A/N In the thick of things. Thanks for reading, reviewing and PMing.
Don't Own Chuck.
CHAPTER 28 Compromising Positions
He meets his artiste
Who invites him to her ballet
There the swimming head
Makes everybody bleed
Thomas Merton, Cables to the Ace 73
Bryce had spent the night in Castle. Jill was gone. There was no reason to go back to his apartment.
Casey had interrogated Hilda. Chuck's reconstruction of how she had found him was confirmed. Beckman has sent word that there was chatter of a Fulcrum cell operating in LA.
Fulcrum. {Agent Roberts} Bryce shook his head. It was like he had heard a voice. But he knew he was alone, except for Hilda and Dee and Dum, and they were all sequestered in soundproof cells.
Bryce had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had broken out in a cold sweat. He took a minute to put his hands down on the table he was seated at. He breathed in and out deliberately. He felt better.
He missed Jill. He wished she were in town. {I love you, Jill} Bryce shook his head again. Maybe he needed to get out of Castle, spend some time in the sun and open air. He was getting claustrophobic. Sarah was due to take over in another couple of hours. He could send Cheryl down until then. Bob could open the Orange Orange by himself. Bryce was panicky. He hoped he wasn't relapsing.
Casey was puzzled. Bartowski went out on an install a while ago. Whatever else Casey might think of Bartowski, the kid knew his job. He should have been able to knock that install out fast and to have come back by now.
Casey walked over to the Nerd Herd desk. Jeff was leaning against the desk, staring vacantly at Morgan. Morgan was stacking video games up for display. The stack kept falling, tipping over. Jeff made no offer of help. He just watched the process of stacking and tipping. Casey stopped in front of Jeff.
"Where's Bartowski?"
"Home install. Special request."
Casey's gut tightened. "Really? Do you have a copy of the paperwork?"
Jeff shook his head as if Casey only wanted to know that Jeff had one, not to see it. Casey grabbed Jeff by his loose tie and jerked him close. "Give me the copy, you moron!"
Jeff stumbled to the opposite desk and moved papers around. Finally, he grabbed one and handed it to Casey, standing as far from the big man as he could and still deliver the page.
Casey grabbed it from Jeff's hand. The name on the sheet was illegible. Jeff's handwriting, Casey knew. But the address was barely legible. Casey grabbed his phone called Chuck. It went to voicemail immediately. Casey called Sarah.
"Sarah, I'm worried about Bartowski. He went out on an install, one for which he was specially requested. He's been gone longer than he should have been. He isn't answering his phone. Here's the address, meet me there. Wait for me if you get there first, I'll do the same if I do." Casey read the address to Sarah. They were roughly equidistant from it. "We should be there at the same time or nearly so."
Casey hurried into the parking lot and into the Crown Vic. He dialed Bryce as he opened the car. No answer. That was strange. He dialed the emergency number for Castle. Cheryl, not Bryce, answered the phone.
"Cheryl, where the hell is Larkin?"
"He wasn't feeling well. He stepped out. He didn't say when he would be back. I don't know where he went. He didn't seem quite himself."
"Ok, keep an eye on things there. Be ready to send help if we need it. If Bryce shows up, tell him what is going on and make him stay put."
Casey had gotten the Crown Vic into traffic. He saw an opening and punched the gas.
Before Chuck could say anything, Jill slipped her hand up to his shoulder. He started to step back and she tranquilized him.
He went down in a heap. Jill walked quickly to her bedroom. It was empty except for her phone, sitting on the windowsill. She picked it up and hit a button.
She went into the bathroom and took off the towel. She dropped it in the tub. Other than the towel, there was nothing in the bathroom but a large plastic bag, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. Jill grabbed them soap and the shampoo and put them in the bag. Then she picked the towel back up and wiped down the surfaces of the shower and the bathroom counter, as well as the door and its knobs. She shoved the towel into the bag and threw it out into the living room floor, near Chuck's unconscious body.
A Fulcrum team had wiped down the entire apartment earlier in the day. All of her things had been moved. Another Fulcrum agent bought the TV and the other electronic items with cash at Large Mart, as well as the couch and TV stand. Large Mart's video for the day of the purchases had been wiped. Jill grabbed the clothes she had left folded in a cupboard in the kitchen. She dressed with practiced rapidity, an actress between scenes. By the time there was a knock on the door, she was completely ready.
She opened the door. Two Fulcrum agents, a man and a woman, were standing there. Without a word, they entered the room and grabbed Chuck. Putting one of his arms around each of their shoulders, they carried him from the apartment. Jill followed, taking the towel out of the plastic bag and wiping down the apartment door.
