Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.
Some of these episodes are hard to write around, especially when they include things like "A skeleton key to our nuclear facilities" (Whatever that means)
STRATCOM owns the military security, NNSA owns the civilian side. I'm not at all certain what a skeleton key to those places would look like, but I'm sure it requires a 26-character Alpha-numeric mixed case password that has to be changed every 30 days. (For those who remember the old days of DoD systems and DISA logins you may laugh/cry now.) Joking aside, as I'm sure you're expecting, I'm going to change it up a bit.
Also, for the counter intel stuff, that's complicated to write about, reading about mapping communication networks and assigning risk scores and building out a suspect map is very dry. So, I've kept some of the techniques without going overboard. I hope I hit that balance.
General Alexander was the head of the NSA in this time period, he was very good at his job.
October 28, 2007 – 1530
Chuck was dreading this phone call, he looked over at the couch, Sarah was lying there quietly watching him. She'd grown attached to his Stanford shirt, he noted with amusement.
She made a hurry up motion with her hand.
He sighed and started texting Ellie.
C: Hey sis, texting in case you're at work.
E: I'm not, what's up?
C: Do you mind if I bring someone to Thanksgiving?
Chuck waited a moment, then the cell phone rang. He looked at Sarah in amusement. He answered, "Hey Ellie. Yes, the someone is a girl."
"Seriously? I'm so happy for you, yes bring her please!
What's she like? what's her name?"
"Her name is Sarah, she's absolutely fantastic, we met at work."
"Oh, I can't wait to meet her! What does she do, is she in IT like you are?"
"Oh no, she's just a Ranger. Keeps an eye on things, helps me out when needed." Sarah was giggling on the couch.
"We actually met when she was helping me out on a project, and we got dinner afterwards."
"That's great! She sounds wonderful!" Ellie's enthusiasm spilled out of the phone.
Chuck and Ellie chatted for a few more minutes before Ellie had to go, she promised to call back later that night.
He looked over at Sarah, "Okay, so for once we have the day to ourselves."
She looked at him, "How's your leg, you were in a lot of pain last night."
"Feeling better, not fully there, but you know they said it would take a week or two."
"We could watch one of those war movies you're talking about all the time."
"War movies? Do you mean Star Wars?"
"Yeah! Then we could go out and get dinner."
"Sounds good! Okay, here this is Episode 4: A New Hope."
"Why don't we start with Episode 1? Wouldn't that make more sense?"
Chuck suppressed the nerd rage and instead explained, "Well, the new movies are the "Prequels" Episodes 1,2,3 whereas the original movies are 4,5,6."
"That… doesn't make sense." she wrinkled her nose in confusion.
"Here, let's just watch them in release order."
He put on "A New Hope" and put his arm around Sarah, she snuggled into his side and they watched as the opening crawl scrolled by.
It is a period of civil war…
Rob sat down at his desk, exhausted. He hadn't slept much. The report from Q Group was getting worse by the hour.
It appeared that the only agency not infected with this cancer was CIFA. Whether it was due to the small size of the agency, the youth of the staff, or just simply the fact that it was a new Agency, and the rot hadn't had a chance to set in yet.
TAO was clean, for that he was grateful. Q Group had found potential traitors in their own ranks, which was slowing down the work even more.
CIA was similarly infected, as were DIA and FBI. State Department's INR was the least impacted outside of CIFA, but that might just be because these rogue agents forgot it existed. They needed to clean out one Agency, then they could use that to clean the rest out. At less than 600 people, CIFA was too small for this.
Rob prepared the report and marked it for Casey's eyes only and sent it via trusted courier to CIFA HQ.
Graham sat at his desk surrounded by coffee, Tommy Delgado, the man was a legend in the Agency. He worked the Middle East for years, taught at the Farm for two rotations and mentored dozens if not nearly a hundred agents, he was known by sight to a majority of the NCS.
Sarah was known by name, she was aloof and efficient she burned through mission objectives and then moved on to the next operation, or she had, before she met Bartowski. Ironically moving her into supporting a counterintelligence team may have be the best option for them, the CIA could use her to clean the ranks.
Tommy on the other hand, took the time to make friends. Removing Tommy wasn't going to solve this issue, how deep did the rot go? NSA was having a quiet panic as they realized just how deep the corruption sank in. Even putting out a burn notice wasn't going to work, Tommy was too popular, too many in the Agency would wonder what was going on. If he killed Tommy, he might remove the head, but did they have any guarantees. They needed to know more before people started dropping.
How did they miss this? When did Tommy go rogue? Was he the one that talked Larkin into turning?
It looked like it was just by luck that the team protecting the Constellation scientists and the new facility were clean. No new members were going to be assigned, and no one was rotating out. They couldn't risk this again.
He hadn't heard from DIA yet, but he didn't imagine they were in better shape. Beckman was going to call him in an hour.
He reached for the antacids in his desk and threw a handful in his mouth. He was so paranoid he'd bought a new bottle.
Beckman was going through the reports, thank goodness TAO was clean, their tools leaking out gave her nightmares. The counterintelligence directorates at the agencies were the first to be infected, which made sense. Federal hiring was down, too much work was going out to Contractors, with the loss of the Civilian positions they couldn't afford to lose even one GS in the counterintelligence groups, so waivers were signed.
