A/N: I guess we're continuing.

Jeux Sans Frontières

Chapter Three: Mother of Lies

You could have an aeroplane flying
If you bring your blue sky back

All you do is call me
I'll be anything you need

— Peter Gabriel, Sledgehammer

Stanford Campus/Spring Break 2018/Monday Morning

Chuck stumbled behind Lou. The exit door latched behind them.

Sunlight swallowed Chuck. He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hand above them, a visor, to shield them. He stumbled one step more then he stopped, halting Lou also.

"C'mon, Chuck, there's no time!"

"Wait, Lou, what's going on? One minute I'm playing a game, the next you've knocked off my headset and are talking to me in sci-fi movie lines…"

Chuck might have seen a half-smile of almost no duration appear on Lou's face, but his eyes were still adjusting to the sunlight. Has the sun always been this bright? My entire life? The campus background against which Lou was foregrounded, expansive and green, seemed bizarrely regular, controlled, in comparison to the jungle — the profuse VR jungle — Chuck had been in just moments before.

Lou yanked him forward again, unexpectedly, throwing him off-balance and forcing him to follow. Ahead of them sat a cardinal red golf cart. 'Stanford Groundskeeping' was stenciled in white on its side. The cart was running.

"Get in, Chuck, get in. I'll explain as soon as we're — as soon as you're — safe."

She pulled Chuck to her then pushed him past her, onto the passenger side of the cart's bench seat. He fell in, bewildered, not knowing what else to do. She was strong for someone so tiny. Lou was on the driver's side in a moment and she mashed the pedal on the floor and the cart whirred away, picking up speed.

Lou looked back. Chuck did too. No one was there.

Lou swung the wheel suddenly, throwing herself against Chuck and Chuck against his side of the cart. Chuck shut his eyes, trying desperately to claw his way to where he was. He felt like he was awakening from a dream, or escaping from a spell — as if he were somehow behind himself, a step or two of doubtful twilight separating him from himself.

"Hold on, Chuck!"

Lou jerked the wheel again, this time in the opposite direction, and threw Chuck against herself. Chuck noticed how good she smelled.

And then Chuck caught up with himself. The cart was speeding along Via Pueblo, on Stanford's campus, jetting along in a Stanford utility cart. Lou glanced at him and seemed to see him come to himself, catch up. The other half of her possible earlier smile flitted across her face.

Gripping his side of the cart, Chuck craned around. The Monday-of-Spring-Break campus was nearly deserted. Two pedestrians, curious, stopped to gaze at the fast-moving cart, but neither seemed unduly interested. The other pedestrians were more intent on their destinations than on a passing utility cart, even one bulleting across campus.

Lou spoke but without looking at Chuck: her eyes were focused ahead, her hands tight on the wheel. "We need to get to Green Library. I know you don't understand — but you need to trust me. You know me."

Chuck nodded blankly, not sure he agreed, but not sure what else to do. Lou saw his nod as she checked behind them again. Chuck looked behind them too. No one was following them.

"Good, it worked," Lou breathed out, her relief apparent. "I disabled the cart they were using. They'll have to follow on foot or find another cart. That should allow us to gain some distance on them, keep them from knowing where we've gone."

"'They'," Chuck asked, "'them'? Who, Lou?"

"I'll explain in a few minutes, Chuck. Hang on."

Lou wheeled the cart onto Lomita Mall, barely slowing to do so. Again, Lou was thrown against Chuck. Despite his confusion and near panic, he smelled her hair again. The scent added to his confusion even as it detracted a little from his panic.

"Brazilian Joia," Lou said flatly.

"What?"

"My shampoo. What you're smelling. Nice, huh? Expensive but totally worth it."

Chuck shook his head. The cart was sailing along the broad sidewalk and before he could make sense of the exchange about shampoo, Lou whipped the cart onto Escondido Mall, throwing herself and the Brazilian Joia against Chuck once more. He tried not to inhale but failed.

