were determined and intimidating. Despite the current life-or-death situation, Chuck noticed that the bloody gash above her left eye did little to upset the perfect symmetry of her face. He also couldn't help but notice her lean and curvy form under her outfit and felt a tiny bit of warmth at the memory of all the little touches they had shared. He always noticed when she touched his unruly hair, straightened his tie, or grabbed his hands to reassure him when he was freaking out.
"Goddammit Walker, Shoot!"
Chuck's quiet moment ended with an insistent shout from Casey and more loud bangs coming from his H&K 416 carbine. He had just dropped out an empty magazine and slapped in a fresh thirty rounds. Casey was about twenty feet behind Chuck, dressed in black, and crouched behind an improvised barricade of office furniture and bulletproof vests. His target was the only entry (and exit) point of the room. He wasn't hitting anybody at the moment, but his shots provided suppressive fire and kept them out.
They were the ex-SEAL/SAS/ MI6/Spetsnaz/super-soldier mercenaries that comprised the Miller-Johnson Corporation's private army of 'contractors.' The room they desperately wanted to enter was the GDN of the corporation. The GDN was the Global Data Node of Miller-Johnson and reminded Chuck of NORAD from Wargames. It was much cooler looking than the real NORAD which had once shown up in an Intersect flash and was plain and boring in comparison. Every bit of data from Miller-Johnson's vast business empire flowed into the GDN so that the corporation's decision-makers could do their jobs. For a corporation with 110,000 employees around the world and $48 billion in revenue, that meant a lot of bits. So many bits that the four floors below the GDN housed countless racks of servers, wiring, cooling, and storage.
The subject of Sarah's angry blue eyes stood a few feet directly in front of her behind a desk with a laptop on it. The laptop was plugged into the GDN network and a finger was poised inches above the Enter key. The finger belonged to a stunning 5'9" tall brunette with long wavy hair, bright blue eyes, and a lean and curvaceous form that resulted from a lifetime of exercise and training. Morgan had been quick to point out that she was what a brunette Sarah would look and act like. From a God's eye view, Chuck, Sarah, and Nikki formed an equilateral triangle.
"Back away from the computer!" Sarah commanded to Nikki. "I will kill you if you don't."
Nikki flinched at the complete ruthlessness she saw in Sarah's eyes. And at the large barrel of the .45 caliber pistol pointed at her head. After the past few weeks, she knew that Sarah hated her guts. She would feel the same were their roles reversed. "Sarah wait…" she started.
Chuck interrupted "Sarah, don't shoot! You don't understand! Nikki's trying to do the right thing!"
Sarah's eyes flicked over to Chuck. "Chuck, I don't know what lies she's told you but she is doing the WRONG thing. If I don't stop her, she will destroy everything. She is a traitor to this country and you've been helping her! I have orders to stop her at any cost. I have orders that even you are expendable on this mission."
Chuck shivered at her words. Sarah was colder and harder than he had ever seen. He knew he shouldn't be surprised after the revelations of the past few weeks. He knew that she was a far better actress then even he suspected. The killer in front of him must be the true Sarah Walker or whatever her name really was. He knew she could walk into a parking lot and instantly memorize all the license plates, plot out escape routes, and calculate her best source of cover. He knew that with her looks and skills, she could manipulate men at will. Brilliant, experienced political leaders and businessmen had succumbed to her wiles. He knew for a fact how far she was willing to 'compromise' herself to get close to her mark. She could get close to any man in the world and kill him and his family without leaving one iota of her involvement. What chance did he ever have to resist her? He was just an under-employed college dropout with a low pain threshold who only had one-and-a-half girlfriends his whole life (Lou didn't last long and ended up being a mission). He felt like such an idiot. He still felt that he was in love with her.
Nikki remained still, her finger trembling over the laptop's enter key. She hoped that Chuck could convince Sarah not to kill her before she pushed the button. If she didn't push the button, all would be lost
"Sarah, Nikki and I are not traitors!" After the past few weeks, he would suspect the same thing if he were Sarah. He had to find a way to get through to her.
