A/N1 Leader: from a TV screen to your living room. Yikes!
Don't own Chuck.
CHAPTER 54 Till We Have Faces
A perishing computer blazes down into a figure of fire and steam. We live under the reign of stainless leaders…Gone is another technical spy in giant and instant heat.
Thomas Merton, Cable to the Ace 85
Sarah tided toward consciousness like a languorous wave lapping a beach: in and out again, in and out again, never quite conscious, never quite unconscious—but each time the in of consciousness lasted a little longer, and the out again of unconsciousness lasted a little less long.
And then without warning: she was conscious. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. The tranquilizer had been very strong; it had affected her internal clock.
She was no longer in her own clothes. She was wearing a black shapeless dress—a shift. She could tell she had her undergarments on underneath it, but her feet were bare. Her hands were very tightly bound behind her. Her ankles were bound together even more tightly. She was sitting on the floor, leaning up against a wall. She looked around her.
She was in a small, cubicle room, largely black and white. There was a door with a slot. It looked heavy and it was shut. Computers and computers lined the walls. There were multiple monitors, most turned off. A couple of monitors were on—but their displays were strangely colorless, washed out. If Sarah forced herself, she could have named the colors, but they were as close to achromatic as chromatic colors could be.
The lights in the room were the cruelest fluorescent lights, leeching the color from Sarah's hands and feet, everything. It was as though she saw herself and the room on a black and white TV.
Stephen was on the floor near her but he was still unconscious. He was in a black t-shirt and black pants, barefoot and bound as she was.
About fifteen feet from Sarah, sat Mary Bartowski. She was seated in a metal desk chair, seated beside a large flat desk covered in papers and with a large keyboard. Her chair was turned toward Sarah and Stephen.
Mary's hair had obviously been self-cut with scissors and with no thought but utility. It stuck up around her head in various lengths, all short. Tufts of it on the sides of her head stood up, resembling horns. She was rail thin, a hunger artist. But she was not weak. Her thin arms showed muscles, lean and long. She was dressed entirely in white. A white t-shirt and white pants. She wore short, white boots.
On her face was a pair of sunglasses like those of a blind man or a welder. The lenses of the sunglasses were so dark and thick that they were practically opaque. It was unclear how much Mary could see through them if she could see anything at all. The glasses had leather edges, making them look more like goggles when she turned her head—as she was currently doing. Turning her head and smiling. Turning her head and smiling. Leader.
She was smiling. The smile looked caused by an electric shock, not by any internal emotional state.
Sarah did not offer any comment. She stared into the black lenses, at reflections in them.
Finally, Mary spoke, that is, Leader spoke. "Sarah Walker. How nice to meet you."
Leader's smile barely moved as he spoke. "I am Leader."
Leader's voice was a woman's voice, but strangely low and harsh.
"No, you are not. You are Mary Bartowski." Sarah offered it as a challenge.
Mary jerked in her chair. "I am Leader. There is no Mary Bartowski. Mary Bartowski is a…fiction."
"No, she is the mother of two children, the wife of a husband. She must miss her family terribly. They miss her terribly. They would like to see her, to welcome her home, to give her back her life."
"A fiction…cannot have a life."
"That is sensible. But you, Leader, you are the fiction. You have no life."
"I am alive. I have a life. My life is here." Mary struck her chest with her fist. Then she gestured around her jerkily: "And here."
"There is no Mary Bartowski. There is only Leader…and Frost. But Frost will soon be gone."
Sarah stopped. She had not expected this turn. Frost, not Mary?
"Frost is…here." Not Leader's voice.
Leader's voice: "No, Frost is…asleep."
Another voice, cool, dispassionate, very aware: "Frost is not asleep. I am awake."
The smile on Mary's face became more natural, but non-committal, illegible.
Sarah was unsure what was going on. She had expected two—but three? Was it three? Two and a half? One plus some? Hell.
Frost was Mary's code name. Her name as a…CIA agent. Frost was Agent Walker to Mary's Sarah. Sarah was not Intersect-savvy like Stephen or Chuck or Ellie, but she knew something about deep self-division.
Maybe, if nothing else, Sarah could keep Mary talking for a while. Sarah was unsure how long she had been unconscious, but she was reasonably sure she had been out a while. Her internal clock told her it was late morning. Chuck would come for her. She just had to stay alive and keep Stephen alive until the Team arrived.
"Hello, Frost. It is nice to meet, agent to agent."
Mary's facial features seemed like they were being remotely controlled. Leader's smile, then Frost's smile, then Leader's. Her face was a battlefield.
