Thanks to Go-Chuck-Go for the beta-read on the next three chapters ... all mistakes, both new and ignoring her advice, are my own.

Scene XLVII – Griffith Observatory

When an agent's guard drops, bad things happen. A single moment of distraction can make all the difference.

The pair of agents behind Sarah on the stairs gasped in pain. She turned to find the two agents reaching up and pulling their ear wicks out. The grey-coated woman discarded hers as if it burnt her fingers.

Sarah was on the other woman in an instant. Leaping down the stairs, she kicked the woman in the chest before she could recover. A tangled mass of agent and coat went tumbling down the stairs; her gun bounced and skidded down the corridor behind her.

The pointy-nosed man heard his partner cry out and turned to see Sarah crouched on the other side of the railing. His eyes widened and he swung his piece around.

Seeing the danger, Sarah went horizontal, grabbing hold of the weathered steel banister and swinging underneath it like a gymnast. The man's shot went over her head, ricocheting harmlessly off the concrete wall behind her as again her feet struck home. The man stumbled back against the wall, air whooshing from his lungs as the momentum of the impact carried his arms back against the wall.

Sarah landed in a crouch and launched her next attack, a sharp strike to the gut. As her opponent hunched over, she wrested his gun away with her left hand even as her right repaid him with a chop to the base of the neck. The blow sent him tumbling down the stairs after his partner. He came to rest in a crumpled heap, unmoving.

The other Fulcrum agent pulled herself to her feet. Disoriented, she desperately looked around for her gun.

Sarah's glare and her gun fixed on the other woman. "Don't move," she ordered.

The woman wisely chose to comply.

"Hands on your head. Turn around."

Again, the Fulcrum agent obeyed.

Sarah put her backside on the railing and gracefully spun her legs over the top so she could approach the woman on the same side of the stairs. She carefully descended, watching for any body language that would indicate an attack. There was none.

When she reached the woman, she clubbed her on the back of the head with the butt of the gun. The woman dropped like a sack of potatoes.

"I'd say we're even," said Sarah as she stuck the gun in her holster. "What do you think?"

The unconscious woman didn't have a response.

Clarence was ticked off. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked the men watching the screens. "This is an observatory. What could you possibly–"

"Shut up!" the standing man ordered. His eyes never left the monitors.

"I'm too old for this nonsense. There's nothing here worth stealing! What, you after the meteorites? The moon rocks? There's what, a few hundred bucks in the cash registers?"

This time the man's eyes left the monitors long enough to shoot Clarence a threatening glare. "I said, 'Shut up!'"

"Fool gets a gun in his hand and he suddenly thinks he's a big man. Put the piece down and come over here. I'm sixty-four years old and I'll still kick your butt."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" the man yelled as he crossed the room, putting the muzzle of the gun in Clarence's face.

Clarence stared at the man, unfazed.

The handheld radio on the monitoring station blared, filling the room with an awful, shrill noise. Both captors instinctively turned to look.

Faster than Clarence could register, the stranger next to him burst into action. He grabbed the gun from in front of Clarence's face and landed a vicious elbow on the owner's nose. As the man staggered backwards, the guard took two steps and put his foot on the chest of the man in the chair. He extended his leg, sending the chair rolling. The gun was suddenly leveled at the two men. They disgustedly raised their hands in surrender.

"Thanks," the stranger said to Clarence. "You don't have any handcuffs around here, do you?"

Clarence stood up, scratching his head as he tried to figure out what had just happened. "Wow," he finally said. "Guess they improved the hiring standards around here."

Morland winced as the high-pitched feedback filled his ear. Hunched over next to him, Casey wasn't fully prepared for the opportunity. However, the other man's guard was down even before the distraction, which gave Casey extra time to react.

He fired off a left cross. Morland turned just in time to see four knuckles heading for the center of his face; a priceless expression of surprise appeared just before the fist made contact. His head jerked to the side, pulling his body with it over the edge.

