Before the ink was dry on the lease contract, Sarah and Casey were on the horn with their superiors coordinating the equipment and modifications needed for their office space. Within the span of two weeks, the office was ready to be moved in. Under the close supervision of Casey, the armory was stocked to his exacting standards and requirements for the space. Sarah and Chuck oversaw the office furniture and equipment. Sarah had convinced Casey to let Chuck have free reign on the computing systems they would be using. With the older man's grudging grunt of acceptance, they both gave Chuck the contact information for their respective agencies' tech specialists.
Neither Sarah nor Casey were terribly surprised when Chuck proceeded to run rings around the tech specialists, pressing them until he was able to get them to acquire technology at a level just as exacting as Casey when it came to armament. The medical and research lab had been stocked with the basics, but they had agreed unanimously to wait to do more until they were able to get Ellie on board so that she could customize what would essentially be 'her' space in the office. All that was left was to brief Ellie, and by extension Awesome, on what all was going on.
"Are you ready to go?" Sarah asked, leaning against the door frame of Chuck's office.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Chuck sighed, "I wonder if this is how convicts of death row feel before walking the green mile."
"I think you are being just a bit dramatic," Sarah rolled her eyes, "Don't forget to bring the NDA's"
"They're already in my bag and I think you're not being dramatic enough," Chuck countered, pushing back from his desk and pulling on his suit jacket before following her out of the office and to the underground parking where her Porsche sat waiting for them. It had been delivered the previous week, within a few days of Casey's precious Crown Vic.
The ride back to Echo Park was both the longest and shortest ride Chuck thought he'd ever taken in his life. Sarah gave him a supportive smile as she put the car into 'park.' As soon as they were both out of the car, she took his hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze as they made their way back to the apartment where they still lived, at least for a little while longer. They'd already found a condo not too far from Echo Park, but like with the office, had to wait for the CIA to set up the specialized security and specs required of an agent's domicile before they moved in. They were told the condo would be move-in ready by the end of the following week and had already started packing up Chuck's room. His walls, shelves and bookcases were all bare now, and boxes neatly labeled and stacked were piling up against the wall. The majority of his, and her, clothes had also been packed away, leaving only what they would need to get through the week.
So much had changed in Chuck's life since his 28th birthday, it was understandable that his mind would drift over it all from time to time as it did now, only to be brought back to sharp focus the moment they stepped through the threshold of his sister's apartment.
Ellie looked up from where she was setting the table for dinner and gave them a warm smile, "Good timing, I'm just finishing up setting dinner out, Devon will be home in a minute and then we can eat."
"Sounds good Elle," Chuck nodded before he and Sarah hung up their coats her purse and his messenger bag and continued down the hall to their room, opting to take the few minutes they had to change into something comfortable. If they were going to have an uncomfortable conversation with his sister, they wanted to at least be comfortable when doing it.
They'd just emerged, Chuck in a long-sleeved forest green Henley, jeans, and his ever-present chucks. Sarah had chosen a comfortable blue sweater that was just a few shades darker than her eyes, a pair of black skinny jeans, and silver ballet flats. Ellie was lighting candles on the table as she informed them that Devon had just got home and was changing really quick.
"What's for dinner Ellie?" Sarah asked, taking her seat, "It smells delicious!"
"I was wanting some comfort food, so I made up some meat lasagna," Ellie smiled at her before turning toward her brother, "Chuck, could you grab the bottle of Cab from the rack, please?"
"Sure thing, sis," Chuck attempted to affect a casual air as he went in and grabbed the bottle of red wine from the small rack in the kitchen. Devon entered the dining room, wearing a UCLA sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, just as Chuck handed the wine to his sister.
"Now that everyone's here, let's eat!" Ellie declared, taking her seat diagonal from Devon and Chuck who sat at the head and foot of the table and across from Sarah.
The simple dinner of lasagna and salad was delicious and satisfying as it always was, the wine the perfect pairing for the pasta dish. Once dinner was eaten and the leftovers packed away in the fridge, it was time for Chuck and Sarah to make their move. Stopping briefly to grab a packet of papers from Chuck's bag, they took a seat in the living room and got the older couple's attention.
"Hey Ellie, can Sarah and I talk to you and Devon for a minute?" Chuck asked, nodding to the TV, which was on, playing a rerun of ER.
"Yeah, sure," Ellie nodded, picking up the remote and turning off the television, setting it back on the coffee table before turning her attention to the younger couple, "Is something wrong? Is Sarah…"
"No, nothing like that," Sarah shook her head aware of where Ellie was going with her inquiry, having caught the older woman's eyes flick to her stomach momentarily. "But still important."