Finally, Frost spoke. "Good to meet…you, Agent Walker." Strain worked her voice. Then her voice steadied, sharpened. "Why are you with my husband?" Was that jealousy?
Sarah did not know what Leader knew, did not know how much said to Frost could be heard by Leader. But this was, ultimately, Mary Bartowski, and no matter how many persons seemed to be inside her—she seemed as crowded as Sarah's Porsche on the way to Boulder City—this was a woman who was responsible for two children who took family seriously. That had to have something to do with her. Sarah decided the risk was worth it.
"I am with your husband, but he is my father-in-law." Even in those circumstances, the feeling of being part of a family, this family, warmed Sarah. "I am Chuck's wife."
Mary's body went stiff in the chair, then jerked, then stiffened, then jerked. After a moment, Mary repositioned herself in the chair.
When she spoke, the voice was intelligent, strong, warm. Her smile was wholly natural and legible, a trace of happiness across her worn, ravaged face.
"You married my Chuck?" Sarah's eyed welled with sudden, heavy tears when she heard Mary Bartowski say 'my Chuck' and say it so gently. "Chuck married an agent? I always told Stephen," Mary looked gently at his unconscious body but could not seem to move toward him, "that our family story would end up reading like a bad scriptwriter wrote it…Charles has a wife…"
"And a daughter—we, uh, adopted, her name is Molly. I think you'd be crazy about her."
"A grandchild? I am a grandmother? How wonderful! I feel old enough, I am sorry to say…" Her voice faded. Frost's voice returned. "Look, enough of the touchy-feely stuff, how do we get you out of here, Agent Walker?"
Leader's voice: "You don't. I tire of this carnival sideshow. I wanted Orion. I wanted to kill him in front of Frost. Orion first. And then Agent Walker. It seems that Frost will get a double bill. 'Double bill': a nice pun, that." Leader smiled that ghastly smile—a skull grinning in at the feast. "An atrocity exhibition."
Leader laughed, a sound Sarah prayed she never heard again. It sounded like Mary had swallowed some tiny, tinny transistor radio and that the laugh was issuing from it and echoing up and out of her throat. Sarah gagged reflexively.
"You see, my plan is simplicity itself. I will kill everyone Frost cares about in front of her, one by one. Stephen, you, Ellie, Chuck—you see, I now remember the names. The floodgates have opened; the firewalls are down. I am beginning to see clearly. Oh, and Molly, a name I had not forgotten and a bonus for the end. Call Chuck and then Molly the grand finale."
All at once, Sarah burnt with white-hot rage and she was chilled by a bleak frustration. She struggled violently against her bonds, but the zip ties only bit deeply into her skin, causing blood to flow freely from her wrist and ankles. Eventually, the rage and frustration played themselves out, leaving her bleeding and sweating on the floor.
Leader started that sickening laugh again, but it got shut down: "No, no, you make-believe, pixelated bastard, you will do nothing of the sort: you will harm no child, you will harm no one else. I will kill you, kill us, before you do. The floodgates are open; the firewalls are down. I can do it now. You see, unlike you, I am not a coward. I am willing to die if it means you die too." Frost.
Sarah forced calm on herself. "Mary, Ellie was supposed to get married today. She's in love with a wonderful man, a doctor, like her. His name is Devon. Chuck calls him 'Captain Awesome'."
"Wait, Chuck calls Ellie's fiancé 'Captain Awesome'?" Mary. She giggled into her hand. "That's funny. And I can imagine him. I know Ellie. I used to anyway. Good for her. Although I am guessing all this may delay the wedding?" Mary sounded disappointed, apologetic.
"Probably. But you know Ellie, she's made of stern stuff—yours and Stephen's—this won't knock her down for long. Besides, I think she certainly would have happily delayed it if delaying it meant that you would be able to attend."
Mary's face brightened. Then Frost shifted topics. "Are you CIA, Sarah? NSA?"
"CIA."
"For a long time?"
"A decade. A little more."
"Do you want to keep doing it?"
"No. I am…hoping to quit soon."
"I should have quit." Mary now, looking pensive, sad. For the moment, inexplicably, she seemed firmly in control.
"I couldn't let go of it, Sarah. I couldn't let go of Frost. I…needed her. She protected me. Stephen has always had doubts about me. I caused a lot of them. I loved…love…him, you see. So desperately it terrifies me. Do you know what I mean, Sarah? Do you know that kind of love?"
Sarah nodded, unable to find her voice.
"And almost any time things got real, I became Frost. After our engagement…after our wedding…" Sarah saw Mary's face working under old but raw regret, "…when Ellie was born, Chuck…I became Frost. I loved him. I was so excited by those things, but they also scared me so much. So I became Frost.
