Ch. 4 The Game Begins

A/N: We know that you have all been waiting for Chuck and Sarah to finally meet. Well, it finally happens. Kind of. Any text between asterisks indicates a text message.

Some of you have expressed doubts regarding Chuck's plan. As a reminder, Chuck is a genius when it comes to computers. When it comes to women...maybe not so much.

Sarah stood in line at the kiosk in the student center to get some coffee. She tried not to think about how everyone in this line looked much younger than her. The line was moving slowly, but she knew she had plenty of time before her morning class on the roots of the Romance languages started.

She frowned inwardly thinking about how it would be the only kind of romance she'd ever know. The languages, she understood, the emotional type of romance…not so much. There were no classes at Stanford or the farm on romance. There was seduction, but that was the furthest thing from romance. There was sure as hell no one on the farm to teach romance, and she doubted anyone at Stanford could either.

She was pulled out of feeling sorry for herself by the slight vibration in her purse. She was surprised she was getting a text message as she reached for the burner phone that she had brought with her to Palo Alto. As her hand hit the burner phone, she paused in the act of pulling it out. The buzzing was still continuing, but not from the phone in her hand. She found herself quickly in agent mode. That would normally be fine, but in a line for coffee on a college campus…there was no way to explain to anyone there the need to hurry. The students and the baristas continued at their speed, to the annoyance of Agent Walker.

When she finally got her coffee from the overly chipper barista, Sarah quickly made her way over to a mostly deserted common area. There was a bit of an enclosed area for students to study and Sarah took a seat in one of the padded seats that had a movable desk area in front of it. It was both comfortable and practical.

A quick, discrete check revealed that no one was paying close attention to her. The dark tinting on the plexiglass ball covering the nearby security camera prevented her from seeing the camera which had tracked her movement across the room. She pulled her work phone from a hidden pocket inside of her purse.

As she pulled out the phone, she found herself wondering if she would need the item secreted in the other hidden pocket of the purse. Sarah found herself grinning at the look she could imagine on Roan's face if he heard that she pulled out her pistol in the Student Center.

"Keep your head low, Sarah," she said in her best Roan imitation. "How can you keep your head low if you're brandishing a gun on campus? How are you supposed to enjoy college, if you're terrifying everyone with your firearm?"

Sobering herself from her one-woman play, she quickly ran down the possibilities of who was texting her in descending order: the DDO, the acting DCI, the DNI or Carina. She realized the sad state of her life that her only friend would come in last in a list of who would be trying to reach her. She wasn't sure what was more depressing, that or her banishment to the CIA NCS's version of Siberia. It wasn't the frozen gulag, she reminded herself quite angrily. The disappointment she felt in herself for the melodrama she was playing out in her head got her back on track of her mission.

"You're in California, Sarah," she muttered to herself. "Jesus, you act like this is the worst you've ever had it. No one has even shot at you." Yet.

She didn't miss the adrenaline-fueled shootouts with whatever miscreant Graham had her matched up with. She didn't miss the hours of mission prep; pouring over any and all information that she could find in order to come up with contingency plans for her contingency plans that were different from contingency plans from whoever the CIA had acting as an incompetent handler on a mission.

She sure as hell didn't miss the body counts from foot soldiers or security guards who were more than likely just doing their jobs, just for the wrong side….at least the wrong side from the US's viewpoint. And she really, really didn't miss the assassination missions.

She thought back to her rise in the Clandestine Services ranks. Sarah had been occasionally tasked with eliminating enemies of the State. She remembered how Graham had been thrilled when the pshrinks had reported that Sarah had done a remarkable job of compartmentalizing her emotions following her red test.

Subsequent eliminations had shown that Sarah was a master at infiltrating secure locations, killing the target, then egressing without anyone being aware of her presence. In fact, she had been so skilled, that a couple of her first kills were written off by the opposition as having been from natural causes. For one mission, Graham had personally drawn up the mission plan in order to avoid that result. He wanted his foes to know that his Enforcer could get them anywhere, anytime. He didn't care about her nightmares that invariably followed on the heels of such missions.

She didn't know what she would have done without Roan at her side. He had told her about Graham and what he was doing. Roan had given her heads-up here and there about what was coming and the right way to deal with each situation. He had given her the best outcome of a hellish situation. She was Graham's tool, a tool that he thought that would always do exactly what he wanted done. Graham knew anything he needed done, he just pointed Sarah Walker in the problem's direction, and she would take care of it. Roan had told her that Graham was good at using tools, but never protecting them, or maintaining them. Graham had a history of discarding any tool that stopped working for him the way he wanted.

