Some elements here have been lifted from my earlier stories as they explain (I believe) the results that they're seeing.
Usual disclaimer, not rights to any characters portrayed.
One of the two women in the van wasn't used to being the backup on missions, and it grated on her more than a little. While she had to concede that she wasn't up to the level of at least three of the four people in the building at the moment, her muttered comment about the fourth and nepotism was heard over the radio, which got her a response.
"What was that Panther? We discussed this and you agreed that Leopard has better breaking and entering skills than you do, didn't you?" Even with the voice changing filters they used, they could recognise each other from the tone and wording used, so she knew who it was that said that. "Yes Wolf, but I still wonder how much the fact that she's S.. Tigress's sister effected the decision." "Panther, have you forgotten when we were in the CATs? Leopard was always the best at breaking into things, that's what the decision was based on, don't make me come out there and kick your arse! Lioness, can you try and talk some sense into her please?"
At that the other woman cut their mics and turned to her companion. "What's this about Zondra? I was in the meeting and everyone, including you, agreed that Carina was the one who had the skillset needed to get her half of the team into the building. You know that Sarah didn't choose her over you because she's her sister." "I know Ellie, I'm just not used to not being in the middle of things, I was always at the first in the door, sitting it out is hard for me!" "This is one mission, this time she had the skills needed to get half the team into the building while Chuck and Sarah go in the other end, next time it's just as likely to be your skills that are needed." "Yeah, I know you're right, I'm just frustrated I guess." With that she sighed and leant over to switch her mic back on "Tigress, Wolf, Leopard, issue resolved, sorry, just getting frustrated out here." The response that came back from Sarah was rather less aggravated than before "You'll get your chance to shine soon Panther, promise." They all laughed quietly at the crack that followed "Roger that, I'd prefer a partner who's less likely to get me my arse shot off!" Zondra grinned as she responded "I'll see what I can do Bear."
In the van they turned the mics off again as they had a laugh, Zondra turned to Ellie and asked who came up with the call signs/code names, anyway, because they fit pretty well. Ellie responded that it was Chuck, of course, except for his own, Wolf came from Sarah, and Carina's obviously came from the "Leopards don't change their spots" line. Zondra couldn't help laughing as she repeated "Obviously!" They also laughed about the code names allocated to the others in the Council, while General certainly didn't appreciate getting Cougar (they didn't let her know where that one came from, other than that it didn't come from Chuck or Sarah), the rest didn't really mind and conceded that they fit, Mary had Jaguar, Bryan Jackal, Emma Lynx, Roan Coyote, Stephen Fox, Josie Ocelot, and Alex had Bearcat, for obvious reasons. The reason for the code names was that while Stephen and Chuck ensured that they had the highest levels of security possible on their communications, far higher than any government systems, they understood better than most that any security could be broken, so they always used voice changers, and always used each other's code names when they were talking to each other to prevent anyone being identified via their communications.
While she was in the van, Zondra found that she understand Chuck's position on doing the exercises while they were doing something else, she and Ellie moved the chairs aside and stood in front of the screens doing isometric/isotonic exercises and tai chi, and not only did it drain some of the frustration, it helped them focus on what was on the screens better, so they found that they picked up on things that they may have missed otherwise.
Inside the building, things were proceeding well, the two teams entered and proceeded to the computer centre and filing room, Chuck and Sarah were in the computer centre installing programs on the servers to feed information out to the Council's systems and copying large slabs of data onto the storage devices they had with them, while Casey and Carina were in the filing room installing bugs to collect information, as well as copying what they could while they were there. When they were done, they covered up any sign that they'd been there and slipped out, returning to the van to head out. When they got to the van, Zondra met Sarah's look then went to her with a hug and an apology, doing the same with Carina, and Chuck.