Feeling Sarah giving his hand a squeeze of support, Chuck took a deep breath, met his sister and future brother-in-law's eyes, "Ellie, Devon, we haven't been completely honest with you."
Ellie gasped, hands flying to her mouth, "Oh my God, you eloped when you were back East, didn't you?"
"We…" He suddenly registered what his sister had said, "Wha… Ellie, no. We're not there yet, you've had nothing but weddings on the brain since Devon put that, admittedly impressive, rock on your finger."
"Chuck," Sarah gave him a meaningful look.
"Right, like I was saying, there have been some things going on in my life that we've been keeping from you," Chuck continued, "And before I tell you everything, I need you to sign theses non-disclosure agreements."
"Non-disclosure agreements?" Ellie gave him a skeptical look, "I highly doubt whatever has been going on with you, Little Brother, is a matter of national security."
"Actually Elle," Chuck looked sheepish, "It is, please sign the papers, both of you, and hear us out."
Ellie still wasn't convinced it wasn't some elaborate prank her brother was trying to pull, but decided to humor him anyhow, taking the pen Sarah had offered and looking over the paperwork before signing it. It looked official-ish, but she knew how good her brother was with all things computer related and had no doubt he could had created a realistic looking document using a template from some legal site or another. She handed the pen to Devon who also signed and pushed the papers back toward Chuck and Sarah, the latter of whom stood and placed the paperwork in Chuck's bag before taking her place back at his side, holding his hand. Ellie saw a them look at each other, communicating something silently before her younger brother took a deep breath and proceeded to tell her what all had been going on in his life.
It sounded like something straight out of his comic books. According to Chuck, he's accidentally downloaded some kind of governmental data base that their father, of all people, had at least partially designed. His girlfriend, his real girlfriend he'd been sure to stress to both herself and Devon, was a CIA agent and their new business partner was not only a Colonel in the Marines, but an agent with the NSA. The 'company' that had hired them and taken them back east to familiarize them with their server was none other than the intelligence community of their nation, and that his training had actually been an abridged version of a combined CIA and Marine Force Recon training, which Sarah informed them with great pride, he'd passed with flying colors.
Looking back, she could recognize the physical results of the training over the past few months. His slim frame was broader, but no so much to be obvious, the little bit of baby fat he had retained thanks to his marathon gaming and junk food binge sessions he used to have with Morgan had faded away to be replaced with more firm muscle that she was able to feel when she hugged him. Now that she thought of it, she could remember the first few times he hugged her after returning for Thanksgiving were careful, as if he was unsure of his strength and didn't want to hurt her.
They'd gone on to tell the about the mission they'd just returned from. It came as a shock to her that not only had they not been in DC as she'd believed between Thanksgiving and Christmas but had been in Eastern Europe. On top of that, apparently the mission they had been sent on had revealed more about their family history. It turns out that the wedding they were supposed to crash in order to keep tabs on an arms dealer was the actual wedding of their childhood friend Vivian, who was herself a MI:6 agent who was now married to another MI:6 agent who she'd met while undercover in her father's criminal organization.
She stared at her brother and his girlfriend as they explained what they'd learned about why her mother and then father disappeared never to be heard from again. How, against his better judgement, their father had uploaded a program into their honorary uncle's head in the false belief that the data would eventually degrade and be rendered unusable. Sadly, the programming did the opposite of what they'd expected and basically infiltrated their Uncle Hartley's brain, turning him into a sociopathic Russian mobster, with their mother, his handler, in the guise of his right-hand man. They'd gone on to explain how learning all this had caused them to change their mission to include trying to remove the programming from Hartley's brain in the hopes of being able to disband his network of weapons dealers, baddies, and thugs, as well as free their parents to be able to come home, safely.
"Which brings us to why, at least in part, we are telling you all this," Chuck gave his sister a small smile. "Uncle Hartley was the neurologist on their team, Dad came up with the programming, but Hartley helped him figure out how to get it to be able to implant in the brain. I have the original data packets from the upload they'd put in Hartley's brain to change him into Volkoff, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to get it to work with any success.
"The data override part of the program is correct, so far as my tests have shown me," Chuck sighed, "But I just can't figure out how to get my new data packet to be absorbed into the brain. That's where I'm hoping you'll come in, I need your help with this."
Ellie didn't know what to say, looking between her brother and his girlfriend, dumbfounded, for several long minutes. "So, let me get this straight," She sighed and rubbed her temple as if trying to stave off the beginnings of a migraine, "You opened a suspicious email from a man you have neither seen nor spoken to since he got you kicked out of school and slept with your perspective fiancée. Not only that, but you activated the program he'd attached to said email, which resulted in you downloading a database containing all the intelligence our government has collected since the twin towers fell, into your head," Her voice was growing louder and angrier with every statement she made, Chuck knew this was not likely to end well for him. "Then proceeded to stop a freaking bomb from exploding, allowed yourself to be conscripted to the CIA and NSA, submitted to elite-level training… Dear God, are you armed?"
