CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Dark angels follow me
Over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling
For all my days remaining
What would be true?
Sometimes I see your face
The stars seem to lose their place
"Why Should I Cry For You?"
Sting
July 14, 2012
Washington, D.C.
"She did it," Beckman said, tsking, as she slowly shook her head back and forth. She looked at the time as she crossed her arms over her chest. "In 25 minutes." She tilted her head to avoid the glare on her computer screen caused as the morning sun streamed through her office window.
"Who is 'she,' Darling?" Roan asked her, positioned behind her chair.
"Someone you've never met. Bartowski's sister. Absolutely the smartest person I've ever met." Beckman scanned the file, now all laid out for her, page after page, in order, making perfect sense. She thought to herself, though she was just speculating, that Meriwether had hidden this information with minimal security protocols, simply for the fact that he had believed no one could interpret what it all meant. It had remained that way for over 30 years, most likely for that reason alone. His fatal mistake, she thought, as righteous anger simmered below the surface, had been in underestimating the Bartowskis.
"So you were right?" he asked her, a question, though he was not questioning her.
"Of course I was right. And now I have the documents to prove I was." She stepped away from the computer, rifling through the top drawer of her desk like she was looking for something. She pulled her loose hairs back into place with one hand, pulled a hairpin from the drawer, and with one tuck, changed her hair back to the immaculate twisted bun behind her head.
"Meriwether sent a team to neutralize them, but Bentley stopped them. That was in the middle of the night. I'm sure none of his minions dare wake him in the middle of the night unless there's an incoming nuke. But he's going to find out…" She gazed at the clock, watching the time creep closer to nine in the morning. "Pretty damn soon. Let's not let him get ahead of us, shall we?" she said wryly.
"And how are we doing that?" Roan asked. "I am persona non grata in most areas of this building."
"Don't remind me. But unless you've slept with the wife of the Deputy Secretary of Defense," she paused, waiting with her eyebrows raised.
"No!" he spat out. "No, no, darling. No worries," he mumbled. "Troll...of a woman," he grumbled under his breath. Louder, to her, he said with a charming smile, "Pales in comparison to you, my sweet."
"Enough sweet talk, Roan, this is serious. We've got a very important man whose itinerary we need to crash. Pronto," she said.
July 14, 2012
Oak Park, Illinois
Ellie was still scanning files at her computer when Mary entered the room, tucking her gun away as she proceeded towards her daughter. Ellie turned at the sound of her mother's voice. "Mom, my God, I have so many things I want to ask you. This file that Beckman sent. The one that implicates General Meriwether." Ellie stopped, gathering her thoughts, realizing she could abbreviate the long story here, to glean the information that she thought her mother might know.
"What about it, Sweetheart?" Mary asked, in a normal tone, though the tension in the room was thick like humidity.
"Meriwether had a file of Intersect data on his computer from 1978. Dad's data, with a brain scan included what Chuck thought was mine from when I was a baby. Can you explain any of that?" Ellie asked. Ellie seemed genuinely curious, but with a sharp edge to her tone that denoted her innate desire to know the answer.
Mary was pale, shaking, not responding to Ellie at first. Sarah watched, understanding there was more here than just what Ellie had uncovered. Mary had a habit of not telling the whole story, after being a spy for so long. Telling only information that was mission critical had been instilled in her long ago. "Mary, what does this mean?" Sarah prodded.
"Meri-Meriwether was the director of the CIA in the late 1970s. He sent me on that mission, to London, for Stephen and Hartley." She looked dazed, startled, but then quickly refocusing her attention. "What do you mean, Meriwether had your MRI?"
"Mom, I had an MRI when I was a baby, didn't I? Because of my lazy eye?" Ellie asked.
"Yes, yes, you did, Ellie," she said slowly.
"Dad used Chuck's MRI to figure out the Intersect, after he accidentally downloaded the beta version, after you were gone, Mom. Did he ever say anything to you about my MRI? The scans? The results? Anything?" she quizzed.