None of them had much time to themselves now, they had to put the time in to keep Hunter Security a viable cover business, do the government missions, do the Council missions, put in the training hours each day and on top of that Stephen, Chuck and Ellie were trying to get the updated and "fixed" Intersect done to get Stephen's head straight (and optimise it for Chuck, and anyone else who chose to take it on), and they were all working on gathering and collecting information about Volkoff Industries so that they could formulate a plan to take it down. The shakedown and final tuning and tweaking of the systems for the Valkyrie were done now, so they had it up and working as the primary transport to move the team wherever they had to be, though if it was only one or two who had to go, then the Falcon still worked fine (actually, better than before as Chuck had tweaked the control systems and surfaces to eliminate the instability that his father's original design had). Getting the Council's equipment and transport issues out of the way gave Stephen much more time to drive the on-line searches for information on Volkoff Industries, which of course sped up the search.
Zondra soon got her chance to step up on the missions as Chuck had to concentrate on completing a few things with the Bartowski Brain Trust (Stephen, Ellie and himself), so Sarah was teamed up with Carina while Casey was teamed up with Zondra on a few missions, and they had Bryan and Emma in the "van" for support and backup. It was actually a good setup, as Carina was more under control when she was partnered with her sister and Casey had a partner who was less likely to "get him his arse shot off". They were all experienced field agents and got the job done, if without the extra elements that Chuck usually brought to the table. One thing that Sarah noted was that it was more exciting (IE dangerous) without Chuck as they didn't see or recognise things that he could pick up, and it took them a lot longer to get through the systems that they came up against. If she was being honest with herself though she, like the others, relished the excitement of the extra fire fights that they got into without using Chuck's planning to slide by the confrontations, in their "normal" Council missions, they had less opportunities to make use of the weapons that Stephen (and Chuck) had supplied them with, and the field agents did appreciate superior weapons.
When Stephen, Chuck and Ellie started working on the "Bartowski Intersect", Chuck's superior coding ability and Ellie's Neurology expertise quickly showed considerable areas of the existing Intersects that were in serious need of improvement. Stephen was gifted in all areas of technology, but his focus was more on engineering and the hardware/devices whereas Chuck's focus had always been more on the software/coding side, and that was what the Intersect was based on. Once they'd examined the code, Chuck dove into recoding the entire Intersect "engine" to allow faster and more efficient operations with less impact on the brain, while Ellie's input allowed them to rework all the interfaces between the Intersect and the brain and especially the body's control systems to allow it to operate in a more natural and efficient manner, so that everything felt a lot more natural, and worked faster and more effectively. It also meant that data extracted from the Intersect database was "remembered" by the brain in a similar manner to the normal learning process, so from that point on it could be recalled like any other memories.
Of course to create and load the new Intersect, Stephen and Chuck had to create a super computer and the equivalent of an intersect room, luckily this was what Stephen was best at, which meant that they managed to build the Hunter Processing Centre in a couple of weeks. It used a communications interface of multiple gigabit links, multiplexed to feed the computer the bandwidth needed, it initially supported up to 100 Terabytes of memory, and 5 Petabytes of flash storage (for up to 100 concurrent virtual instances running 1TB of memory, with enough processing power and fast enough bus architecture to support full capacity operations on all instances) the primary display interface used an air mouse/remote to select and control each display array (plus audio output and input devices), the base display array was a single 65", 2K display that could be configured as 4, separate 32", 1K displays associated to separate virtual instances, Chuck's preferred configuration was 4 (2 x 2), high end 65" 2K displays butted together, that could be configured as an array of options between 16, segregated 32" 1K displays of separate virtual instances of the system in different languages, and a single 130", 4K display (the display system had the capabilities to expand that to a 19.25 x 8.5' (255"), curved 12 screen display array (4 x 3) that would support 48 separate instances concurrently, creating an array that was a bit of overload for normal usage, but that set-up was in Stephen's bunker, as it was good for diving into big, complex issues and doing the Intersect uploads), and the smart keyboard/trackball interface that remapped to the language that was applied to the system active/selected at the time. The Processing Centre itself was located in a sealed chamber in the bunker complex, kept below freezing in an inert gas environment for optimal operation and to preserve the environment, you basically needed a space suit to go in there.
