CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It's been coming for a long time

And some heads are gonna roll

"The Missionary"

The Brothers Martin

July 14, 2012

Estimated elevation 30,000 feet, 300 miles west of Ireland, over Atlantic Ocean

"You need to get some sleep, Bartowski," Casey said stiffly, flicking the back of the laptop computer positioned on Chuck's lap with an index finger. "You've been awake almost 30 hours."

"So have you," he accused, rubbing the knuckle of his index finger across his lips as he tried to refocus his attention.

"I slept in the van while you were driving in Romania. It was the only way to shut the pipsqueak up," he said with a grunt of disdain.

Chuck was in the process of scanning with a hacked satellite feed, looking for activity at European airports within a 100-mile scanning radius outward from Berlin. He had no choice but to leave, no longer having time to waste backtracking to find where Poshenko could have taken Corrine. He was banking on the fact that he would keep her alive, and take her with him when he secured a flight. Leaving Corrine behind had been antithetical to how he operated, but desperation had taken over. He was driven, almost possessed by the desire to get to a position where he could act, and not sit back while the people he loved were in danger.

"You really think I can sleep now, Casey? I've done more with less sleep. I'll be fine," Chuck insisted. Casey knew he was telling the truth, probably better than almost anyone else who had seen him that way, a soldier on his way to fight in a war he had never asked for, but a war he would not lose, even if it meant sacrificing everything-his ideals or even his own life, to save his world and keep it safe. A world that consisted of not things or places, but people, literally everything he had. Those kinds of wars were worth risking everything to wage, because defeat was unacceptable, unimaginable, and catastrophic.

Walker loved him most, Casey knew, for what he was, who he was. How he was different from both her and him. For the second time since he had known Chuck, he was witnessing the side of him Walker had never seen. She had never seen it because he only became this way when he was fighting for her. She knew it existed, after hearing everyone talk at their wedding about what he had done in the day and a half before standing on the altar with her. Seeing it was rather extraordinary, Casey thought, and briefly thought what a shame it was that she couldn't, though not wishing harm her way just for the sake of it. Not that she needed another reason to feel the way she did, anyway.

He thought quickly back to what Chuck had told him, when he'd asked about Morgan's reaction before. It suddenly clicked for him, as he put all the pieces together. Why he had behaved as he had, once he was alone. All this fire, this raging determination, this willingness to go to war, had blazed with no outlet of release. Walker left, and he had let her leave. The passionate firestorm had ended up directed back inside himself, where it sounded like it had almost destroyed him. There would be no sleeping, Casey knew, until Chuck knew Sarah was safe. That all of them were safe. Alex was his daughter, but an adopted member of Chuck's extended family. Casey shook his head, remembering the first day he had met Chuck on the helicopter pad, knowing if anyone had told him five years later he would consider Chuck like he would a brother, he would have shot them dead where they stood. Stranger things had happened, though, hadn't they?

Accepting his advice would not be heeded, Casey told him, "If you won't sleep, then at least make sure you have a few hundred milligrams of caffeine before we're back. It's going to be a long night, Chuck," Casey warned.

He had had plenty of those in the last six months. Heading back westward was only lengthening this night, traveling against the rotation of the Earth, canceling out the progress they were making toward dawn. The total trip was eight hours, but they would land with local time having only skipped ahead two hours from when they left Berlin. This had turned into the longest day of his life. What was coming already had the potential to be the longest night ever, but he knew with the utmost certainty that no matter what, it would be the last night like this he would ever live. One way or the other.

July 14, 2012

Oak Park, Illinois

As time continued to creep forward slowly, Ellie began to feel the passage of the hours pulling on her like a lead weight. Doing research all this time had dulled her senses, removed the ingrained lack of sleep intolerance she had honed over the years she had been a staff physician at the hospital in Los Angeles. She had only been awake for about 19 hours, a long day, but by no means the longest period of time she had been awake and functioning, considering she had a child who hadn't slept more than two hours at a time for the first three months of her life. But as her mind scrolled back to what she had done right after she had woken up, it felt like this day had lasted for ten years. Her fatigue was understandable, she told herself.

She must have started to nod off, sitting in the chair at the desk, because she heard Vivian say softly, "Ellie, if you need to sleep, I can keep an eye on Sarah, if you show me what to look for."

Shaking herself fully awake, Ellie told her, "No, that's ok. I think I just need some coffee. Something to perk me up. We're almost halfway done here. I wouldn't feel right not paying close attention." Part of her still held a needling distrust of Vivian, not completely able to trust her after her dangerous string of poor decisions that had caused so much damage.