"He talked about the idea he had for the Intersect to me, after we, uh, you know, became more than business associates if you will," Mary said, slightly embarrassed, speaking so candidly in front of her daughter. "Meriwether wanted him to proceed. Both that and the Norseman. That I know. But your MRI?" Her eyes widened as she extrapolated with logic from where Ellie was. "Your brain is just like Chuck's, isn't it?" she demanded.
Surprised at how quickly her mother had pieced that together, she added, "From the looks of it, yes. Chuck is still several hundred orders of magnitude more than me, but I'm still well above human average, considering I was six months old when those scans were taken," she reasoned.
"Your father said something about memory patterns to me, right after that test. Something about how you retain memory when you're a baby, things you would know all your life but you wouldn't remember learning, because your brain was still developing. Developing around the memories, if you will. He thought it could work for someone with a fully developed brain, if he used the right type of memory engram encoding. He lost me after that, and I just started nodding," Mary said, a half smile on her face as she thought of her husband.
"That's how I thought about it too, Mom, after Clara was born. But he never tested me or anything, did he?" she asked.
"Absolutely not, no. He must have just used the pattern as a reference to see if the theory was sound," Mary concluded. "He wanted you safe, away from the life that we lived when you were a baby. You and your brother." The tragic irony of her words was lost on no one, but left unspoken all the same.
"Ellie, it wouldn't have worked on your brain, would it? Being female?" Sarah reminded her, after the in depth discussion Ellie had had with her about why she was able to regain her memories.
"Your father wouldn't have known that then. That was his very first attempt at the project. Is that why it ended up removing Hartley's identity? Is that what you're saying?" Mary asked, a few steps behind what Sarah already knew.
"Mary, your husband's very first Intersect was this file-the one based on Ellie's brain. Only this file was stolen and replaced by an altered version. Meriwether had that file, not Orion. Stephen used the defective file without testing it, right?" she asked.
Mary only nodded.
"If he had, he would have noticed the program he was running had been tampered with," Sarah said, emphasizing each word so Mary understood. Mary actually staggered backwards, Sarah catching her arm before she stumbled. "Orion didn't create Volkoff. Meriwether did."
After the initial shock, Mary seemed to almost catch on fire, burning like an inferno as both younger women sat and watched her. "He used me!" she fumed. "That sonofabitch used me! And my husband! My God, do you know what he cost us?" she said again, seething in rage that was only barely contained. Sarah watched Mary's clenched fists, knuckles white, trembling as they rested on her knees. Her entire body seemed charged with electricity.
"Yeah, Mom, I do," Ellie said, less angry, more sad than anything else.
Pulling the focus away from the past and things that could not be changed, Sarah brought them both back to the present. "Mary, I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but we've got a bigger problem right now and we need to focus on that first. Meriwether can be dealt with later. Beckman's on it, when it comes to him. We just have to do our part," Sarah explained calmly.
"Yes, yes, we do," Mary said brightly, blazing anger in her eyes. "But it's not over until he is."
XXX
Lester came awake with a start in the passenger seat of the Nerd Herder, parked about twelve car lengths away from the Woodcomb house. He heard a voice that sounded familiar, he realized. He looked over at Jeff, sleeping in the driver's seat, his hair sticking out in a million directions and drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth. He could hear light fluttery snores emanating from his mouth. The interior of the car smelled of remnants of two old meatball sandwiches and stale coffee, unappealing in the light of the morning.
He heard the voice again, turning to look out his window and nearly jumping out of his skin. A man with salt and pepper hair, speaking with a British accent, was walking by with a young auburn haired beauty, also speaking with a British accent. It was the man's voice that sounded oddly familiar, though for the life of him he couldn't place where he knew it from. What he did remember about the voice however, was that it was cold and menacing in his memory, but light and calm as he heard it now. As quickly as they had appeared, they were out of sight and no longer audible.
