A/N This will be a hard chapter. Sarah's not leaving, Casey didn't shoot the mole, and Chuck's already got the girl, so what do I have left to talk about?
"I want some answers."
"We just need a bigger blast."
"I want to know where that van is at all times."
"That's old-school."
Chuck and Sarah watched side-by-side as General Beckman poured a large amount of a brown liquid into a glass, downing it in one gulp. She gasped, "Okay, Agent Walker, continue with your report."
Chuck knew what time it was in LA, and the time-zone difference was no challenge to his keen intellect. "Um, General, isn't it a little early in the morning to be, um…"
"Having a little tipple?" finished the General, pushing the glass out of camera range. "Not at all, Agent Bartowski. While your partners may have inspired a taste for 'Johnny' and 'Walker', your reports inspire a need for the same. I don't know of any libation named 'Chuck', but believe me, if I did–" She saw some hideous expression of joy come over Chuck's face.
"I just had a great idea for a cover business."
"Distilling?" asked Beckman. "It was tried, disastrously. The brand was so popular it became self-funding. They split off and have been acting independently ever since, to no one's benefit."
"Too bad, too," said Casey. With Shaw in the hospital he had no reason to stay away from Castle. "They're much better bottlers than they ever were as spies." He even liked the product, but institutional loyalty kept him from saying so, or buying any.
"We don't talk about them," said Sarah. "On the other hand, if you're looking for a good suit…"
"We have tailors enough in the US, Agent Walker," said Beckman. "Now, Agent Bartowski. The events at this warehouse, are they in any way another manifestation of the Intersect problems you've had in the recent past?"
"No, General," said Chuck. "If anything, they were a manifestation of the Intersect problems I had during training."
The General remembered those blessed, halcyon days. "No flashes at all?"
"None."
"Good," said Beckman. "Given your current experience level I'd be very surprised if you had to flash over every little thing. Questions were raised on this end, however, when it seemed you'd managed to have an airstrike without an airstrike."
"That is something you could probably manage to do, if you had a mind to," said Sarah.
"Well, I don't have a mind to, okay?" said Chuck. "There were unconscious agents all over the place, I wasn't going to do something stupid and get them all killed."
"We all admire your scruples, Agent Bartowski," said Beckman. Casey rolled his eyes but didn't make a sound. "So please explain what you did do, before Mr. Depak explodes."
"Well, to begin with, somehow Jeff and Lester from the Buy More got involved…"
Beckman reached for her glass.
Up in the Buy More…
Morgan came out of the break room at the end of his scheduled break time, adjusting his tie and vest to look properly assistant-managerial. The room was quiet, eerily, ominously quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before the storm, or before opening the doors on Black Friday.
All the employees were looking at the Wall. Every TV showed the same scene, some fire down in oil city. If you looked out the front window you might just be able to see a smudge of that black smoke against the sky. Morgan found the nearest and smartest of his men. "What's going on, Skip?"
"You'll see. It comes back around every few minutes." Skip left Morgan to it and went off to do anything else.
"Is that a soda machine I see there, Biff?" said the anchorman, off screen. On screen were fire, smoke, lots of men in firefighting gear running around, and what looked like a fire-blackened metal box, smashed against the ground under a wedge of concrete. Pieces of plastic littered the area. The image switched to one of a man holding one of the larger fragments, with a brand name still visible, for the camera.
"It certainly appears to be one, Stan, but how it got here is a real puzzler," said Biff, also off-screen. "One thing's for sure, the arson investigators will have their hands full trying to figure this one out. Back to you."
Anchorman Stan came back to the screen. "The police have already set up a special hotline for any information that might resolve this mystery, especially any information about this van–" the image flickered to bad video of an ugly, boxy, grey van "–or the two occupants, who were spotted in this location moments before the blast." A man, overweight and balding with frizzy hair, wearing a white shirt and black pants, came around from the back of the van and climbed into the driver's seat, while a long, skinny, dark-skinned arm pointed out from the side window. Seconds later the van jerked into high-speed motion, right before something large and blocky smashed down and the image went to static.
Morgan pulled out his phone, and pressed a contact. "Ellie," he said when she picked up, "Turn on channel seven news, right now."
Behind him Morgan heard the most ominous sound in the world, the manager's office door opening as Big Mike took an interest in what was actually happening in the store. "Grimes?"
In Castle…
"Do we have anybody there now, General?"
"Of course, Agent Bartowski. Events of this sort are very easy to exploit. We inserted a team not long after the chaos started. Apart from its cause the fire appears to be perfectly ordinary, so we left them to it and focused on the warehouse." Beckman pressed a button and a series of images appeared, not that many. "The base was surprisingly small, with few operatives on site and no back door, suggesting a limited or one-time-use facility. To address your concerns, Chuck, the operatives all survived, although several were in severe respiratory distress, and have been taken into custody. Congratulations on such an effective reduction."
Casey grunted. "Too bad Shaw missed all of it, he could have used a few lessons."
Beckman kept a straight face, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "At the very least it appears that the testing phase of Chuck's development is over."
Sarah flashed Casey a warning glance, before she asked, "How's Shaw doing?"
"Still unconscious but expected to make a full recovery. The doctors say he was simply tased at some point, judging by the burns on his neck."
In a hospital bed in some secret CIA clinic…
The man in the bed awoke and opened his eyes at the same time. No one was around except the machines, sensors attached to him to let their users know if they were needed, so he sat up. On the table next to him were his personal effects, a wallet, a ring, a small envelope, and his phone.
Which was on. And ringing. He picked it up. "This is Shaw," he said. "No. You wait there. I'll come to you." He disconnected, putting down the phone and picking up his wedding ring. He smirked. "And I'll bring a guest."
