A/N: More of the story. Some characters make their first 'on-screen' appearances.
Jeux Sans Frontières
Chapter Five: Time-Keeping
It's the time of turning and there's something stirring outside
It's the time of turning and the old world's falling
Nothing you can do can stop the next emerging
Time of the turning and we'd better learn to say our goodbyes
— Peter Gabriel, The Time of the Turning
Downtown San Francisco/Monday about mid-day
Carina Miller thumbed slowly through a magazine as the stylist finished.
Carina was still annoyed, still angry. She had hoped a spa day might help — and maybe it had. But not enough. A massage, new clothes, new earrings, a new haircut, and Carina still wanted to yank Walker's long blond hair out in handfuls.
"There!" the stylist crowed in victory, throwing up his arms for a moment and then spinning Carina's chair so that she faced herself.
She looked at the new curls in her short red hair and nodded approval. At least there were a few, comforting constants, like Carina's attractiveness. The curls were cute. Carina had been nervous about the new stylist — she normally got her hair done in DC. But she was still in San Francisco and she wanted a change. She had a week before she had to report back to DC, and so she thought some daytime shopping and nighttime clubbing would divert her mind, channeling her anger into worthwhile action instead of daydreaming about disfiguring Walker.
Daniel, the stylist, was standing behind her, arms crossed, looking supremely self-satisfied. "You are my masterpiece," he said to the mirror, more to himself than Carina.
Carina looked at him in the mirror. "Calm yourself, Daniel; kill the ululation. It helps when you start with promising raw material. You didn't make any silk purse from a sow's ear. You started with silk."
Daniel wilted, frowned.
Still looking into the mirror, but now refocused on herself, Carina gave her new curls a tap, enjoying their bounce. Shaw knew what he was doing; she'd give him a large tip.
Although she tried to resist the impulse, she looked down at her watch, her arm emerging from beneath the styling cape with which Daniel draped her. Almost noon.
Today was D-Day. Walker was going to program Bartowski. Or kill him. One of the two should have happened by now. Carina wondered which way it had gone. Either way: poor Bartowski.
A robot or a corpse.
Hell of a choice.
And despite her anger and her daydreams, and maybe a little because of them, Carina allowed herself another thought: Poor Walker.
Lou took a moment to respond to Chuck's question; she looked away from him, then back toward him. She took a breath.
"Who do I work for?" She paused again, took another breath. "The name, our name, won't mean anything to you. It's not like we're a publicly-traded company. Or The Company. So let me tell you about who and what we are, at least in general terms."
She turned on the bed, putting one knee on it, so that she was half-facing Chuck. She continued, her voice taking on a slight lecturer's lilt.
"Our name is Pivot. Pivot was started by a group of American intelligence officers — CIA — who had become nauseated by the excesses of American intelligence, espionage. And they'd become suspicious of the deep state, the malignant self-preservation of the massive Washington bureaucracy. The officers found each other and realized their common dissatisfactions, and so they began work to curb the excesses of intelligence from within, to break up, crack, where possible, the mass of the deep state."
Lou paused, searching his face for a reaction. Chuck furrowed his brow, then smirked slightly.
"That sounds like the first paragraph of a recruitment brochure — if you don't mind me saying so."
Lou flushed and looked hurt for a second, but then she grinned slowly. "It does at that, doesn't it. But, even so, that's who we are."
Chuck glanced down at his shoe tops, studying the laces, then turned to look at Lou. "I get it. I mean — I've always believed the 'deep state'," Chuck placed air quotes carefully around the phrase, taking on Lou's lecturing tone, "was conspiracy theorizing, at best a confusion of evil intent with the natural, brute reproduction of bureaucrats. After all, Job One for any bureaucrat is the creation of more bureaucrats — but that's the nature of bureaucracy, not the product of anyone's nasty plans. Think about Stanford, all the administrators, constantly creating more administrators, but there's no Stanford deep state."
Lou narrowed her eyes, shaking her head. "But the creation of more bureaucrats is worth resisting, whether it's anyone's dark plan or just a fact of nature! Kudzu nearly strangled the whole goddamn South, and it was worth resisting, despite it's being just a plant."
Chuck shrugged concessively. "I suppose. I'm not sure the analogy's a good one, but you don't have to convince me about the excesses of the CIA, since I'm one of them, I'm here because of them. People like Agent Walker, and the people who assigned her to me, gave her the orders, they need to be stopped.
"I'm a person; I'm a citizen; I'm innocent. I'm no repository for some insane program, no matter how...receptive... my brain is."
