A/N: ….30 reviews!? WOW! Thank you! So, for those that didn't know, life got weird about the time I put up the first chapter. 95% of things straightened out, the other 5%…it will be fine. I feel bad for starting this and just letting it hang out there. This won't be very long at all, it was never meant to be. I originally thought between 4-8 chapters. We'll see. A lot of questions last time, I'm not sure of how many answers will get this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck.

Sarah walked out of her room quickly, and headed down the hallway, glancing around. Her phone pinged, and she looked down at it.

Are you okay? Your heart rate is spiking.

She stared at her phone, in shock.

You have a smart phone, it measures your heartrate. I'm not a stalker or anything.

She stopped dead in her tracks, her lips trembling, trying to stop the laughter in this ludicrous situation.

"Do I just talk to you?" she asked.

Sure, but I wouldn't recommend doing so in the hallway. They're already worried about you enough as it is.

"What does that mean?"

Sarah, come on, you talk to me all the time, the guy who can't talk back. You come in and tell me all of your problems, because you know I'm safe.

She swallowed and began walking again. This couldn't be happening. This was some kind of trick. If this were true… this was some kind of far-out sci-fi, and that stuff didn't happen. She felt betrayed, knowing there could be only one person behind this. The person she thought was her friend. Sarah turned the corner and saw exactly who she was looking for. There was Ellie glaring at her phone. "You did what?" Ellie hissed at it.

"Who are you talking to?" Sarah asked.

Ellie looked up at Sarah, panic covering her face. "No one," she began, and her phone made an incoming text noise.

"Do you need to get that, so you can get your story straight?" Sarah asked. Ellie stared at her. "What is this, some kind of crazy stunt? Are you trying to get me thrown off the team?"

"What? No!" Ellie replied. "It's… you wouldn't understand."

"You're sick, you know that? SICK!" Sarah yelled. "Pretending to be him to get to me, to make them think I'm crazy! What, do you have some kind of recording device in here? Where is it?"

"He's talking to you," Ellie said softly. She looked over at the bed, at her brother. "Chuck… why?"

"Don't play this game, Ellie. Tell me the truth, what have you done?"

Ellie turned to Sarah, tears in her eyes. "I screwed up a formula in the Intersect, it… it melted his brain, or so I thought," Ellie said, tears in her eyes. "It's like his brain is caught in this loop, and he's stuck."

"What?" Sarah asked, stunned at what she was hearing.

"I-I… I did this," and with that Ellie began to bawl. She sank to her knees. The anger, the rage, it left her. If she was being conned, then damn it, that made Ellie Bartowski the best con artist ever. Sarah went to her, sank down beside her, and held her. "He's a vegetable because of me," she said softly through her tears. Her phone pinged. "Not now, Chuck," Ellie groaned. Sarah couldn't help herself and looked at her phone. She read what it said, and snorted. "What?" Ellie asked, wiping at her eyes.

"Potato or carrot?" Sarah read. Ellie chuckled.

"God, I hate him," she said grinning at the prone body in the bed. She glanced over at Sarah. "I guess I owe you an explanation, of sorts."

"I guess," Sarah replied, not wanting to push Ellie right now.

"No, I do," Ellie said. "Come on, we'll have this talk in private. No listening in," she said, pointing back toward Chuck. Sarah's phone went off, and it was a meme of a person saluting.

}o{

They sat in the mess hall, both with a cup of coffee. "Best I can tell it started when Chuck was about eight years old. He downloaded the first Intersect accidentally. There were no side effects, no problems, no nothing."

"Accidentally?" Sarah asked.

"Dad had it loaded on his computer, went to do something, and when he came back, Chuck had pushed the button," Ellie explained.

"Why do I have no trouble believing that about him?" Sarah asked, shaking her head. "Okay, so then what happened?"

"Dad kept working on it, to make it bigger, better, a teaching tool. And then… Dad disappeared. Graham found us, as teenagers, Dad nowhere to be found. Instead of separating us or putting us into the foster system, he had Casey sent to stay with us, on the condition I kept working on the Intersect."

"Why you?" Sarah asked.