"What did we miss?" he said to himself, as he sat up straighter. Something was off, he could tell, but he wasn't sure what it was. Only that there seemed to be more people than there should have been at seven in the morning, and yet with those extra people, the houses looked deserted, like no one was home. Except at the Woodcomb residence.
He poked Jeff awake, telling him, "Rise and shine, Jefferson. Something is afoot. We need to be watchful."
Behind their vehicle, an older woman with auburn hair, who would have had a detectable British accent as well had she chosen to speak, was crouched down. She knew the vehicle was occupied, so she stayed low to the ground. But the information she had been able to acquire told her this was the place, Charles Bartowski's sister Eleanor's house, the one she had seen on the surveillance footage on the Intersect computer in Romania.
XXX
"Does this strike anyone else as very Alamo-ish?" Morgan said, crouched next to Casey on the floor next to Ellie's living room windows. His disruption of the silence, though welcome for the reprieve from a feeling that the air was heavy to breathe, was unusually unamusing to the others. Waiting with senses heightened to almost overload was thoroughly exhausting.
"Will you shut up, Moron? No one wants to hear your two cents about anything. Just shut your mouth and pay attention," Casey growled at him. Chuck regarded them both from separate vantage points crouched down beside the other set of windows in the same room. Gertrude and Bentley each were outside, with their respective troops, so to speak.
"Do you really think they can stop him?" Morgan asked, directed at Chuck, who was a more sympathetic ear. Morgan rested his gun beside him on the ground for a moment, rubbing his wrist absently as he spoke. Chuck had a stray thought about him, jumping from his job as office manager at Chuck's firm to hard core spy again, probably in a situation more perilous than any other he had engaged in, minus his Intersect days. The transition had been seamless, and even now, he seemed relatively calm, despite the pending danger.
"Wear him down, maybe. That's our only shot, from what I can guess," Chuck answered him, thinking he should tell Morgan what he had just thought, just in case, but then stopping himself, imagining Casey's potential reaction to Chuck talking about his feelings out loud. He made a vow to himself to tell Morgan when this was over. Although, he didn't need any more motivation to come through this alive than he already had.
More noise from outside seemed to confirm what Chuck was talking about. Casey could hear Gertrude over his communication device, pulling her men back as Poshenko tore through them effortlessly. The comm still active, Casey could hear the sounds of hand to hand combat as well, that seemed to last forever. Errant pops of weapons fire accentuated the conversation, all of which was brisk and loud, shouted in the background but audible on the microphone.
Gertrude's voice broke through the background noise. "We have bogeys, Casey. I think they're Bartowski's friends. And a redhead that looks like she's been through the gauntlet." Giving them a wary look, Casey rose onto his knees and crept to the window, using the tip of his gun to shift the blinds so the outside was visible. Chuck heard him, starting to enunciate a word, which turned to a grunt, then a growl that ended with an angry hiss.
"Who?" Chuck asked, hearing her words, having a sinking feeling he knew who Gertrude had just encountered, considering Casey's reaction.
"Those clowns that know you're Feds," she clarified. "Larry and Jack. Or whatever." When Chuck didn't answer right away, because he was dumbstruck, she continued to elaborate. "A small Indian with a wig and a partially bald man, in white button downs and ties."
"Jeff and Lester?" Morgan asked, almost dropping his weapon he had recently picked back up, he was so shocked. "What the hell are Jeff and Lester doing here?" His mouth hung open. He stood up on one knee, too short to see everything Casey could, but peered over the window sill, needing some confirmation of this unbelievable information.
"They fixed my sister's computer. They disengaged the Pentagon surveillance last night," Chuck told them. Casey growled, long and monosyllabically, for a ridiculously long time. "Per diem Nerd Herders, I guess," Chuck offered quietly. "Although, you know, I know, you don't really care," Chuck mumbled, more to himself. He shifted position to look out the window on his side of the room.
"Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber? Again?" Casey huffed. He spun on the balls of his feet, readjusting the weapon he was holding, and creeping away from the window.