She prepared her report to for the DNI himself, if they were going to have a fighting chance, they needed to get the Constellation data into a human and begin purging their ranks of the traitors. Everyone was too worried about the risks, the risk of not going ahead with this was too great.
Bartowski was the ideal candidate. DNI would approve of this, she was certain.
She reached over to the phone to call Graham.
Casey looked over at the board, CIFA was clean. By the grace of Reagan himself, CIFA was clean.
The computers were all on, his team were building out contact maps, assigning risk scores and tearing through all communications from Delgado. CIFA was being mobilized quietly. The wrong word at the wrong time would be a disaster for everyone. Information was being gathered; the agents were moving around as quietly as they could.
Andrew was explaining the risk model that they were using to Ashley,
"We're starting out with Delgado as a known bad and building out a map of everyone he's talked with…" Casey let his voice trail off as he got lost in his thoughts, he would let Bartowski have today, but they needed him and Walker tomorrow.
Plus, he didn't want to deal with the fresh lady-feelings, with a grunt he got more coffee.
Her heels clacked as she walked in, Graham was standing next to her as was Rob. None of them had slept more than an hour before the meeting.
They were let into the room, inside sat General Keith Alexander from NSA, Mark Graves the CIFA Director, Robert Muller from the FBI, Lt Gen. Mike Maples from DIA, and at the head of the table sat Mike McConnell the director of national intelligence.
As they sat down, the meeting began.
McConnell was the first to speak, "So what I'm hearing is that by chance we happened to stumble on a cabal of intelligence professionals working to… do what? Cause chaos? Undermine our security apparatus?"
Everyone looked at each other, Muller was the first to speak, "Sir, we haven't even drawn a circle around the problem yet. Our internal counterintelligence people have likely been corrupted, we're working off of a trusted list who have had no contact with anyone potentially rogue and are having them vet each other and others within their organizations. Because we don't have the full capability of these groups we're moving slowly. No agency aside from CIFA is free of their taint."
Graham spoke up, "We're holding off on detain and termination orders until we have a clear idea of what we're dealing with. Some of the people are extremely popular, the last thing we want to do is push more people to this… Cabal"
McConnell's powerful voice cut the silence, "and there's nothing we can do to speed this up?"
Beckman took the opportunity, "Sir, we can use the Constellation data, being able to conduct visual analysis of suspected agents would allow us to remove the traitors quickly. It's what our own people are doing now, correlating investigations with all the different datasets, and making risk scores, this would enable us to proceed faster."
"It's a risk, from the reports I've seen it's untested."
"Sir, we're fighting an enemy we don't know, they know our tools and our tradecraft, for all we know they taught our classes on those topics. We've had several of the affected people turn out to be instructors. We're running out of options, at this point the question isn't "Are they at risk of being a cabal member?" so much as "How much of a risk are they based on their interactions with known members?""
"I'm not okay with grabbing one of ours and pushing him into an experiment, we'll table it for now, but I want to revisit the option later."
"Sir, I recommend we put a detain and secure order on the ideal candidate, he's a NSA Employee, Charles Bartowski. He's the only one with a retention score that high."
Rob jolted at the mention, "Sir, we-"
Beckman cut him off, "Now isn't the time for sentimental feelings to get in the way, we're in real trouble. With your permission, Sir. I can have the order given and he'll be secured by tonight."
McConnell looked at Alexander, "He's one of yours, what do you think?"
Alexander looked thoughtful, "I think I'd rather have willing cooperation rather than coerced control. Let's leave him be. I'll call him into my office tomorrow, we'll even include Walker, she knows how critical this is, she may convince him."
Beckman looked at her superior, "Why would we further their bond? We should at least separate him from Agent Walker, she may prove to be an obstacle should we need to secure him."
Graham chuckled, "First off, they're doing nothing wrong. Second, does anyone here think that forceful separation is a good idea?"
Beckman shot Graham a nasty look, "Are you telling me you don't have control of your Agent? That she's at risk of harming Federal officers?"
Graham's frayed patience snapped, "I am saying Diane, that if we were looking for a blueprint to make Walker less loyal, we couldn't have found a better one. She is doing nothing wrong; Walker is free to socialize, just because she hasn't until now doesn't mean she can't. We have enough trouble without worrying about creating more by turning her against us, you think that this… Group… won't hesitate to exploit this?"
The rest of the table was nodding along with his explanation, Rob spoke up, "Chuck is one of my lead analysts, he's temporarily out of that role due to his detached duty with CIFA, but I would not endorse any action that could put him at risk. He's already proven invaluable in the fight against this…Rot. We have to have better options than risking his mind on an unproven technology."
Beckman looked like she'd bitten into a lemon.
McConnell made his decision, "Your points are well noted, there will be no interference in their relationship nor will we secure Mr. Bartowski or subject him to this experiment."
"Now let's address the actions we're going to take to begin restoring control over our agencies."
The meeting lasted hours, everyone walked away even more concerned than when they had walked in.
McConnell looked at the empty room and picked up the phone and dialed the White House Chief of Staff. "It's Mike, I'm going to need time with the President, Vice President, Attorney General, and the National Security Advisor tomorrow, it's an emergency."
October 28, 2007 – 2230
It was late by the time Rob knocked on Chuck's door, he slipped past the lobby entrance. Chuck really needed better security. He saw the peephole in the door darken and sighed to himself, he was going to have to explain to Chuck not to look through that.
