Thanks to Badshot and Noctaval for their help with this, and to all my lovely reviewers. Let me know what you'd like to see in future chapters, and maybe I can work it in. This one's a lot longer than the earlier chapters, so enjoy.

All standard disclaimers apply.

****

"God, sometimes I hate these BuyMorons." Morgan glumly watched Jeff pass out in the trash can behind the Nerd Herd desk. "Lester!" The weaselly half of Jeffster hurried across the sales floor. Though Casey's brainwashing had begun to fade, he was still vulnerable to Morgan's rarely-used 'commanding' voice.

"Yes, my assman?"

Morgan decided not to quibble with the phrase. "Why is Jeff sleeping in the trash?"

Lester leaned over the counter to look, and gave a knowing smile. "Ah, it's his midday Ketamine/Everclear pick me up. Should wear off in an hour. The man likes his horse tranquilizers." And with this sage pronouncement he wandered off to work on looking like he was working.

Morgan gave a depressed sigh. BuyMore was just no fun without his chief Nerd Herder around.

At the same moment that Jeff was giving himself liver failure, Chuck found himself in the Castle being strapped into complicated medical equipment by the technicians General Beckman had dispatched. They had set up a chair in front of a large flat screen in one of the training rooms, and Chuck joked back and forth with the techs about watching movies on the job. Sarah watched from an out-of-the-way corner, busy trying to disguise her unease. Chuck was anxious enough already without her adding to his stress, and nothing she could say would dissuade the General from her plan.

One of the techs, an older middle-aged woman with pretty red hair, smiled kindly at Chuck as she explained some of the equipment they were strapping him into. She thought he seemed like a nice boy; truth be told, he reminded her of her teenage son. So many of the agents she interacted with were cold and strictly professional, or suave almost to the point of absurdity; they didn't waste their time affecting personable mannerisms for medical staff. This boy seemed friendly and a little bit nervous; she didn't miss the worried glances his blonde handler gave him either.

"Now, we're going to apply some electrode sensors so we can get more precise data. Unfortunately, you're going to need to take your shirt off for this part."

Chuck had changed into scrubs earlier when they drew some of his blood; after he took off his shirt he was left in only the loose pajama-like scrub pants and his bare feet. He laughed in embarrassment. "A little chilly in here."

The tech gave him a smile. "Maybe we can turn the heat up a little for you." She shot an inquiring look at Sarah, who nodded and slipped out briefly to adjust the thermostat. The tech held up an electrode, which looked like a suction cup with a wire coming out of it. "I'm going to apply these with a light adhesive. They won't hurt, but they might get a bit itchy after a while. Try not to scratch, though, because you might dislodge them."

Her assistant began swabbing electrodes with glue and handing them to her. When she placed the first one Chuck flinched. "Ooh, cold, cold." He saw that they were waiting for him to stop moving, and he blushed and tried to laugh off the situation. "Ah, sorry. Not exactly stoic agent behavior, huh?"

The tech chuckled as she applied the rest of the electrodes. "You'd be surprised how the toughest-looking agents turn into wimps in the doctor's office. Trust me, I've seen worse." She finished studding his chest and back with the electrodes, and carefully placed one on each of his temples.

Sarah watched this silently, but it did not escape her notice that Chuck looked much different with his shirt off than he had when she first met him. Not to say that he had ever been chubby (he had always run to the long and lean, and Ellie had told her once that he was like a beanpole in high school), but he had hardened up. The physical training he practiced as an agent, coupled with the fierce exertion that the Intersect occasionally forced on him, had created muscles where none had been before. He was still lean rather than bulky, but he seemed much more solid now.

He also had scars and bruises where none had been before; even now he bore a few fading marks from their fight with Casey's old commander and his men. She knew that Chuck thought of himself as a somewhat wimpy nerd, but any objective observer would agree that he had nothing to be ashamed of in either looks or physique.