"And at the moments when I most needed to be available to my husband, open and true, I became unavailable, closed and false. I was more comfortable with appearances than realities. I know it hurt him deeply. I should have quit the CIA. But I wanted the escape route, wanted to be able to escape it if it all became too real.
"I went after Hartley because it had all gotten too real. Ellie was nearly a teenager and I had no idea how to relate to her—she had become a little black cloud in a dress and I did not know what to do. Couldn't talk to her. Did not speak or understand Teenager even if the words were all English.
"Chuck was so bright, so open; he loved me with such a sunny, tender, uncomplicated love, it broke my heart.
"Stephen was buried alive in the Intersect and overburdened with guilt about Hartley. I did not know how to make Stephen better.
"I wanted to help Hartley—I really did, but I also wanted to escape all that, Ellie, Chuck, Stephen. So I did. I took the mission and I broke my husband's heart and ended up adding nightmarishly to his guilt.
"I suppose some of it is his fault…a little of it. Stephen's a good man. But he's a digital man trapped in an analog world: a reverse Tron. He has emotions but he often does not understand them: 1's and 0's, yes; X's and O's, no. Emotions don't compute without remainders. I fear that may be the reason why the Intersect went so wrong…
"….But I knew this about him, I even loved it about him, and I became Frost anyway…What was I doing…?"
Sarah realized that Mary's control was caused by what she was saying. This—confession—had been inside her for so long that once it started, Leader could not prevent it from avalanching to its conclusion.
"I have been Frost whenever I have had to face Leader. That is why he does not call me Mary. I put on that mask so many times it now seems welded to my face. There is no Frost. I know that. I have always known that. There is really just me, Mary—and this goddamn program in my head. I am and am not Frost, because ultimately Frost is my mask, a persona and not a person. I am her when I wear the mask, but that does not mean she is not a mask.
"But I have leaned on Frost again, that is the face of mine that Leader knows. I don't know that Leader knows that I have opposed him—a fiction—with a fiction of my own. Mask-of-a-living-woman to mask-of-a-code-monster."
She rolled her chair closer. "Has Chuck seen your face, Sarah, your true face? Can you put your Agent Walker mask down and recognize it as a mask, nothing more? Can you be a real wife to my son, a real mother to your daughter…Have you seen your own face?" The questions were softly asked, as introspective as they were turned toward Sarah.
Mary leaned down toward Sarah as she asked the last question. Sarah saw her reflection in the dark glasses: her drawn face, the fear in her eyes, the worry.
She saw Sarah Bartowski. She saw her own face.
But she also knew the presence of her competencies, her gifts—the things that allowed her to don her Agent Walker mask. She would wear it again, and save herself and Stephen—and Mary, if she could.
But she could and would take it off. She knew it was a mask. A thing that Sarah Bartowski could use, but not a thing she was. I am and am not you.
Mary smiled—smiled wrong. Leader had returned.
Sarah noticed that Stephen was conscious. She did not know when that happened; she had been so engrossed in Mary's speech.
Leader rolled the chair back and stood. He picked up a knife that had been hidden from Sarah's view behind a pile of papers on the desk. She walked toward Sarah. She stopped. She had just noticed that Stephen was conscious.
"Welcome, Orion. I wanted you to be awake before I gutted Agent Walker. It will do Frost good to watch you watch that."
Mary walked nearer Sarah as she spoke, but she was careful to remain just beyond the range of Sarah's legs. Sarah was not sure she could manage much, but she might be able to knock Mary down, maybe somehow get the knife from her.
Leader looked back at Sarah. "Always thinking, aren't you, Agent. You remind me of Jill Roberts, except you are better. Better control. Colder. More deadly. Roberts, at the end of the day, was best at making herself horizontal. You excel at making others horizontal."
"Lord," Sarah whined, putting extra whine in her whine, "do you ever shut up? Jill Roberts did not deserve you. Maybe you need to get out once in a while. Find a therapy group. You know: 'Hello, I'm Leader, and I'm an asshole…' You might make a friend."
Leader stepped a little closer. Behind the lenses, Sarah could just make out the anger in Mary's eyes. Good. Maybe she would make a mistake.
Stephen spoke for the first time. His voice was choked.
"Mary, sweetheart. Leader is not real. You are. Fight him. Fight him for me and for us. For Sarah. Fight him for our family. Please, Mary."