Jill's apartment was at the end of the hall. The stairwell door ended the hall. She followed the agents as they took Chuck to the stairs. She made sure the door closed quietly. As the agents took Chuck down the stairs, she wiped down the stairwell door, and then caught up with the agents.
She held her breath. They met no one on the stairs.
The agents had stationed a van next to the exit. They moved Chuck to it, slid the side door open and lifted him inside. Jill wiped down the exit door then jumped in the side door of the van and slid it closed. A moment later, the van was gone.
Inside the van, neither of the agents was watching Jill. She rubbed the spot on his shoulder where she had inserted the needle. She leaned down and kissed Chuck's lips.
Casey got to the apartment building just seconds before Sarah did. He saw her arrive just as he entered the building. He called the elevator, and punched the button for the third floor just as Sarah slipped in beside him.
When the doors closed, they both checked their weapons. Neither spoke. They got to the door of the apartment. Sarah pressed herself against the exterior wall on the hinges' side of the door. Casey looked at her. She nodded. He kicked the door in. He rushed inside, taking one side of the room as Sarah took another.
A woman was seated in a recliner, watching TV—a diamond ring turned slowly on the screen above a rapidly falling price. She screamed as the door crashed and Casey came in.
"I said 'No Solicitors'!" She stood up and started chanting the phrase at Casey. He pointed the gun at her and she shut up. Sarah swept through the house. She came back, her eyes terrified. "He's not here!"
"Who?" The old woman put her hands on her hips, no longer intimidated by Casey's gun since Sarah had reached over and gently lowered it. "Are you after that other solicitor?"
Sarah stepped toward the woman urgently. "What did the other solicitor look like?"
"Tall, polite, curly brown hair, grey tie, name tag. Mormon, maybe, now that I think about it."
"Where did he go?"
"I think he went next door."
"Who lives next door?"
"Some woman. Never really seen her clearly. Takes the stairs. Late twenties, maybe. Dark hair. Slim."
Sarah started into the hallway as the woman finished her description. Casey picked the woman's door off the floor and leaned it against her doorframe. He peeked back through the crack. "Someone will be here soon to repair this and pay you for the damages."
"Fine," the woman said, as she sat back down to her shopping show, already engrossed, "just make sure he doesn't try to sell me anything."
Sarah knew that if anyone were inside the next apartment, the noise of the entry next door would have alerted him or her. Her instincts told her that no one was there. But she and Casey repeated their positioning outside the door, except this time Casey stood on the other side of the door and reached out to try the knob. The door opened.
Casey pushed it. It swung into the apartment. This time, Sarah went in first. There was some furniture in the living room—a couch and a low stand to hold a TV and other electronics. There was an opened but unemptied TV box in the room, and some other unopened electronics boxes.
Once Casey was in, Sarah went through the rest of the apartment. Empty. Nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the bedrooms or bathroom. The bathroom was still slightly humid, like someone had showered in it not long before, but the mirror was clear and there were only a few drops of water standing in the bottom of the shower.
"No one is here, Casey. But someone was here. Call Castle. Have them get a team here to go over this place carefully. Maybe whoever it was missed something, left something."
Sarah's heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear her own voice. But she fought against the panic. Chuck needed her. She was going to save him.
Casey's phone rang. He listened for a moment then ended the call.
"That was Cheryl. Bob found Bryce. He was wandering around inside Underpants Underpants. Bob says Bryce is…confused." Casey shrugged at Sarah.
"Shit."
Chuck woke up. Later. He had no idea how much later. Later.
He was secured to a heavy wooden chair by zip ties. One quick yank against them told him the cost his skin would pay if he struggled against the ties. He was still wearing his Nerd Herd uniform. He was thirsty, but not parched. He was not very hungry. Maybe he had been out several hours, possibly a day. Not more. The room seemed mostly empty. Concrete floor. Concrete walls. Industrial light fixtures. There was a bed along one wall and a metal table along another. The bed was made. The tabletop was bare.
Chuck noticed that his bag was scrunched under the bed.
He tried to make himself relax. Sarah would find him. She would come for him. Casey, too. Maybe even Bryce. There was a Buy More record of where he went.
He thought about Jeff's scribbles. They'd never get a name off that copy of the paperwork. Chuck had the original and could not decipher it. But the address—it wasn't right but it wasn't far wrong. That crazy lady would surely remember him.
Jill. Jill Roberts did this to him. Jill Roberts was a spy.