In Castle…
"As for the base itself, the only room of interest to us was the room where I presume you found Agent Shaw." The image became one of a small room with many screens, a small platform rising from the floor.
"That looks like an Intersect room," said Sarah.
Beckman nodded. "And it might very well have been designed as such, although we doubt that was the purpose behind its use today, since Agent Shaw survived."
"Not necessarily, General," said Chuck. "Considering that its data store was limited to the size of a flash drive, it might have been a small enough upload to survive. Or at least put some kind of programming information onto."
"Shaw could be some kind of unwitting sleeper agent," said Casey, sounding like he looked forward to finding out.
"A possibility, Colonel, but unlikely," said Beckman. "We considered such uses for the technology ourselves but the variety of limiting factors made it unworkable. Even a simple back door would require a control agent."
"It looks like they've made progress on something, though," said Sarah.
Beckman nodded. "We're very glad for Agent Bartowski's economy of effort, we never would have known about this if we'd simply bombed the place." The image zoomed in, to the little platform in the middle. "What progress has been made on the drive you found?"
"The encryption isn't in any scheme we know of," said Chuck. "I can work it out, but it will take some time. Given the nature of the room we can assume it's probably visual data, and given the nature of Shaw I think we can also assume what it's visual data of."
"Shaw could be some kind of witting sleeper agent," said Casey, sounding like he looked forward to finding out.
"Stand down, Colonel."
One end of a phone call…
"Tonight at 7:00, Union Station. We go to Mexico and after that, anywhere you want…I would like to go and see the Eiffel Tower at some point if that's at all possible. Don't answer now. Don't say a word…I don't want to have to convince you. I just want you to show up…Both summer and winter wear."
The other end…
Ellie pinched her nose, regretting that she stayed on the line this long. "No, Lester, I'm not packing for you, I'm not meeting you at any station, and where you two idiots go is no concern of mine." She hung up.
The first end again…
Lester put his phone back in his pocket. "Women."
Upstairs, in the Buy More…
Casey entered a number he was still reluctant to use and would just as soon forget.
"Colonel, why are you calling me this way?" asked Beckman.
Casey checked six unnecessarily, well aware that none of the other employees would willingly share the break room with him. Not that those were the eavesdropping ears he was worried about. "I have information about Chuck's testing, ma'am. Shaw doesn't need to know it but you do."
"Go ahead, Colonel, I'm listening."
"Chuck didn't kill the mole," said Casey. "The Intersect did. Walker was there to talk him down again. Shaw doesn't know that either. He thinks Jones was monitoring the whole thing, and Jones isn't here to tell him any different, not that she could."
"We'll find her, Colonel."
Casey knew Beckman wasn't slighting him, but he took his failure to trace Jones personally anyway. "I know we will, ma'am."
"I gather Agent Walker doesn't know you're telling me about these events?"
"She'd probably kill me if she knew," said Casey, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. "Chuck's not a killer, ma'am, not like us. She doesn't want Shaw breaking him while trying to make him one. There's more on that subject, ma'am, but that's something you should hear from her."
"I understand her concerns, and I appreciate your confidence and your trust, Colonel. Thank you for both. Leave this in my hands, I'll see what I can do."
"Yes, ma'am." He disconnected. Thank God that was over with.
The Orange Orange…
Daniel Shaw sat outside in the parking lot. Today was not a day to rush things. Today was a day to plan, and then step…step…step, follow that plan. The first step in that plan was visible through the windows, waiting for him, although she didn't know it yet.
Today was the first day of the rest of her life too.
In the Buy More…
Chuck clocked out, anxious to get home and get to work in the kitchen. It wasn't usually his thing, and Morgan enjoyed it so much more anyway, but Morgan wouldn't be home tonight. If the Intersect could make him a killer then making him a chef should be much smaller potatoes, and he knew just what he would do with those small potatoes. He flashed, and smiled at the knife skills that were now his. He grabbed the door handle, prepared to push.
His phone buzzed. Return to Castle ASAP.
In Castle…
Chuck and Casey met at the head of the table, as the screen came to life. "What do you have for us, General?"
"I recently had occasion to try to contact Agent Walker at the Orange Orange. I got no response, so I accessed the security logs and saw this. Agent Bartowski, please flash on any lip-reading skills you may have." The screen showed Sarah, sitting at the counter, staring at her gun. Suddenly she swept it into a drawer and slammed the drawer shut, going to wipe down some of the already spotless tables on the far side of the room. Within seconds, Daniel Shaw appeared in the doorway. He spoke to her for a few seconds, she moved towards the back of the store but hesitated. He took her arm, and they left. Beckman came back to the screen. "Agent Bartowski?"
Casey went to his boards as Chuck said, "He said, the Ring has information on you, more than you know. She said let me get Chuck. He said I have to brief you privately, too many eyes and ears here. She said let me get my gun, and he said sure, but it won't help you, not against this. Then they left."
"His car's not here," said Casey, apparently scanning the lot. He dialed the recording back. "There they go, they get in his car and they leave."
"We have to go after them," said Chuck.
"Why?" asked Casey.
"It's Shaw. He's been trying to split us up since he got here, and that was before the whole thing with the wedding rings. You think I'm going to trust him with unarmed Sarah after a day like today?"
"Nope," said Casey.
"I had you at 'Shaw', didn't I?" asked Chuck.
"Yup," said Casey.
Chuck turned to the monitor. "General, do you still have that air strike handy?"
Beckman pressed a button and disappeared.
Chuck sighed. "Fine. We'll do this the hard way."
A/N2 Please drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.