Lou shot him a full, coy smile. Chuck shook his head another time, trying to shake sense into it. This isn't happening. This is just some odd variant in the game, in SpyCraft. But then he felt the cool of the cart metal against his hand, a discreet tactile quality. The scent of Lou's hair was a discreet olfactory quality. — No, it isn't the game, however unreal it seems. He looked ahead in time to see the Clock Tower and then Lou angled the cart onto Lausen Mall.

They were close to the Library.

"Why the Library? I work there."

"I know," Lou offered without looking at Chuck, responding to his comment, not his question. "Be patient?"

"Patient? You keep telling me there's no time, dragging me along, trying to kill me in this go-cart. — How can I be patient?"

Lou checked behind them then narrowed her eyes at Chuck. "Do you always talk this much?"

Chuck nodded. "Yeah, mostly." He bit his lip.

Lou laughed silently as she turned the cart toward Green Library, driving it to the side of the building and parking it alongside several others.

When the cart stopped moving, Chuck breathed out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"C'mon. Follow me!"

Chuck jumped out and followed. Lou ran to a side door, a fire door, one not normally in use. Chuck was about to tell her it was locked when she pulled and it opened. Lou looked at Chuck and gestured sharply for him to keep close. Chuck listened for an alarm to go off but none did.

Lou led him among the stacks. It was not in a part of the Library he often worked in although he had been in it occasionally. Lou stopped and turned to Chuck just before they emerged from the stacks into a more populous section of the library.

Lou held out her hand. "Hold my hand, like we're a couple. Just walk along naturally."

The command of course made Chuck disturbingly aware of how he was walking. For a moment, he was sure he became John Cleese, a Minister of Silly Walks, and that everyone was staring at him. But Lou squeezed his hand and whispered: "You're doing good."

He was less self-aware then but his earlier confusion returned and his previous near-panic threatened to erupt into fiery, full panic. Lou seemed to intuit the change and she gave his hand another squeeze. "Remember the scent of my shampoo."

That worked. Chuck calmed down; his shoulders relaxed. He felt rather than heard Lou giggle beside him — and he gave her a wan smile. They reached a stairwell door and Lou dropped Chuck's hand and stepped in front of him, opening the door. She started down the stairs, glancing back to see that Chuck was following.

"Okay. We're almost there." She waited and took Chuck's hand.

They left the stairwell and entered the Lower Level. Lou's pace quickened. A moment later they entered a small, private carrel. Lou released Chuck's hand, opened the door, then closed the door once they were inside. After locking the door, Lou retrieved her phone from her pocket and touched the screen a couple of times. She put it to her ear.

"Alpha, this is Beta. We're in the carrel. No, no one followed us." She listened and as she did she glanced at Chuck. "No, he's okay, I think. I haven't talked to him yet but I'm pretty sure I made it to him in time. Okay, how long? Ten minutes. We'll be here."

Lou put her phone back in her pocket and gestured to one of the two wooden chairs in the small room, the chair against the wall.

"We'll have to wait for a few minutes. I'll try to answer a question or two for you." Lou leaned against the back of the other chair, stationed beneath the messy, book-strewn desk.

"Is this your carrel?"

"Huh?" Lou asked, an amused look on her face. "Where did that come from?"

Chuck shrugged. "The same place as your Brazilian Joia comment."

Lou shook her head. "No, it belongs to a friend. She's writing her senior thesis down here. Women's Studies. But she's away on Spring Break — Men's Studies."

Chuck did not expect the joke and so it took him a moment to get it.

When she saw he did, Lou stood straight. "You asked who they are. Let's start there. The short answer is they are the CIA."

Chuck gaped. "Who is the CIA?"

"The people running the tournament, the people in the lab coats."

"The blonde? The big guy?"

Lou nodded. "Both. Her name is Walker; his, Casey. Technically, he's NSA, but that doesn't matter at the moment."

Chuck dropped his head for a second and then lifted it back up. His confusion had returned in duplicate. "CIA, NSA...I don't understand. I was just there to play a game."

"I know. I hoped to head you off at the door, but that blonde bitch took my post. I couldn't argue for fear of giving myself away."

"Wait, you're telling me that those two — Walker and Casey? — are spies?"

"Yes, they are. And the tournament was an elaborately staged trap for you."