She realized with a start that she had been on the verge of ogling him, and looked guiltily around the room to make sure no one had noticed. She had forbidden herself weeks ago from looking at him in any kind of romantic way, and she was not going to slip up now when he needed her.

The technicians finished fitting him up with straps around his chest and upper arm to measure breathing rate and blood pressure. The redhead stepped back, checking over her work. "Okay, we should be ready in a few minutes. Let me just check with my colleagues to see if all the testing equipment is ready." Chuck nodded, and the medicos left to consult with the computer techs.

Sarah went up to Chuck with a bracing smile on her face. "You alright?"

"Yeah. I feel a bit like a stereo system right now." He gestured at his wire-covered chest, careful not to dislodge anything. "Do you know what they're going to test me with?"

"From what they told me, they're going to run a bunch of baseline tests without the drug or anything, so they can see what your reactions are normally. Then they'll run them over again while you're on the Laudinol. They'll also check to make sure that the drug isn't putting any stress on your heart, or otherwise endangering you." She said this last bit rather fiercely, as though she were going to force them to check if they tried to slack off.

Chuck gave her one of his goofy grins, touched by her concern. "Hey, don't worry. This part shouldn't be too hard; I mean, it's got to be safer than being in a room with a bunch of armed bad guys trying to kill me." Sarah nodded, though she wasn't so sure. She knew that her government could destroy an agent just as thoroughly as the Ring could, if they thought it in the best interest of the country.

When the technicians returned they guided Sarah to the observation room next door so that she could watch without distracting Chuck. They explained that his emotional reactions to her might taint the testing. Only two techs stayed in the actual room with Chuck, and they were careful to stay back out of his range of vision. The room was set up so that the mirrored observation window ran parallel to the chair and screen, and they could see both Chuck's face and whatever images were to be projected. They had fit Chuck with high quality noise-canceling headphones, completing his wired ensemble.

"What are you going to show him?" Sarah asked one of the medicos.

He gestured to the screen in the other room. "We've collected a number of visuals with different emotional and personal meanings. Some are of people he knows, some are neutral images, some have very strong positive or negative connotations. We want to get an idea of his emotional triggers and see how strongly he reacts to different kinds of stimuli. Later on in the week there will be more physically active tests, but these give us a good basis for comparison." Sarah nodded, reassured by the apparently innocuous nature of the assessment.

One of the observers pressed the intercom button and announced that the test was about to begin. The screen began cycling through different images, each one staying on for a few seconds before being replaced by the next. At first Sarah watched the screen, but the pictures were just photographs of everyday things: a daisy, a car, a rock, a glass of water, a sandwich, a baby, a cockroach. She switched to watching Chuck instead. His face was placid, and a little bored, though he seemed to be careful to study each image in turn.

"Okay, now we're switching to more general images that have emotional connections," the tech murmured to her. She nodded and began watching both the screen and Chuck's reactions. The pictures changed to less neutral subjects: laughing families, a dead child lying in a street, soldiers marching, a wedding, an old man in a hospital bed. The images were clearly set at extremes of the emotional spectrum, though there were some she thought were intended to evoke amusement or loneliness, or other less primal feelings. Chuck looked a little less placid, but otherwise much the same as he had in the earlier section. After several minutes of the emotionally charged visuals, the screen switched back to neutral images for a while.

The tech leaned close again, "And now it'll be people he knows, and things of personal significance." Sarah watched more closely this time, trying to guess what the photos might mean to Chuck. Some were surveillance pictures of his coworkers at the BuyMore, some were of people he knew from the spy community. He gave little grins for the photos of Morgan and Ellie, and laughed outright at a picture of Jeff lying unconscious in a pool of cheeseballs on the couch in the BuyMore home theater room. She saw no noticeable reaction to the photos of Casey, General Beckman, and her friend Carina, though one of herself in her old Wienerlicious costume caused him to glance involuntarily towards the observation mirror. For some subjects she noticed multiple pictures; one of Ellie crying made Chuck's jaw tense up. There were also some buildings and other location shots-- one she thought might be from Stanford, another was an elementary school