What they didn't realise at first was that the extent of the differences that Ellie implemented to the way that the Intersect interfaced with the body's control systems meant that the interfaces were at a much lower level than the previous intersect versions had used, so as well as being more natural and far faster (as they didn't have to negotiate through all sorts of higher functions and logic processes to send the commands, they essentially plugged directly into the core body control system), they apparently triggered the body's repair mechanisms at that low level. The body still held the core ability of lower life forms to regrow or repair just about any part of itself, it was (by their theory, at least) the "higher functions" of the brain that got in the way of the body doing this, and that was what they believed was happening when the Bartowski Intersect interfaced into the body's control systems at such a low level and triggered the body's repair mechanisms to rejuvenate the body.
As the only known safe Intersect test subject, Chuck loaded the "Bartowski Intersect" once they thought it was safe to do so, and the effects were rather astounding. The optimised Intersect version allowed Chuck to get the maximum performance and benefit out of the Intersect. One of the most promising side effects of the Bartowski Intersect was the vitality that he acquired, and the fact that his general physiological state was steadily improving the longer he had it. He was fitter, stronger, faster, more flexible and better co-ordinated, with with better endurance all the time (not only when he was accessing the Intersect). Aside from his performance, it was obvious that any injuries that he acquired were healing at a faster rate than normal, and pre-existing damage seemed to be being repaired as well. Another thing that they found was that the BI (Bartowski Intersect) apparently had no trouble accessing any Intersect database in the host's head, Chuck knew that he'd coded it to locate the BI database in order to access the data, but what he found now that it was loaded was that it located and accessed ALL Intersect databases present in the brain, and therefore searched all of them for the requested data. If the data itself was corrupted, that may be a problem, but when issues appeared to come from the behaviour of the Intersect code, having it over-written by the BI appeared to eliminate many problems. It was looking as though the BI was, in fact, the ultimate Intersect.
Ellie had been running full physiological and neurological scans on Chuck on a regular basis ever since she was brought into the picture, and soon after he loaded the BI, she started noting changes, previous scans had shown notable areas of damage in the brain from the earlier Intersects, the raw version he loaded when he was nine or ten, the 1.0 version that he was sent by Bryce Larkin, the Fulcrum version that he was forced to load at the Fulcrum facility (along with the Fulcrum test that'd killed the rest of the subjects), and the 2.0 version that he loaded after Ellie's wedding, not to mention the multiple updates and upgrades he loaded, and the damage that occurred when the 2.0 version started glitching on him and almost had him committed, but since he'd loaded the BI, the evidence of this damage was diminishing at a fairly rapid rate. This showed a lot of promise in regard to their hopes of repairing the damage to their father's brain that came from the Intersect (and possibly other things?), so Chuck was working on a cut down version (BI Lite, as it were) for his father to load while they waited to try and make sure that there weren't any detrimental side effects that they were missing.
While all this was gong on, they also went through the data retention tests and genetic markers which appeared to give the indication that it was safe to load and use the Intersect. One genetic marker appeared to relate to Norse bloodlines, and specifically Berserkers. There was limited test evidence recorded as the incidence of "true" Berserkers in recent times was quite rare, but the theories appeared to relate to a hyper sensitivity to adrenalin, in small doses it increased the strength, speed, co-ordination and mental acuity, so that they became supermen (or women), and neural pathways appeared to differ from "normal" people as well, in large doses (equating to instances where "normal" people perform acts of extreme strength etc due to adrenalin), the Berserkers would be out of control, far stronger and faster than anyone else could possibly be, not reacting to injures and not capable of rational thought while in that state. The extreme state was obviously not the target for the Intersect, but rather the "enhanced" state, as these capabilities along with the different neural pathways enabled a capability to host and utilise the Intersect that "normal" people couldn't reach. As this line of investigation seemed to be valid, they had full DNA tests run up for all of them, and everyone went through the data retention tests, to see how safe it may be if anyone came in contact with the Intersect.