Chuck wondered if it were possible to cackle and vomit concurrently. He felt like he could, but he did not want to.
Of course, Jill Roberts was a spy. Of course, the first time he sees her after years and years, she used a handheld tranquilizer on him. Because whose ex was not a spy? Whose ex did not lure him to his likely death wearing very small towels? These were everyday occurrences. Obviously.
He fought back his rising fear. He thought of Sarah. That calmed him. He imagined her saying his name, in that way that only she could, and he felt centered.
At that moment, Jill came in.
The rush from earlier was gone. Getting tranquilized will do that.
Chuck was surprised though that her eyes carried no hint of self-satisfaction or victory. Her eyes looked as they sometimes had at Stanford when she had done poorly on a test she expected to do well on: her eyes were frustrated, slightly disappointed, mostly determined. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. She came in followed by a man with a folding chair. He opened it and she sat down on it. She glanced at the man and he immediately left the room, shutting the heavy metal door with a clang and a click.
There were no windows. As far as Chuck could tell, there were no cameras. Given the man's reaction, Jill seemed to be in charge.
Chuck decided to wait for her to speak. No reason to let his pounding heart speed him into oversharing. Jill reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled out a cell phone. Holding it in her hand, she sat back in the chair and crossed her legs at the knee, swinging her dangling foot in the air slightly. The posture would have been alluring if she were wearing a dress and heels, but since she was wearing a black t-shirt, old fatigue pants with cargo pockets, and black combat boots, the effect was mainly jarring. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
She stared at him for a little while, her eyes sweeping up and down his body. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. She looked around the room as if she thought someone might be watching or listening.
"Chuck, I meant what I said earlier. I've missed you. I've replayed scenes of our meeting over and over in my head. They never involved me tranquilizing you, although they often involved me wearing few clothes, if any." She blushed as she leaned back. She still had the phone in her hand.
"I work for Fulcrum, Chuck. This is a Fulcrum base. I am the ranking agent here, so, for now, at least, I am in charge. Here is what I know—and I do know it, Chuck, so denying it will gain you nothing but will waste time, time we do not have.
"You have, in some sense you are, something Fulcrum has wanted for a very long time. The Intersect. From the early days of Fulcrum's existence, the Intersect has been the Holy Grail, the object of an intense and long-lasting chase. We know that Orion created it. We do not know who Orion is. We know that some form of the early technology was stolen from Orion, but we do not know originally stole it. We have acquired a…version…of that technology.
"We know that Orion later created successor technologies, like the one you ultimately got from Bryce Larkin. We believe that technology was also stolen from Orion. Again, we do not know who stole it. It eventually ended up in the CIA's hands, and tinkered with and further developed by Graham and his team. We thought we were going to be able to steal it. Then Larkin managed to screw that up.
"Long story short: You are what Fulcrum has been chasing since Fulcrum existed. But no one other than me knows that—yet. I don't know if there is a way for me to keep you…alive. I am willing to try. You 'd have to trust me," Jill smirked ironically at him, knowing that he would smirk at her, and he did, "but we might be able to give my boss what he wants, while I—while we, " she looked at him with calculation and hope, "while we might be able to get what we want, something like what we want, anyway."
Chuck was confused. He was angry. Both emotions danced on the firm floor of his fear. "What is it that…we…want, Jill?" Chuck dialed back his tone and swallowed the rush of questions that came into his mind.
There were a million things Chuck could think to ask Jill. But they were all retrospective, about the past—and, given the situation, right now his actual concerns were all prospective, about the future. Did he even have one?
Right now, the best tactic seemed to be to follow Jill's lead, at least as far as he could. "So, Jill, what is it we want?"
Jill stared at him for a few seconds.
He saw a shadow of the spy cross her face—a shadow he knew from his first few months with Sarah. Jill was tempted not to be tempted by what was tempting her. Her instincts were against what she was doing. She was trying to find a way to get what she wanted without giving up anything that she had. It was the spiritual equivalent of locating and counting exits, checking sight lines, trying to find a position that exposed the target but was unexposed.
She could not be trusted. Chuck knew that.
He had known it since she leaped from his troubled bed at Stanford into Bryce's busy but untroubled one. It had been confirmed in her apartment hours ago. Some old feeling, some set of memories was driving her, but there was no way of knowing what it…
Wait. Jill wanted him. It had been clear when she pressed against him in her towel.
Chuck did not think of himself as desirable. It wasn't part of who he was. He didn't really think he was undesirable—just not desirable. Perhaps that fact had itself contributed to the long awkwardness with Sarah. His inability to believe she desired him made him overlook or misinterpret things that she said and did.
