For notes and disclaimer, please see part one. Also... whoops. I forgot yesterday was Wednesday. Been a very crazy past few weeks. So, here we are, a day late. Many apologies. ~K
Here's a couple things you might need to know or maybe you just forgot: Casey and Sarah pick up Alex from the Buy More. Beckman gets a reprieve from her interrogation to get the story on Alex's being found safe, while Shaw tries to paint the Human Intersect Project as a broken team. Shaw finds out that Ellie was able to finagle Alex's release from custody and isn't happy. Stephen presents Chuck with a governor. Chuck and Stephen are tasked to look out for Alex while Casey and Sarah go to meet Beckman, except they wind up confronted by Kathleen and Justin, and taken into custody. Chuck and Stephen try to rescue Ellie but, as they're leaving, Shaw finds them, and kills Stephen. Shaw takes possession of one governor, destroying the other.
Morgan looked at the message on his phone, mildly puzzled. It was from a number he didn't recognize, and the spelling wasn't exactly spot-on.
Grt to Castel
Taking a slow, cautious breath, he glanced around the Buy More. It looked relatively peaceful, like a normal day. Granted, his "normal" had already included a visit with Casey's formerly kidnapped daughter.
He wondered if there was ever "normal" with spies. If there was ever anything that was easy and breezy.
The one thing he was leery of was entering Castle without proper protection, especially since he seemed to be alone at the moment. With a sigh, he snagged one of the hand-held vacuum cleaners off the display in home appliances. It wasn't exactly a gun, or a baton, or even a can of mace, but it might do some kind of damage against whoever might be down there, doing dastardly things.
The entire trip into the bowels of the top-secret base, he tried to keep his emotions in check. If Chuck could master his fears, then he could, too.
When he finally entered the empty command center, there was a peculiar sound, the sound of... of a paper shredder? "Hello?" he called out cautiously.
"Mr. Grimes!"
He looked toward the sound of the voice, seeing General Beckman on the large flat-screen television at the front of the room. "What are... General, are you okay?"
"We have a problem," she said, shoving another six sheets into the shredder. "Casey and Walker have been apprehended. And I can't locate Bartowski."
"What do you mean you can't locate him?"
"He's not answering his phone."
"There... They were taking Alex to a safe house..." He'd just seen Casey not that long ago. How could he be compromised already?
"Find him, understand?"
"I... yeah... are..."
"General Beckman, open this door," said a stern voice just outside her office.
She turned, fully looking into the camera for the first time. "Mr. Grimes... you're my only hope."
Morgan watched, in horror and shock, as suited men forcibly entered the room and lifted the tiny General off the ground. She kicked and thrashed about, but she was no match at all for her captors.
He numbly left the hand-held vac on the conference table, heading back up to the Buy More. If Chuck wasn't answering his phone, maybe that meant his best friend in the world was in trouble, too. Oh, God, how was he supposed to save the day? He didn't have the Intersect or the training. He just knew the truth about his coworkers and friends.
As he wandered vacantly back to the store, he heard his name being paged. With a heavy sigh, he headed towards the customer service desk.
A mix of emotions tumbled through his chest as he realized the gray-haired customer standing there wasn't someone with a complaint who wanted to talk to someone in management, but someone with experience. Someone with knowledge and wisdom. His very own Obi-Wan to his incredibly inexperienced Luke.
"Mrs. Casey?" he asked, astonished.
Joan, Casey's mother, turned to face him. "Mr. Grimes."
"I am so glad to see you. We've... We've got quite a situation."
"I was afraid of that," she said quietly.
Casey and Sarah looked up when the back of the armored vehicle opened, when two new figures were shoved into the cage.
"Chuck!" Sarah exclaimed, both relieved and fearful now that they were reunited.
He moved slowly, dejectedly, pushing himself up to sit on the metal bench beside her. "It's all over," he said quietly.
Ellie looked up at Casey, who set his jaw tightly when he saw the bruising on her face and the scabbed-over split in her lower lip as well as the pain in her watery hazel eyes. She eased down beside him, looking at the floor at their feet.
Casey reached over with his hands, both of them as they were cuffed together, and slowly tilted her face up towards his. Whoever had done that to her would pay and pay dearly. It was bad enough, seeing the kind of torture Shaw had put his daughter through earlier that day, but now this? They'd physically attacked Ellie.
"I'm okay, John," she promised, her voice breaking only a little as she spoke.
All he could manage was a slight grunt. He wanted to believe her, but it was clear she'd been hurt. He'd always prided himself on avoiding emotional vulnerabilities. It had been why he'd let Kathleen go, why he'd let Ilsa walk out on him again. But with Ellie, it had been different. He hadn't been able to forget her, to distance himself from her, and look what had occurred because of it.