Chuck and Sarah both nodded sheepishly, "In my defense," Chuck hedged, "I only carry a tranq pistol. Sarah does carry a live weapon, but we can assure you that they are both locked away safely in a lock box that is secured with a biometric lock and will only open to one of our fingerprints."
"That doesn't make it better!" Ellie exclaimed, "You know how I feel about weapons in my house!"
"I'm sorry, Elle," Chuck gave her a small shrug, "It can't be helped, but the lock box and any armament we own or have been issued by the agencies will go with us next week when we move out."
"Charles Irving Bartowski, I don't think you fully grasp the seriousness of the situation you are in," Ellie scolded.
"No, I fully understand the situation," Chuck shook his head, "Did it scare me at first? Of course it did. Does it still scare me? Yeah, but it also means I'm able, in my own small way, to protect the ones that I love. I understand that what I am doing is dangerous, but I'm proud of what I'm doing, isn't that what you've always wanted for me?"
"What I wanted was for you to achieve your dreams," Ellie huffed, "Preferably behind a desk in an office where you are safe from all the mobsters, oligarchs, and general baddies of this world."
"Elle, I appreciate that you are worried for me," Chuck tried to soothe her, "But I'm not alone in this."
"You're not the only one with a vested interest in his safety," Sarah added before sending an adoring look at Chuck, "I have just as much, if not more to lose. I love him, with all my heart. If you lose him, you'll grieve his loss for a while, but eventually you and Devon will be able to move forward, have a family. If I lose him, I lose everything. He's the only man I could ever imagine having a future with. I never even imagined being able to have a real life until I met him. I lost that dream when we lost touch with each other, but now that we found each other again, my hope has been restored. I share your desire to see him safe. If I had my way, I'd wrap him in bubble wrap and never let him leave the house, but I've seen him in action. He is really good at what he does; he can, and has, honestly helped people. Do you have any idea how many lives he saved by disabling that bomb? Not only did he save the people attending the conference, but likely everyone in that hotel and building within even a few blocks of there."
"Sis, I'm not doing anything more than Mom and Dad have done," Chuck pointed out.
"Just because that's what they chose to do over actually being with their family, doesn't mean you need to do it too!" Ellie yelled.
"Mom didn't expect to be gone for 20 years, Elle!" Chuck shot back, "She thought it would be a quick trip, just like all her other 'business trips' had always been up until that point. It's not her fault that the program didn't disengage, even when she tried to activate the other disabling protocols. Her only choice to keep the world as safe as she could was to stay with Hartley and to what she could to keep him in check."
Ellie harrumphed at her brother's assessment of their mother's actions. "If dad hadn't created that stupid thing, it wouldn't have been an issue."
"Dad created that 'stupid thing' with the goal of helping people," Chuck countered, "It was meant to be a learning tool with possible applications in treating memory loss due to dementia, Alzheimer's, or even traumatic brain injury. He was trying to do a good thing, but the government got wind of it and offered to help fund his research. That's how he and Mom met; she was sent to be his handler and they eventually fell in love with each other, which was a good thing because, otherwise, we would not exist. Unfortunately, over the course of the project, the government began to pervert his original goals until it became the Agent X project which was the precursor for the Intersect that is now in my head."
Ellie considered what her brother had said for a moment, "So, theoretically, if I were to help you with 'fixing' Uncle Hartley; Mom, Dad, and he could all come home?"
"Along with Vivey and her husband Cole, yes," Chuck nodded.
"That also means that we could eventually get that thing out of your head as well," She postulated.
"In theory, yes," Chuck confirmed, "But that doesn't necessarily mean I'll quit working with the CIA and NSA. I like what I do, and like Sarah said, I'm good at it, like really good. Although considering I was born from the union of a company scientist and a spy, it's kind of a foregone conclusion that one of us would have an aptitude for it. You'd be surprised how much nepotism there is in the intelligence community, and not just in the United States. Uncle Hartley was MI:6, a real James Bond type if what I've read is to be believed, and transferred to MI:5, Vivey is MI:6 as is her new husband."
"We won't be field active forever either," Sarah pointed out, "We've discussed what our future might look like, what we want it to look like, and we agree that we want that future to include children. Some field agents choose to stay field active after having kids, but I for one don't want to."
"And I would rather step back from field service at that point as well," Chuck added, "Sarah's dad basically took her and ran when she was too little to understand that he wasn't the parent she should have been with after her parents' divorce. Although, if he hadn't, we might not have met."
