Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.

Sorry for the acronyms, I write like some people talk, I can explain inline rather than include an appendix, but I prefer not to break up the flow. This should be the last chapter in world building.

Next chapter we'll get on the road and see the team in action. I welcome all feedback. This is the last chapter I had pre-written, so the next one may take longer than a day to get out.

Chuck pulled into the CIFA HQ, his new teammates wanted to get him badged in and start their work, teams from NSA, CIA, and CIFA had been scouring all over the world looking for mentions of Bryce to no avail.

A Porsche 911 pulled into the spot next to him, and Chuck felt time stop as Sarah Walker stepped out of the car and gave him a bright smile.

"Good morning," Sarah said with a smile, "Ready for a day of badges and paperwork?"

Chuck couldn't help himself, "Badges? we don't need no stinkin' badges."

Sarah gave him a flat look, "Really? Mel Brooks before 8am? We're going to need to lay rules down on references and quotes, aren't we?"

Chuck couldn't help but laugh a bit, "Probably."

One of the CIFA Analysts met them at the entrance, "Present your agency badges at the desk, we'll get you visitor passes for our building and get you badged appropriately, Major Casey is already here somewhere. PED Lockers are over there," he gestured off to the right.

Chuck and Sarah put their phones and keys into a locker and took the locker keys with them.

They both donned their visitor passes and followed the CIFA Analyst through the labyrinthian headquarters.

"Here's where we'll get you two badged and your access sorted, we pulled what we need from Castles to get your Clearances validated. Agent Walker, we already pulled your weapons certifications."

After that task was completed, they followed him down to the SCIF they were assigned, they found Maj Casey and the other two analysts sitting there discussing the results of the search.

"Nothing turned up on Larkin, none of the other agencies have even heard a whisper of where he went."

"Do we know where he sent the Constellation data to?"

"Not yet, can't get forensics data off of melted silicon and the service he was using was designed specifically to evade our detection."

"So, what was this data set actually, I get that it's supposed to be all the data between CIA and NSA, but what does that mean?"

"We're not sure, we have a team coming in to explain what was there and what's our level of exposure. I can only assume it's going to be bad."

Casey stood up, "Now that everyone's here, let's talk about what we're going to be doing, I received orders last night from General Beckman, our priorities are recovering the Constellation data and hunting down Larkin. They can't afford to read anyone else into the program due to the risk."

"Do we know how big the data is? It'd help us scope out the services that are capable of holding it at the very least."

Casey grunted and said, "We'll be meeting with Constellation Scientists, Perseus and Pisces, Perseus worked on the architecture and Pisces on the encoding process to figure that out. Walker and I will be in the field hunting this stuff down, the CIFA team will be providing remote support and analysis."

He looked over at the CIFA team, "Who's the DOMEX specialist?"

The analyst who'd escorted them around raised his hand.

"Great, what's your name again? we'll make sure that you and Bartowski will be joined at the hip, virtually speaking."

"Andrew."

With that, he looked over at Chuck, "Joyce wants you in the field with me, so you'll be providing field support and analysis."

Chuck nodded and Casey started handing out papers, "This is the analysis of Larkin's missions and notes on his behavior, Walker might be able to contextualize it further."

With that Sarah stood up, "Bryce was a good partner, he was ruthless and effective when he needed to be, but there was always an element of jealousy between us, especially when he was read into my mission record."

Keith raised his hand, "Was he jealous of your capabilities or your achievements?"

Chuck cut in, "Why was he read in, that's not usual is it?"

Sarah looked at Keith first, "He was jealous of both, but after the read in he was more reckless, willing to take greater risks to get a more impressive result. That's why I ended our partnership 8 months ago, I didn't see that ending in any other way other than body-bags for one or both of us."

Then she looked at Chuck, "This is a more complicated answer, in short Director Graham wanted me to be partnered with him long term, but before he did that, he made both of our backgrounds available to the other for the sake of getting a better understanding of who we'd be working with."

They went through the documents and asked Sarah a few more questions, once they were done Sarah sat down in her chair. Chuck's eyes followed her movement, she moved gracefully once she was back in her chair, he quickly averted his gaze.

