A/N The first appearance of 'Good Boy Chuck', a persona I used more extensively later. It wasn't planned, but since I created it here as a throwaway line I decided to use it later when I had a need.


"They turned him into a what?" Even as outraged as she was, Doctor Eleanor Bartowski-Woodcomb kept her voice low for the sake of her recuperating patient. Her brother was resting for her prescribed hour before the next stage in his examination, and she took doctor's orders seriously, especially her own.

Sarah matched her volume, if not her tone. "Yeah, that's what I said."

Ellie shook her head. "Oh, no. Oh no you didn't. Someone with your skills, training, and weapons in the trunk would have taken more direct action, and I think I would have heard about a terrorist rampage cutting a bloody swath through NSA headquarters, even stuck down in this high-security hole like I've been all day."

Sarah blushed in combined amusement and anger. "Your brother had a hand in that." She could still feel the warmth of his hand on hers. "Something about multitudes of children, prison hospitals, and conjugal visits."

"You talked him into multitudes?" Ellie looked shocked. "I'm glad he's resting now, then." She frowned. "How much is multitudes, anyway?"

"Twenty."

Ellie sprayed cold water all over the clinic. "Twenty?"

Sarah shrugged, and handed her a tissue. "Casey ran out of expendable digits. And…other things."

"You held John Casey to ransom?"

"In absentia." Sarah sighed. "But now I can't kill him or torture him, so I'm SOL on the revenge front."

"Bullcrap."

Sarah laughed. "What?"

"Bull-loney. And other words beginning with 'bull' that a PG-13 gal like me isn't very comfortable saying." Ellie tapped Sarah's hand with her finger. "You are Sarah Walker, the CIA's best. You should be able to think rings around those NSA goons, especially for what they did to your husband and my brother. Don't they have classes in how to do that sort of thing?"

Sarah looked away. "Uh, yeah, I guess, but Seduction School really isn't…and anyway I never really liked those sorts of missions…"

"C'mon, Sarah, you've gotta think sideways here!"

"Now you're sounding like my father. I didn't like my missions for him either."

"Well channel him now, just this once. What would your father do?" Sarah thought back to the last time she'd seen her father, and smiled. Ellie liked that smile. "And whatever you think of I wanna help."

Sarah nodded. "Oh, yes. You can definitely help with this one."


Chuck lay in bed like a good boy, afraid to leave his bed against doctor's orders, even when said doctor was being uncharacteristically quiet on the other side of the door. With his wife. Especially then. Nature, on the other hand, was definitely calling. He snuck one foot out of bed and on to the floor.

The door opened. "Hey Chuck."

He pulled his leg back up, but it got caught in the covers. "I wasn't trying to get up but I need to go to the bathroom!"

Ellie frowned. "You know what I said. If you need to go, just ring the bell. I'll have Sarah here bring you a bedpan."

Sarah looked as shocked as Chuck. "What?"

"Sorry, Sarah, but all the money for the project went into building the room across the hall. I don't have a nurse. I just figured, you being his wife and all…"

Sarah froze. Bedpan duty?

Chuck burst out laughing. "Too funny, sis. You really had her going, there."

Ellie smiled and turned to her victim. "I'm sorry, I know, that was cruel, but really you should have seen your face." She spun back. "Where do you think you're going, mister?"

Chuck froze, his foot again on the floor. "Uh, Ellie, I really do have to go."

Ellie relented. "Fine, go. We were just coming in to tell you your hour's up. Your phase three will be here soon so get ready."

As Chuck hobbled to the little room in the corner Sarah asked, "Phase three?"

"Mm-hmm. They have to make sure all traces of the Intersect data are gone. They have a guy who's going to give him a thorough going-over, basically turn his brain inside out looking for any traces. It'll be kind of hard to watch, I know I'm not going to stay. You coming?"

Sarah stood her ground. "Fool me once, Ellie Bartowski."

Ellie pouted. "You're no fun, you know that? Okay, this guy's gonna come in here and chat with Chuck for a while, while some pictures show on a screen. We'll have Chuck rigged up to see if there's any suspicious brain activity but we're just getting some baseline statistics at this point."

"He's not going to hurt Chuck?"

"Please, the worst this guy'll do is stand too close and try to look down your blouse. I'm told his boss was a lot creepier, but he disappeared a couple of years ago and nobody misses him."

"I doubt that," said Sarah. "CIA scientists don't just disappear. Who was he? There had to have been an investigation."

Ellie shrugged. "Somebody named Zarnow, that's all I know. Rumor has it he was blown up and there was a cover-up. You okay Sarah? You look like you're choking."

"It's…the air in here, a bit dry. Is there any water?"

"In the outer room. I have to get Chuck set up first." Ellie walked away. "Chuck, sweetie, what happened, did you fall in?" Sarah took up station in the outer room, waiting for Zarnow's 'assistant'. In a few minutes, the door opened, and a tall, rather portly man entered the room, pushing a cart with some equipment already set up on it. He showed no surprise at her presence, merely appreciation at having another beautiful woman to look at. "Hi, I'm Sam," he said in a strong Southern accent, as if that was the most important thing she could need to know about him. He held out his hand.

She took it. "Sarah Walker. Agent Sarah Walker. I'm your subject's handler."