Sarah gasped when she saw Ellie's hands. "Ellie, you're bleeding!"
"It's... It's not mine," she said, looking from Sarah back to Casey.
"What happened?" Sarah asked.
"What's happened? You've lost," Shaw said as he appeared in the open door, his hands on his hips. "It's all over for you, for all of you." He smiled, pleased with himself, as he spoke again. "Enjoy this ride together. It will be the last time any of you see the others."
Sarah narrowed her eyes, already trying to formulate a plan to kick Shaw's ass, when the cage door slammed shut.
"It's all over," Chuck said again, defeatist.
"Chuck, I... I know it's hard, but we can't... we can't give up," Ellie said.
"He took the governor," Chuck said, his eyes coming back into focus as he looked at his sister's face. "I can't... I can't work anymore. I don't work anymore."
Something clicked in Ellie's memory. "What are you talking about? What... what's this governor thing? That was why they took me, that was what they were after."
Chuck closed his eyes tightly at Ellie's admission. "I walked him right into their trap. I brought him right to them..."
"Chuck, please, I don't understand," said Ellie, desperate to figure out what her brother was saying.
"The Intersect, it..." Sarah took a slow breath. "It isn't exact science. There have been some issues come up that we weren't fully expecting."
"The Intersect, that's what Chuck has, right? That's..." Ellie looked at her brother, who had mentally checked out. She didn't blame him, not after what they'd just seen. She looked at her hands resting on her lap, at the blood drying on her skin. Her father's blood. She closed her eyes for a moment. She had to concentrate.
"It... it's a lot of information, a lot of abilities stored in one of the most advanced computers known to man, the human brain, but it..." Sarah shook her head. "It's caused issues."
The doctor in Ellie reached the surface, giving her clarity of thought. "The stresses something like that could cause, it's... it's tremendous... isn't it?"
"The governor is the regulating device your father created to prevent those issues," continued Sarah.
"The watch..."
Sarah nodded.
"But, it doesn't matter anymore," Chuck said miserably. "Dad's gone, I'm useless... There's no one left to save us."
The black Ford Crown Victoria pulled down the long gravel drive to the cabin, kicking up a small cloud of dirt and dust along the way.
Alex peeked out through the thin curtains, excited to see the familiar car. Her father was back.
Her father.
That was still something odd, something to get used to. Of course, her entire world had been turned upside down in the past few days. While she wasn't sure things would ever get back to the way they used to be, she had decided maybe that was all right.
She'd always wondered about her father. He had supposedly died so young, but her mother had often talked about his quiet strength and his own brand of kindness and generosity. She'd come to expect that from John, the patron. She'd never once imagined that he'd actually be her father. But now that she knew the truth, she couldn't imagine her father being any other way.
Stepping out onto the front porch of the cabin, she wanted to welcome him with open arms, but the driver wasn't exactly over six feet. And the passenger was someone she'd never seen before either. "Uh..."
"Hey, Alex," Morgan said as he closed the driver's side door.
"What's going on?" she asked cautiously.
"Well..." Morgan slowly crossed towards her. "I know you've had a pretty trying few days, and you've met one new family member already, but there's someone else I'd like for you to meet."
Alex looked at the older woman. "Okay," she said slowly.
"Joan, this is Alex McHugh. Alex, this is Joan Casey... Your grandmother."
Alex regarded the older woman for a moment. She had familiar blue eyes, ones that looked remarkably like her own. "My... grandmother?" she asked.
Joan smiled warmly, taking the girl's hand in both of hers. "I used to be Elizabeth Coburn," she explained.
"I..." Alex looked at Morgan quickly, trying to take it all in.
"Confusing, I know, but..." Morgan sighed. "We really don't have the luxury of detailing the family tree at the moment, Alex. Something's happened."
Ellie rested her head against Casey's shoulder as the van continued to rumble along.
Casey knew they had long since left the freeway. He wasn't entirely sure where they were, but it was on a more rural highway. While he had assumed they would be taken to some CIA facility-his captors had implied that-he had a feeling they would be executed before the hour was up, their bodies left in a ravine somewhere, far from prying eyes. It would be days, maybe weeks before they were found, if they ever were.
He very lightly kissed Ellie's hair. "Thank you."
"For what?" she asked, looking up at him.
That dark bruising under her eye made his stomach churn again. His one biggest regret would be not paying back the son of a bitch who had done that to her, if they didn't make it out of the van alive. But, he couldn't think about that. Not yet. "For saving my daughter's life."
"You've saved mine and Chuck's a hundred times over. It was the least I could do," she said, offering a ghost of a smile.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about her sooner."
"It's okay, John," she said, resting against him again. She looked over at Chuck, who wasn't looking at anything or anyone, who hadn't said a word since he'd declared their situation hopeless. She couldn't think about that. She couldn't think about her father's loss either, not yet. "John...?"