Chuck stood up and walked to the spot previously occupied by Sarah and Casey, "So 5 years ago Bryce decided to frame me for cheating and selling tests and he slept with my girlfriend. I was a few classes away from graduating from Stanford with Distinction in 2 Majors when he threw me that curveball."

Sarah observed him, he was shuffling his feet a bit, didn't seem to meet anyone in the eye, and couldn't stop fidgeting with his pen. Though thankfully he wasn't clicking it. He really had the nicest brown eyes she'd ever seen, and his hair was begging for her to run her hand through it. She wasn't entirely sure where that thought came from.

"Jesus and this guy was one of ours, how wasn't he weeded out?" Keith murmured; Sarah couldn't help but agree.

"We did fix that right?" Ashley asked.

Chuck straightened his back, looked them in the eye, and continued, "Yeah, Rob and Major Casey found me in Burbank and made me an offer I literally couldn't refuse, thanks to them I'm here with a career and my degree. Stanford even apologized," he said with a small grin then continued, "I didn't know he became a spy, and I definitely didn't expect him to go rogue like this."

Casey looked at his watch, "It's 11, we've got our meeting with the Constellation team in an hour and a half, I expect that's going to take the rest of our day. Break for lunch and meet back here at 1215 to prep?"

Everyone agreed and went their separate ways for lunch, Sarah saw Chuck's retreating form and made a decision.

"Hey Chuck, want to get lunch with me?"

Chuck turned and looked at her with confusion, "You sure? You may be subjected to more references."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

As she caught up with him, he asked, "What are you feeling? We can grab whatever passes for food here at the cafeteria, or we can head out and grab something a bit more edible."

"Let's head out, we're going to be spending enough time here. I'm driving," she said as she grabbed her keys and phone out of the locker. Chuck quickly grabbed his and followed her.

They agreed on a burger place that was near the office, after paying and sitting down Sarah asked, "Since you're from California don't you miss In-N-Out?"

Chuck smiled as he said, "Every day."

Sarah smiled back, and thought to herself, 'He has a really cute smile.'

"So, why'd you invite me to lunch?"

"Honestly, I just wanted to get to know you a bit better," she said with a shrug.

One of the workers turned up the TV, "We're live on the scene here at the hotel where General Stanfield was giving his speech. As you can see emergency crews are working to secure the area."

Chuck and Sarah watched in horror as bodies were carried out of the hotel. There was rubble everywhere and the fires were still being put out.

Chuck quickly grabbed his phone and texted and waited nervously for Ellie to reply, Sarah noticed his nerves and made an inquiring expression.

"My sister, Ellie, she works at a hospital out there. I'm just making sure she's okay," he explained.

His phone buzzed on the table and he opened it, "Ellie says it's horrific."

He looked at her apologetically, "Sorry one sec." and started texting.

After a moment he closed the phone and looked up, "Sorry about that, again, I'm norma-"

"Chuck, it's okay, relax clearly this is an exception to the rules. Speaking of, we should probably get back to the office."

With that, the two got up in silence and went back to her car.

They both threw their phones and keys into the locker that Sarah had used and quickly badged into the building, running into the SCIF they found that Casey was already there and using the secured phone to talk with someone.

"Yes, I understand. I'll share it with the team."

He hung up and looked over at them, "You're the first ones back, Vuc Andric is claiming responsibility for the bombing, he says it's in retaliation for NATO bombing his people. CIA and FBI are after him, we'll see what comes of that."

The CIFA staff ran back in and Casey repeated his explanation.

"We have 30 minutes before the Science team arrives, get your notes and questions in order. I want to know if we could have prevented this with that thing they were working on."

Chuck started writing down questions around storage and data transfer, Sarah walked over to Casey and the CIFA team started brainstorming among themselves.

"What's up, Walker?"

"Not useful for this bit, I know what I want to ask them. What's the story with Chuck?"

"What do you mean, he works for us and does a damn fine job."

"The guys not a spy, he's too… open."

"That's because he's really not, he finds vulnerable software and helps our guys get access and exploit it, he has no fieldwork experience at all. He's an angry geek at best, does a damn good job at breaking stuff though."

"So why take him?"

"Rob, the head of TAO wants him along, thinks he'll be more useful out there with us than sitting here in this office drinking their shitty coffee. Okay what's going through your head Walker, I know you're not here just to wonder why the geek is following us."