"Corrine's with them," Chuck announced to them both, managing to sound worried and relieved in the same sentence. "Someone needs to get them out of there," he said, an edge of desperation noticeable now, as the time had grown ever increasingly short.
Casey motioned for Morgan to follow him. "We are on the way to extract said bogeys, roger," he said over the comm. Morgan was shaking his head, like he couldn't believe he was doing this yet again.
"Roger that," Gertrude said in the ear piece.
Those two are going to haunt me even when I'm dead, Casey thought to himself. He moved quickly to the door, slinking through, checking to make sure Morgan cleared the door before he reached for the doorknob and pulled it closed again. Let's just hope it doesn't start today, he thought morbidly.
XXX
"Get out of the car!" Corrine said, as she tapped on the window, a weapon in her hand.
She stepped out of the way as the door flung wide enough to almost hit her, both men inside the car falling out the same door onto the sidewalk. They were talking quickly, and over each other, making the words almost incoherent. "Shut up!" she ordered, clearing the cacophony. "What are you doing here? And why are you driving that ridiculous vehicle?"
"Nerd Herd. We work for the Nerd Herd. We fix computers," Lester babbled.
"Why does that involve an all night stakeout, hmm?" she asked.
"It's a long story," Jeff mumbled. "You must know Chuck," he added, exchanging a glance with Lester.
She fought to maintain her stern exterior, but confusion was working its way onto her face. "You know Charles Bartowski?"
"Yes, we're his friends. We were guests at his wedding. We helped him save the day at the Pacific Concert Hall about six months ago," Lester told her.
"With a striking rendition of 'Take On Me,' I might add," Jeff said quietly but enthusiastically.
"It was a turning point in our career, wasn't it?" Lester mumbled to him, suddenly ignoring the gun.
"Shut up!" Corrine ordered again. Her eyebrows rose high on her forehead, as something suddenly occurred to her. "Wait a minute. You're a musical act?"
"When we aren't helping Chuck save the world, yes. Perhaps you've heard of us. We are Jeffster!" Lester pronounced, sticking his chest out triumphantly as he said it.
"Jeffster," she said, half question, half statement. "You do that broken wings song, right?"
"Yes!" Jeff yelled, smiling at Lester, thinking they had a fan on their hands. "That was a huge hit in Europe, where I can tell you are from by your accent."
"I can't believe this," she mumbled to herself. "Why are you here?" she asked, directed at them again.
"Just in case Chuck needed help. He's good and all, but sometimes, we help him out," Lester told her.
Against her better judgment, but thinking the situation was too strange to be a ploy, she said softly, "Well, I'm here for the same reason."
"Corrine!" she heard, slow to turn her head, to see Morgan crouched behind a bush. "Glad you could make it," he said, shifting his weight as he crept through the bush. "Our target's on his way. You all need to clear out."
"Target? As in singular? One guy?" Lester questioned.
"Not now, you colossal moron. Do what he says!" Casey ordered with a growl, behind Morgan but still unseen.
"Is that Colonel John Casey of the National Security Agency I hear?" Jeff asked, half turning to attempt to peer through the hedge to see who was behind Morgan.
There was inaudible mumbling, then, "Why can't I shoot them?" Casey was heard saying, quieter, as he was in fact speaking to Morgan.
Corrine was at the end of her patience, and her determined, angry face said so. She stuck the gun out farther, pointing it closer to Lester's face than it had been so far.
"There's more than one person, if that's what you think," Jeff announced.
"Explain," she barked, not lowering her gun.
Lester nodded to Jeff, asking him to explain. "When we were leaving Ellie's house earlier. There were probably five or six guys, in suits, speaking Russian. We thought it was weird, considering what we ended up fixing in her house."
A sharp grunt issued forth through the shrubbery. "How did the CIA and Gertrude's team miss them? Where are they?" Casey asked.
"They disappeared. We thought they left. But they're about ten houses away, as you can see right now," Lester told them. He gestured eastward, and Corrine saw what he was talking about. They had advanced while she was dealing with this sideshow.