The door opened and he was faced with something he thought he'd never see. Sarah Walker dressed in what looked to be a men's Stanford shirt and sweats.
He held his palms up in peace and slipped into the living room. She had been doing dishes and it looked like Chuck was asleep in the bedroom.
"I thought you'd know better than to look through the peephole."
"I didn't, I waved my hand over it. What's going on? Chuck's leg started hurting, he's sleeping."
He was thankful she didn't use his name, he walked over to the TV and turned it on. The opening crawl to Star Wars came on and the music filled the apartment. Any laser mics would be deafened, maybe they could enjoy Lucas's work.
"Beckman was talking about splitting you up and securing Chuck. We talked her out of it, but you need to be aware. We've got ourselves a real problem, the Rot is worse than we ever could have imagined."
"Rot?"
"We needed something better than Cabal, we all felt stupid saying that."
He saw Sarah's eyes narrow, he turned around, Chuck was limping a bit and looked like he'd just woken up. "Rob? What's going on?"
Rob could feel her eyes staring holes into him, apparently when Sarah Walker fell for someone, she fell hard. Good to know. She'd keep him safe.
"Chuck, sorry to wake you, I know you're still recovering."
He filled Chuck in on the relevant parts of the meeting.
"This is getting worse by the minute," Chuck said as he took a seat on the couch.
"It is, look, they're not going to force you, yet. Expect Beckman to come and offer you whatever you want though, she really wants you to host the data, thinks that it's the key to fighting the Rot."
Chuck looked curiously at him, "Rot?"
Sarah chimed in, "They felt stupid saying Cabal."
"They should, sounds too melodramatic."
"Some degree of drama is warranted," Rob said with a smirk.
Sarah offered him some water, he shook his head, Sarah Walker playing hostess, out of all the strange things he'd seen tonight this was in the top three.
Rob drank it down, "I'm going to head home and try and catch some sleep, I'll see you guys in the morning, but I wanted to give you the heads up. Don't accept any meetings from Beckman one on one, it's your right to insist that I be there. Do so," he paused, "Also same thing goes for Alexander, you'll be called into his office early tomorrow, Walker might be included as well. They're going to hope that your notorious devotion to the mission will have you convincing Chuck to go ahead with this."
"They'll be very disappointed," Sarah saw him out and she turned to look a Chuck, he smiled at her then was on his way back to bed.
Chuck lay down in bed, he heard the sink start again, he felt bad not helping Sarah. Next time he'd do the dishes, with that thought he started to drift off again when his phone went off. If it was Morgan he was going to snap. It was Ellie, he picked it up and started talking with her, he enjoyed the quiet bit of normalcy.
Monday rolled around, and they had to get into CIFA, Chuck moved to wake Sarah up when he found her looking at him.
"How do you always do that?"
"Spy, remember?" she stretched, "I hate mornings. I also hate your alarm clock, it's too abrupt."
"That's all that wakes me."
The phone rang again, NSA Switchboard, Chuck picked it up nervously when a soft female voice said, "General Alexander wants to see you in his office today by 0900, bring Agent Walker and Mr. Joyce if you so choose."
He looked over at Sarah, "How do you feel about protecting me from the NSA?"
She smiled.
They drove into Meade and Sarah parked, Sarah was issued a visitor badge, Rob escorted them up to meet with Alexander.
"It cannot be a good sign he knows my name."
"I did call you one of my lead analysts, and he's probably seen your name on more than a few reports."
Sarah followed silently, she'd had to surrender her pistol and knives at the front desk. The security guard had looked shocked as she divested herself of her cutlery.
They were escorted into General Alexander's office, the room was spartan, few decorations, and the desk was unassuming.
"Thank you for coming, I'm sure you're wondering what this is about. Your capture of Einerson has unearthed a nightmare. I'm sure you're aware of how bad the situation is, so I'll spare you the details and get down to it. We don't have much time, Mr. Bartowski, you're the ideal candidate to host the entire Constellation data set, when I called Perseus this morning to ask him how he felt about you hosting it, he called me a "myopic military mind obsessed with making results look good rather than actually doing good." In hindsight I should not have asked him to be completely honest." Alexander let out a laugh.
"But I'm asking you, if this what you want, if you say no, I'll accept it.
There will be no consequences for your refusal. I'll even make sure that I sign off on your endorsement for your next GS level right now if you want. All I'm asking is that you consider it, take the day and come back this afternoon and let me know. We need all the tools in the field if we're going to win this fight, we're making significant progress in rebuilding the lab, so even if you say yes, it won't be immediate."
Chuck correctly took the end of the sentence as a dismissal, they left.
He looked at Rob and Sarah, "Guys, I know this is horrible of me, I don't want to do this."
Rob looked at him, "Gee why wouldn't you want to expose your brain to something that had a high chance of damaging it, a project where the lead scientist is snapping at people who are asking him if it's ready to be implanted. With that kind of endorsement, I don't know why we don't just give it to everyone."
Sarah giggled at the sarcasm, as Rob collected himself, "If you don't want to, then don't, I told them we had better use for you than this, and I still maintain that statement. If they need the dataset so badly, they can grab someone else, I'm sure when they roll out that test to everyone in the IC, they'll find one or two more people who can handle it just as well as you can. Let them."
Sarah was silent as they left, they got into her car. "What do you think Sarah?"
She looked at him, "I don't want you to do this either. You'll never be able to do anything other than what they want, you'll become a tool of the government in every way."