Mary jerked. Her face slipped out of Leader's horrid smile. For a moment, it was unclear what was happening. And then Frost: "Stephen, stay back and stay out of this. I don't know if I can stop Leader. Maybe Agent Walker can. Maybe not. But if Leader turns to you, I know you cannot stop him. We have to play the odds."
Stephen had tears coursing down his cheeks. "Goddamn it, Mary. Goddamn it." He said these words in one long whisper. "I can't deal with Frost. Don't be Frost."
Mary answered him after a moment. "Frost loves Stephen Bartowski. You know that, don't you, Stephen? She has loved you exactly as long and exactly as much as I have. She will always love you exactly as I love you. She is me; she is mine…
"I have missed you so much. It hurts, Stephen, and when I hurt, I am Frost."
Leader: "Isn't this a touching reunion. Just the two of us, but the gang's all here…" Mary was looking at Stephen.
Sarah took her chance. She twisted herself hard, leaning forward suddenly, and keeping her hands close to her back. She rolled as fast as she could across the space between herself and Mary, crashing into Mary's legs. She had seen Sarah coming at the last moment, but could not avoid contact.
Mary slammed to the floor. Her knife landed and skittered away. At that moment, the lights went out.
Mary was used to the dark. She was able to scramble to her feet. Sarah could not see to react.
The lights came back on, but lower. An emergency generator must have powered them.
Mary was standing again. She was looking for her knife but had not found it. Then she saw it. Sarah could not get to it before her. Her attack was going to have been wasted.
But then Mary froze. Something held her back. Frost.
Frost's arm went up, her hand clutched a hypodermic. It must have been stowed somewhere in the room and Frost had grabbed it. Sarah had not seen her grab it. Maybe she did it when the lights were out. But she must have gotten good at hiding actions from Leader, from everyone.
Frost spoke in absolute, clinical detachment. "No, Leader, you will harm no one else. Die." She plunged the hypodermic into her thigh.
Leader's voice: "No! You don't dare! You cannot win without losing."
Frost: "I am willing to lose as long as you do too, you son of a bitch."
Leader was weaving. The psychological strain was too much. It was acting on her before whatever Mary had injected into herself.
Mary's face contorted almost unimaginably, a mask of agony barely human. She slumped and leaned against the desk. Her hands went to the keyboard.
Leader: "And I am willing to lose as long as you do too, you bitch. All of us will die!" Leader punched a button violently. Mary collasped hard on the floor.
Sarah foresaw what was coming. A red light began to flash. A feminine computerized voice announced calmly: "Hydra Network self-destruct sequence initialized. Four minutes until self-destruct."
Sarah rolled to the desk. Leader's knife was on the ground. She lay down on top of it, supine, and grabbed it. She sat forward and used it to cut the bonds on her wrist and her feet. Then she crawled quickly to Stephen and freed him.
He jumped up and ran to Mary.
"No, no, Mary! I did this. It is my fault."
Sarah went to the computer. She had no idea where to begin. She punched some keys. Nothing.
The timer: 3:00
"Stephen, here." Sarah took the knife and cut off a section of the bottom of the shift she was in.
"Tie this tight around the thigh she injected. It might slow some of whatever that was. Poison, I'm guessing." It was the only suggestion Sarah had.
Stephen's answering look was wild and uncomprehending, forlorn. He turned back to Mary, ignoring the instructions.
Sarah did it herself, pulling the fabric as tight as she could as she finished.
"Stephen, you have to stop the self-destruct or help me stop it."
He now had Mary in his arms, rocking her and rocking himself. Saying her name again and again in the flashing red light, a counterpoint to the computerized voice informing them repeatedly of what they already knew.
Sarah ran to the door. It was locked. She could not see any mechanism for opening it.
3:15
The flashing red lights had started to seem to Sarah like they were in her head, tinting her thoughts themselves. She was full of alarm. They had to get out!
3:00
She heard voices—or thought she did. Voices other than Stephen's. He was muttering, "Mary, Mary, Mary…"
She listened at the slot in the door. She heard no more voices.
2:45
She frantically pushed her arms through the slot, scraping the skin of her forearms raw. But she could not get her arms far enough through the slot to get her elbows out so that she could try to reach something, anything that might open the door. She pulled her arms back in; her forearms burned.
2:30
She did hear voices. Were they the voices of Leader's men? She couldn't tell. Then she heard shots. Yells. Silence.
2:15
Still silence. The Team must have come to rescue her. They hadn't made it. Chuck hadn't made it. Hadn't. Made. It. Chuck!
Sarah went and knelt beside Stephen. She put her arm around his shoulders. Mary was still breathing. It probably didn't matter.
They had been so close to home.
2:00