Chuck narrowed his eyes, shaking his head in violent denial. "For me? That's crazy! I am nobody."

"No, Chuck, you are most definitely not nobody. But I don't have time to go into all that right now. Listen. They — the CIA agents — were going to expose you to...programming using the game.

"Programming?" Chuck muttered but Lou held up her hand.

"Yes, programming. They intended to use the programming to make you a kind of...super spy."

Chuck sat for a moment, trying to comprehend. Finally, he asked: "Against my will?"

Lou shrugged one shoulder. "Not exactly. That was the reason, or one of the reasons, for the game."

"So I was playing a game?"

"Yes and no, Chuck. There is a SpyCraft game. The other gamers in the lab are playing it. You were playing something else, call it a malignant variant of SpyCraft."

The situation, in all its unbelievableness, settled on Chuck like an immense physical weight. Without meaning to, he jabbed his index finger at Lou. "But you're...you're just a student here, like me."

"Not like you, Chuck. I am a student — sort of — that's my cover. I have a job. I work...for a different organization."

"The CIA? NSA?" Each option seemed crazy to Chuck. Lou was the small, wonderfully cute girl he'd talked to in the hallways, thought about asking out. The one whose shampoo smelled so good. She was not a secret agent.

"No," Lou said carefully, "neither. I work for a group you have never heard of, a group dedicated to ending the abuses of the American intelligence agencies, particularly their abuse of American citizens, like you. If they'd succeeded today, they'd have declared you government property — your rights would have been effectively eliminated."

"Property? I'm a person."

Lou gave Chuck a quick, affirmative grin. "Yes, Chuck, you are, and I...we...intend for you to remain a person."

"What did you mean, program?"

Lou's cute face pinched. "I can't explain the technical stuff. Above my pay grade. The techs will explain that. But they were going to download a program into you using the game, and that program was going to...change you. Make you over in the CIA's image.

"But look at me," Chuck said, gesturing generally at himself, "I'm not in any danger of being cast in a Bond film." He looked at Lou and she just raised an eyebrow. "Besides, I'm an AI student. What you're talking about, to the extent that I understand it, is impossible."

"No, it was just believed to be impossible, Chuck. Isn't that how almost all scientific advances are? At one time, people said humans couldn't fly."

"But, even if it were possible, why would anyone choose me? I'm too...lanky to be a spy."

"And I'm too short and too cute." Lou gave him a challenging look.

After a moment, she continued. "The program would have implanted skills. The mastery of them would not have been immediate — but it would have been tremendously accelerated. What would normally take others years to master would take you days, maybe only hours. The program would also have greatly diminished your capacity for empathy, your compassion. It would have turned your moral reasoning into pure ends/means calculations, and the programmers would get to decide the ends..."

"So, the program would swell my head and shrink my heart?" Chuck's question rang with scorn.

Lou winced but met his gaze squarely. "More or less, yes. Not literally, but yes."

"But that still doesn't explain me. Why me?"

"Because only someone with a particular kind of...receptivity...can download the program workably."

"Receptivity?"

"Something about a peculiar kind of mind — kind of brain, I guess. You have that kind — to a degree no one else does. The CIA believes no one else is close. They've been cultivating you...for months."

Chuck stood up and waved his arms, elbows bent, hands up, palms facing Lou.

"Just stop. Stop! I'm...We're acting like this could all be true: that CIA agents are on the Stanford campus, setting an elaborate trap for me, Chuck Bartowski, potential super-spy. — The only thing about all this that's remotely plausible is the bit about me having potential." He stopped waving his arms but still held them up. "People used to say that about me but they don't much anymore. — And no one ever thought I had spy potential."

Lou screwed up her expression in distaste. "We don't have time for you to wallow, Chuck — and it's not your best look." She checked her watch. "Alpha will be here in a minute."

Chuck dropped his arms finally and looked plaintively at Lou. "Do you have any proof that what you're telling me is true? That this isn't just some elaborate prank? Anything?"

Lou gave him a pondering glance, then retrieved her phone again. She held it in front of her, touching the screen.

She stopped and glanced up at Chuck. "Look, we have to get you out of here. I'll show you this, but we have to put off talking about it until we get someplace truly safe."