She took a deep breath, "Also I'm taking a moment to be selfish here, I've earned one moment of selfishness over my career. I don't want you to take it because we might not work together, and it may change you. I like you; I really like you a lot. I like working with you and I don't want to give it up."
The admission had cost her; he could see how frayed she was over that statement.
"Hey it's okay, if you want, I'll walk in there and tell Alexander "no" right now."
She took a moment to collect herself, "I'm sorry, I've never felt this way before, I need girlfriend advice," she had on a nervous smile as she said it.
"Come on let's go for a walk, I need to stretch my leg and you need to bleed off some of that energy."
As he got out of the car an ACS guard ran up to them. "Mr. Bartowski? You've been ordered to meet with someone immediately."
Sarah moved to follow, and the guard stopped her, "Sorry ma'am, private meeting."
Chuck looked at her in confusion as he was led away. She ran back to her car and called the switchboard, "Rob Joyce please, it's an emergency."
Chuck found himself being pushed into a SCIF, contrary to the professional welcome he'd received in Alexander's. General Beckman was waiting there with a manila folder.
"Mr. Bartowski, you are the only option we have for this, the fact that you are considering declining it disappoints me greatly. We need you to secure this nation."
"Ma'am, with all due respect, I'd like Mr. Joyce up here please."
"As is your right, I'll have a guard find him."
"He's in his office"
"Then the guard won't take long, will he?"
She stood up, and paced, "You know, you probably don't remember, but the week of your birthday a man died, a good man, General Stanfield," her voice softened as she got lost in the memory.
"We met at Ft Belvoir when he was at INSCOM and I was part of AFISRA. We were still early in our careers, but we together we could move mountains, then we started hearing reports and so we started alerting people about a man named Slobodan Milosevic, we were ignored.
We fought Milosevic in our own little secret war, we worked with a man named Roan Montgomery from the CIA, the three of us could have kept the world safe from that monster. That was real spy work, agents and assets fighting, it was a grand chess game that our superiors knew nothing about, they didn't care to. In the end, we lost, we didn't have any support and our actions were swept under the rug.
I was exiled to NSA, back then this was a backwater post, Stanfield was sent overseas to SHAPE. Roan vanished back into the CIA.
A few years later we started to hear about atrocities committed, children murdered, nightmares on earth."
She looked at him, "You know what I remember most about that time?
We had all these reports, and the Secretary of State looks over at the CIA director and says, "Why didn't we see this happening?"
I wanted to shout at him, we did see it coming, we tried to fight him, that his predecessors were too weak to do what needed to be done and innocents paid the price for their inaction. I thought that was the worst we would hear of it. Maybe CIA would send someone out and the problem would go away.
Instead, NATO responded, with all their fire and fury, a bombing campaign was their solution. A bombing campaign. More innocents died.
You know what I learned that day Mr. Bartowski? It's an old adage, but "Evil succeeds when good men do nothing.""
She opened the folder, it was a series of photos, it was carnage. A woman was fighting off multiple people, in every photo the bodies around her grew. He thought he recognized the still movements, his breath caught, the last photo was of Sarah Walker aiming a gun at the camera.
"She can do what needs to be done, for the good of the nation, her entire career has been keeping us safe. She puts her life in danger every time she goes out into the field, all we're asking you to do is to host some data and undergo some training, you wouldn't need Agent Walker to fight for you. How's your leg? Healing well?
I had an analyst go through the data feeds that fed Constellation, and you know what he found? With the information that fed it." She paused before continuing,
"That the right person would have known that there was going to be a bombing at the hotel.
The right person would have stopped all of that.
The right person can save lives."
She looked back at him, "I am not going to tell you what you should do, I am telling you that the nation needs you, the nation needs people who are strong enough to do what must be done. You have that strength; you can fight the enemies on our terms.
Have a good day Mr. Bartowski. Keep the folder, it should motivate you to do the right thing."
She let him out, the guard she'd sent to find Rob was standing by the door. He unlocked it and Chuck walked out lost in thought.
He walked out of the building and he saw Sarah and Rob talking, Sarah was the first to notice him she ran over to him and hugged him, he couldn't help his flinch. She looked at him with concern.
"Sarah, Rob, we need to get to CIFA now."
He was silent the entire car ride, Rob was following them in his car. Sarah moved to touch his hand and he tried to keep a hold of hers.
They walked in, Joyce was issued a pass and they walked into their SCIF and went into the room that they used for calls. Chuck walked over to the desk they normally sat the phone on.
He put down the manila folder and opened it. Sarah's breath caught.
"I just met with Beckman, she deliberately held it away from her office so you couldn't find her."
He filled them in on the meeting, Stanfield's death, her statements about Sarah, and about him taking the fight to the Rot.
After he was done, Rob looked at him and all he said was, "She's good. She's… really good. Linking Sarah's wet work with your accepting the data and learning to fight. It's… a masterful manipulation."
Sarah looked at the photos, looked down at her hand and realized she was wearing the same ring. She took it off and dropped it in the trash.
"Chuck, this is what I did before we met, but let me be clear. If this is the kind of work, they want you to do, it would destroy you." Chuck flinched.
"I know I sound like Bryce and Fleming, please let me explain. You are open, you know I asked Casey when we met if you really worked at the NSA? You invited me to meet your family in a few weeks. You are a kind and decent man who works hard here. Like Rob says you do good work, fantastic work. Watching you use Yuri's phone to take down La Ciudad was incredible, and how you helped us take down Alahi? Just as wonderful to watch, you come alive when you're working with technology."