"I don't know about that," Sarah hedged, "You forget, I was born in Santa Barbara, and I'm fairly sure there was a band from there at the band competition we met at."
"Point," Chuck acknowledged before turning back to his sister, "And we had both our parents leave us. Neither of us want to do that to our kids. We are more than happy to shift into other roles within the company, however that might look."
"Doing what?" Ellie looked between them.
"Well, with Chuck's skills he could investigate cybercrime, yeah I know that's kinda what we are setting up to do now, but the difference would be that right now we can still be called out into the field. He could also work on the Intersect project from the R & D side, kind of like your father did, or take over for Fleming identifying potential candidates for the project. As for me, I could be a recruiter, teach at the farm, or follow the path I'm sure the director was slowly grooming me for, which involved leadership and administration, going from Special Agent In Charge of a team or Chief of Station, to potentially advancing to the level of deputy director or director of the whole agency."
"And none of that would require you to be field active?" Ellie pressed.
"That would be correct," Chuck affirmed while Sarah nodded beside him.
"They why don't you do that now?" She demanded.
"Well, we want to try to undo the damage and hopefully reduce the impact the Agent X program has done to Hartley, and by extension the global community." Chuck reminded his sister, "There are also a few other lose ends that need to be tied up which require us to stay field active in order to do so."
"Like what?" Ellie looked at the pair, clearly not believing they'd actually remove themselves from the field.
"I can't say," Sarah shook her head, "It's classified and tied to a prior mission that went sideways in one of the worst ways."
"More classified than what was done to my brother?"
"Not exactly," Sarah shook her head, "Technically, your brother's situation is above top secret, we were only allowed to read you in because before Thanksgiving he suggested you be the one added to the team, even convinced them to bring Devon on as an additional medical liaison incase one of us or someone from the LA field office are injured on the job."
"Before Thanksgiving?" She looked to her brother, "So you wanted to involve me in all this before you ran into mom and reconnected with Dad?"
"Yes," Chuck confirmed, "You see, they have never had someone successfully download the full Intersect data base. What is in Uncle Hartley's head is less than 5% of the data I downloaded. They are unclear as to what impact, if any at all, there is on the human brain from downloading the whole thing."
"So, what you are saying," A slightly evil smile began to spread on Ellie's face, "Is that you convinced the powers that be, to hire me to essentially play with your brain?"
"More monitor me and alert them of anything that may cause concern to my overall mental or physical health," Chuck corrected, "Who knows maybe you'll be able to locate that screw you constantly insist is loose up there. So, what do you think, Elle? Are you interested?"
"If I do this, if we do this, are we locked in forever?" Ellie looked between Chuck and Sarah.
"That would depend on what you and your lawyers can negotiate for you," Sarah shrugged, "Some people start with a five- or ten-year contract and reevaluate if they want to stay after it's expiration. Some negotiate to only stay as long as the project they are working on is ongoing."
"But wouldn't that second one have the potential for them to extend the contractor's project and employment indefinitely?" Devon pointed out.
"That is a possibility," Sarah gave them an embarrassed smile, "Which is why I'd advise starting with a five-year contract as a consultant, with the proviso that you'll only work on and with anything pertaining to your brother's health and possibly amend it to include his research if you chose to at a later time."
"Can we think about it?" Ellie hedged.
"Would seeing where you'd be working help you make up your mind?" Chuck suggested.
"So, what do you think?" Chuck asked, opening the double doors to the medical bay and lab that sat in the rear portion of his office suite.
"It's kind of barren," Ellie mused, taking in the treatment and recovery suites as well as the connected lab area. Devon was also casting an appreciative look around, cataloging what they already had and making a mental list of what else would be helpful to have on hand.
"That was intentional," Chuck explained, "I didn't want them to bring in a bunch of equipment only to have you or Devon say it isn't needed. We have such limited space, I figured it would be best to have to figure out what you deemed essential and go from there. We also have access to the VA since this is partially an NSA substation, and can write it into your contracts to include access to Westside. That would also mean you'd have admitting rights and the ability to treat patients at both facilities."
Devon nodded in understanding, "It's not a bad deal, Babe. We'd get a stipend no matter if we were called in to treat someone or not, we could include in our contracts to have complete autonomy over treatment and methods. Not to mention you wouldn't have to wonder if some government hack is messing around in the Chuckster's brain."
Ellie looked between her fiancé, her brother, and Sarah, considering all that had been told to her that night and feeling a little overwhelmed at it all. It was a lot to take in over the course of just a few hours, and much as she might want to deny it, she'd made up her mind as soon as her brother had suggested it. With a sigh and a shrug, she gave her choice, "Know any good lawyers?"