What if the Intersect had been...different? What if its negative effects had been much more immediate, plaguing Chuck from the get-go?


C'mon, folks. It's me. (To borrow a refrain from David Carner.) I've written almost a million and a half words on this site and folks still don't get it? Don't understand the vision that underlies these stories, all of them? C'mon...

Ahem. - Anyway, I didn't want to leave you with that particular cliffhanger, so here's a short update. I promised my wife I will not write over the holiday - no philosophy, no fiction (although she told me I may write poems for her). So, nothing more until sometime next week. Enjoy the holiday if you are celebrating, the weekend otherwise. My best to all!


Chuck felt the steel of Bryce's knife blade resting gently on the skin of his back.
"You know, Chuck," Bryce breathed out, "this feels...familiar."


Chuck Amuck


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Belly of the Man of Wicker


Tuesday


Bryce waited.

Waited.

Chuck could feel the blade against his back. It had not broken the skin. He clamped his teeth together - and Chuck waited.

Waited.

His heart was pounding, he tasted bile, but his head had cleared. Evidently, his earlier fogginess and dizziness was the effect of the drug. Probably not the optimal time to be clear-headed. Chuck tried not to tense up - he had read somewhere that pain was worsened by being tense - and he seemed to succeed. He untensed. Chuck waited.

"Huh," Bryce said, registering disbelief, surprise, "you have changed. The Chuck I last talked to should be begging by now - or at least negotiating. Remember? The way you did that time with the nurse who was going to give you a flu shot?" Bryce chuckled and sounded like the Bryce Chuck remembered for a second. But then his voice changed: "What did you find in Outlook, Chuck? I'm not happy about what you did to Outlook." Chuck heard the knife snap shut. Bryce walked around and sat back down on the stool. Chuck noticed that he did so slowly, like he was in pain. "What did you find, Chuck?"

Chuck looked at Bryce. "Nothing, Bryce. Corn." Chuck grimaced at that memory now. "A barn. I think the barn exploded." He offered no more.

Bryce's face flushed, his voice was low. "You think it exploded? Do you know what was in there?"

Chuck shook his head. "Nope. Never made it inside."

Bryce shoved his knife in his pocket. He stared at Chuck as if he were trying to see inside Chuck's head, then looked away. The tension in the room clicked down a notch or two.

"You were going to cut me." It clicked back up a notch.

Bryce grinned, if an expression so pregnant with threat could be called 'a grin'. "No, I just needed to know something. And I know now." Bryce paused, taking himself in hand. "Fleming was right. That head of yours is too important to be risked unnecessarily, especially now, this close. I confess I know...something of such things. Fulcrum taught me well. - Don't make a face, Chuck. The CIA taught me well too. Double instruction for the double agent, double-dipped."

He paused to enjoy his phrase, then gave Chuck an annoyed shrug. "There are no 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in this shadow world, Chuck. Everyone's enshadowed. The only logic in this shadow world is that you must be willing to be viler than your competition. Is that a logic you could live with, live in, Chuck? Is that the new logic, the dark new logic, you would choose for yourself?"

Chuck shook his head again. Bryce went on in an intense, hatefully taunting tone. "I didn't think so. You aren't strong enough to do what needs doing. You were always weak - destined to be the side-kick, never the hero. The Arthur to somebody's Tick. What Fleming called your strengths are really just weaknesses. How could a large capacity to suffer count as a strength? Screwed up Sunday-School logic. I take my logic from Port-Royal. -No? But I guess you didn't take that class with me, did you? There are intellectual things I know that you don't, Chuck." Bryce clucked the 'k' smugly.

"What do you want with me, Bryce? I assume this ramble will end, maybe in my lifetime."

Bryce nodded, eyes narrowing. "It may end your lifetime, Chuck. We'll see. I guess I did get distracted, didn't I?" Bryce looked at the ceiling as if trying to remember where he had left off in his recitation of the past.

Chuck took a moment to inhale and exhale. He was surprised at how calm he felt. His whole life was turning out to be a lie - not just his screwed-up Double-0 parents, but Stanford, the Buy More, all of it. He was a puppet on a string. No, worse. He had strung himself up. He had been used against himself, both puppeteer and puppet - and string.

~The man who hangs himself has a dupe for an executioner. Okay, that was dark.

Bryce and Fleming had acidified and weaponized his self-hatred, let him do their dirty work to himself. But Bryce did not know one thing that Chuck knew, the thing that Chuck knew: Sarah Walker loves Chuck Bartowski. ~No, she doesn't. Yes, she does. She does. No doubts. I am not listening to voices in my head that contradict my heart. That fact changed everything, exchanged Chuck's old world for a new world. Sarah was a woman of myth and legend, of guns and knives; she was a woman of flesh and blood, of caresses and sighs. She was all of that - and she loved him. The past was past. The future mattered. Seeing Sarah again, holding her again. She was a future absolutely worth having, no matter what the past, her past, Chuck's past. And besides, "The meaning of yesterday is never decided until tomorrow". - Where did I read that?