"I was already a big neuroscience nerd by then, and Chuck knew computers, so… it made a lot of sense," Ellie explained.

"Graham has a way of making things make sense with teens," Sarah groused. Ellie gave her a look that said, we're talking about that later.

"So, we completed it, ran every test in the world we could short of live humans, and found no errors," Ellie continued. "The CIA and NSA had a lot of candidates tested to see who would do well with the Intersect, but none of them scored high enough to make Chuck and I comfortable." She paused. "And then he did the most Chuck thing ever."

"He uploaded it himself, didn't he," Sarah stated. It wasn't a question. She had never really talked to him, but it just felt like that's what Chuck Bartowski would do.

Ellie nodded. "Something is wrong in the computer part of the code, the part I don't understand."

"Oh my God," Sarah said softly. "So literally, the only person who could fix it…" She trailed off.

"Is in a coma," Ellie continued. "After nothing woke him up, I did a bit of brain surgery, exploratory, and left some nodes hooked to his brain. He's in no danger," she said hurriedly, seeing the look on Sarah's face. "People would come in the room, talking to me about things, and one day, I noticed when they did, his brain waves would pick up. I eventually was able to get the brain waves to talk to a computer, and it gave me base coding, ones and zeros."

"Chuck was flashing, and… talking?"

"For lack of a better term, yes," Ellie said. "That's how we started using the Intersect, and eventually we found a way to let him 'see' files and pictures. The Intersect works, it's his body that's locked up."

"So, what about the texts?" Sarah asked.

"I started getting weird messages sometimes, again ones and zeros, so we made sure he had a computer hooked up that could translate what was being said. I literally explained to him what was happening. Chuck somehow used the Intersect to talk to the computer, so that the next time he texted, it was in words. I don't understand it all, but he found a way into the network, and that's how he's communicating."

"That's gotta save on your cell phone bill," Sarah groused. Ellie chuckled. "This is real?"

"Yes, and I told him not to, but… Sarah, he's worried about you."

"Wait… what?!"

"I know, I know, the guy in a coma is worried about you. He's worried… he's worried you're gonna do something stupid."

"Ellie, I'm not suicidal," Sarah countered.

"No, but you are taking bigger and bigger risks," Ellie reminded her.

"I feel like I have nothing… or no one," she admitted. "I accepted a long time ago that I was going out in this job…"

"See, that, that's what he's worried about. So that's why he told you about Ryker."

Sarah sat there a moment. "Figures, the one guy who gives a damn about me can't even talk to me."

"Are you crushing on my brother?" Ellie asked, grinning.

"How?" Sarah replied, laughing. "I've literally never talked to him."

"Oh, girl, you have poured your soul out to him… you've just never heard the words back. But he says you've felt it." Ellie shrugged. "Chuck's… Chuck's a romantic."

"He's right," she admitted softly. "Can we get him out of this mess?"

"Maybe," Ellie admitted. "I need to find my father. Only he can fix this… well, Chuck might be able to, but he's stumped as well. He keeps saying we should turn him off and turn him back on."

"You mean…" Sarah's eyes went wide, as Ellie nodded. "NO!" she said, a little more powerfully than she meant to. A slow smile came to Ellie's face.

"Wow, okay… sis," Ellie said with a grin.

"Now you're just being ridiculous," Sarah replied.

"Am I?" Ellie asked, getting up. "Go see your boyfriend, he's really excited to talk to you." She bent down, and the smile left her face. "If you hurt him, Sarah…"

"Ellie, how can I? He's in a coma!"

"You know damn well you can," Ellie said, straightening. "But I trust you with him. You've earned it." With that, Ellie turned and left, leaving Sarah sitting there.

"Good God, I have a boyfriend in a coma," she muttered.

A/N: Whoooo boy! Yes, it's out there….but I believe a computer in someone's head is as well. If you're gonna get technical…please don't. I'm doing the best I can on the why. Next time, Ryker, Orion, and Sarah and Chuck…go on a date (bets are being placed to see if this actually happens, because I never let them go on a date) See you sooner rather than later! Reviews, PMs, smokesignals, or whatever, always appreciated.

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