"I can go make some for you, if you'd like," Vivian offered. "I'm sure your mother can show me what to do. We usually just drink tea, you know."

Ellie smiled, her face feeling stiff, her muscles exhausted. "That would be great, thank you," she said.

Vivian had to have only been gone for about five minutes, but when she vacated the room, Ellie had to have fallen completely asleep in her chair, because she recalled a brief dream that ended up being a memory.

May 15, 2011

Westside Medical Center, Los Angeles, California

When Devon had returned with the news that Sarah was awake, her fever gone and her abnormal laboratory tests corrected, Ellie had taken off immediately back to the hospital, even after having worked a ridiculously long shift while Sarah was so ill. Dressed in her regular clothes, she had approached Sarah's hospital room door when she was stopped by a colleague who still felt the need to talk to her about work, even though she was here to see her family.

It was someone who had wanted to discuss the unusual case Sarah had presented and the unorthodox treatment. Very technical information, probably geared towards publishing a research paper at some point. As she droned on and on, Ellie did hear the other doctor mention a potential joint effort. She had stopped listening, instead her attention drifting toward the conversation she could hear through the glass partition, ashamed that she was in effect eavesdropping on Chuck and Sarah, but unable to dismiss what she was hearing. What was difficult was hiding the tears that had started accumulating in her eyes.

"I have some, you know, bad news, I guess. We don't work for the CIA anymore," Chuck said, sounding apologetic. "Well, at least, I don't. I think he took your resignation as a given, but, you know…"

"What happened?" Sarah asked, still sounding weak, but stronger than the last time Ellie had heard her voice.

"Decker. I had to quit, you know, to get past him. Actually, I had to blackmail him to get in here. I quit when he threatened me. He was perfectly content to just let you die, even though he knew I had the way to save your life. I couldn't spend one more minute listening to him," Chuck said, angry in a way Ellie had to scroll back very far to find a comparable moment.

"Chuck, it's ok. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters to me but you. Don't you know that?" Sarah said softly. Ellie knew she was smiling, and heard it in her voice.

"Well, that's good to know," Chuck said, gently, his voice slightly muffled, like he had to have been holding her. "Because the Intersect is gone, Sarah."

"What?" Sarah gasped.

"Decker. He had a suppression device. He turned Volkoff back into Hartley Winterbottom too, before I got to him," Chuck said.

The woman in front of Ellie was still talking, gesturing with her hands and bringing her attention back to the hallway. Chuck and Sarah's conversation disappeared from her focus, only returning when the volume of Sarah's voice changed.

"Chuck," Sarah exclaimed, her voice so strange Ellie couldn't place what it was Sarah must be feeling. It sounded like total disbelief, shock, but so saturated with her love and devotion that Ellie caught her breath. "You did everything Devon told me you did...without the Intersect?"

A prolonged silence ensued. When Chuck responded, Ellie knew how close to tears he was. "Turns out I don't need it. Not when it comes to fighting for you, anyway."

Another long silence, where Ellie picked up a few stray words from her colleague, still talking away despite Ellie's lack of attention. "What happened in Russia? With Volkoff and Vivian?" Sarah asked.

"Volkoff is gone. He's Hartley again, my father's friend. They're actually both gone. He took Vivian and left with her, to start over," he said, sounding apologetic again. "I had to let them go, or I wouldn't have gotten out of there with the antidote."

Ellie fought to retain her neutral appearance, despite the spike of anger she felt, understanding in only that moment the full extent of what had transpired in Russia. She knew why Chuck hadn't elaborated.

"Is it safe? That they're loose in the world again?" Sarah asked, an edge to her voice that told Ellie she had bristled at the idea that Vivian got away with attempting murder.

"Hartley is no threat to anyone. And with a chance to put her family back together, I don't think Vivian is anymore either. I know why you couldn't forgive her, I even understand why, but I thought it was only right to give her a second chance, after everything that she went through because the CIA used me to get to her. She's not a terrible person, Sarah, despite the terrible thing she tried to do," he insisted. "She has to live with that forever. That's enough, isn't it?"

Ellie started, as the woman in front of her stopped, as Ellie realized whatever she had said had turned up at the end. She had been asked a question, and now the woman was waiting for a reply to something she had no idea was even asked. Stammering, Ellie said, "You know, why don't you send me an email with all that info and those questions? I can respond later. My brother's getting married tomorrow, and his fiancee needs to be discharged, and you know…"

Ellie didn't even listen to the reply, just walked into Sarah's room. She was sitting up in her bed, seated beside Chuck who sat on the edge of her bed. Her head rested against his shoulder as he held her in his arms. Chuck's face, over the top of Sarah's head, told her he knew she had been standing outside the door while he and Sarah were talking.