Bryce resumed. "Well, maybe tale time is nearly over, Chuck. I've told you about the essentials." Bryce turned as the lock sounded in the door. It opened and Jill came in; her steps seemed forced, numbered. She had a file in her hands. As she gave it to Bryce, she leaned down and whispered in his ear. Chuck could not hear, but it took a minute and what she said did not make Bryce happy. Jill turned and started to leave, but Bryce stopped her. "No, Jill, stay. I need your help. Shut the door, though." She did and Chuck heard it lock. Bryce fanned himself with the file.

"Well, Chuck, this is it. Time to do what we've been waiting for. But just a bit more story, facts of record. Humor me. Here's the gist, Chuck. I was able to get to know your father, Orion, get him to trust me. Not completely, maybe but...enough. He was lonely. Lonely is my specialty. Perhaps my best work, getting to him. Perhaps - but I have done so much good work. - Of course, he was getting a little shaky upstairs at the end. That helped. He said things. Anyway, he thought I was CIA - just CIA. He even thought I was your friend. Thinking those things made him...loosen up a bit. I realized he had the Intersect. And then I realized it had to be the Chucked version. That was how he hid for so long. He didn't have to hide the program in some lockbox; it was locked away, hidden in his head. He just had to keep anyone from finding out that he had it or how to copy it. I'd have given a body part - not necessarily one of mine, but somebody's - to have found one of his copying machines."

Bryce looked wistful, then satisfied. "But one day he showed me a set of...slides, I guess. He said that they would hasten the integration of the Intersect into the mind of the host. Host - I guess that would be you, Chuck. Your dad thought I was part of the CIA's Intersect project, and I was, but I was really part of Fulcrum's Intersect project. So, he showed me the slides one night. He was depressed, drinking a little, whining about -" Bryce glanced at Chuck's eyes " -your mom. He forgot to put the slides away. I helped myself to them. He never missed them. Kinda funny, you had no idea where your dad was, and I was his drinking buddy.

"Then, not long ago, it became clear that he had made some kind of breakthrough. He was excited, distracted. Drinking again. He finally let me see the copying machine. When he was deep in his cups, when his back was turned, I checked it. It had a copy on it." Chuck could feel Bryce's remembered excitement. "It was too big to move. So, I left - and came back with a Fulcrum team. He must have suspected. He was ready. The place was booby trapped. I couldn't get the copy off the machine, so I emailed it to you. But doing so erased it from the machine, somehow. Getting it to you was always the plan, but I had intended you to be in my...control...when that happened You see, I figured it out, using what Fleming told me and what your dad let slip. You are the future of the Intersect, Chuck. The vessel. I threw myself over the copy machine when the place exploded, hoping..."

With that, Bryce opened the file, pulled a slide from it and held the slide up. Chuck looked at it and flashed. Chuck heard Jill gasp as his body tensed and writhed, he heard the chains rattle. He closed his eyes. Then he heard Bryce. "Hold his head up, Jill. The Intersect will force him to look." And his eyes opened on a new slide. And he flashed...It felt like someone was knocking on the door of his mind, knocking...And he flashed...Past Chuck met Present Chuck...Dad was present too...And he flashed…The Intersect swallowed him - or he swallowed it.

Blackness.


Sarah stepped out of 214, closed the door. The morning tension between Mary and Ellie was already fatiguing her. She took a breath. As she did, she saw Casey exit 216 at the same time as Zondra exited 212. Sarah did a double-take. Each was leaving the wrong room. Then she saw Carina behind Casey, and Morgan behind Zondra. Zondra smirked at Carina; Carina smirked back. Sarah shook her head.

Her phone buzzed. She looked at it. Brown! She read the text. Security cameras on the MSU campus showed Chuck leaving the library. Brown had done some extra digging. An old professor of Chuck's and Bryce's, a man named Fleming, was now working at MSU. Too coincidental. Brown suggested starting with Fleming's office on campus and his house near campus.

Sarah opened 214. "Mary, Ellie, hurry! Brown just texted."


Bryce and Jill stood by the bedside. Chuck was on the bed, electrodes attached to his head in profusion, and a few to other parts of him too. He was entirely surrounded by computers, machines, devices. He seemed attached, connected to them all, them all to him. Networked over. Jill looked from Chuck to Bryce.

"Did it work?" She looked back at Chuck. "So much pain."

"Fleming was sure it would, as long as the version I sent Chuck was as developed as Stephen seemed to indicate. We had no choice. If we want a viable Intersect, if we want to be able to realize the future Fulcrum dreams of, we dream of, this was the path. We had to run the risk of losing the Intersect if we were ever going to have it."