Sam smiled amiably. "Well, he seems to be in good hands, then. Is the doctor in there with him?"

Sarah smiled back. "Yes, she's just getting him set up for you. I'd offer you something but it's not my office and I only know where the water cooler is."

"From your hands even that would be a blessing."

She laughed, and took that as a 'Yes', so she got him a small cup of water as Ellie came out of the back room. For a second he stared at Sarah and the water, before taking the cup from her hand. "Thank you kindly, Agent Walker."

"He's all ready for you, Sam," said Ellie. For some reason she'd put on a smock. Sam gave her a cordial nod but his attention soon returned to Sarah.

"What is all this?" she asked, as if she hadn't seen Zarnow setting up much the same equipment for his test of Patient X.

"The screen's for the trigger images. You know about those, right?"

She nodded. "I saw them once, too, although I had sunglasses on at the time." She didn't see any sunglasses on the cart.

"No, no, those are for the upload images, much worse, but the sunglasses block out critical frequencies. I have trigger images here, specially made to prompt for specific data."

"So you're forcing him to flash?"

"Yes. We can't make him do it most of the time, the human brain makes its own connections, but for some of the images we have specific triggers. Part of what I'll be doing is research to create user-specific trigger patterns."

Using Chuck as a guinea pig. "Well, good luck to you," said Sarah, in the tone of someone whose eyes are glazing over.

"Thank you. Well, ladies, it's been a pleasure, but duty calls." He pushed his cart through the door to the back room.

"Nice smock," said Sarah.

"It keeps the things I want off me off me." She made a face in Sam's direction. "How do you stand it?"

Sarah snorted. "After some of the things I've been through, a little old-fashioned genteel lecherous appreciation is almost refreshing. He's not trying to ravish me, I'm not trying to manipulate him, so it all evens out. It's not like he can help it."

"Look, I know it's hard-wired into us, and I certainly don't mind Devon looking at me that way, I'm just saying it would nice if more men made an effort to be less obvious about it. It's not like that's the only hard-wired reflex we've got." Ellie stripped off the smock, its purpose served, and went back to her desk. "Okay, good, scans are good, and synchronized to Sam's feed."

"Can I watch?"

"If you want to. It should be about as interesting as watching paint dry." Ellie pointed at an inset window, currently showing a hippopotamus. "The images are timed, and we can tell if an image sets off a spike anywhere. Which none of them should. Sam's also chatting with him, somewhat scripted but not iron-clad. It's being recorded though, so we can do a match later if we need to."

Sarah watched as the images changed, flicking her gaze to the line on the paper. Eventually she gave up, having given herself a headache. "This is dull."

Ellie nodded. "The picture part is. I'm listening to the conversation. It's kind of cute to watch the way his waves spike when Sam mentions certain blonde super-agents." She tapped the screen. "Like here."

Just then, Chuck laughed, a machine-gun, rapid-fire, braying laugh completely unlike the sounds he normally made. Sarah knew her man, and whatever wasn't right was definitely wrong. She left Ellie behind without a thought and pushed through the door.

"You're kidding, right?" said Chuck, not seeming aware of her presence. "You want me to tell tales out of school about Agent Walker's husband? He tore strips out of an NSA Major over a parking space!"

Ooh, clever little detail, Chuck. Sarah arranged her face into a frown. "A-hem."

Chuck got wide-eyed. "I wasn't saying anything, Agent Walker!"

"I know you weren't, Chuck. Good boy. Sam."

He didn't look up. "Uh, yes, Agent Walker?"

"Are you really trying to subvert a National Intelligence asset with his handler in the next room?"

"He wasn't trying to subvert me, he was just asking me about some rumors…"

"Quiet, Chuck. I am assigned to protect you. He's asking you for personal details about me which could potentially weaken my ability to do that. Isn't that right, Sam?"

"Yes, Agent Walker." Sam said to the floor. "I apologize. I hadn't thought about the ramifications."

"For God's sake, Sam," said Ellie, sounding terrified, "Stick to the script. She could kill you."

Sarah snorted. "Not for this. The intelligence business deals in partial information, making up stories to fit the few known facts. Rumors aren't very different. Which one was it this time, the mercenary gang he defeated with a pocket comb, or the Russian gangsters he took out while he was on the toilet?"

"He wanted to know if it was true you met your husband when he fell off a three story building and crashed into you," said Chuck.

For a second Sarah glared at Sam's hunched back, breathing heavily. "Close enough," she said at last. "You're done here, aren't you, Sam?"

His head turned as he looked at his screen. "Yes, it, uh, looks like I am."

"Good. Try to do better tomorrow."

"Thank you, Agent Walker." He unplugged his devices and pushed the cart out without another word. Ellie bent double, choking on her laughter.

Chuck watched Sarah's face light up as the sound of the door closing reached them, and he smiled back. They'd done it! No way was Sarah Walker going to be married to some dorky janitor washout. Much better to have a mysterious super-agent husband for the well-known super-agent wife. Sarah raised her hand and he raised his hand too.

Then Sarah turned an high-fived Ellie. "Woot!" they said together, and turned to look at him with grins on their faces.

He looked back and forth, one face to the other. "What?"