"I know that things look bad…" he paused to compose his thoughts and wait for a particularly intense volley of shots between Casey and the contractors to pass. "I know that things look bad, and that the last couple of weeks have been a little rocky between us. But you have to believe me, Nikki and I are doing the RIGHT thing, the right thing for this country. We are the good guys." A memory of a warm, surprisingly smog-free sunrise on the beach came back to him. "Remember when you asked me to trust you? Well, I did Sarah, I always have. Well, after the Zarnow thing I have. Now I'm asking you to trust me. You don't have to believe me, but I'm asking you to trust me. Let Nikki push the button."
Sarah's eyes flicked from Nikki to Chuck again, but lingered this time. Chuck noticed her gaze soften for the first time this morning, and felt a rush of adrenaline at the prospect of reaching her. His hands had been sweating in the pockets of his Buy More windbreaker this whole time. His right hand was sweating around a pistol grip with his finger on the trigger. He hoped he didn't have to use his weapon. The only gun he had fired successfully shot at TV screens. Nikki had told him to just point and shoot.
Sarah's face registered a range of emotions starting with frustration, then anguish, then a more pleasant look as Chuck imagined her remembering the sunrise on the beach. He thought he could read her mind as she displayed her feelings for a moment. She was thinking of trusting him. She was going to let Nikki push the button because Chuck asked her to. She didn't just think of him as another mark. She really did have some true feelings for him. Her tear on the rooftop was real. Everything was going to work out just fi...
"Chuck, you tell Nikki to back away from the computer or I will blow her head off."
Shit. I'm such an idiot. She played me from the start. I'm going to change my name from Chuck to Big Stupid Sucker Mark. If I survive...
"Walker, if you don't shoot her, I have a shot from here. I'm down to my last two mags so you better hurry!" Casey quickly and efficiently ejects another empty magazine and inserts fresh ammo. "Bartowski is in my line of fire, but he is expendable, right?" Sarah glances at Casey with a look that Chuck reads as fear. Nah, it can't be that. She looks back at Chuck with a now unreadable expression.
Nikki takes advantage of Sarah's short distraction to move her finger toward the Enter key. Chuck notices her motion in the corner of his vision. Sarah notices the change in Chuck's eyes and snaps her attention back to Nikki. Chuck knows that they're all out of time. He pulls his weapon from his pocket and to his great surprise, it comes out cleanly without him somehow messing it up. He brings it up and points it at Sarah.
Time has seemingly slowed down for everyone in the room. Sarah notices Chuck's weapon pointing at her and glances at him with an expression that he now has no difficulty reading. Betrayal. Anger. Hurt. He feels like the floor has just dropped out and he is free-falling. Sarah instantly focuses back to Nikki and her finger tightens around the trigger. At that moment, Chuck fires his weapon. Chuck's aim is dead on and strikes Sarah square on her chest. Sarah screams out in pain, convulses, and loses her footing. As she falls to the floor, she gets off one poorly-aimed shot at Nikki which impacts her left shoulder. Sarah's shot was too late however. Nikki had gotten to the Enter key first.
It took mere nanoseconds for the keystroke to signal the trigger to fire. The Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Generator, more commonly known as an E-bomb exploded. Eighty five layers of conductive metal discs arranged in a cylinder deformed when the plastic explosive packed between them detonated. The explosion propagated outward from the axis of the cylinder deforming the metal discs and acting as a conductive piston. The conductive piston compressed the magnetic field inside each disc creating an inductive current. The induced current from all eighty five discs reached maximum was shunted to the load. An electromagnetic pulse measured in tens of terawatts was directed at the many racks of hardware and software that made up the Beta Intersect. Despite being hardened against EMP attacks, the Beta Intersect couldn't withstand a pulse from within the EMP shielding. The Beta Intersect ceased to function and all data stored within was lost.