"He had men in place here," she hissed angrily. "How did no one know that?"
"Sloppy," Casey cursed. "It's like they're the FBI."
"We need to warn Chuck," Morgan said nervously, knowing they were out of range of the earwigs. "The Intersect is enough to plow through that crowd. Add extra guns and we're toast," he proclaimed.
"No one's toast, whatever the hell that means," Corrine snapped. "But he needs backup. Let's go," she said, charging into the bush next to Morgan.
"You two stay in the car," Casey called to them. Morgan questioned the directive. "Just in case," he said softly, so they couldn't hear.
XXX
"Five additional targets, repeat, five additional targets," Casey heard Gertrude say over his comm unit.
"Damn," he swore. "I'll stay east. Circle around to the west, check the vantage point from there," Casey told Corrine. She nodded, then crept away, using the shrubbery dividing the property lines as a cover. Casey noted as she moved away how relatively unscathed she seemed, even though she had escaped from the Intersect at the airport and still had found Ellie's house and made it here. She had a few wounds on her face, and dried blood at her hairline, but other than that she had no restriction in her movements. He grunted silently to himself, knowing she had earned his respect.
"Chuck, Poshenko had back up. They were missed at the first perimeter check. Do you read?" Casey spoke into the comm, even as the thoughts were still circling in his head.
Chuck was silent for several seconds, but replied smoothly, "Understood." Gertrude and Bentley were outside, Sarah, Ellie, and his mother in Ellie's office. At that moment, he was alone in the room. Unsettled, he spoke into his device, in order to address his mother.
"Mom, you heard?" he asked. The anxiety had ratcheted his voice up higher and tighter.
"Don't worry, Chuck," she said immediately, and he almost laughed, though not with humor. He had never been more frightened for his sister's safety than in this very moment, but freaking out helped nothing. Not worrying, or better, telling him not to worry, seemed pointless.
His thoughts were interrupted by more loud reports of gunfire, now closer than in the initial barrage. He could hear yelling over the comm, not sure whose voices they were. The symphony of sounds changed, as if part of the total wall of sound was wavering. Some of the devices picking up the noise were winking in and out, some dropping out all together. What he did hear caused his stomach to feel like it had dropped to his feet. "Man down, repeat, man down!" It was Gertrude's voice.
"Casey?" Chuck called, sounding more desperate than he had hoped.
"It's Bentley, Chuck. I'm headed to them. Morgan and Corrine are circling back around," Casey yelled.
Chuck waited.
XXX
"Ellie, what are you looking for?" Sarah asked her, as she paced behind Ellie, who was still working furiously at the computer despite the situation. Ellie was not paying attention, and only half responded to her.
"There was a name that looked familiar to me, only I can't remember from where. It was mentioned several times in that file, the one I sent to Beckman," she finally said to Sarah. What Sarah could see on the computer screen looked like gibberish, and she wondered how Ellie could have found anything in the file.
"Beckman has the proof she needs, Ellie. What else do you need to do?" Sarah asked her, stopping at the computer, bending slightly to speak closer to Ellie's ear.
She spun around in her chair, her nerves forgotten as an intensity like nothing Sarah had ever seen from her burned in her eyes. "Because I want to know why. Meriwether had a reason for what he did-tampering with my father's file, letting him take the fall for all of that, while at the same time commissioning Intersect research, and then trying to have me prove that the Intersect is a failure. Bentley reports to him, ultimately."
"What name?" Mary asked, breaking into the conversation. Her clothing was wrinkled, though Sarah knew she hadn't slept either, as Mary had foregone sleep in order to protect her.
"Dr. Jonah Zarnow," Ellie told her.
Mary and Sarah exchanged knowing glances, the name familiar to both of them. Ellie just kept talking. "He worked with Dad, encoding the Intersect, right?"
"Yes, he did," Mary said, acidic disdain in her voice.