Instinctively, Casey reached out on his follow-through and grabbed Morland by the lapel. The man did an awkward half-summersault before Casey's arm stopped the fall; the impact yanked his chest against the top of the wall and jarred Morland's gun loose. The Glock plummeted, softly thumping into the ground far below.

"What was that about?" Morland asked, seemingly unconcerned to be swaying two stories above the ground with blood trickling from his nose.

Through teeth gritted with effort, Casey answered, "If anyone was watching, it needed to look like I took advantage of the distraction. It explains how we both escape."

"Kind of a risky stunt."

"Not for me."

"Touché."

"Besides, I'd be of far more use to Fulcrum if I'm still in good with the agency."

Morland's grin was back.

"Shut up. I'm just keeping my options open. I haven't decided anything."

"I think you have. Go see Jennings tomorrow." Morland winked at his old partner. "See you in the funny pages."

The man deliberately lifted his arms above his head, allowing himself to drop out of the sleeves of his coat. He plummeted twenty-some feet to the ground, twisting around in midair. He bounced lightly off his feet and tucked into a pair of graceful shoulder rolls, neatly snatching his gun off the ground as he tumbled down the hill and into the woods.

Casey stood up, stupidly holding the empty jacket out with his left hand. Without really thinking about it, he reached into the coat pocket and retrieved his own gun.

He wondered about what he had just done. He shook himself out of it. There would be time for that later.

Dropping the jacket, he raced across the terrace, down a set of four wide stairs to the lower terrace and the railing of the corridor. Walker had clearly taken advantage of the distraction as well; she was finishing stashing the bodies of two agents in a back corner of the patio behind a table where they would be difficult to spot.

"Walker," he said into his mike.

She finished stashing the second body. She pushed her ear piece a little deeper into her ear. "Casey, where are you?"

"Look up."

She stood up and quickly located him through the tinted glass wall. She walked purposefully across the patio to the cutout, pulling her gun out of her holster and double-checking the ammo. "Where's Chuck?" she asked.

"Unknown," he said grimly.

"Chuck? Do you copy?"

There was no response.

Sarah reinserted the cartridge into her gun. "Call in the clean-up crew and we'll go find him. I'll be right up."

Chuck wondered how he would know whether his plan had worked. He didn't need to wait long. A sharp cry behind him gave him his answer.

He spun around, along with fifty or so pairs of eyes, to find the source of the sound. Plato stood in the door Chuck had used to enter the planetarium; the agent was struggling to pull the ear wick from his ear.

Chuck panicked. He ran for the opposite door. He reached it about the time that Plato finally removed the ear piece and shoved it into his pocket.

Plato shook his head to clear it before sprinting across the room, with fifty or so eyes watching his every step.

Outside, Chuck faked to his left as the door closed. After the door shut, he ran back to the right. To the left was a couple of escape routes that would hopefully keep Plato busy.

Partway around the narrow walkway, he stopped. Around the curve of the planetarium was the terrace where Casey had been. What if the agent was still there, but as a captive? Was he running towards more Fulcrum agents?

Chuck couldn't risk it.

To his right was a ladder of copper rungs built into the side of the dome. To his left was a three-story drop to the ground below.

He made a call. He took a deep breath at what he had to do next.

Plato pounded his shoulder into the heavy door leading out of the auditorium; the door opened, but his shoulder was the worse for it.

He was definitely getting irritated.

He had spotted Bartowski running left as the door shut, so he checked that way. A covered hall led back towards the main part of the observatory; it was deserted except for a small family. Nobody was looking around as if a man had just sprinted back into the building.

Something didn't feel right. Plato followed a walkway away from the planetarium and scanned the eastern terrace. Finding it vacant, he leaned over a wall to search the loading dock area below. He still didn't see Bartowski. There was no way he could have made it out of sight so quickly.

Plato jogged back the other way. The walkway went around the exterior of the building, but after he circled most of the way around, all he found was an empty terrace with Amafor's jacket sitting on the wall. That wasn't a good sign, but it would have to wait.

