A/N: Sorry again about the fubar with chapter 13. I especially appreciate all of you who let me know that I erred, minutes after posting. Thanks a bunch.

I have been listening to my evil muse… you'll find out just how evil the bitch-goddess is. She's shouted down the Charrah muse but I still managed to hear something – at least until…

Moah14

The desk clerk put Sarah's call through and it rang and rang. No answer. They must really be dead to the world. She gasped, realizing how crass that sounded. Her Chuck, for all intents and purposes, was dead to the world. She felt numb. This isn't happening. She knew she'd awaken any minute now and it would all be a bad dream.

She motioned to one of the Blackbirds and asked him to drive over to the hotel and bring back the two doctors. Tell them it was an emergency. They could call her and she'd brief them en route. She was back in agent mode. Distance. She needed to distance herself from these events. She dialed the phone again and told the desk clerk the room number to call. She needed to do something. Not just stand around and wait for a doctor to deliver the grim verdict with cool professional detachment. She could hear his words, "I'm sorry for your loss."

The neurosurgeon approached the General. "He's stable again. I honestly have no idea what brought this on. It was as if his brain started shutting down all his autonomic functions. And that's impossible. I'm having a full head CT run to make sure none of our handy work has come undone. I'll have the results to you within the hour."

"Agent Walker, please accompany Mr. Bartowski for the procedure. I'm sure you'll find it interesting."

"Yes, ma'am."

Sarah followed the doctor into the ICU area. She hadn't seen Chuck up close, just a figure through the frosted glass.

His head was partially shaven for the surgery but it would grow back. And what hair could be seen was cut short and appeared to be dyed gray. Good thinking, Chuck. She was surprised. It's the small, subtle things that can change appearance the most drastically. Short of shaving his head, Chuck had opted for the easiest and most effective. Cut and dye your hair. Impressive.

She would mourn the loss of his curls until they grew back. They were one of his most endearing features. The curls and his smile. So many different smiles. If she really thought about it, she could probably catalog them all. Well, there would be plenty of time for that later. And she promised herself that she'd be the reason for all Chuck's new smiles.

His arm and leg were in casts. The laceration to his scalp and forehead had been stitched and might leave a scar. Big deal. She could live with the scar if she could live with him… a lot of living. The entire left side of his face was swollen and his eye was covered with a surgical dressing.

His chest was bear. A smattering of hair but most had been shaved during surgery. She could see where the chest tube entered between his ribs, a surgical dressing loosely covering the site. Walking around the bed to his 'uninjured' side, she was the powder burn on his right cheek. She shuddered and closed her eyes. She had come so close to losing him to his delusions. But she felt perversely proud of him. He kept his promises. He would not have been taken alive. Thank god for that deputy's quick thinking.

She took his hand gently in hers again marveling at the rightness of the fit. Even with the pulse-ox meter pinned to his fingertip, it still felt right. She gently squeezed his hand and raised it to her lips. So close to losing him.

A throat clearing behind her. Lowering Chuck's hand to the sheet she turned and saw the doctor. "We really need to hurry with this procedure. You'll have plenty of time when we return. He'll need a lot of attention. TLC. You up for that?" The last said with a knowing grin.

"Yes. He'll not lack for TLC while I'm around."

Holiday Inn Express

Between the banging on the door and the ringing of the phone, Ellie Bartowski awoke in a foul mood. Throwing Devon's arm off her, she got out of bed, pulled on a scrub shirt and pants and went to the door. Whoever it was banging on the damned door had better have a good reason. She was definitely cranky. Too much worry and too little sleep. Stress.

The agent had just raised his fist to pound on the door when it was thrown open by a short brunette with murder in her eyes.

"I'm sorry Doctor, but you and Dr. Woodcombe are needed at the hospital. I was sent to rouse you and provide transportation. Agent Walker called several times but no one answered the phone and she directed me to come and wake you and take you back. I'll be down in front of the lobby with transportation for you when you're ready to go. Please hurry."

Fulton County Hospital

Chuck wondered if he'd been asleep or just zoned out. It didn't matter. He was alert and curious. Plus he had a plan.

The intersect was clunky. It lacked elegance. The time needed to access and correlate data was an insult to any trained programmer and more so to a computer engineering major such as one Charles Irving Bartowski, near-graduate of the Leland Stanford School for Spoiled Genii.