"Yeah?" he asked.
"How are we going to get out of this?"
He was silent for a long moment. He had a few ideas. None of them were exactly plausible. He blamed hanging out with the nerds a little too long for a few of the more far-fetched ones, which included a super soldier serum and turning green when angered so he could easily break their restraints and smash through the reinforced steel walls of the armored vehicle. With a slow breath, he glanced at his partner.
It was clear Sarah didn't like being caged anymore than he did, that she was itching to get out, to issue a little extra payback against a certain supposedly dead agent.
He was really starting to get annoyed at how often spies died and came back to life.
Granted, he was one of those, too. While Alex Coburn had died, John Casey had lived on.
He realized he was getting distracted and pulled himself back together. Dwelling on the past, on things he couldn't change, wouldn't get them rescued any faster.
"I'm working on it," he told her.
"You shouldn't follow so closely."
"You know, you're making me really nervous. This is my first tailing experience, all right!" Morgan huffed.
"I understand, and you're doing a great job so far," Joan reminded him gently.
Alex watched, somewhat amazed, at her grandmother's ability to take a situation and turn it on its head. Morgan was anxious and Joan, while trying to be helpful, had only inflamed the situation with her suggestion but then was able to douse the fire in a sweet little old lady type fashion.
She was so glad she had found more family.
"Are you sure that's them?" Alex asked, looking at the armored vehicle in the distance.
"Quite sure," Joan said, pointing at the GPS read-out on the dashboard. "This is Johnny's car. That's Johnny's GPS reading in his watch. And, from the look of things, I'm going to assume that's his partner, Sarah's, and Chuck's as well."
"Not to be, y'know, a party pooper or anything, but I kinda feel like a dog chasing after a bumper here. Now that I've got it, what the hell do I do with it?"
"Just remain calm, Morgan. The opportunity will present itself," Joan explained, turning her blue gaze back to the road in front of them.
"The... that sounds kinda like a vague spy thing that I'm not fully sure I'm capable of dealing with."
"Take a deep breath," Joan instructed. She waited, listening as the well-meaning civilian did exactly as she said. "Better?"
"No, not really. I'm still not sure what to do! I mean... do I ram it?"
"No."
"Do I try to run it off the road?"
"Its weight versus ours, it isn't advisable," Joan said.
"Then...?"
"Look!" Alex said excitedly from her position in the back. The van pulled off the road just ahead, beneath a few shaded trees.
"Pull over here, Morgan," Joan said.
Morgan did as instructed, kind of impressed with the old lady's authoritative and calm spy voice.
Joan reached for the glove box, finding exactly what she assumed she'd find there: a selection of weaponry. She glanced back at Alex as the passengers in the front of the armored vehicle stepped out. "I know this is kind of a startling question, but how are you with firearms, dear?"
"Uh... Well... Not... not that great. But, I've taken self-defense classes for a long time. I'm pretty good in a fist-fight." She wasn't sure why her grandmother's approval was suddenly important, but it was. And when Joan smiled, she felt more at ease.
"Morgan?" Joan asked.
He let out a high-pitched squeaking noise. "Fair to middlin', I'd say."
Joan offered him a handgun, which he took.
He wasn't entirely sure it was his kind of gun, though. It looked small and not exactly manly. Why John Casey would have a gun in his car that wasn't manly seemed completely incongruous. John Casey was the manliest man Morgan knew. "Y'know, there isn't... isn't there something a little bigger in there?" Morgan asked, reaching to put the gun back into the glove box. "I may be small, but I can pack a wallop, y'know?" he asked, shooting a grin at Alex.
The gun, however, hit a button inside the glove box, and a targeting interface appeared on the windshield while Joan was checking the ammunition in the weapon she'd selected for herself.
"Uh... Grandma?" Alex ventured.
Morgan swallowed hard. "Well, if I turned it on with a button, I'm sure I can turn it off with-"
"Morgan, I wouldn't do that if I were you," Joan cautioned, but it was too late.
A rocket-propelled grenade launched from beneath the left headlight.
"What the hell?" Morgan asked, watching as the projectile flew through the air, heading straight towards the van.
Casey heard the familiar whoosh from inside the back of the armored vehicle. While they didn't have much of an opportunity to prepare, they had a moment. "Incoming!"
Sarah held onto Chuck's hands tightly, bracing herself. Chuck barely looked up at Casey when he'd issued his warning.
Ellie felt Casey's arms go around her, holding her tightly, even though his hands were still bound in front of her. "What's going-"
She didn't get a chance to finish her question because they were suddenly airborne. She was reminded, however briefly, of rides on a roller coaster. The feeling of zero gravity was more intense, however, when they all four were lifted from their seats.
She couldn't prevent the scream, even if she'd wanted to.