She seemed to be waiting for his response. "Okay," Chuck said after a moment. "But show me."

Lou handed him her phone. On the screen was a picture of his former girlfriend, Jill. Jill Roberts. She was sitting at an outdoor table they called 'our table' at a small restaurant just off-campus.

"Push play," Lou said. Chuck, unable to quite comprehend what he was seeing, did, holding the phone and his breath.

The video played. Jill was nursing a drink, looking around nervously. A waiter was working behind her, taking down a Thanksgiving display.

Then Jill sat straighter in her chair. A moment later, a woman strode to the table. The woman. The Norse Warrior Princess. Walker, Lou called her. Her hair was down and she was wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses but there was no mistaking her. She sat down gracefully.

And then Chuck could hear her voice. "Hello, Agent Roberts."

He almost dropped the phone. He glanced at Lou, his jaw unhinged, and she nodded. "It's her. Directional mike."

"Agent Walker," Jill answered after another look around. "This is maybe not the best place to meet. Chuck's supposed to be in class but…"

Walker gestured dismissively. "You work for me, Agent Roberts; I call the shots. Today, Bartowski is my worry and he is in class. We're safe. So, are you ready to do it?"

Jill's eyes dropped. "Yes, if that's what you want. If it has to be now."

"It does. We have a carefully planned timetable for the next several weeks. So, get it done, and get it done today."

"Breaking up with him will break Chuck's heart…" Jill said, lifting her eyes slowly.

Walker almost sneered. "You haven't fallen for your mark, Agent Roberts, have you?" Even seated, Walker's posture registered contempt.

Jill stiffened. "No, of course not. I'm a professional."

"And you haven't slept with him?"

Jill looked offended, indignant. "No, agents don't sleep with marks."

Walker studied Jill. Jill's face was reflected twice in Walker's sunglass lenses. "Well, we're instructed not to sleep with them. That doesn't mean it doesn't, hasn't happened. Agents slip up, things slip in. This kind of mission is hard. It's easy for an agent to start to believe, to feel, or to start to believe she feels something."

"No, Agent Walker, no. I haven't slept with Chuck Bartowski. There's been a lot of...making out — but no sex. He's wanted me to but — as you and I agreed — I stalled, delayed, told him we should wait for the perfect moment."

She paused, looked embarrassed. "I will admit — Chuck's a good kisser."

Walker stared at Jill for another long moment. She frowned and shook her head. "Not relevant. Now, remember, when you finish with Bartowski, you are to start up with Agent Larkin as quickly and publicly as possible."

Jill swallowed. "You know that will kill Chuck,...um, ...Bartowski, don't you, doing that, right after the break-up?"

Walker looked into the distance, her fingers drumming the table, her voice refrigerated. "We need to make sure Bartowski's given you up, sees it's hopeless."

Chuck's vision of the screen blurred. It was too much. He let Lou take the phone gently from him. He wiped at his eyes as she stopped the video.

"I'm sorry, Chuck. But if I'm going to save you, I needed you to believe me. I needed you to know."

"Jill, a spy? — Bryce, too? — It was all a scheme? I was manipulated?"

Lou reached out and put her hand around Chuck's wrist, her voice softening more. "Yes, Chuck. Jill Roberts and Bryce Larkin both work for the CIA. You were their mark for more than a year." Lou's soft tone hardened, turned emphatic, grave. "Walker masterminded the whole thing. She pulled the strings, pulls the strings, the bitch."

Chuck recalled Walker's smudged face beneath dirty black hair, the sudden warmth of her blue eyes as she encouraged him to save himself. — But that had been Walker in the game, a dead bit of programmer's code masked by a living face. Not the real woman. The real fake woman.

He'd seen her now for who she really was. Agent Walker.

Lies. His life was lies. All of it. Agent Walker was the Mother of Lies.

Bitch.

A single quiet knock on the carrel door — and Lou turned. "Let's go, Chuck. Let's get you the hell off this campus."

Chuck nodded, punch-drunk, silent, unable to trust himself to speak instead of sob.

A/N: What of Walker and her CIA team? — More sometime next week, I hope.