"Why'd Bryce get him kicked out, I know the guy wasn't the best example of humanity but framing him for cheating and selling tests seems unnecessarily cruel to someone relying on a full scholarship."

"Well, if you can keep your hands off of Lark-" Casey suddenly stopped at the look on her face.

"I get it, I fucked up, I slept with Larkin, I regret it, rub it in my face one more time and NSA won't have to worry about paying your pension, clear?" Her eyes went from warm and inviting to hard chips of ice, her smile vanished to be replaced by a hard and guarded expression.

"Got it, if we do find Larkin, I'll make sure we ask. NSA was ready to throw what they could at the kid to get him to join up. Rob's not above taking advantage of the situation though, kid got a fair deal, not as much money as if he'd graduated, but he got his degree."

Casey broke off with a chuckle and resumed lost in the memory, "You should have seen it, Rob and I walk into the Dean's office and ask for the expulsion file on Bartowski. Dean starts stalling us, Rob tells him if he can't produce the file in the next 10 minutes, he's going to have an uncomfortable day."

"Guessing he couldn't," Sarah said with light amusement.

"Nah, so we cut a deal. Bartowski gets his degree and won't sue the school and if he wants to go back, he gets free tuition. Rob may be stubborn, but he takes care of his people," Casey with a note of approval.

The phone rang, Casey went to pick it up, "I'll be right there in a moment."

He looked at the room, "That was the guard, the Constellation team is here. I'll go escort them in. Get ready."

Casey returned a few minutes later with two men in tow.

"Perseus, Pisces this is Green, Blue, Yellow, Red, Orange," he said pointing at Chuck, Sarah, Andrew, Ashley, and Keith.

Perseus started, "I understand you're the team investigating the theft of the data set, the first thing you need to know is that it can be stored in someone who's not consciously aware that he's carrying the data around."

Chuck just stared in shock, "We were told it was a project to unify the data sets between CIA and NSA to allow analysts from both to enrich their work with the other's data."

Perseus answered, "Well yes, that's the case, however the way we found to do that was to take the raw data and subliminally encode it into an artificial memory palace within the human brain. Upon receiving stimuli that would lead to the data it would give the additional context needed for the analyst to make that decision."

Pisces stepped in, "What we did was effectively take advantage of the way the human brain stores data visually and compress-"

He was cut off by the phone ringing, Casey answered it and walked into one of the side rooms, telephone cable trailing behind him.

Keith asked, "So how big does storage need to be, this has to be extraordinarily massive."

Pisces responded with pride, "Not necessarily, we were very efficient with our designs. With our compression you could probably fit it in any standard 250GB drive."

Chuck said what they were all thinking, "Shit. That just made it that much harder to track this down."

Perseus responded, "I'm sorry, but it was critical to our work that we easily be able to move this around. Now we need to be clear, none of the encoding has been human tested, we were using an artificial brain developed at Sandia called the Cipher, it was supposed to mimic how the human brain processes information. Unfortunately, it's been destroyed like everything else in the lab. If you're looking at a screen with the data it'll attempt to instruct your mind to begin building the palace, you need to avoid this."

Sarah asked, "So how do we capture and transport the data, it sounds like it's dangerous to even look at it."

Perseus took out a briefcase, "We've brought glasses that will help you avoid that, if you see a screen with the data on it do not look directly at it, wait for it to stop flashing or cut the power to the building entirely. We use these in the lab to mitigate the risk."

Casey walked back into the group; Sarah noticed his gun was in his hand. "Constellation Scientist Pisces, please put your hands behind your head. Now." There was a growl at the end. The rest of the room looked at him in shock.

Sarah palmed a knife and slowly moved to get behind the two scientists.

"Did you think after the destruction of the lab we wouldn't immediately begin a counterintel review of everyone involved in the project? Q group found some unknown payments, one of the money men they have over there traced the payments to the North Koreans. It's time to come clean Zarnow."

Zarnow turned to run only to be caught by Sarah and restrained in a quick movement. Chuck watched in slight awe as she brought him down and then restrained him in one motion. Sarah took out her handcuffs and further restrained Zarnow.

Casey said, "I'll take him to detention, Q group is sending some interrogators to debrief him."

Sarah held up a hand and asked, "Were you working with Bryce Larkin?" As she asked, she increased the pressure of her knee on his back.