Again, he didn't think Bartowski could get out of sight that quickly. Where could he have gone?

A rare moment of calm air allowed him to hear a twig snap deep in the woods. He cursed. He really didn't want to go chasing Bartowski in the forest, but Fulcrum wouldn't look kindly on him if the agent got away, and he really preferred to stay in Fulcrum's good graces.

At the top of the curve of the walkway, he leaned over the edge. It was a two-story drop with a steep down slope upon landing, but nothing a trained agent couldn't handle. He gnashed his teeth.

He climbed atop the wide wall and tried to pick out a landing spot below.

Chuck looked down between his legs and saw Plato pass underneath him. He breathed a sigh of relief; he was fairly exposed where he stood. To be safe, he quietly took another step upwards, following Awesome's rock-climbing mantra of always keeping at least three of your hands and feet firmly set at all times.

He stole another peek downward when he heard footsteps. Plato had returned.

The man jerked and looked into the woods. He climbed up onto the wall.

A gust of wind flew over the top of the dome and buffeted Chuck's face. His knuckles turned white as he tightened his grip.

A follow-up gust cast his cap into the air.

He looked back down over his shoulder in horror. "Please don't notice, please don't notice, please don't notice," he mouthed quietly.

Whatever gods were listening ignored his pleas. Almost as if directed by a puppeteer, the cap curved in front of the man's face before floating to the ground far below.

Plato turned around and looked up. When he spotted his quarry, his face sprouted an evil grin. "Cute trick with the radio," he said.

Chuck laughed nervously at the compliment. "Well, Plato said it best: 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'"

"That's true. He also said, 'Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.' That seems particularly appropriate."

Plato pulled out his gun, pointing it at the sky before lowering it with slow precision.

"Ohboyohboyohboyohboy," Chuck nervously uttered. He took a futile step upwards, which only served to amuse the man below. There was nowhere for Chuck to go.

The aim of the gun shifted inevitably closer towards his body.

"Prepare to be led to another world."

Casey put his phone away; the clean-up crew was coming. He turned around and ran back up the four steps to the top terrace. He stopped after only a few more paces.

One hundred feet away, Bartowski stood on the wall, dark hair whipping in the breeze as he looked up at the dome. Except that Bartowski was lowering a gun with a definite purpose.

"What the…?!" he muttered.

Casey looked up to where the gun was pointing. The angle of the dome kept him from seeing the target.

He squinted. The man was wearing the same jacket as Chuck. His hair looked as wild as Chuck's. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty: Chuck wouldn't be pointing a gun like that at anybody.

Out came Casey's gun, quickly steadied by both hands. Two shots whistled from the silencer.

Pfft. Pfft.

The man toppled backwards off the wall.

Behind him, Walker shouted, "Casey, what did you do?!"

Casey didn't need to turn around to know that Walker had her gun out. He raised his hands where she could see them, careful not to make sudden moves. Not with that kind of emotion in her voice.

"I took out a Fulcrum agent," he said calmly.

Clearly, she didn't believe him. She went around him and over to the side wall to look at the face-down body below. "You shot Chuck!"

"Walker," Casey said. "Bartowski is on top of the dome."

"His blue cap is right next to–"

"Sarah? Casey?"

Chuck's head peeked over the top of the planetarium. His wavy hair blew frenetically in the breeze as he took the last two steps up and set himself down at the crest. He fiddled with a device in his hands.

Walker looked back and forth between the corpse and Chuck. Finally, she looked at Casey. "How did … why is he … what the hell is he doing up there?" she spluttered.

Casey shrugged. "Don't get ticked at me. I didn't put him there."

Bartowski's voice was suddenly in their ears. "I don't know which one of you got him, but thank you." There was a long pause as an intake of breath was clearly audible. "From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

Casey put his arms down and turned to his partner. Realizing the truth, the anger and emotion fled from her face, replaced by a grateful smile.

For some reason Casey couldn't pinpoint, that meant a lot to him.