There was one photo that made him straighten up in his seat and frown-- it was a faded Polaroid of a beautiful woman holding a child. She had rich brown hair that fell in gentle waves around her face, and warm brown eyes that matched those of the adorable little boy on her lap. They were both smiling up into the camera, and Sarah wondered at Chuck looking so grim over such a sweet picture. It was followed by a high school-era photograph of Morgan looking more hobbit-like than ever and sporting a Chewbacca tee shirt. Chuck grinned, and she wondered if he too noticed the strong resemblance between his best friend and the Wookiee on his chest.

The images finally ran out, Chuck was released for a bathroom and snack break, and the techs took the opportunity to look through some of the data they had gathered. Sarah lingered, peering over their shoulders to see what the results had been. It looked like a seismograph reading, with multi-colored jagged lines tracking across a graph. She noticed that the lines seemed smoother at the beginning and the middle, where she guessed the neutral images had been used. Near the end there was a very sharp section of peaks and valleys, and she wondered if that was when the brown-eyed woman had been shown. Deciding that she could learn nothing more from the observers' impenetrably technical discussion, she slipped out to track down Chuck.

He sat in the conference room wolfing down a sandwich, and she had to laugh at him. The medicos, loathe to reapply all the electrodes, had simply disconnected the wires and left the sensors themselves on their subject.

"You look like you have the high-tech chickenpox." She sat on the edge of the table grinning down at him.

He swallowed his bite of sandwich and made a face. "I just hope these things don't leave a mark, otherwise it'll look more like I was attacked by an octopus."

"So, how do you feel after the first round? Okay?"

"Yeah. It was kinda boring, but that's about it. Better than looking at all those files Beckman makes me check." He grinned, more at the promise of no flash-checks for the next week than at the thought of the test.

It was on the tip of Sarah's tongue to ask who that woman had been, but she decided to give him the chance to bring it up on his own. "Do you think you had a strong reaction to any of the pictures? I myself enjoyed the one of Morgan with his arm stuck in Big Mike's stuffed marlin."

"Yes, that was a favorite of mine as well. Poor Norman, he'll never be the same." He gave her a goofy conspiratory grin and his trademark eyebrow waggle, then sobered up. "I dunno, maybe some of the ones of my family, or of Bryce." Here he paused, as though he didn't want to continue. "Some of them didn't bring up very good memories. I don't know where they got some of those pictures. Actually, you know what, I don't think I want to know." He laughed off his grim moment, and carried on devouring his sandwich.

The second part of the test was identical to the first, different only in that they gave Chuck a low dose of Laudinol through an IV drip. They ran through the same images, though they were shuffled around. This time, Chuck's face remained impassive through the entire sequence, and what she thought of as his personal seismograph ran smooth from beginning to end. Sarah went in and watched quietly while they released Chuck from the medical equipment. He watched it all with an expressionless face, though he did manage a sort of detached curiosity as one of the technicians removed the electrodes from his body with rubbing alcohol.

When they were done with him he sat quietly in his seat observing the removal of the test equipment from the room. The technicians chattered among themselves as they had done when they first set up, but this time Chuck did not join in with their banter. Sarah watched him closely, trying to tell if she could see the Laudinol wearing off. She thought she knew the exact moment that he came back to himself because he hunched his shoulders in sudden tension and rubbed his face with his hands. Sarah brought him his shirt, and he pulled it on with a sigh. He looked really worn out, though he hadn't been very chipper to begin with.

"Want me to go get you some coffee? I heard a rumor that the techs brought their own. They must've heard how bad ours was."

Chuck forced a tired laugh at her weak joke. "Yeah, I could really use some caffeine. I better make sure it doesn't interfere with any of the tests first." He heaved himself to his feet and went over to ask one of the medicos about it. He came back with a wry grimace on his face. "They said it was okay, but I have to get some blood drawn first. I'll meet you in the conference room, okay?" Sarah nodded and left to hunt down some of the alleged coffee.