"I wasn't eavesdropping. Not on purpose anyway," Ellie said, her face lit up with a gleaming smile. She regarded them softly for a moment before she asked Chuck, "No more Intersect?"

"No," he said quietly. "It's gone."

She smiled, choking out the words before emotion closed her throat, "It's what Dad wanted, Chuck."

"I know, El. I know."

July 14, 2012

Oak Park, Illinois

What woke Ellie was the sound of Sarah's monitor alarming, both pulse and blood pressure now in the yellow zone. The bleary feeling of sleep cleared, as she focused razor sharply on the problem in front of her. Ellie grabbed Sarah's wrist, taking a manual pulse, to make sure it wasn't just the instrument malfunctioning. It was elevated, but not as high as the electronic reading. She pulled the monitor off Sarah's finger, grabbed a tissue from the table beside the chair, and wiped off the contact points. When she reattached it, the reading leveled off. Her blood pressure wasn't abnormal, but it was higher than it had been at the commencement of the procedure.

"Hang in there, Sarah. Just a few more hours, and it'll be over," she said softly, talking to Sarah but really herself.

Vivian returned, closing the door softly, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. She walked to Ellie, handed her the blue ceramic mug. Ellie thanked her, taking a gentle sip of the hot liquid. "Your mother fixed it the way you drink it, Ellie." She continued to drink, feeling the warm liquid like it was soaking into her bones, lifting her out of fog. The more alert she became, the more Ellie seemed to notice how distracted Vivian seemed, much different than she had before leaving.

"What's wrong, Vivian?" Ellie asked cautiously.

"It's probably nothing," she murmured. At Ellie's tilted head and curious expression, she continued. "Your mother. She seems different since the last time she left to talk to your husband. I can't explain it, and I don't know her that well. But she was so resolutely calm before. She seems agitated now, almost worried. Maybe it's just the night wearing on her. I know it's getting to all of us."

A cold, suffocating sense of dread started filling Ellie up. She stood, mumbling to Vivian, "Can you just keep an eye on Sarah, while I go talk to her?"

Ellie was out of the room even before Vivian could accept her request.

July 14, 2012

Estimated elevation 30,000 feet, somewhere over International Waters, Atlantic Ocean

"Casey, it looks like he took off from Warsaw about 45 minutes after we left Berlin. It was a private craft, cleared through a private airport. The telemetry plays out. He would have landed there in the chopper 20 minutes after we lost him. The flight plan he filed says he's headed to Midway International. We're due at O'Hare about two hours before he's due to land there," Chuck interjected into the silence inside the cabin. Morgan and Gertrude were asleep.

"That's cutting it close, but we should be able to get to your sister before him," Casey said, softly, so as not to wake anyone. "That gives us time to get Corrine away from him, before he can do any damage."

"Provided whoever was spying on her doesn't beat us there first," Chuck grumbled bitterly.

"Your mother is making sure that doesn't happen, Chuck," Casey stressed.

"He knows we got a head start, Casey. It's not slowing him down," Chuck mentioned, his words almost slurred. He rubbed his blood shot eyes, trying his best to hide his utter exhaustion from Casey.

"He doesn't know you're smart enough to figure out how to track him. And he also has the Intersect. Which, in case you haven't noticed, seems to make everyone who's ever had it but you think they're invincible. He may not be thinking clearly," Casey guessed.

After a stretched out silence where he knew Chuck was trying to think, Casey said, "One thing I do know is that you aren't. You can hardly articulate your words, Bartowski. And in effect we are traveling backwards in time, every minute we're in the air, we're turning the clock farther back towards midnight in the opposite direction. Just close the computer and get some sleep. You're no good to Sarah or your sister if you can't form a cohesive thought because of burnout."

Chuck looked away, knowing Casey had found the right words to argue with him and win. He shut the computer and leaned his head back against the seat back. He was asleep almost immediately, the creases in his forehead relaxing at last. It was only then that Casey allowed himself the same luxury.

July 14, 2012

Estimated elevation 30,000 feet, somewhere over West Virginia

Jane Bentley knew what Diane Beckman was doing in the Pentagon, at the same time she was boarding the flight that was taking her to Chicago, Illinois in the middle of the night. How Diane Beckman knew, she had yet to discover. Something was definitely amiss, as her own line of communication as well as Beckman's were non-functional, with no logical explanation. At least not before she realized what was in fact actually going on.