She looked at Rob, "Rob, could you leave for a minute please?"
Rob stepped out of the room.
She looked at him, "Chuck, I told you I care about you, you radiate a warmth and a decency that I have never seen anywhere else." She leaned her back against the wall.
"If you accept this, your life goes one of two ways. Either you turn into this," she pointed at the photo, "Or you go into a bunker and spend your life looking at things to see what the data can tell you."
"Our dating, watching Star Wars, calls with Ellie, gaming with Morgan, they all come to an end."
Chuck looked at her, "what's that worth really? Compared to the lives lost, why do I-"
"It's worth everything Chuck, everything!" she was shouting at him, he noticed there were tears in her eyes threatening to spill out.
"This is what we do, we find a problem and we ask, "How can we destroy a good person to fix this? We ruin lives and then pat ourselves on the back and say, "Job well done, where's the next life to ruin?"
I will not let that happen to you."
"Sarah…"
"No Chuck, I know what this life does to people, you have an entire world around you that cares about you. Before we met, do you know who would miss me if I died?" She paused and her breath hitched, "No one, because when Sarah Walker slides into a life, she destroys it or takes it, and she moves on. At my funeral they'd send agents to pose as mourners, someone would say I was a teacher or something, Carina might tell people I was a stripper, and that would be it."
Her voice got quiet, "And you know what? Before we met, I was okay with that. I took pride in my success rate, 100%, all enemies to the nation eliminated. I've made the world safer.
But now I feel greedy, I want Thanksgivings with family, I want to laugh, I want to feel warm, I want to watch the rest of Star Wars with you, and I want to keep wearing your Stanford shirt.
Losing you to this life would be a tragedy, it would be one of the worst things I've ever seen. Please, Chuck, please don't do this. You asked me to protect you from the NSA this morning, this is me doing that."
"Do you think I'm not strong enou-"
"Do you think I'm weak Chuck?"
"What?! No, of course not. You're incredible"
"Then trust me when I tell you this, I wasn't always this way."
She composed herself, and she opened the door to let Rob in.
Rob looked at her and back at Chuck, "Chuck, I've been your friend for years, please don't do this. Beckman is manipulating you; she's using your own desire to do good against you."
Rob leaned against the opposite wall from Sarah, "You know, I wouldn't do it, myself. Agent Walker's world is different than ours. We tell ourselves that it's the same, but we aren't. This will move you into hers, and judging by her expression, she finds it as distasteful as I do. I'm going to talk with Alexander, this was beyond the line." He left.
Sarah looked at him, "Please stay my toothy computer nerd. Not a spy."
Casey poked his head in, "We need to go, Department of Energy just found something."
As they drove to the airport, Casey filled them in, "Mason Whitney is missing, he's one of the NNSA's liaisons to the updated Permissive Action Link program. That's the safeguard control around the nuclear launch system. STRATCOM is already on high alert. We're going to Oak Ridge, TN. He was last sighted at the Y-12 NSC."
They parked and boarded the plane, "We're meeting up with DoE Intelligence, this big counter intel review caught Whitney accessing information he shouldn't have while he was here, if we waited longer we'd have caught him in Berkley. He went off grid when his credentials were suspended."
They boarded the plane; Casey noticed the tension between Sarah and Chuck. He grabbed Chuck and pulled him aside roughly. "Bartowski, didn't I tell you to keep your lady feelings from messing up missions?"
"It's not feelings, Beckman offered me to host the Constellation data," He explained the conversation and touched lightly on Sarah's and Rob's objections.
Casey grunted, "Okay, you get demoted from Bartowski to numbnuts, until you get your head on straight. When the people in your life tell you subjecting yourself to something of this magnitude is a mistake, listen to them."
"Beckman said I needed to be strong, so I don't need you to fight for me."
"Numbnuts, again I need to stress this to you. You do computers. We do shooting and sneaking. Having you do either of those two would be a disaster. It doesn't matter how much you train a fish; it will never climb a tree. I could load all the data for tree climbing into a fish, and it will still never be successful, all I've done is cause problems for the fish. You are a fish. Now go make up with Walker, I have a feeling this will be a shooting mission and I need her 100%"
"Why's she Walker and I'm numbnuts?"
"She's got her head on straight."
Chuck walked over to where Sarah was sitting and sat across from her, "Hey."
"Hi."
"You know why I made the Computer Nerd with Teeth joke?"
She looked confused at his non-sequitur.
"In Stanford my handle was Piranha. Thus, computer nerd with teeth. And before you ask, yes Rob knows, I didn't commit any crimes, I was mostly just annoying. If anyone was to go after me he has a letter saved to get me out of it. Red team exercise or something."
Chuck leaned back on the chair, "I guess what I'm trying to say, is between the craziness of Stanford over the last few days, feeling helpless after getting hit by a freaking crossbow of all things, I guess I just wanted to be a badass. The hardcore James Bond-type of spy, you know. But like I could also hack, I'd be the best."
She was looking straight at him as he continued. "You know, I know you know this life better than I do, if you tell me, it'll make me someone I'm not, then I'll listen. I like who I am."
"I do too, Chuck," she moved over to where he was sitting and snuggled against him.
Casey looked nauseated.