The intersect was nothing more than a huge data base and so it needed a spiffy and simple but fast method of pulling data requested without relying on the visual cues to trigger it.

So, being the nerd that he was, he designed a mental query system using, for lack of an easier comparison, am SQL approach.

Pick a subject, designate columnar topics and submit for a report of just where the data might lie. Display the pertinent visual cues and Voila!, a relational database complete with switchboard access. In Chuck's world it took a couple of hours. In reality, its development spanned the time it took to wheel his bed from the ICU to the CT area.

Now for the test. Find all for John Casey. Display location, alias, mission, result. Mentally Chuck pressed an 'enter key' and sat back to await the results. Within milliseconds he saw a report. Looking at just the last 4 entries he decided to see just how John Casey came to be on his detail.

Munich, Germany, Franz Dorffmann, assassination, successful

Beirut, Lebanon, Yevgeny Zhukov, infiltration, assassination, successful

Zurich, Switzerland, Heinz Schumann, infiltration, assassination, failure.

Burbank, CA, John Casey, protective detail, pending.

So, Agent Walker was to be his executioner if and when it became necessary. Casey was just a bodyguard, not tasked with his termination. Very interesting. Apparently the CIA planned on his liquidation rather than the NSA. Or the NSA didn't trust John Casey to get the job done. What happened in Switzerland to cause him to be relegated to the task of bodyguard? What did John Casey do or not do that put him on the malignant dwarf's shit list? Or had those orders been changed after Arthur Graham's untimely demise when the replacement intersect went on-line? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Beckman had no great love for the CIA.

He mentally closed out the report and erased the query. Now that he knew how his head was screwed on he needed to know the variety and extent of the data in his poor head. Right now he had a headache. So that meant he wasn't dead, yet.

Crap. If a .45 caliber wad cutter couldn't do the job, what would it take to free him from this durance vile? A cannon? A mouthful of C4? Maybe a Semtex sweat band?

Well, he needed something to occupy his mind. Something that wouldn't hurt his head… or his heart. Hmmm, lets see what the earliest entries are to the intersect database… and once again Chuck's brain lit up like the White House Christmas Tree on the CT scans.

"So you see, Agent Walker, the red areas are those involved in whatever it is that's going on in his brain. As you can see from the CT scan we took when he was admitted and the current display, the red areas have increased since the initial scan.

"What's that black blob down there in the center, Doctor?"

"That's where we removed the earlier hematoma. The smaller 'blob' is where the bleeder from the accident was repaired."

"So this older hematoma was what caused Chuck to have hallucinations?"

"Probably. I don't think hallucination is the right word. More like selective hearing and misconstruing both aural and visual cues. Aphasia, both auditory and spoken is really quite common but usually disappears quickly with repair of the trauma. Now a true brain injury where damage to say, Broca's Area, well that's permanent and it takes a lot of therapy to over come. But that won't be his problem."

"So this caused him to freak out, break cover and plan and execute his escape?" The doctor had been thoroughly vetted and then briefed as to the circumstances leading to Chuck's accident.

"No. Not really. The hematoma and damage caused the miscues. The creative actions were all his doing. He just needed a push to demonstrate his abilities. We react differently to challenges. From what I've been able to piece together, our patient's actions were totally unexpected but very innovative and novel. His deception was almost his undoing. He wouldn't have lasted a week without medical intervention."

"When do you think you'll be able to allow Chuck to regain consciousness?"

"That depends entirely on his ability to heal and the absence of a repeat of this afternoon's Code Blue. I still don't see a reason for him Coding. Makes no sense at all."

"We'll be able to manage his pain but with head injuries and especially with this odd anomaly, it won't be easy. There will be some pain. I won't lie to you, but nothing we can't dull or blunt. I think we should be able to reduce the medication and let him regain consciousness in 2 or 3 days barring another incident."

Ellie and Devon arrived at the hospital after quickly dressing and meeting the agent outside the lobby although to Ellie the drive seemed to take forfrikkinever.

Arriving at the ICU suite, they noticed that it was empty.

"Nurse, where is Mr. Bartowski?" Devon asked.