"He was supposed to remove it from Chuck, about a week after I met him. Zarnow faked his own death because he was selling secrets to the North Koreans. He wanted the Intersect," Sarah told her. "He was NSA, before he turned." Sarah added quickly, "That was the night Chuck set fire to the souffle." A quick smile, and knowing glance, just one more oddity that now made perfect sense after she knew the whole story.
"His hands were all over this. Even as far back as 1978. He may have been working with Dad, but he was a double agent from the beginning," she swore.
"There was someone else. Dr Busgang. He was killed by Fulcrum, but he was part of it too, wasn't he?" Sarah said, directed at Mary. She nodded to Sarah. "Although from what Chuck told me, Busgang seemed unaware that he was working for Fulcrum on the wrong side. He got in the way and they killed him."
"Code name Perseus, right?" Ellie said, still typing faster than she was talking. "His info is here, too, but only in research notes. I don't think he knew what Zarnow was doing, not back then." Ellie flipped through more documents, silent, sensing that Sarah had moved away, but not lifting her attention until she heard her mother speak.
"Sarah?" Ellie heard Mary ask, a sharp spike of concern in her voice.
When Ellie looked up, Sarah was backing towards the sofa, slightly unsteady on her feet. "What's wrong, Sarah?" Ellie asked, jumping up from the computer and rushing to her.
"I just feel like I need to sit down," she said, her voice muddled and unsteady. Ellie saw her, sweaty and pale. Ellie reached for her wrist to feel for her pulse, noting it was rapid and thready. The skin on Sarah's wrist felt clammy to the touch.
"Feeling faint?" Ellie asked tensely. Sarah seemed to not hear her. "Sarah?" Ellie yelled again. Without speaking more, she pushed Sarah to lie on her side, pulling the pillow forward. "Mom, her blood sugar is crashing. She's barely eaten anything since last night. There's a small bottle of orange juice and some crackers in my desk drawer. You need to grab them."
Mary ran to the desk, a blur that drifted out of Ellie's peripheral vision. More breaking glass and gunshots distracted Ellie, and she ran towards the door, knowing from her mother that Chuck was alone in the other room.
XXX
Casey found Gertrude and Bentley crouched behind the same shed he had been behind earlier. Gertrude was in the process of wrapping a binding around Bentley's arm. She was bleeding, but the wound looked under control. "The perimeter check missed the additional men, Casey. Poshenko took out ten of ours. We took all but two of his, and of course, him. But they got past us when I went to get her," Gertrude nodded towards Bentley, "and dragged her to safety. Poshenko is with one, the other went around the opposite way."
"Morgan and Corrine have that one," Casey said. He left the "hopefully" unspoken.
"Poshenko is on his way in. Bartowski needs help," Bentley said through gritted teeth. Casey growled and took off running towards the house.
XXX
Morgan went first, and Corrine trailed about 15 feet behind him. The grass and flowers that surrounded the house were trampled down and crushed already before their arrival this time. As more sunlight brightened the landscape as the morning progressed, it became clear how utterly devastated the scene appeared. NSA or CIA cleaners were needed, but even then, the task was mighty, Morgan thought, as he walked slowly. The air was warm, still humid, and now rank with the acrid stench of gunpowder that seemed to float in the air like tree pollen.
He dove for cover behind a row of bushes as he heard commotion behind him. When he looked, he saw Corrine, grabbing a long gun from an assailant's hands and spinning it back up, cracking him across the face with his own gun. He pulled her down with him as he fell, kicking at her legs as they went down in a roiling pile of arms and legs. Her gun flew out of her hand, sailing away in the altercation. Morgan moved forward, poised to take him out, when a blur he caught out of the corner of his eye, was suddenly in the fray.
A loud, sickening crack filled the air as the man who had come to Corrine's rescue had walloped the man with a broken piece of wood. He went down, sprawling and tumbling away. Morgan did a double take, when he saw who it was. Hartley Winterbottom, he had learned, after the Agent X issue. Morgan had only seen him a few times in real life, the last time being as he had been hauled away from Orion's cabin by a military task force. This was Alexei Volkoff, he knew. Chuck had told him about Hartley, but Morgan had been at the hospital with Sarah the entire time that whole situation had transpired. He wondered how different he really was.
