In the Valley of the Shadow, Chapter 10 – "Tabula Not So Rasa"
Author's note: I apologize in advance - there's a LOT of intertwined story lines in this chapter. Hopefully you'll be able to follow without any problems.
CAST (in order of appearance):
Topher Brink – Fran Kranz
Juliet/Sarah Walker – Yvonne Strahovski
Adelle DeWitt – Olivia Williams
Alpha – Alan Tudyk
Boyd Langdon – Harry Lennix
Echo/Sarah Walker – Eliza Dushku
Dr. Claire Saunders – Amy Acker
Laurence Dominic – Reed Diamond
Jill Roberts – Jordana Brewster
John Casey – Adam Baldwin
Paul Ballard – Tahmoh Penikett
Chuck Bartowski – Zachary Levi
Carrie Rozelle – Summer Glau
11:00 AM, Pacific Daylight Time
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
The Westwood Rossum Tower
Los Angeles, California
Topher Brink watched in amazement. The blonde beauty before him clearly knew everything there possibly was to know about security and intelligence.
She's like a machine, he thought to himself, looking out of the corner of his eye at the computer monitoring her vitals. Everything was normal. In fact, everything was BETTER than normal. If Topher hadn't known better, he'd think that Juliet was asleep.
Reaching over and maneuvering the optical mouse, he temporarily minimized Juliet's vitals and brought up iTunes. Shuffle away, my Appley friend.
The program kicked it over to "Wake Up" by the Arcade Fire. Topher approved - he'd always thought of Funeral, their first album, as forty-two minutes and fifteen seconds of auditory aphrodisiac. He hummed softly along as the song played.
Back to your vitals, Ms. Juliet, Topher thought, bringing the program back up - only to see that her heart rate and respiration had both increased. It wasn't an increase that could be detected by an observer, but according to the computer, it was a significant enough increase over her previous state of relaxation that Topher was bordering on alarmed.
"Uh, excuse me, Juliet?" he said quietly. Juliet turned around to face him – and sure enough, there was a perturbed look on her face. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
"No," she said softly, an unsure note to her voice. "Nothing's wrong – but – what's the name of this song?"
Topher raised an eyebrow. "It's called 'Wake Up'," he replied. "By a band called the Arcade Fire." He paused. "Why, do you know it?"
Juliet shook her head slightly. "I don't… but I feel like I do."
Okay, that's not good. "Would you, uh, like a treatment?"
Juliet shook her head again, more determined this time. "No, this is more important. I can wait on a treatment till later." Then she looked directly at Topher. "Also, you shouldn't call me Juliet."
Oh shit. "Why not?"
She shrugged. "That's what I get called all the time, but right now, I'm not me. I'm definitely somebody else."
False alarm. "Okay, that's fine," Topher said, breathing a sigh of relief. "What would you like me to call you?"
Juliet thought about it for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. "You can call me the Operative."
And with that, she turned back to the computers before her and resumed her work.
Adelle DeWitt looked with confusion at the sight of Topher Brink crossing the floor of her office. "Topher…"
"I know, I know, I'm supposed to be watching Juliet. But there's something I needed to talk to you about. Juliet, I don't know if she got wiped right – there's stuff –"
"Topher."
The young scientist shut his mouth. "Who's watching Juliet?"
"Oh," Topher said, "Dr. Saunders. She'll be fine."
"Proceed."
Topher sighed. "She recognized a song I was listening to. She doesn't know it, but said she feels like she should. Then, she asked me not to call her Juliet, and said that I should call her the Operative instead." He paused and smiled half-heartedly. "Quite honestly, I didn't program her to be a Joss Whedon fan."
Adelle frowned. "So, what are you saying, Topher?"
"I'm saying, she's got vestiges of the real Sarah Walker popping up. These could be indicators of a serious problem –"
"Or they could be completely normal," Adelle interrupted him. "You imprinted her to essentially BE Sarah Walker, just without knowledge of her own identity. If she was imprinted with all her skills, doesn't it seem logical that somewhere in there, two or three little tiny bits of information about her true self might have gotten through?"
"Well…"
"And do you truthfully think that knowledge of a song and a character from a movie is going to cause a composite event?" Adelle asked. "This isn't Alpha we're dealing with here, Topher."
Topher opened his mouth to speak – and then, his eyes went wide, and he pitched forward onto the carpet, a tranquilizer dart sticking out of the back of his neck. Adelle looked down at him, and then looked up, horror crossing her face.
Alpha looked at Adelle from his position behind where Topher had been standing, smug malice drawn on his face. "You would like to think that, wouldn't you."
The Operative stared intently at one monitor. Something was off. Something about the way Boyd Langdon was moving – it was as if he had been injured. And Echo – something was wrong with her, too. What was that in her hand?
Grabbing the mouse, she boxed Echo and clicked on the "Zoom and Enhance" button. The picture zoomed in, and clarified her look at Echo's hand –
Jesus Christ. That was a .38 revolver in Echo's hand, dug into Boyd's back. "Oh, fuck," she whispered.
Whirling in her chair, she turned to face Dr. Saunders. "Dr. Saunders, I have to go down to the parking garage," she announced. "We have a major security breach."
Dr. Saunders frowned. "Juliet, I don't know if I can allow you to do that."
Call me THE OPERATIVE, she snarled mentally. "Look," she said, leaning forward, "there is an Active in the garage who I believe has gone off the reservation. She has a gun to her handler's back, and I think she might have injured him somehow. I'm trained to handle this. I'm going."
As she rose from her chair, Dr. Saunders stood as well. "I'm going with you then."
"No," she replied. "You need to stay here. Call Ms. DeWitt and Mr. Dominic. They need to know about this right now."
And with that, she turned and jogged out of the room. "Crap," Dr. Saunders muttered, reaching for the phone.