They landed shortly in Knoxville and grabbed the rental car; they drove through the forest to Oak Ridge and checked in at the Y12 National Security Complex. Two men from DoE Intelligence met them.
"We cast a wide net, this is a company town, everyone was willing to help. We have this photo here from Starbucks, it looks like that Whitney was talking with Riordan Payne, he's a seller of hard-to-find items on the back market. Whitney is still missing."
"Do we have Whitney's phone number?"
Chuck took out one of the ANT laptops and checked something, "Here I've got a ping on his phone. It's a few miles away."
The DoE intelligence officers followed in their car. They arrived at the location and started looking. Chuck found him passed out against a wall, he was feverish, and his breathing was shallow.
An ambulance was called, and he was taken to the hospital. One of the DoE intelligence men rode with him.
As they pulled into the hospital they got out of the car and found the room he was in. The DoE officers had already searched his belongings, they didn't find anything relevant.
Chuck looked at Whitney's keys and something caught his eye, "Sarah can I borrow a knife?" She handed him one. He pried open a little portrait holder that had caught his attention and looked at it.
He cut around the portrait and found a small chip. "Does this look like something bad to anyone else?"
"Short range burst transmitter, someone bugged our scientist."
Chuck looked for a case, "Here this will isolate it. We'll need to investigate it further to determine if there's anything there that we can use to identify who it belongs to. Can we grab an electronics lab at ORNL? We don't have much time."
The DoE men agreed, one would stay behind to watch Whitney the other would escort them to ORNL.
The drove through the forested road, ahead was a stone sign and a lone checkpoint.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Managed By UT Battelle
For the Department of Energy
They were given access and drove through the winding road, until they arrived at the visitor entrance. There they walked in to get badges and then drove to one of the electronics labs. The DoE man ordered the lab closed while they were investigating the bug.
Chuck was going through it, "It's custom, whomever made it was surprisingly good, it's got a range of about half a mile. Which is impressive for something this small."
They stood around as he dissected the chip. Sarah would never get tired of watching him work.
"Okay it looks like the bug emits a burst along this frequency, we can use some of the gear I have in the car to scan that frequency and maybe determine if there are other bugs or maybe where they're being stored. I'm done, not much more I can get out of it here."
They vacated the lab and Chuck got to rigging up a scanner, once they left ORNL they started driving around. While Chuck was tinkering, he looked up quickly. "It looks like there might be a bug, or a few of them judging by the results, over there?" He pointed at a police car parked outside of a hotel. Casey noticed Payne coming out of the hotel, he nodded to Sarah and she moved to flank Payne, they needed to detain him to determine what he had access to. Chuck was by the police car when Payne made his move, he grabbed a glass ampoule and threw it at Chuck's position then twirled to duck behind a pillar.
"Whoever you are, your friend is already dead, if he doesn't get the antidote in the next 12 hours, he will die. I suggest you let me leave, I'll leave the antidote by the car."
Sarah nodded to Casey and they both advanced on the pillar.
Payne was a gymnast; he knew how to move. He moved to backflip away then he would draw his gun and shoot the larger of the two Agents.
That was the theory a moment ago, however as he moved to do his backflip, the blonde agent shot out his other knee, the momentum of the impact and the injury prevented him from getting up.
The blonde spoke to him in a deadly voice, "Give me the antidote. Now"
Payne smirked, he still had cards to play, all he had to do was delay.
The blonde told the large agent, "Look, a mockingbird." the large agent turned around, Payne steeled himself to be hit. It looked like they would try and beat it out of him.
She took the ampoule of serum and loaded it into the injector. She slammed it into his neck and injected him.
"Well, in your container you have six blue ampoules, and one green one. I'm betting the green one is the antidote. Right?"
He nodded, he wasn't feeling the effects of the serum yet, once she injected the green dose into the agent he'd infected, the agent would die.
"Yes, it's the antidote."
"Really? Huh, I better test it out on you then, just to make sure of course. I'll keep a bit for our labs to make some more. Just in case."
His eyes widened, who was this woman? Before he could say anything, the infected agent came up, Payne recognized the glassy look and slight confusion the serum produced in its victims.
"Hey, I can't stop talking, and god you're pretty."
"I don't know what this stuff does, but I can't control what I'm saying, focusing is hard, you have beautiful eyes."
The blonde looked at the agent in concern, then back at Payne.
"What did you give him?"
"Lethal dose of my truth serum, like I said he'll be dead in 12 hours."
"Since I just dosed you with your own serum, seems like I'll only have to wait a few minutes for my information." She nodded at the large agent, "If he moves shoot out his other knee."
They moved out of earshot, he didn't know why the agent said the blonde had beautiful eyes, they were cold and emotionless.
Sarah pulled Chuck away from Payne. They got into the car.
"Focus Chuck, please focus on me, you've been dosed with a truth serum."
"Oh, that explains it, I feel foggy, and have I told you that I love waking up next to you?"
She smiled softly, "I enjoy it too Chuck, but I need you to focus and stay here. Please."
"I wanted to kiss you so badly when you fixed my tie that one time, I considered wearing ties regularly to see if you'd do it again. When I see you wearing my shirt, my thoughts go to inappropriate places."
Sarah almost laughed, 'okay, do not take advantage of the situation. And do not laugh.' she was going to have to keep that in mind until he was safe.