The cold rage on his face was reminiscent of the epitome of how evil Volkoff had been, although Morgan had been privy to the information that explained it all, how he had come to be. Morgan watched from afar, seeing Corrine backing away from him, scurrying backward like a crab, a sheer terror displacing her calm and cool exterior. She backed up as far as she could, then stopped, cowering like a child.
Morgan watched Hartley's face. The rage calmed, and he dropped the wood. Morgan heard it as it clammored to the ground. Something seemed to overcome him, as he raised both hands to his face, covering his mouth, but not his eyes. He seemed hypnotized, unable to look away from her. Morgan heard her, incoherent babbling that sounded like it was coming from a frightened child.
"Corrine," Hartley said, clutching at his chest, as if his heart were breaking beneath the surface. He dropped down onto both knees, as if he were witnessing a holy miracle before his eyes. Even at the distance he was standing, Morgan could see he was crying.
He said her name, at least twice more, before she looked up. Her gaze stayed fixed on his face for what seemed an eternity, studying it, examining every line, every inch of him, searching for what she had hoped to see. He couldn't hold her gaze, continually shifting his eyes towards the ground, overcome with guilt, as she had backed away from him in fear, an echo of the horrors he had perpetrated not far from her mind. The fear disappeared a little at a time, as she studied him in silence that stretched as time ticked by.
Morgan turned away, feeling that he was intruding on a private moment as she reached hesitantly towards him, her fingers reaching for his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hartley take her hand in his before it touched him, holding it gently, caressing the back of her hand with his fingers. Morgan also heard the cry, bursting out from deep inside her, as she dove at him, clutching him in a ferocious hug that set them off balance. He leaned back on his haunches to keep upright, his hands in her hair, holding her against him, both of them weeping.
Morgan pulled his attention away when he heard the clatter inside the house, and took off running, leaving Corrine in her husband's arms for the first time in 30 years.
XXX
Chuck was on his feet the second he heard the breaking glass. Chuck flashed almost at the same instant he reached for the man climbing in through the window. The glass crunched beneath his feet, and he kicked it out from under his feet to keep the soles of his shoes in touch with the ground. The intruder took a flying kick to the stomach, then a chop behind his head, and he fell, skidding to a stop as he collided with the far wall.
Chuck was in the process of standing again from a crouched position when Poshenko flew at him through the open window. For a moment Chuck was pinned under him, but he kicked him off, then flipped himself to stand in a bended arch. "You don't need to do this," Chuck told him. "What good does killing me do?"
A sinister gleam in his eye, he responded coldly. "You're in the way. I'm after your sister. I always was."
The Intersect kept him cool, and for the first time, he was thankful for the upgrade. An open threat to his sister like that could have thrown his emotions out of whack enough before that he could have slipped. He knew he needed to protect his sister, but the fear of failure, fear of losing her, was absent. "My sister isn't a threat to anyone, Poshenko," he told him.
"Really, Bartowski?" he taunted. "I'm here like this because she created me, this version anyway." He started to walk, circling Chuck, as he kept pace with him. "And you know as well as I do, the only thing that can defeat an Intersect is another Intersect. Whoever wins this is the last. Eliminate your sister, eliminate all possible future competition forever."
"You sound a little too confident," he taunted in reply. "It's meant to work in my head, not yours. Things feeling a little jumbled? Seems like it."
Chuck's words had provoked him again, and he dove, tackling Chuck to the ground.
XXX
Ellie was crouched down behind the sofa, listening to Chuck and the other Intersect as they exchanged barbs. The gun Chuck had was gone, skittering across the floor, through the trail of broken glass. She stayed low, unable to see what was going on, but the sounds of the fight were so loud it was grating. She heard fist connecting to flesh, bone crunching bone, for an unbelievably long period of time. She remembered the conversation before, what Sarah and his mother had been worried about. Chuck and Poshenko were evenly matched, and Chuck was exhausted from fighting and not sleeping. Casey had needed to save him the last time.