______________

Chuck found Sarah in her usual seat at the briefing table, two steaming cups of coffee and a plate of Danishes in front of her. "So, is it really any good?"

"Yes, actually. I even filched some pastries for you."

"Ooh, I love pastries." He snagged a cheese Danish and a cup and settled into a chair. "I better stay away from Big Mike for the rest of the day. That man can smell Danish at a thousand yards."

"I thought you might need some sugar after getting so much blood taken." Sarah examined his drawn face, worried anew at the strain and fatigue she saw there.

"Oh, it was only a couple of vials each time. I think I've lost more donating it at the blood bank." Sarah smiled; she couldn't imagine Bryce or Shaw taking the time to donate blood.

"Do you give blood a lot?" She had trouble picturing someone as terrified of needles as he was voluntarily donating blood.

"When your sister's a doctor, you better believe it. Mmm, this is really good." He licked a bit of filling off his finger. "I don't know why I'm so hungry, I was just sitting there the whole time."

"It's okay. Speaking of which, how do you think it went this time?" She was watching him closely, and so she caught the tightening around his mouth as he tried to hide his unhappiness.

"It wasn't too bad. A lot better than the first time I took the stuff anyway."

"I would hope so. Did you feel weird again, afterward?"

"Yeah, a bit. It's like the feelings that were held back just keep building up until the medicine's gone, and then they get released anyway." He made a face at his Danish. "That seems like a pretty big down side."

Just then one of the men from the observation room came in, clearly looking for Chuck. He was the one who had explained the experiment to Sarah, and he shook both their hands, apologizing for not introducing himself properly earlier. "I'm Dr. Michael Grey. I'll be coordinating the drug assessment this week, and I wanted to discuss some things with you." Chuck gestured to a chair, and they all settled back down around the table.

"Now Chuck, how much do you know about how Laudinol works?" Dr. Grey set aside his clipboard, steepled his fingers in front of him in a classic scholarly pose, and peered at Chuck.

He shrugged, "Not much. Just that it makes you unable to be afraid, and that they wanted to use it with soldiers."

"Well, that's true to a point. It actually creates a sort of barrier between the part of your brain that processes your emotions and the part that controls your conscious actions. Some of the chemicals in the drug interfere with the transmission of signals between those two parts. It doesn't actually erase the emotions, it just lets your brain ignore them for a while. In a way, it makes you a temporary sociopath. You can see why we've been reluctant to use it on soldiers up to now; we didn't really want a big group of well-armed sociopaths on our hands."

Sarah straightened in alarm, and she cut in quickly before the doctor could carry on further. "You want to make Chuck into a sociopath? That seems like--" Dr. Grey interrupted her.

"No, no, Agent Walker. You're alarming yourself for no reason. I know that the average layman associates the term 'sociopath' with psychotics and killers, but it's actually a very misunderstood condition. A sociopath is someone who, perhaps because of genetics or brain damage, cannot feel emotion. They can recognize that emotions and consciences exist, and they can understand that certain things are considered 'good' and others 'bad,' but they do not feel guilt or sorrow over those bad things. There are many sociopaths who go undetected because they become very good at mimicking normal reactions. What Laudinol does is create a very temporary state of this condition, allowing the subject to do what he needs to get done without being impeded by fear. Once the drug is out of the subject's system, they go back to being their normal selves. It is actually metabolized very quickly, so once the source is gone the sociopathy is gone as well." He smiled at her as though this made everything all right.

"But Chuck will still feel those suppressed emotions eventually, though?"

"Yes, but at a safer time and place than if he felt them like usual. The sudden emotional surge might be a bit overwhelming at first, but he should get used to that." Sarah didn't like that qualifying 'should,' and it could be seen clearly in her face.

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Then he will simply be taken off the drug, and he will be no worse off than he is now. As I understand it, this may be his best chance at reliably accessing the Intersect."