"I don't want to host the data; I like that you like me. It makes me so happy, happier than even Jill. I'm so sorry I was angry at you when we met, you're awesome. Did I tell you about Captain Awesome? He's Awesome, you'll meet him at Thanksgiving, he's dating my sister."
"Yes, Chuck you told me, he seems like a nice guy."
"I really want my sister to like you because I really like you. You know your lips are so kissable."
His eyes were focused on her lips, "Save it for later, okay Chuck? Stay here in the car, a-"
"You're like a superhero, you're this super sexy, awesome, kick ass ninja. It's incredible."
"Chuck, if I give you a kiss will you stay in the car?"
"Okay!"
She got out and started laughing, at least he was crazy about her. She was crazy about him.
"How is Payne?"
"He's babbling. Think you fried his brain with that stuff."
"Payne, where is the antidote?"
"It's in my hotel, the Courtyard down the road. You're terrifying."
"Why were you here?"
"I knew Whitney was staying here, I wanted to see if he managed to copy the data before his access was cut. He escaped from me, and you guys picked him up when he collapsed. I don't know why that agent says you have nice eyes; they'll haunt my nightmares."
"Good."
They put him in the back of the police cruiser and Casey nodded to her, "I'll drive him to the hotel, you take our guy."
Sarah got in the car, "Sarah, do I get my kiss now?" she smiled at him, "Of course."
A gentle kiss, "I wanted it to be deeper, I love kissing you. Also, I wish you'd wear shorts instead of sweats at my place, I love your legs, it's all I can do not to stare when you're wearing a skirt."
Sarah bit her cheek and filed that information away, she followed Casey to Payne's hotel.
They walked Payne to the room. "That's the antidote there, take it."
She looked at it and took two ampoules. "We're going to get this tested first. Then we might give it to you."
"No! Please. It's safe."
"CIA is sending a team to collect all the intel here, there's probably a lot of it on that laptop and-"
"There's also a lot of information on my phone."
"Thank you."
"I have a storage unit in Miami, you'll love the stuff that's there."
"I'm sure we will."
Sarah's phone rang she answered it and hung up. "Whitney is dying,"
"The antidote will save him."
Casey shrugged, "worth a try, guys got nothing left to lose."
She took two doses and left the hotel. When she got into the car, Chuck's face was a bit morose.
"Hey."
"Chuck, I need you to focus, okay?"
"You know, Rob said something to me when I told him we were dating. He said he was worried that you were too closed off for me, because you do deep cover stuff that we'll never talk, we'll never see each other. Once this mission ends at least. It sounds lonely. I don't want that to happen. and I was thinking about all that stuff you said earlier, Star Wars and Thanksgivings and we're not going to get that are we? I really wanted to think that we would get that..."
"Chuck…"
"I have no right to say that do I?"
"No! Yo-"
"If I'm too pushy or too much… you'll let me know right…?" His voice was a mix of fear and sadness.
"Oh… Chuck…" She felt her heart break.
He was finally silent, of course. She wanted to slam her palms on the wheel, but he'd think she was mad at him. She was the mess here; Sarah Walker destroys lives indeed. She could fix this once he was cured. She'd fix it, she had to. Damn it, Rob was right. She'd been so caught up in how she felt, she knew she didn't know how to be a good girlfriend, it wasn't just cuddling and kissing. It's not like she could learn from a book or something. Thankfully, they were at the hospital.
She pulled Chuck out of the car and rushed in, if this worked, she wanted to waste no time injecting it into Chuck.
She injected Whitney, after a few minutes his vitals started improving. Good. She moved to inject Chuck, he looked so miserable. How long had this been eating at him, when did he and Rob talk? When he picked up the form? Was it before? She hoped it wasn't a long time. She was greedy, she wanted the Thanksgivings and Star Wars. This wasn't a decision she'd have to make soon, but one would need to be made.
She injected him, a few minutes later his eyes cleared, and his shoulders slumped. She hugged him; he didn't sink into her hug like he normally did. She refused to let this fail because of her issues. She called Casey, the CIA team had Payne, his laptop, phone, and they were sending retrieval teams all over based on his uncontrolled babbling. He wasn't a major player, but it was good to get him off the board, nonetheless. Casey was going to be here soon; they would fly back. She was going to fix this.
It had been a mostly silent flight; Chuck had slept most of it. She thought about everything, the more time she spent with him the more she considered the idea. She could teach at the Farm, take some out of the way post or maybe she could get a Diplomatic Cover.
She helped him get to his apartment.
When they got inside, she looked at him,
"Chuck, I need to say something, I need you to listen okay?"
He nodded.
"I want to be right for you, but Rob is right, I am too closed off. So, I'll tell you a bit about myself every weekend. I'll need the week to recover," she said with a smile.
"I've never done this before okay? I'll need you to be understanding, but I am trying. I promise I am. I may not always succeed."
"Sarah you-"
"No. I do. This needs to be done."
They showered and got into bed; she was wearing just his shirt.
When he got into bed, he ran his hand down her side like he usually did, when he hit bare leg, the hand froze.
"Umm, Sarah?"
"You liked my legs, right? Well…"
"I…"
She turned over and kissed him, she let herself get lost in the sensation of kissing him, before she went too far, she rolled on her back. She looked him in the eye, "My middle name…" She couldn't get the words out.
He put a finger to her lip, "No Sarah, it's okay. Don't… Don't worry about it. I need to get some water, one second. That serum dried me out."