Nobody noticed the four additional people who climbed out of Echo's van.
The phone on Adelle's desk rang. She didn't move, her eyes fixed on the former Active, who advanced toward her, a tranquilizer gun trained on her forehead.
"Answer it," Alpha instructed her. "And if you say one thing to give away the fact that I'm here, I'll put a dart in your eye."
Without taking her eyes off of Alpha, Adelle reached out and picked up the phone. "DeWitt."
"Ms. DeWitt, this is Dr. Saunders. Juliet has identified a security breach in the parking garage, and has gone to investigate."
A security breach in the parking garage? Just what the hell is going on here? Adelle thought to herself.
"Understood," she replied. "Is your situation normal otherwise?"
There was silence on the other end for a moment. "Uh, yes."
"Thank you, Dr. Saunders. Keep me posted."
Situation normal. Those two words rang in Dr. Saunders' mind.
That was the pre-arranged staff signal for being under duress. They had been trained, and trained, and trained again to never, ever say "situation normal" unless the situation absolutely was NOT normal.
"Shit," she breathed. Picking up the phone again, she dialed.
"Dominic."
"Mr. Dominic, this is Dr. Saunders. We have a situation at the house. Ms. DeWitt is in trouble."
Westwood Plaza Shopping Center
Laurence Dominic looked across the table in the food court at Jill Roberts. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he said into his phone.
Hanging the phone up, he gave Jill a rather grim smile. "My man is in place," he informed her. "Time to go Chuck hunting."
Rossum Tower
Boyd Langdon was tied up and well hidden. The clothing warehouse for the Dollhouse was absolutely gigantic. "Alright, here's what's going to happen," John Casey began, ignoring the former LAPD officer restrained behind him. "Ballard, you're going to stay here and guard Langdon –"
"THE HELL!" the suspended FBI agent exploded. "You can't for one minute believe that I'm going to sit here, after all the work I've put in –"
"It's BECAUSE of all the work you've put in," Casey interrupted. "You're too emotionally invested. You're going to be TOO driven to win, and that might make you screw up."
"I'M emotionally invested?!" Ballard shot back. "What about Bartowski? How is HE not emotionally invested?"
"He IS," Casey replied testily, "but unlike YOU, he has a singular objective, and that is to retrieve the body of Sarah Walker. He is NOT here to take down the Dollhouse."
"Though I'll happily do it if given the chance," Chuck muttered.
"Bartowski…"
"I'll be quiet."
Casey grunted. "Now, if I may resume the briefing?" He looked around. "Alright. Ballard stays here with Langdon. Walker –" he looked over at Echo "- you and I will go find the big cheese."
"Adelle DeWitt," Ballard informed them. "Probably toward the top floors of the tower."
"Copy that," Casey replied. "Rozelle, you will take Bartowski and go try to find Agent Walker…" Casey paused. "While I'm running around with Agent Walker trying to find somebody else."
He shook his head. "I pray to God I never have a mission like this again."
"So, what exactly do you want, Alpha?" Adelle asked the former Active.
Alpha just smiled as he took a seat across from her. "I just want you to sit there and shut up, Adelle," he replied. "If the phone rings, you answer it, and tell whoever's on the other end that your situation is completely normal. Understood?"
You have no idea, Adelle thought. "You do realize that eventually security will realize something's wrong and show up," she said.
Alpha snorted. "Such a pity that I've been working with Mr. Dominic, then," he replied. "Security will be doing jack."
Adelle felt the blood drain from her face. This was not good.
The Operative jogged through the subterranean corridors, scanning her surroundings continuously as she went. Suddenly she froze.
Voices, she thought. Two of them – a male and a female. Up ahead, around the corner. Flattening herself against the wall, she crept the rest of the length of the corridor. Reaching behind her, she drew the gun that she had grabbed from the armory –
"FREEZE!" she roared, moving around the corner, the gun coming up to bear on the two people ahead of her.
The woman was shorter, but looked like she could easily kill somebody. She was dressed completely in black, with short brown hair, and a gun nearly the size of her forearm in her right hand.
The man, on the other hand, was tall and skinny, and looked like he would have a difficult time hurting a cockroach. A white, short-sleeved shirt and a black necktie made him look like a nerd, and the unruly mop of curly brown hair on top of his head completed the image.
But wait – there was – what was it –
"DON'T SHOOT!" he shouted, a note of desperation in his voice.
She couldn't have shot anybody if she wanted to. She had frozen. Her mind was running in a million different directions.
Slowly, her gun hand came down. "I know you," she whispered, her eyes glued on the man in front of her.
Chuck Bartowski's breath hitched when she said, "I know you." She clearly wasn't Sarah Walker – "Sarah Walker" was off prowling the building with John Casey – but there was something there.
"Yeah," he whispered. "You know me, and I know you. We've known each other for a couple years."
She nodded, clearly confused. "I know," she replied. "I know, but I don't know how."
Carrie looked from Chuck to… what was she supposed to call her? "Chuck, what's going on?"
A gasp came from the un-nameable woman when she said the name Chuck. "Chuck," she whispered. "You're Chuck!"
Chuck turned to Carrie. "I'm not quite sure," he replied. "Either she's only been partially wiped, or she's been partially re-imprinted. Either way, there's something going on there that nobody expected –"
He froze. Sarah – not quite, he reminded himself – had said something, and he almost couldn't believe his ears. Slowly, he turned back to her. "What did you just say?"
"You're Chuck," she repeated. "I know you, but I don't know how." That's when the confusion disappeared from her face. "But there's one thing I know for sure, that everything tells me is right."
She crossed the space between her and Chuck, and stopped right in front of him, looking up into his eyes. "I know that I love you."
To be continued…