She tried to tell herself it was just like the roller coaster, that they were coming down the big hill. If she closed her eyes, she could almost picture a sunny day at an amusement park, with Casey's arms around her, protecting her from more mundane fears.
The excitement was over almost as quickly as it had begun, with the four of them on a heaping pile on the floor of the truck. Except, the floor of the truck was now one of the walls.
"Everybody okay?" Casey asked.
Sarah coughed, having had the wind knocked out of her in the fall.
Chuck groaned slightly. He opened his eyes for a half a second but, unable to see clearly, he allowed his heavy lids to close.
"What was that?" Ellie asked.
"Sounded like an RPG," Casey admitted, slowly releasing her. He moved slowly, painfully, as he attempted to crawl towards the door, in the hopes of seeing something out the tiny windows.
"Dad!" Alex charged out of the back of the car, rushing towards the smoking, smoldering van. Joan was right behind her, her gun drawn and at the ready.
Morgan realized the only good thing was that the two who had been in the front of the armored car were now on the ground. He hoped they were knocked out and not dead. He wasn't sure he could deal with having killed someone. When he saw the overturned van, however, his heart not only sank, he was pretty sure it stopped beating.
"Johnny?" Joan called.
"Mom?" Casey asked, muffled.
"Everybody, back from the door. And plug your ears!" Joan ordered. After hearing the shuffling of movement from within the van, she glanced at Alex, who had covered her own ears. She fired twice at the lock, and the exterior doors fell open. "One more. Hang on," she said, looking through the barred doors to see her son and his friends.
Once the interior door lock was taken care of, Sarah climbed out first, followed by Ellie.
Chuck wasn't exactly moving.
"Ch... Chuck?" Sarah asked, looking back into the van.
Ellie swallowed hard. "Did he hit his head?"
Sarah shrugged. "I... I don't know. He might've..."
"If he hit his head... and he's having problems enough already..." She drifted off. "We need to get him to a medical facility. As quickly as possible."
Casey lifted the younger man onto his shoulders, fireman carrying him out of the back.
"You've got lock picks in the car, right?" Sarah asked, glancing back at Casey after having seen his Crown Victoria.
"Center console," Casey answered.
"Let's get out of here," Sarah said, racing to the Ford. She pulled the picks from a small drawer in the center of the dash, finding them easily, and worked quickly to free herself and the others, starting with Ellie.
Morgan exited the car, standing at the open door. "You guys okay?"
"Grimes. In the back," Casey ordered.
Morgan slid into the backseat, as did the newly-freed Ellie and Alex.
"Ellie...?" asked Casey.
"We can take him back here," she said, looking at her brother's ashen face. If the governor had been the only thing keeping her brother awake and alert, and the pressure of having all those secrets, all that information in his brain was getting to him, she feared for his getting back home alive, as well as his survival until she could find some kind of replacement.
Because she would be damned if she'd lose the rest of her family in one day.
Sarah climbed into the front, sliding into the middle of the seat. She bent over to the back, working on Chuck's handcuffs as Joan joined her.
As Casey took the wheel of his car, his hands still cuffed, he saw the driver of the van shake his head as he climbed out of the fallen vehicle before stumbling toward the road, aiming his gun square at the car. "Hold on!" Casey said, slamming his car into gear and, tires squealing, peeled out of there.
Sarah had to abandon her work on Chuck's cuffs, shooting Ellie an apologetic look as she moved to sit down properly.
Ellie just nodded, holding onto Chuck a little tighter. He was crammed in on top of them, his head on her arm, his feet on Morgan's legs.
Morgan ducked when he heard the familiar sound of semiautomatic gunfire, but was even more surprised when the glass behind them didn't shatter. "Bullet-proof glass, big guy?" Morgan asked, nodding approvingly.
"Save the questions, moron, till I get us the hell outta Dodge," he said.
"Johnny," Joan chided lightly.
Casey sighed. "Sorry, Mom."
Alex and Morgan exchanged amused glances.
When Casey took a hard turn, Sarah and Joan both practically fell into him. Ellie had to hold onto Chuck tightly to prevent him from moving around too much.
"It'll be okay, Chuck," Ellie whispered. "Just hang on..."
Stay tuned...
Lines from the next installment:
"Off... Off-grid? What do you mean exactly?" Alex asked. She was pretty sure she'd heard that term watching a spy movie, but she wasn't sure she liked the implications it had for her life.
"It means you and Ellie stay safe. You stay away from me, from the rest of us."
Alex shook her head. "No. No way."
"What?" Casey asked, astonished at the spunk his little girl had.
"I'm not going anywhere, except somewhere I can help you."
"You can help me by getting out of here safely," Casey insisted.
"Will not happen," Alex said stubbornly.
"Like father, like long-estranged daughter," Morgan said with a slight smile.