Zarnow managed to respond, "No, I've never heard of him."

Casey chuckled, "Well, we'll see how true that is when the Q guys are done with you."

Perseus looked at Zarnow in horror, Chuck noticed that Perseus was shaking, he walked over and guided the man to a chair.

"Easy there Doctor, take a seat before you collapse," Chuck recognized the look of a man who was betrayed by a close friend, the shock and horror were immediate, the questions and recriminations would come tonight.

"Walker stay here, I'm going to deliver him to Security." Casey left with Zarnow.

Sarah looked over at Perseus, "Okay clearly we have bigger issues than just Bryce Larkin, what was Zarnow involved in?"

"He worked on the Visual Encoding, the process by which the system works with the brain to build the memory palace and store the data."

"Can those glasses be trusted?"

"Yes, this was the exact set that we used when we were building the lab. I'll need to have the new ones tested to make sure."

Chuck watched as the rapid-fire questions continued, Sarah was putting him at ease faster than he would have thought possible.

Sarah looked over at Chuck and nodded at Perseus. Chuck stepped over, "Okay, with the data that's out there, what exactly is at risk?"

Perseus took a moment to think before his reply, "With this data set there's the raw data, before it's been analyzed, there's the collection sources and the identities of the employees of the CIA and NSA. It's dangerous data, we may have to suspend operations until we know it's not in the hands of our adversaries."

Casey walked in as Perseus finished. "I handed Zarnow off to Security, a team from NSA will arrive to interrogate him here. We'll need to work out where to detain people in the long term though."

Sarah had a dark look as she said, "I have a few ideas."

Chuck looked back at Perseus, "Okay, how can we tell if someone has looked at the data and has it in their head, is there a visual cue or something we can use to easily tell?"

"They'll look like they're having a seizure. Eye rolling immediately after a prompt. Depending on their ability to process the data there may be a moment where they lose focus and can't come back." He took a moment and took out another briefcase.

"I brought these along too, they're what we were going to use for visual diagnosis of a human host, they're guaranteed visual stimuli that will always trigger the host accessing the data."

Perseus opened the briefcase, there were white cards with colorful geometric patterns on them. "Hold this up to the eye of someone who has the data in their head, and you'll know."

He took out the cards, "these all have different functions."

He held up the red card, "This will put the host in "diagnostic mode", for lack of a better term. It will be painful for the host though, so please be careful.

The green card here will return them to normal.

The yellow card over there will make the host access a specific file in the Intersect, it is that of a bushel of bananas. When you hold it up, the immediate response should be, "A bushel of bananas" from the host.

The blue card will put the host to sleep, we made it since entering diagnostic mode was supposed to be painful. I just want to say, if there is a human host, we need to study him immediately, there could be severe neural degradation if the retention rate isn't high enough."

He stood up, "That's everything I have, it's clear from Pisc- Dr. Zarnow's defection that we have bigger issues, we'll need to be more careful with who we trust with this. I assume I'll be hearing from General Beckman?" He said looking at Casey.

"That's a safe bet Doc, let's get you out of here." Casey escorted the Doctor out of the building.

Chuck held up the cards, "Well, at least we have a guaranteed way to know if someone is hosting this thing, it sounds like science fiction."

Andrew nodded looking the glasses over, "No kidding, computers that write themselves and their data into your brain."

Ashley looked over her notes, "Well I can safely say when they asked me to serve my country, I didn't expect this. What do you think Sarah?"

Sarah was looking over Ashley's shoulder onto her notebook. Sarah picked it up, "We need to get a clear idea if Bryce and his partners were after the encoding process, or the data itself."

Chuck looked thoughtful as he spoke, "That makes sense, we're all assuming its about the data, not the process. That kind of encoding could make billions, everything from learning to medicine would be revolutionized."

"I still think it's the data, but we can't discount the potential profit motive. Bryce would want something more than the money, but with the right incentives…" Sarah trailed off as she thought more about the situation.

Keith stood up, "Okay it's been a long day, let's wait for Major Casey and then break for the day?"

Casey walked in a few moments later, "Let's call it, I'll update Beckman, see you all tomorrow."

