ThePromise4
A/N: Although I'm a stickler for using real places I've been to, similar situations and individuals as much as possible, the techniques here are, hopefully, out of reach of any agency of the Empire. I try to write what I know.
Also, regarding Ellie's reaction: she and Chuck were raised together, formed opinions and beliefs based upon common background, upbringing and situations, I therefore submit that her attitudes and Chuck's would be extremely similar in specific circumstances. Also, I just felt like screwing with Devon and Ellie and maybe letting John Xavier have a shot at her. He does like her… um… cooking.
Please read the techno-babble. There are clues and hints and points that are germane to the plot line and I don't want to have to explain stuff to you that you should have read.
This chapter is Sarah's Tale. The next chapter will cover the same period of time from Chuck's viewpoint.
Unknown location
Unknown date
Consciousness came in stages, first the nausea, then the headache, then the feeling of disorientation and finally, worst of all, the heart-crushing realization that her husband was either dead or worse, a prisoner of his own government deep underground.
She'd gotten sloppy. She'd developed trust in others, a byproduct of her relationship with her asset. She'd trusted her NSA partner and that trust had either killed her husband or sentenced him to a life alone, without family or friends, without her.
Part of her soul, the better part, cried out in anguish for her lost love. She'd been lost, adrift on a sea of meaningless relationships, broken dreams and false promises when she found him. Or he found her. Or they found each other. No matter. Each was the missing half of the other. Together they created a dynamic that knew no boundaries. Soul mates.
The darker portion of her soul cried out for vengeance, retribution, a restoration of the balance it had briefly known while joined with it's missing half. It missed the light and warmth it had known only briefly but now craved as its natural state. It wanted the entity known in its host's mind as "Chuck" back. Nothing would prevent the re-joining.
Day 1 – unknown location
Subject: Walker, Sarah, Central Intelligence Agency, Caucasian, female, age 30, scheduled for accelerated reassessment and Critical Self Analysis; maximum restraint and security levels required at all times until treatments completed and subject tested.
The psychoanalyst handling her treatment raised an eyebrow at the security protocols required. Well, orders were orders. She noted Walker's chart as 'MaxSecure' and placed it in a red jacket. Red jacket patients were never left alone, technicians were always in pairs during treatments, and extreme measures were authorized should the patient attempt to escape or commit suicide.
The first step was to establish a baseline of the information present, identify and catalog those memories that would be 'erased' as specified in the subject's assignment brief. Sometimes it was a memory of a particular mission, like assassination, or of capture and torture, but sometimes it was to locate and disarm 'emotional triggers' linking the subject to individuals such as spouses, children, or partners, as specified in the assignment brief. Memories that might provoke 'inappropriate responses' in an agent resulting in compromise or the failure of a mission.
The procedure was to identify, catalog and remove the landmines in the agent's mind before the agent's mental foot does.
The procedure didn't purge the triggers; it simply 'hid' them using techniques the Agency had developed after studying the brainwashing techniques of the North Koreans and the Chinese. You weren't a Manchurian Candidate exactly and if you had the right trigger and visual stimuli in the proper sequences, you could recover the memory blocks. It just wasn't recommended. There were tales of agents who accidentally recovered blocked memories and were terminated by their partners as a result. Some said it was a mercy, others said it was because they'd gone mad.
It was like the intersect in reverse. Sometimes an agent looked at people, places, a smell, or sound and it combined to trigger a … nothing. Like having the word on the tip of your tongue or when that sneeze builds to such an incredible level you think it's going to blow you face off and then…poof… nothing. It's gone. It was very unsatisfying but in an agent's life, very necessary.
The assignment brief covered dates, places, missions, etc. There was a notation that the Agent had married the asset to whom she was assigned as part of a protection team. That was curious because the personal detail brief specifically stated that the marital status of the Agent was 'single'.
This struck an emotional chord with the analyst. She was married and she loved her husband but she had never been 'in love' with him. This Agent went against protocol and orders and threw caution to the wind and married for love and now the Agency wanted to purge every memory, every trace of the man she loved as punishment. It was punishment, nothing short of being cruel beyond belief. She felt shame for the role she was about to play in destroying this young woman's life and the life of her young man.
The more she reviewed the protocols and photographs that were to be followed and used in the sessions, the greater became her discomfort and disgust. It was plain as the nose on your face from the surveillance photos that these two young people were in love, not lust. Every photo of them together was somehow complete. Those taken as individuals were truly alone not just solitary. And this was punishment and the General who was ordering it admitted as much in her "hurry up and get it done" memo.
She wanted any trace of the young man ripped from the Agent's mind regardless of the cost or damage. Such cruelty surprised even the jaded analyst who had performed literally hundreds of these 'refreshenings'.