"I'm sorry sir, but he's gone…" She never got to finish her sentence because a mother bear had suddenly appeared in her face.

"What do you mean 'he's gone'? Where? Who took him? Was he transferred? Discharged? What have those sinister black-suited bastards done with my brother?"

"Ma'am, if you'll just give me a minute and step back, I'll pull his chart. I just came on a few minutes ago and he was already gone."

"It's Doctor Bartowski. Get me the damned chart. I'll read it myself."

Devon just looked at the nonplussed nurse and mouthed "Sorry" to her and shrugged his shoulders. Ellie Bartowski aka Momma Grizzly Bear was on the prowl and she was looking for her missing cub.

Chuck had reviewed some of the earliest entries on the Intersect. It was easy to sort by date and then select a subject and just browse through the data. He was already trying to design a much better way of accessing and cross-referencing and indexing his data finds.

What surprised and frustrated him was the amount of "printed material" in foreign languages. He began to sort through the files to try and find a "dictionary" to help him translate some of the documents. He was sure he could develop a routine that would automatically translate documents if he could only find a foreign language database. He could see the advantages of having images of the original documents but not having side-by-side translations in English was just poor tradecraft. Inefficient too.

Hmmm, he also wondered why there were no audio recordings. Maybe the intersect lacked a sound card? The thought tickled him. Or maybe he just couldn't hear them in his current environment. Another problem to solve. Well, at least he wasn't bored. Or thinking about a certain blonde heart breaker. Too late, images of Sara Walker assaulted him.

Sarah driving her car like a wild woman, grinning like an idiot. Sarah smiling, many images of that beautiful smile. Sleepy Sarah. Aggravated Sarah. Sarah holding a gun/knife/spatula… Spatula? Whoa, free association had its shortcomings. No, he remembered Sarah trying to help Ellie make pancakes. Super spy but a real klutz in the kitchen.

Sarah at the beach. In a bikini. In shorts. In jeans and a tank. In an evening gown that was so low cut in the front that he just knew… don't go there Chuck. You don't need the aggravation.

Besides, he knew now that he'd always been just the mark. Go, Agent Walker. Get close. Get closer. Get close enough so you won't miss but not get splattered with blood either. The consummate agent. He'd been a fool to ever believe that a nerd, no, face it, a geek, like him could have ever attracted a woman of her caliber let alone one who would return his feelings.

Depressed and feeling that nagging dull headache again, he retreated to the corner of what he now termed his 'inner sanctum', figuratively turned out the lights and zoned out. He had nothing better to do.

ICU

They'd just completed reconnecting all the various monitoring devices when the monitors began their screeching wails.

"He's coding again."

"Get her out of here!" That said to the nurse who spun a wide-eyed Sarah Walker around and shoved her out into the hall.

"Code Blue ICU, Code Blue ICU" announced the ceiling speakers in a soft voice. How did they ever hear such a quiet announcement? Such a devastating announcement. Someone had died. All hands on deck. Push back the night one more time.

"Agent Walker? Sarah? Sarah!" Ellie Bartowski had run down the hall to Chuck's room in ICU just in time to see a pale faced blonde unceremoniously shoved out into the hall. She'd heard the announcement and came running. Putting her hands on Sarah's shoulders and bringing her face up close she again tried to get the Agent's attention. "Sarah? Agent Walker report!"

Maybe she seen or heard too many of Chuck's StarTrek programs. Sounded like that French guy Pickle or something. But it worked.

Sarah snapped out of her fugue.

"Ellie, we were just coming back from the CT scan. Everything was just fine. I'd held his hand. And then when they hooked him up to the monitors all hell broke loose. They threw me out. I need to get back in there. Chuck needs me."

"No. You don't need to be in there. You'll just get in the way. And you won't like what you see but you have to understand it's a fight in there. A battle to the death against death. And we doctors do not like to lose anymore than you spies do. Now, come over here and sit down and tell me what you've learned from the doctor about the CT scan."

The group of doctors and nurses hovering around Chuck's bed moved back when the lead doctor shouted "Clear" and placed the paddles.

[ZAP] The body convulsed, arching off the bed.

The EEG was flat. The EKG was a green line, flat, unwavering.

"Well, that's it. I'm calling it."

"Time of death…"