Notebooks were stored in the appropriate cabinets and everyone filed out, Sarah walked with Chuck out to the entrance chewing her lip deep in thought, she took out both of their phones and keys she handed his to him, and brushed her hand against his as she did.

"Chuck, since lunch got interrupted, would you like to get dinner?"

Chuck looked at her, and she held up her hands, "I really do just want to get to know you better, I promise, nothing nefarious. My treat," she said with a shy smile.

"Sure, what are you thinking?"

"Well, do you want to go into DC or stay out here?"

"I don't want to fight for parking," he said with a laugh.

"There's a pretty good sushi place a few 15 minutes away," she said as she texted him the address.

After they seated and ordered Sarah asked, "So is Ellie your only sibling?"

"She's my only family, my parents… well, they weren't exactly around to collect their parent of the year trophies."

Sarah winced and mentally chastised herself for hitting a sore topic. "Sorry, I didn-"

"No, there's no way you could have known, it's okay. Ellie raised me when our parents took off, kept us out of the foster system until we were old enough not to worry. It's why I worked so hard in High School, so that I could get into Stanford and not have to worry about… well living I guess."

He sighed, "I guess it's why I was so upset over what he did, it'd be awful no matter what, but it was my only option. He had family money, I was fully on scholarship, he had tutors and I had Ellie.

I didn't have any fallback because there wasn't one. Sorry… sorry… I keep focusing on this. I'll stop."

"No, don't, it's been eating away at you. Please," she gestured for him to go on.

"If Rob hadn't found me, there wasn't going to be a lawsuit, there wasn't going to be anything. Just me at the BuyMore. When Jill told me, they had slept together that was the worst day of my life. I don't know how I kept going…" His face moved from sad to heartbroken as the tale continued.

Sarah resolved that when she saw Bryce again, she would enjoy inflicting retribution.

"Onto happier topics, Ellie and her boyfriend Captain Awesome." Sarah could only hear fondness in his tone, no mockery at all. "Captain Awesome?"

"Yeah, because everything he does is awesome, skydiving, paragliding… flossing." At that, she started laughing. "They're great together, he's a really good guy. Friendly and smart as hell."

He shrugged, "So tell me a bit about you."

"Just your garden variety sneak, run around take photos, steal stuff, and run ops. Not much more to say about me really, I just work. This is actually the longest I've been local in years."

"Wow, okay so I know everyone asks, but where's your favorite place?"

"I don't really have one, we don't get to see much of the location when we're working. I have a list of places I'd love to visit when I get some downtime."

As she said that their food arrived. They quietly ate when Chuck's phone went off.

He looked apologetically at Sarah, "I'm really sorry, it's Ellie, I just want to check in on her, give me 5 minutes?"

The blonde happily nodded, "After 5 minutes you're losing a piece of salmon for every minute," she said with a teasing tone.

Chuck answered and walked off. Sarah smiled as she saw him through the window, laughing and smiling as he paced in front of the restaurant. He came back in at exactly 5 minutes and sat down.

"Sorry again about that Ellie and Awesome just got home, glad I made it in time to save my sushi," he said with a smile.

They joked with each other for the next hour, Sarah couldn't remember smiling this much in years. She play fought him for the last piece of sashimi and with a feat of dexterity that had him staring in awe, she managed to get it from under his chopstick onto her plate.

She popped it into her mouth feeling very self-satisfied.

Despite her insistence that she pay the bill, Chuck insisted on splitting it with her, they walked out into the night together.

"I really had a wonderful time tonight, Chuck."

"I did too, honestly despite everything going on, it's been a good day."

"Night Chuck, I'll see you tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Have a good night Sarah, I'll see you tomorrow."

Appendix:

Constellation Science Team: (So far)

Pisces – Jonas Zarnow

Perseus – Howard Busgang

Orion – Stephen Bartowski

Terms:

DOMEX – DOcument and MEdia Exploitation a function where you take bad guy stuff lying around their offices and bases and make it useful against them. Or make it into paper airplanes. These days that's handled at a central office (National Media Exploitation Center, NMEC, which is currently operated by SAIC)

Personal Electronic Device (PED) Lockers – When you work in secured locations you can't take personal devices in with you, you store them in these lockers.

Q group – NSA Counter Intelligence arm

Scattered Castles/Castles – System where IC Clearances are stored.