She decided that for one time in her life, she would do something for love instead of a paycheck. She would leave a few unrelated triggers uncovered and trust to fate and True Love to let her find them. It was the most she could do and still pass the subject.
In most instances the procedure was straight forward, determine the cues, find them, deliver the aversion, restimulate the cues and apply aversion until the mind finally said "hey, that hurts us, let's not look there" and the procedure is complete. Testing took almost as long as the process. The mind is a curious unknown and it tends to protect itself in most intriguing ways. Testing required stimulation, pain and more stimulation until at last there was no reaction to the cues, the mind finally having surrendered to avoiding the pain.
Day 2 Unknown location
The accelerated therapy began in earnest. Her screams filled the room and the adjacent hallways. Nurses on duty looked at each other furtively. The collective guilt was appalling and oppressive. The rumor mill was surprisingly accurate. An agent fell in love and dared to marry without permission. The price was a total memory wipe of her husband who had been her asset. More than half the nursing staff called in sick the next day.
It took several stitches to close the laceration in her tongue when she bit through it.
Day 3 Unknown location
The second day of "refreshing" ended after the Agent bit through her lip. The nursing staff was strangely silent and those who did come to work avoided eye contact with each other during their shifts. The third shift did not report at all.
The psychoanalyst in charge of the therapy felt that only one more day would be required to reach a breakthrough. She was wrong.
The process took three times as long with Sarah Walker as it had ever taken with even the most stubborn subject. It also required 3 stitches to her tongue, 4 to her lip and the resetting of her right wrist. She had bitten through her tongue and lip rather than surrender to simply saying "I don't know him" to stop the pain. Her right wrist was broken when she tore the restraint from the bed frame and attempted to maul a nurse with it. Security attendants took the red jacket file seriously; they broke her wrist to release her hold on the nurse's throat. She screamed obscenities and cried hysterically for her husband, crying out for "Chuck". Finally on the eighth day her mind said 'no more' and surrendered its hold on her memories. All except the three triggers carefully left uncovered and unaffected. It was up to her mind to find them and make the connections necessary to release the blocks.
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Unknown location
"Agent Walker, the head injury you received is fully healed but you may experience 'after shocks' especially if you dwell on those who caused the injury. Revenge is not the answer. Take two of these each time you have the symptoms. You should be free of these residual symptoms in a month. Good luck on your new mission."
After she left she wondered why the doctor looked like she wanted to say more. Or why she looked like she was going to break down in tears. Must be a hard assignment.
Through the process of elimination NSA had narrowed the location of the traitors to one of 4 different safe houses. Massive raids were nonproductive on the others. They always seemed to know where the force would strike and be gone before they arrived. Another problem was that there appeared to be a significant morale problem among the strike teams. More than half the male agents and almost all the female agents had resigned or requested transfer to other duties. This didn't include the 3 agents who defected to the traitor's side.
General Beckman felt a new approach was required. Instead of the hammer, they were going for the needle: Agent Sarah Walker would recon and infiltrate the remaining sites, killing anyone she encountered for the Greater Good, of course.
Day 9
NSA Headquarters
FT Meade, MD
Sarah Walker listened patiently as General Beckman explained her next assignment. She was introduced to photos, videos, voice recordings and other surveillance data to familiarize herself with her targets. It was a straightforward operation. Search and destroy. Find John Casey and Charles Bartowski and kill them. Photographic evidence was required. If the assassination could be filmed fine, if General Beckman could witness it over a direct link, all the better. Collateral damage was expected and would be handled by the usual NSA cleaner teams.
Time was of the essence. These two traitors had already caused irreparable harm to the agencies.
Once these two traitors were eliminated, she could join her lover, Bryce Larkin on his deep cover mission.
She was impatient to be back in his arms and bed. It had been far too long since she'd felt loved. She loved Bryce Larkin, but she knew she wasn't in love with him, that was against protocol and caused missions to fail and agents to die.
Sarah Walker was back in the game and hunting for her prey. 'Be patient, Bryce, I'm coming, baby. Soon I'll be back with you again, where I belong.
"Agent Walker, will the damage done to your wrist on your last assignment restrict your ability to accomplish your mission?" General Beckman seemed unusually keen on accomplishing the assassination. Her body language and the gleam in her suggested to Sarah that this was 'personal' for the General.
"No, ma'am, if anything, it gives me another weapon." Beckman just smiled. Sarah noticed the tic on the general's eye and also how her hands were shaking. 'She better switch to decaf. Or take a Valium. I hope I'm out of here before she strokes out.' She laughed to her self. 'That sounds like a Casey crack' and immediately felt the onset of a sudden and tremendous migraine. She opened her purse and shook out two pills the doctor had given her and dry swallowed them. Her stitches would be out in a week and she'd have this wrapped up and be on her way south to meet Bryce.