Chuck finally spoke, "And I will be able to access it, right? As easily as I did last time?"

Dr. Grey nodded. "We will actually begin testing that next, but I see no reason why not. Human Intersects being in rather short supply, we have not had the chance to test Laudinol with one before. I am very interested to see the results." Here he rubbed his hands together in anticipation, and Sarah frowned at the avid look in his eye. "I just have a few questions about how the Intersect functions, if you would be so kind."

"Shoot."

Grey pulled out his clip board and sat, pencil ready. "What is the most common trigger for a flash? Visual? Aural?"

"Usually visual, I guess. Like if I see a face or a word that triggers something in the Intersect. Sometimes if I hear something spoken, that triggers it."

"And how long do these flashes normally last?"

"Uh, it's hard for me to tell. A couple of seconds, maybe?" Chuck looked over at Sarah for confirmation, and she nodded. "Sometimes if there's a lot of information the flash is longer."

"Are there any side effects to flashing? Headaches, dizziness, that sort of thing?"

"It's kind of disorienting right after one, but no dizziness. If I flash too much I'll get a headache, or if I already have a headache it makes it worse."

"Hmm, I wonder what the cause of that is. Perhaps too much electrical activity in the brain? We may need to look into it..." The good doctor trailed off, staring speculatively at Chuck's head as though wishing he could see what was going on in there. "In any case, that should do for now. I may have more questions later on in the proceedings."

"Sure, okay." Chuck looked somewhat nonplussed; he wasn't comfortable with the sound of some of the future tests but didn't want to cause trouble.

Dr. Grey stood up purposefully. "Are you ready for our last session of the day?"

Chuck sighed and tossed his coffee cup at a nearby trashcan. "Might as well. Not like I can just say 'no'"

_______________

The testing area was set up with a small table, a chair, and a computer screen whose cables trailed out under the door and into the adjoining room. There was a small camera affixed to the top of the screen, apparently there to record the user's facial expressions. Chuck was relieved to hear that no electrodes were needed for this test, and he settled into the chair as soon as the techs left the room.

Dr. Grey, stationed once more in the observation station, pressed the intercom button, "Now Chuck, we're going to show you a series of images. I want you to tell me about any that you flash on, all right?"

"Sure thing, doc."

The doctor cut the intercom and directed Sarah's attention to a monitor showing Chuck's face at rather close range; he looked tired and pale. There was a small area in the corner of the screen that showed miniature versions of the images Chuck would be seeing.

"For this first round we're just going to keep track of what percentage of images he flashes on. The second round will be the same, but with him on Laudinol. We've randomly assigned potential triggers to each group equally, so if the drug has no effect at all he should flash with equal frequency in each round." Sarah nodded her understanding.

The first round was rather uneventful, and actually reminded Sarah of Chuck's daily file checking sessions. Each image stayed up long enough to give the Intersect a chance to trigger, and was paused whenever he flashed so that he would not miss the next one. The subjects were more varied than what was normally in his files, but it seemed to her that he flashed about as often as normal.

"He's showing a 7% response rate." said the tech who was recording the data.

"Good, then we have our baseline. Administer the Laudinol and we'll begin the second round." The tech left to hook up another IV drip, and Sarah could hear Chuck joking with him about his arms being mistaken for pincushions. It was weird to see his natural humor and affability fade from his face as the drug kicked in, as though his personality was being drained out of him; Sarah tried not to let her mind make analogies with vampires.

The intercom cut in again. "Are you ready to begin, Chuck?"

Chuck nodded and new images began cycling on the screen. This time, though, he seemed to be flashing more often. Sarah wondered if the Laudinol repressed his frustration with the Intersect, and if that alone helped lower Chuck's mental block. It did nothing to improve his pallor, though, and she realized that fatigue was not an emotion but a physical condition, and thus immune to the drug's effects. This round lasted longer than the first because they had to pause more often, and by the end of it Chuck had a permanent frown line between his brows, as though his head hurt.