Jill looked away, blinking. That was not the risk that most concerned her, not close, but she could not let Bryce know that. She fought back her feelings. For five years, she had avoided seeing Chuck in person, even from a distance. She had seen Buy More footage of him, photographs. Heard audio. But she did not think her heart could stand seeing him in person. Binoculars would not have softened the blow. She had been right: seeing Chuck in person - she had not been ready, could not stand it. But no matter how broken she felt inside, she could not let Bryce see. Bryce would make her pay for feeling as she felt, as he had made her pay when he realized that her seduction of Chuck had worked - for her.

She had fallen in love with Chuck. But she had done it while seducing him for Bryce, under Bryce's instruction. She had made love to Chuck while Bryce monitored their coupling. She had tried to hide the genuineness of her reactions to Chuck, but eventually, Bryce saw. He saw that she was not faking it, that she meant the words she was supposed to merely be saying. A cruel joke. She meant what she was supposed to be faking with Chuck and Bryce figured it out. She had not meant what she was not supposed to be faking when Chuck discovered them together, but Chuck had not figured it out. God, it is hard to even think those thoughts straight. The spy life is a prison of negations.

Chuck twitched and her chest ached. How can I still feel like this so long after? Bryce stepped out and Jill allowed her face to soften. She tentatively touched Chuck's hand. She knew he could never forgive what she had done. That was why she had gone on with it. She would lose him either way, but at least going through with it let her live. She had no doubt Fulcrum would have killed her had she revealed herself to Chuck. Bryce would have killed her. She deserved Bryce - and she had him. She was serving out her punishment. And on his good days, Bryce was...bearable. He could be supernaturally charming, his smile like light from heaven. It was false but she made do, pretended, at least on the good days. Tried to make do.

She had gone on to do...other things. Fulcrum things. Other things she was not proud of, other things for which Chuck could never forgive her.

But she had tried to give Chuck a chance. She had hidden the final slide, the thirteenth, under her shirt before she entered Chuck's cell. She banked on Bryce being too absorbed to notice, to count as he used them. She had been right. She had slipped the final slide back in the file when Bryce handed the file back to her. After it was over.

She knew Bryce was now readying the copy machine. He had saved it when Orion's lab exploded, taking the punishment himself. By Bryce's stripes, the copying machine was spared. Greater love hath no man…. Shit.

Jill had lied to Chuck earlier. Memory Lane was not closed, not for her. She hated herself for liking it all these years that Chuck was pining for her, but it was the one thing she had. A good man loved her, even if it was a love built out of falsities.

No, Chuck could never forgive her. She could never forgive herself. But she prayed she had given Chuck a chance.


Casey and Carina and Morgan and Zondra were in one car. They were headed to Fleming's house.

Sarah, Ellie, and Mary were in the other, headed to Fleming's office.

Sarah was grinding her teeth. We have to find Chuck. We have to be in time. She wanted him with her. She wanted to tell him she loved him. I'm coming Chuck. I will always come for you.


Beckman put her head in her hands, her elbows on her desk. He had called, in person, untraceable. Bryce had called. He told her to recall Casey, end the mission. How had Bryce known?

The Intersect now belonged to Fulcrum. What could she do, given what Bryce knew? He had outsmarted, outfoxed, them all.

Although she was not one, she might as well be a Fulcrum agent, goddamn it. A life of self-denial ruined by a few weeks of self-indulgence.

Why had she done it? How could she have believed Bryce Larkin had feelings for her? Had wanted her?

She had condemned herself in her own bed, pronounced her own sentence in pillow talk.

Damn smiler.

Somebody, just shoot me!

She had betrayed herself, her agency, and her country. And she was certainly old enough to have known better. At least Judas had thirty pieces of silver to show for his kisses. All she had were a few goddamn pictures on her phone.

Cougar Failure - she imagined the headlines.

She picked up the phone and called Casey.


Brown willed his way to Graham's office, sweater on, cane in hand. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Taps. Fitting.

Graham was angry. That was obvious on the phone. This was it. Time for Brown to face the music - or to dance as well as a lame man could dance.

He opened the door. Here we go, Dad. Part of the cure.


A/N: Until next time. Two chapters left in Book Two. Book Three will not be long - but there will be two epilogues.

Chapter Theme: Hours Eastly, Shoot Me Dead.

(By the way, I consider these theme songs just that, themes, and I have normally thematized them in one way or another in the chapter, sometimes borrowing lyrics, sometimes trying to recapture the mood of the song, sometimes using them to foreshadow or to recollect action. They are part of the content of the chapters, of the story. This particular Hours Eastly song not only has a relationship to the chapter but to the entire storyline. Lyrics available online. Give it a listen. It's a strong candidate for my favorite non-canon Charah Anthem.)