Roan had been her lifeline. She knew now that her going with him to parties some nights, were ways for her to secretly meet with shrinks to talk through what she had done. She knew that his morning diner visits with her were a way for her to stay grounded, and remember what she was doing and why. She knew he had literally saved her life. She knew that she had managed to navigate the absolute worst of the pitfalls, because of Roan Montgomery.

"If Roan says you need to be here, then you need to be here," she reminded herself. She knew he had his own game he was playing, but he also knew everything he did where she was concerned was with the intent of helping her. With that, she thought she was ready to read the text….she was not.

She was surprised at the slight tremor to her hand as she pulled her work phone free from her purse.

As surprised as she was at the tremor, it had nothing on the shock she received that the text message was from an unknown local number.

But none of that…none of it combined came close to the next shock; the message itself.

*Catch me if you can.*

What in the hell?! It was a testament to her extraordinary skills that she didn't draw her Smith & Wesson from her purse right then and there. Roan would have a cow at the mass panic in the Student Center such an incident would cause.

}0{

At another part of campus, Chuck sat in his office, glued to the laptop monitor. He smiled as he watched the formidable spy go perfectly still when she read his message. The surveillance cameras in the Student Union had been child's play to assume control over. He was thrilled with the image quality. He had been able to zoom in on her face when she had pulled her spy phone from her purse. The only telltale reaction from her had been her pupil's dilating. I bet if there was a way to control the hypothalmus to prevent dilation, she would have already mastered it.

Chuck wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to know how his mother had known how to make a burner phone untraceable. Or how she knew that Agent Walker was sure to have a spy phone on her at all times. But he had appreciated his mother's instruction when he had come up with his off-the-wall concept of how to bring the Ice Queen in from the cold. He laughed quietly to himself over the three days-three!-that he had spent trying to craft the perfect message. Admittedly, it was a fine line between capturing her intrigue versus triggering her trained response. He was no spy, so any spy vs spy game with her would be short lived, and likely painful.

But as he watched her, he noticed something he hadn't predicted or thought of in beginning this game. Earlier, he thought he had seen her morph into Agent Sarah Walker. If that was so, then he wasn't sure who she morphed into know, but it both scared him…and excited him.

There was a coolness about her that was impressive. He could tell that she had been rattled, but now…now she had collected herself and as he watched her, he wished that Ian Flemming had met this woman. Chuck was sure, as great as James Bond was, he held NO candle to Sarah Walker.

}0{

At the student union, Sarah slowly returned her work phone to its secret compartment, her fingers ghosting over the flap where her gun was hidden. She discretely surveyed the area for the third time since the message had appeared on her phone. She noted that the area was secure. Or, it at least was as secure as a civilian location filled largely with people in their teens and early twenties could be.

There was one dude-bro gym rat who was watching her. The looks he gave her made her quickly realize he was one of "those." Those being one of those men who thought that he was God's gift to women. Most women wanted to know where one could take a 'gift' like that to return it. Other than that not-so-fine fellow, no one had looked in her direction for more than a glance, the way anyone would in a normal room. She noticed the 'gift' had been checking out any female since he entered the room. She couldn't help but grin that no one had been returning his gazes.

She sat there calmly, her brain racing. She didn't know everything there was to know, but what she did know was that no one in the spytrade sent a message like that without watching for the response.

She slowly scanned the room, until she noticed them. Her eyes locked on to the dark plexiglass balls scattered about the ceiling of the Student Center. Unless she broke into the Public Safety offices, she wouldn't know which of the plexiglass domes were decoys, and which housed actual security cameras. But now she knew how she was being tracked. Someone was using cameras to track her…and then sending her a text.

She thought about the message, "Catch me if you can." Someone was playing games. Who the hell was crazy enough to play games with a CIA agent and her phone? Was she being tested? Was this something that Director Sommers was using to evaluate her? She glanced over at Mr. "Gift" who was chatting up a few ladies who had walked in. Was it someone like him? The very thought made her angry. She looked up, and glared at the nearest surveillance camera.

}0{

Across campus, Chuck swallowed reflexively as he saw the spy seemingly glaring directly at him through the camera.

"Crap, what have I done?" he asked out loud. The glare continued, until he reached over, and disconnected the feed. The agent had managed to make him blink, all the way across campus. Through a computer monitor. "Don't freak out," he muttered to himself.

Too late.

A/N 2: Yeah, yeah. They still haven't met, but they are at least communicating. Up next, Sarah starts the hunt.