Diane had to be looking for proof, evidence of what Bentley herself knew after a separate investigation handled off the record. She had a score to settle, from a clash that had begun years ago, when she had been handed a mission that had been impossible to accomplish.

Always in pristine control of her emotions, Jane Bentley was a block of ice, unreadable to almost everyone. Over the course of her career, she had learned how to manipulate any situation in order to get what she wanted, what was required for a mission to succeed. Nothing was more important than the success of the mission. Absolutely nothing.

Until she had been manipulated herself, used as a pawn in someone else's game, did things start to bother her. It had started with Eleanor Woodcomb, and her amazing ability to decipher the cryptic information left by her father that no one else had ever been able to make any sense of. She had used Dr. Woodcomb first, then enlisted her help later, when she had learned that Eleanor was looking for something in return-a way to help Chuck Bartowski's wife regain her memory. Dr. Woodcomb had not disappointed her-finding out the complete truth in such a very short period of time, in relation to how long all the others had been working on the same problem with little to no success.

Problem was, the complete truth, of which Jane Bentley had no doubt, proved that she had been set up. She had done as ordered-manipulated Dr. Woodcomb into decoding Orion's laptop. That information was used to spearhead the Intersect project, for which they had told her she was recruiting John Casey away from Project Bartowski. The entire time the CIA had been rebuilding the Buy More as a way station, she had been recruiting potential candidates for Intersect training. She had put almost half a year of her life into that project, only to have it fail miserably, resulting in her demotion from Director of the NCS. She had then been sent back to learn from Bartowski himself how to better do her job, something that had instilled a cold fury inside her.

One year later, she was contacted again, once Dr. Woodcomb had accepted the analyst position as part of her bargain. This time it was to prove the Intersect was a non-viable option for the DNI going forward. A direct contradiction of her previous mission. True, no one in the government would ever have made it a point to admit errors had been made, or explain their own failures to an underling just following orders, but it had started to make her wonder.

From her experience, higher ups in the government rarely let anything go like she was being told about the Intersect. No one with that much power ever had to admit they were wrong, or that mistakes had been made. Or even justify chasing after something that was counter-intuitive, or made no sense. One could not be harmed in any way by what one did not know. She had been indoctrinated to believe as such.

She had followed the project along as it had developed, each day feeling that there was something under the surface that was being kept from her. She had thought maybe Beckman knew, and was manipulating her again, but as time wore on, she realized Beckman was just as much in the dark as she had been. Which had led to only one conclusion-that they were both being manipulated by someone above them.

There was no doubt in her mind who the culprit was. Problem being, she had no authority to do the investigation required to prove she was right. Thankfully, from the report she had just received from her sources at Langley, Beckman had sent her old partner there in search of said proof. Diane had figured it out as well. Bentley hated having to trust someone else to do a task, but here, she had no choice.

She was on her way to balance an inequity that had been hanging over her head for over a year. She just hoped she would be in time.

July 14, 2012

Oak Park, Illinois

"Mom, what is going on?" Ellie asked her as she walked into the living area. Her mother sat on the sofa next to Hartley. They both looked tired, but her mother had an air of disquiet around her, a low level electric current running under her skin that Ellie could not mistake. "Vivian said you were acting like something was wrong."

Mary looked between Hartley and her daughter, her eyes shifting, as if she were pausing to choose her words. "I didn't want you to worry, Sweetheart. Because it's just extra information that doesn't change anything that we're doing here."

"No, Mom, you need to tell me. No secrets, right?" Ellie insisted.

It still took a few more seconds before Mary relented. "Chuck called Devon, in between when I talked to him the last time and the second to the last time."

"What happened? Is everything alright?" Ellie asked frantically.

"He wanted Devon to call the CIA. The man who Corrine was with in Romania was also monitoring your computer. He downloaded an Intersect program. He got away from Chuck and the others and is on his way here," she said gravely.

"Oh my God," Ellie breathed.

"Devon told him we can't move Sarah. He's on his way. He should be back here around the time Sarah is finished," Mary added.

"So what happens afterward?" Ellie asked nervously.

"We hope Chuck and the others get here in time. If we have no choice and need to call in support, there's a real chance that Sarah's procedure will be interrupted, right? We can't risk that. We're going to have to just hold out here, no matter what," she finished grimly.

"What if we can't?" Ellie asked.

Mary only stared, unable to say the words. Ellie was worried enough.