After Sarah had passed out, Ellie had known in a flare of determination what she needed to do. Mary was taking care of Sarah. She needed to help her brother. The only thing she could think of was the instance on Christmas Eve when Daniel Shaw would have killed her unarmed brother if she hadn't disobeyed Chuck and stayed behind. It wasn't rational or calculated, only reflexive and instinctive.
She didn't have a frying pan this time, rather, just a small metal bust that had been on a shelf in her office she'd grabbed as she had run out of the door, praying her mother was occupied with Sarah and didn't follow her out.
She focused on where the noise was coming from, creeping back and forth to stay hidden. Her palms were sweaty, leaving moist prints on the floor as she moved. Her heart was racing and her breath came in short, raspy gasps. Waiting gave her time to think how stupid what she had chosen to do actually was. A quiet spell that lasted for more than just a second made her creep to the edge of the couch, as she tried to peer outward without letting herself be seen.
In the same instant she knew she had overextended her face around the edge of the sofa, she felt a rough hand grab her and pull her up to her feet, then drag her outward. She felt the cold gun against her temple as she saw her brother, bleeding from multiple wounds on his face, grimy from sweat, his hair disheveled. She was afraid, but her mind never stopped working, remembering if he had turned on his Intersect, or "flashed" as he called it, his emotions would be in total control. That was why he didn't look the way she had expected him to, disappointed or worried.
In the next blink of her eye, a myriad of things happened at the same time. The front door cracked loudly as it was kicked in from the outside, and John Casey emerged into the room with his gun drawn. The sound from the door distracted Poshenko for a split second, long enough for Chuck to lunge, ripping his sister from Poshenko's grasp and diving, pushing her to the wall with his body shielding her, spinning Poshenko off balance, the gun still in his hand, at the same time Ellie's office door banged open as well. Gunfire.
Chuck felt the burning pain in his shoulder, realizing one of the bullets had to have hit him, but he stayed crouched, holding his sister in his arms, his back facing outward. He heard her scream, realizing she must have seen the blood spray after the shot. Even from his view, he could see the spray pattern that was now splattered onto the wall behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his blood also sprayed onto her cheek.
"Walker!" he heard Casey shout, just on the edge of panic. Sarah, he screamed in his head, immediately aware that she had come out to deal with the situation, surprised that somehow that fear was able to break through the Intersect, but he felt also in that same moment as his mind raced that if anything could have broken through, it would concern feelings for Sarah. Before his thought was even complete, he heard the rapid succession of gunshots, hitting the target behind him, as he heard Poshenko cry out as Sarah's bullet's connected with his flesh. He couldn't turn his head, but he saw her in his mind's eye, and knew exactly how she appeared firing her gun.
Just when Chuck thought at last it was over, he heard more gunshots, realizing Poshenko's gun was going off even as he was collapsing dead to the ground. Chuck held onto his sister, pinning her to the wall, hearing her hysterical panting. What had started as a red hot burn in his shoulder suddenly became what felt like a blow torch going straight through his entire left side from front to back. The sound of his own cry of pain died in his throat, as the effort to breath felt like he was taking caustic acid into his lungs.
He heard an unbelievably loud scream, one word, "No!" that echoed and echoed in his head as he fell. As consciousness started slipping away, he felt for a moment he was somewhere else. He had heard that scream before, as he'd been dropped off the top of an eight story building by his ankles. Back then, as now, the sensation of falling had been interrupted by a searing pain across his left shoulder. Only then, it had been John Casey, grabbing him as he fell and swinging him onto a landing on the fire escape, almost ripping his left arm out of the socket from the momentum of his weight falling. The last thought he had was how similar this situation was, for back then, he had thought his life should have flashed before his eyes, but instead then, just like now, the only thing that did was the horrible knowledge that Sarah was forced to watch him die.