When there were no adverse effects from the BI after three weeks, Stephen loaded the "lite" version (which was basically the same code, but with only the bare bones of the database to go with it), to overwrite the early Intersect in his head, and within a couple of days he was already showing improvement, both in his behaviour and on the scans that Ellie was doing. The results that Stephen was getting, on the heels of the results that Chuck got, were raising quite a bit of interest (and hope), as everyone in the group appeared be compatible with the BI Lite at the very least, and Ellie and Sarah (and possibly more) looked like they'd be OK with the full version of the BI. Even the BI Lite offered significant advantages to the host, so the consensus was to wait a few weeks to make sure Stephen was handling it OK, and then load the others with the BI Lite, only adding to the BI databases when the host appeared ready to handle it, Stephen had access to the original Intersect database in his head, and Ellie and Sarah worked up to the "full" Intersect database that Chuck loaded, but the rest only received subsets of the database as needed to protect them from overload.
They staggered the BI loads so that it just looked like each person was off for a day or two, easily explained away. As expected, Sarah and Ellie started reacting the quickest to the benefits of the BI, showing more power, speed and endurance and better coordination when they were working out or sparring, but Carina wasn't too far behind them, with Casey and Zondra coming in only a little slower. As they assimilated the changes, they all stepped up their training regimes, part of the reason for the others was that being at least six weeks behind Chuck on the upgrade, they were getting a little disheartened to find themselves even further behind him, but once they'd assimilated the BI, and especially once they'd loaded the skills database, they started closing the gap again. One thing that the others noted, and which was borne out by redoing the data retention tests, was that their memory and access to memories started improving once the BI was loaded, it probably happened with Chuck as well, but the effect was less noticeable with him given how close to 100% access (retention) he started at. An unfortunate side effect of that, though, was that memories that they'd previously managed to repress came back in force, which was a problem, especially for the girls.
Hearing the stories from the girls, especially Ellie, Sarah and Carina, had done nothing to reverse the change in Chuck's behaviour on missions, when he flashed on those that he was fighting against and the records showed that they were a danger to others, especially women, it was more common now for him to switch to lethal ammunition and/or use lethal force against them. He still planned the missions to avoid confrontation and get in and out undetected if at all possible, but he no longer insisted on sparing those who were a danger to others. On the government missions, he tended to carry a "real" gun as well as a tranq pistol now, and the "real" gun was getting almost as much use as the tranq pistol.
One thing the found that they had to be careful about was how they addressed each other on missions, as they'd all, at some point, forget and start to refer to each other as their Council call signs on government missions. As a result, they had to scan the recordings after each mission and redact any references the Council call signs from the recordings before they were filed, just another piece of work to be covered off.
They'd managed to work out a fair rotation for the missions now (both Government and Council), so that everyone had their share of the action and everyone did their stint of running support from the van. This meant that no-one felt like the "fat kid who doesn't get picked" (as per Casey's favourite whine), and got to practice both their active skills, and the technical skills needed in the support capacity. One good thing that came out of that was that Carina and Zondra recognised that they needed to work on their technical skills to really deliver as part of the team. They had tended to look down their noses at that side of the business before they joined the team, but now they could recognise that in the bigger scheme of things, that side was actually more important, so they concentrated on learning what they needed to so they could step up to the requirements.
It was when they were on the government missions that they really appreciated the regenerative effect of the BI, because they didn't have the protection of the Council gear on those missions (especially the girls, who had to wear the skimpy outfits considered appropriate by some dork who probably wanted to drool over the pictures of them), and therefore injuries of some kind were quite common. The ability to heal that much faster was definitely a plus in those circumstances.
They had all of Team Bartowski committed to the training regime and making good progress now, and Bryan, Josie and Alex were added to the program where possible to bring them up to speed, even Roan joined in to improve himself. As well as the physical training, they hacked the security feeds from Castle to allow them to slip the others in for weapons training, and also to allow Team Bartowski to train with the Hunter weapons (as they were now referred to) on the range there (and to use the better dojo facilities that they had in Castle). The Council's team was getting ready for the battle that they had ahead of them.
A/N Just a quick point in response to the review, the development of the Bartowski Intersect would have happened over a period of several months, as they started working on it just after Ellie was read into the family secrets. Also, with the originator of the Intersect to explain the principals it was built on, Chuck who was far better at coding/hacking and Ellie to provide Neurology insights, logically they could have done a better job than anyone else. FWIW.