She said quietly as he left, "My middle name is Lisa."
He came back in, she looked him in the eye, gathered her courage. "My middle name is Lisa. I've never told anyone before."
He kissed her again, this time she didn't hold back. His hands gently moved up her sides, he didn't find fabric where he expected. His hands froze. She pulled back a bit and giggled.
"You said you liked me in just your shirt, right? Well, all I'm wearing is your shirt Chuck," she said popping the "ck" at the end of his name.
"So, show me what those inappropriate thoughts of yours are."
He did, multiple times.
Keith Alexander was not a man prone to profanity, nor was he a man prone to fits of rage.
Having Diane Beckman in front of him challenged those two trends.
"Diane, you want to explain why you did that?"
"He needed be convinced, I read his profile, he wants to be the hero. I just framed it in such a way that he would be."
"Diane! I had a plan, a long-term plan. One that would have at least guaranteed Bartowski would be open to accepting the dataset.
That's blown to hell because I had Rob in here furious that you would pull such a stunt.
Let me make something clear. This is not a request; this is an order. Do not approach Charles Bartowski or have a proxy approach him without my explicit approval. Am. I. Clear?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. ODNI wants us to be meeting with him in an hour. I haven't slept more than 4 since this kicked off."
All the heads were in the office, the door opened and an armed man in a suit walked in. Following him was George Bush, the President of the United States, and Dick Cheney, the Vice President.
President Bush spoke first, "So, I hear we're in serious trouble."
"Yes sir, Mr. President, we are. Our agencies have been compromised by rogue elements of our security apparatus."
Cheney spoke, "Do we understand what they want? What do they feel is worth betraying the nation over?"
"No sir, as of yet we do not. We are bringing this to your attention because we are going to need a lot of political cover."
Bush looked over at the Attorney General, "What are our legal options here?"
"CIFA can operate within the DoD with no issues. We'll have to pair CIA and FBI since CIA is not allowed anywhere on their own domestically. NSA and DIA are bound by Posse Comitatus and a myriad of other laws, so they can't operate against non-DoD agencies. Officially speaking."
"What about Homeland?"
"They're just as corrupted, maybe more so if the current trends hold."
"I'll put together a legal packet, we'll work with the Senate and see what we can do. Unofficially speaking, we'll do what we need to. Stay off the front page."
With that they left.
The Directors began planning their counterattack.
Agency Stuff:
AFISRA – Air Force ISR Agency, shut down in 2014, worked with the NSA via the Central Security Service.
DIA – Defense Intelligence Agency, they do things. Probably. They focus on HUMINT and SIGINT along with counter intel work.
INSCOM – Information and Security Command – Army Intel people, works with the NSA via the Central Security Service.
GS – General Schedule, one of the Federal Employee pay scales. By law Contractors cannot work in certain facilities without military or civilian supervision. (DoE is exempt due to a bunch of reasons. Most of their facilities are run under contract as FFRDCs, ORNL is operated by UT Battelle for example. Y-12 NSC is one of the DoE/NNSA facilities under strict control.)
PAL – Permissive Action Link, You know that cool box where the President puts in the "Launch Codes" in movies? That's what it's called. There's actually a whole process, but we just need to know about the PAL.
SHAPE – Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. NATO HQ. Nice place, lots of hats, cool people, 4/4 stars. (Military people, you may now proceed to groan at the pun)
STRATCOM – STRATegic COMmand, born from the political fallout of the end of Strategic Air Command (SAC) unified strategic nuclear force for the United States, also operates the Looking Glass planes. Based in Offut AFB in Omaha, NE. Also does some space and missile defense stuff.
Y-12 National Security Complex – Not nearly as nice as ORNL, just up the hill from it though. Nuclear storage and security.
Context Stuff:
I realized I didn't do much with Casey's love of Reagan, so here you go!
So let me explain what's happening here. We've found Tommy Delgado, he's important and he's bad, we're now assigning risk scores to the behavior of people who know him to determine if they are part of this. We're finding a lot of people in common and a lot of communication, unusual working hours, etc. We're now making assessments, it's complex work that kicks up a lot of stones.
The easy stuff.
People with more money than expected.
People working weird hours for no reason.
People talking with new people suddenly, and those new people are suspected members.
People requesting more access.
People talking about frustration with "X"
Then it gets more complex from there:
Infidelity
Gambling
Blackmail
The list goes on.
I needed to do something with Beckman, like I said before, if she acted the way she did in the show, Alexander would have removed her in a heartbeat and forgotten about her two heartbeats later. Here she's not stupid, she just saw firsthand what happens when people don't do what she views as the right thing. (If you agree or not, that's up to you, but I've always found the "Damn the risks, lets make things more secure" crowd usually make things less secure.)
DoE, got to love their naming convention. Everything is straightforward. "Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence"
ORNL is one of my favorite places on Earth.
First off, I am sorry, they lined up some Really lame bad guys in season 1. Also, I want to get to the war with Fulcrum and Salami+Nemesis.
Babbling Chuck is hard to write. It went from a happy place to a sad place, I tried to keep the tone that the show used with it, from "You're pretty" to "Do you actually see us having a future together." only here Chuck is the one exposed, not Sarah.
The way the drug works is that it makes it hard to focus.
I love the shooting in the knee, that is the most Sarah Walker thing ever.
"Bad guy jumping around" followed by "I have bullets, problem solved."