Jill wanted him. Whatever else was true of her, however untrustworthy she might turn out to be and had already been, her reaction to him in her apartment had not been faked. The set-up might have been fake, but her reactions to it were not. Chuck knew quite a lot by now about faking it. That was not fake. That was the one thing he could trust. It might not last long but the flame of her desire was the only light (of sorts, anyway) he had in the gathering darkness.
"As I said, we have a version of ancestral Intersect technology. It allows us to do…things to minds. Your descendent Intersect technology should 'interface' with it, allowing us to download the data you have in your head. It would be slow work, and it would take days even to create the 'interface', so as to start the downloading. But if you were willing to let us do it, comply with what we asked, I think I could ensure that you were otherwise well-treated and that we could otherwise be left alone to do with our time…whatever we might want to do."
"What more can you tell me about this 'interface', Jill? Will it hurt?"
"No, at least, it shouldn't." She did not seem especially worried about it, one way or the other. "Given the descendent technology you have, our technology should 'merge' with yours. Our technology allows for a kind of crude upload—nothing like the finesse of the Intersect you have. Your technology has no provision for a download. No reverse in the gearbox, so to speak. Our technology does.
"There is no way (at least none we have discovered) to get your Intersect out. It was made to go into a mind and no one at the CIA ever imagined wanting to take it out. Our technology won't get your Intersect out of your head, but it will allow it to be…emptied. We would like the Intersect itself, of course, but we do not know how to remove it. Still, the combined data from the CIA and NSA—that would be a treasure-trove for us all by itself."
Jill still holding her cell phone.
Sarah's terror for Chuck was like a live, creeping thing, moving beneath her skin like a cobra beneath rice paper.
She wanted to rage and scream. She wanted to hide and cry.
She wanted Chuck.
Casey was trying to talk to Bryce. Bryce, though, was having a hard time: he was lucid, then incoherent, then lucid, then incoherent. Casey put his hand on Bryce's shoulder to steady him.
"Larkin, what is going on? How can we help you?"
"She's gone. She went out of town for a few days. I love her."
Casey's patience had grown thin. It was unclear Bryce understood the situation; unclear that it registered with him that Chuck had been taken.
"Bryce, a woman—youngish, long dark hair, slim—took Chuck. Do you know anything about that?"
Sarah's phone rang. The local CIA team had been to the apartment and had done a sweep. They found a little DNA evidence, but no fingerprints. It would take time to run the DNA evidence, and there was no guarantee that it would match anyone in their database. Sarah told them to run it.
Damn!
"Sarah," Casey said, looking from Bryce to her and back to Bryce, "I don't see any reason to think Bryce knows something about this. I think this is just a relapse. Fulcrum screwed him up worse than we thought."
At the mention of Fulcrum, Bryce stiffened. "I love her. I love Agent Roberts."
"Agent Roberts?" Sarah's heart slapped wetly on the floor. "Jill Roberts?"
"I love you, Jill."
Sarah ran to the computer and punched in Jill's name.
An eternity later, the screen showed a picture of her. Her record was clean. Not even a parking ticket.
Then Sarah reversed her strategy. She put in Jill's description and cross-referenced it with unidentified Fulcrum agents. A longer eternity later, a picture of a dark-haired woman in a red dress popped onto the screen beside the earlier picture of Jill. The woman was wearing sunglasses and a hat. But Sarah was sure. It was Jill Roberts.
"Casey, Jill Roberts, Chuck's old girlfriend, is a spy, a Fulcrum agent. I am sure that's her."
Casey compared the two pictures, the one of Jill and the one of the Fulcrum agent in red. "Could be. So, Bartowski's ex-girlfriend, the one he's bellyached about for so long, is a spy. His ex-best friend is a spy. His current cover-yet-real girlfriend is a spy. But Bartowski is not a spy?"
"We don't have time for this, Casey. We have to find Chuck. I can't lose him, John; I just can't." Casey put his arm stiffly around her shoulders.
Bryce could hear Sarah and Casey talking, and Casey talking to him. He knew Jill could not have taken Chuck—she was out of town. {Who is the Intersect?} Jill had to travel for work. {Fulcrum} Jill used to be Chuck's girlfriend. {Your old boyfriend and my old friend, Chuck Bartowski) I love Jill. {I love you, Jill}
Bryce tried to pull himself together. It took all his strength, all his concentration: his head was telling him one thing and his heart was resisting it.
He managed to cough out words: "Jill is Fulcrum. She took Chuck. And I am…compromised." Bryce collapsed.