"I agree," Lou said simply, quietly, "that's why I've taken on these risks. Why Pivot has."
"So, what happens now, Lou? I take it Agent Walker's not likely to let me just say No and go back to campus?" Chuck raised one eyebrow in mock hope.
Lou dropped her head. "Not likely." She looked up. "The truth, Chuck, ...the truth is that...she has orders to kill you if you do not successfully download the program."
The small room was as silent as a cemetery mausoleum.
Chuck eventually spoke, slowly, as if the words were one's he'd just learned. "Kill me? Me? I'm nobody. I'm barely alive; why kill me?"
Lou's eyes flashed. "We've established you are not nobody, Chuck. — Yes, Chuck. According to Walker's plan, you either become a super-spy today or you're...done."
"God," Chuck said, his face pale, his voice shaky, "what kind of monster is she?"
"The kind who's terminated other people."
Silence returned and slowly, filled the room, running to its edges, syrupy thick.
"So, she's not just a spy, she's an assassin?" Chuck's quiet question answered itself, interrogation become declaration.
Lou's voice was equally quiet. "A trained assassin, yes. It's not her only job, not even her primary one, but she's done it often enough to have a reputation as Langston Graham's Enforcer. He sends her when he wants to be sure there's no mistake."
"And I could be a mistake." He looked around the room, his situation. "I now am a mistake."
Lou did not speak but her nod was eloquent. After a moment, she spoke. "Your life as you have known it, Chuck, it's over."
"But I'm supposed to graduate in a few weeks. I have a sister who's almost a doctor. I have a best friend back in Burbank I haven't seen in weeks. I have a life!"
"And Walker's already ended it, Chuck. Don't let her kill you too. Look, I need you to come with me. We have a place where you can stay while we create a new identity for you, a new life, but a real one. It'd be like going into witness protection, except we'll do a better job."
Chuck stood. He took a step away from the bed then whirled to face Lou, his hands up in supplication. "A new life? I don't want a new life; I want my old one, at least the part of it until Thanksgiving, ...I want my old life to be real!"
"That's not in my power, Chuck. It's not in anyone's power. I may have been quoting a line, but I meant it when I said 'Come with me if you want to live'."
Chuck shook his head and backpedaled from Lou, from her words. "No. No. This can't be happening. None of this, from the minute I put on that VR headset. — I was in that line to play SpyCraft, when you were handing out clipboards, and I was hoping to ask you out tonight...not to have you save me and...recreate me!" He stopped.
"Chuck, there's more I need to tell you, more that I need to explain, but it's your choice. You can walk out of here, now, go back to Stanford, and take your chances, I won't stop you, no one will. Or you can wait here until I've made the final arrangements and then come with me. And, if you do," Lou paused, "maybe tonight we can even have that dinner together after all. — I would have said yes, Chuck, and not just a cover yes."
She patted the spot on the bed again.
"Pivot?" Casey choked out after a moment. "I thought they were a myth."
Walker shook her head slowly, her eyes not quite focused on anything. "No, they're not. That's the official line, cultivated by the CIA, but they're real, and they've begun to do more than whisper in corners. Obviously."
Casey took one step toward Walker. "Cultivated by the CIA?"
"They're a cancer of ours, a group of...dissatisfied turncoats. But the Director has never officially mentioned their existence. He's tried to keep them out of view, the battle with them out of view. But they've grown, growing, they've started recruiting outside the CIA." Walker slowed, considering her words, reluctant. "I've had several missions involving Pivot."
Casey looked into Walker's eyes. "Missions?"
Walker nodded and Casey asked no more, surprised to have been told that much and almost sure he knew the nature of her missions. Director Graham was fighting a secret war against a group of spies he had trained, maybe, in a way, created, and Walker had been his weapon against them.
"How would they have known about today?"
Walker shook her head, staring past Casey. "I don't know. I've deliberately kept Operation SpyCraft small, involved few agents, all vetted by Graham himself as well as by me. Everyone involved is CIA — except you, and Carina Miller."
Casey stepped into the conversational opening. "Could it have been Miller? Why'd she get reassigned?"
Walker continued to stare past Casey for a moment, then she readjusted, looked at him. "No, it's not Miller. She's lots of things, but she's no traitor."
Casey shook his head. "I'm not so sure. I worked with her once…"
"I know," Walker said.
"And," Casey went on, "I'm not sure I'd put anything past her."
Walker seemed to consider Casey's words. "I suppose anything is possible," she stared into the distance again, thoughtful, "but we need to find out more about Palone.