"What was the improvement?" asked Dr. Grey.

"Around 20%, sir."

"That's a significant increase. Good, good." The doctor looked a bit abstracted, as though he had just thought of something. "Did you bring a backup set of trigger images?"

The tech nodded. "Yes sir, two different sets."

"I think I'd like to up the dose and see if there's an increase in his response rate."

Sarah stepped closer to the doctor. "Can't you give him a break? I think he's getting a headache."

The doctor leaned over and punched the intercom. "Chuck, can you still flash?" Chuck nodded. "Good, then we're going to do one more round for comparison."

"Dr. Grey, I don't think you should. He doesn't normally flash this much, he might over do it."

"Better we find his limits here in a controlled situation than out in the field, eh? He's surrounded by medical personnel, he'll be fine." Sarah didn't agree, but she knew that she had no authority over the situation unless there was some kind of immediate security risk. She shook her head, and resolved to watch Chuck like a hawk in case something went wrong.

"Increase his dose by fifty percent." The tech went off to fiddle with the IV, and when he returned the session began immediately. Sarah stared at the screen, watching for the telltale rolling of Chuck's eyes. She didn't have to wait long.

"Theresa Moreno, Chilean resistance fighter, alias: La Aguja. Associated with the anti-junta movement, accused of plotting to assassinate President Pinochet; missing and presumed dead in late 1976."

The screen flashed to a new image, and then another. "MQ-1 Predator drone, manufactured by General Atomics, unmanned aerial vehicle used extensively in the current wars. Vulnerable to video feed hacks." And so it continued, with Chuck flashing more often than not, even on mundane images. Sarah wondered idly if there were plans to upload the U.S. Patent office database into the next Intersect update, and then realized that Chuck would probably just flash on everything. She suspected that most, if not all, of the trigger images being used were either well known or obsolete; they were just looking for the flash, not for anything really sensitive.

She was wrong.

"Dr. Steven Bartowski, alias: Orion." Sarah jerked in surprise, though Chuck's face didn't even register recognition. "Former CIA asset, one of the original developers of the Intersect project. Father of the current human Intersect Charles Irving Bartowksi. Known hacker, possible cyber terrorist, considered extremely dangerous. Whereabouts unknown. Affiliations unknown." Sarah shot a sharp questioning look at Grey, but it bounced right off him. She refused to believe that the inclusion of Steve Bartowski's picture was a coincidence, and her concern over her government's methods deepened.

Fortunately there were only a few images left in the set, and none that were particularly alarming. Dr. Grey and his technician bent over the data readouts, anxiously scanning the results. "A 65% percent response rate! Wonderful." Dr. Grey was almost euphoric, a strange sight to behold in a man who looked like a cross between Freud and Lenin. He was even bouncing on his toes as he and the other man dissected the data. Sarah ruthlessly interrupted their jollity to ask if Chuck could go home now. The doctor waved a dismissive hand in Chuck's general direction, not even bothering to raise his eyes from his research.

Sarah ducked into the hall, repressing her snort of disgust until the door was closed between her and Grey. One of the medicos was just finishing removing the IV from Chuck's arm as she entered.

"Come on, Chuck. You go get changed and I'll drive you home." Sarah held the door open for him, beckoning him towards freedom.

"I can drive myself, Sarah. My car is in the lot." It was the first time she had heard him converse while on Laudinol; his emotionless recitation of the Intersect flashes notwithstanding. It was eerie because it sounded both like him and not like him at the same time. There was none of the cheerfulness or usual (Casey would say 'flamboyant') expressiveness in his speech; it was all calm and logical and detached.

"You say that now, but I bet you won't feel like driving once the drug wears off. Go change." Chuck nodded and went off to find his real clothes. By the time he had dressed and reunited with Sarah the drug had begun to wane, and his frown had grown darker.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, just a bad headache. Let's go." He was so terse that Sarah realized he must still be working the Laudinol out of his system.