"She's our only clue at the moment. Let's really search this place. I'll search here, in the bedroom and bathroom. You search in the other rooms. Then we need to talk to Jill Roberts."
Chuck sat down on the bed again. "I really don't have much of a choice, do I?" he asked softly.
"No, not in one sense. But in another, you do. You can choose to trust me, trust what Pivot is prepared to do for you…"
Chuck turned to Lou this time, put his knee on the bed. His knee touched hers and she smiled. But she said nothing; she waited on him.
"I don't know how to trust anyone...or anything right now, Lou. This has all been so sudden, so overwhelming, so damn confusing. I swear I feel a little like I'm still in SpyCraft, still playing the game but after a sudden scenario shift."
Lou bent toward him, pulling him to her by fisting the front of his shirt. She kissed him for the second time, but this kiss was longer, harder, and, although he was too shocked to respond, unsure he should respond, he felt her soft tongue sweep warm across his lips. She leaned back and looked at him.
"How do I taste?"
Without thinking, he licked his lips. "Nice, Lou." She grinned — and Chuck felt the blush on his face, realized it had been there since the kiss.
"Can you taste anything in Spycraft?"
"No."
"Ok, so we're not in the game. We're in a safe house near San Francisco. This is real, Chuck, all-too-real. This isn't Inception or The Matrix — or even Descartes' First Meditation."
Chuck sat still for a moment, thinking. Then he looked Lou in the eyes. "Descartes? College may be your cover but you seem to have listened in class. — Tell me one thing, Lou. You and Pivot — why do this? Did you do it for me? Or are you doing it to damage or frustrate the CIA? Or is there something you want from me?"
Lou pursed her lips. She seemed to be making a decision. "There is something we want from you, Chuck, something we would like from you. We know the CIA wants you to house this program of theirs. We don't know much about the program, except what it is supposed to do. We don't know how it's supposed to do it. We don't have any interest in having or using the program, but we would like to understand it better." She paused, her face open. "While we work on your new identity, we'd like to run some tests on you."
Chuck swallowed hard. "Tests?"
"No probes or scary wires or needles, Chuck, nothing invasive or painful. Just MRI's and psychological tests. We believe that if we can discover what makes you the ideal candidate to download the program, we'll have a better understanding of the program. A distant form of reverse-engineering."
Chuck nodded and sighed slowly. "So you do want something from me too, Pivot does? You're not just doing this out of the goodness of your hearts." He inflected the final phrase hard and Lou noticed.
"No, Chuck. Our hope is to save you. That saving you jams up the CIA and their plans, jams up Walker," Lou slowed for a moment, her tone sharp, "that's just a bonus. A serious bonus, but still just a bonus. And the tests are strictly up to you. You can do them or not. Not doing them won't change what we are prepared to do for you, want to do for you."
She paused, her hand picking idly at a loose thread in the bedcover. "Pivot is not UNICEF, Chuck, and I'm not pretending that it is. The CIA fights dirty — take Walker, her plans for you — and it is hard to fight clean against someone who fights dirty, but we do our best." She bit her lower lip. "But if you want to do more than save yourself, if you want to keep this from happening to anyone else, then you'll help us, let us test you."
Chuck liked the thought of keeping what had been done to him from happening again. He liked the thought of crossing Walker. "Look, let me think about it, okay? This is all so confusing, like I said. I will go with you, and maybe I'll do the tests."
Lou let go of the loose thread and gave him a bright smile.
"That's good enough. Now, I'll go make the final arrangements. We should be on the road in less than an hour."
Chuck nodded, checking his watch.
Jill Roberts stepped out of the shower, out of the bathroom, and into her apartment's bedroom. She'd just come back from a run. She'd needed the run. Today was a crucial day for her, for the work she'd been doing for so long, the Bartowski work. It had been exhausting.
Still, it irked her to be shut out of it on the crucial day. So much of what was happening — what she hoped was happening — was her handiwork. She felt bad for Bartowski, for Chuck, but the mission was the mission. He was sweet, genuinely sweet, and she had fallen for him just a little. But she was a professional. She'd done her job, as complicated and as hard as it was.
The run had helped. So had the shower.
She glanced at her mussed bed, the back of Bryce Larkin as he slept, prone, upon it, wearing nothing but a sheet across his butt. Bryce was no Chuck, but he wasn't bad — not as consolation prizes went.
She was dressed and brushing her hair when her phone rang. She checked her watch, then picked the phone up, surprised.
Langston Graham fiddled with the pens on his desk, then he fiddled with a paperclip. Then he glared at his phone. Why hadn't Walker called? He checked his watch. He should have heard from Walker by now. What was she doing?