Sarah signed the transfer paper and leant back against the wall with a sigh. Casey looked just as exhausted as her, almost nodding off, even though he was still standing. The last 24 hours had been hectic ones, but they had finally chased down their man. He was getting too good at slipping out of their fingers.

He couldn't hide worth a damn though.

Their prisoner was walked away by one of the security men, deep down into the bunker. She watched the man she had been chasing for over a month now, between various missions.

A month. One month. That was pretty much all the time it had been since she had left Burbank. She thought it had been over when Zarnow had attempted to kidnap Chuck and the decision on high came to have Chuck transferred to a 'secure facility'. The Intersect needed to be kept safe, after all.

So she moved on. A quick mission in Berlin, another in London. Barely a week had passed before the new assignment was given to her.

"Go back to Burbank. Find Chuck."

Chuck was pretty proud of himself after that last run. He had managed to put around 600 miles between him and the bunker before The Handlers caught up with him. He had been aiming to get to Salt Lake City and have a look around, but Sarah and Casey caught him just a few hundred miles shy. Next time he might head for Arizona instead.

Now that he was back in his cell, he scratched another dash into the wall, marking escape #7 as unsuccessful. Then he went through the routine that had become normal over his recent returns. His bed was still here, the door to bathroom looked the same and none of his comic books looked any different. None of the contents had been moved around, although it looked like they had put some metal plating over the circuitry that connected the television to the wall. It was meant to be used so that Chuck could flash on information, but after Chuck had cannibalised the interior components to scramble the operation to his door, they had needed to stop him on that front.

There was a new camera however, bolted to the wall. Chuck grinned. He thought they had learnt after escape #5 that leaving electronics in grasping distance of the locked up Intersect was never a good idea.

Casey found himself back in the same hotel he had ended up in after most of these nerd hunts. After the nerd had been put in the facility, the apartment John had been living in at Echo Park had been sold, but it sure would have come in useful the amount of times Casey had ended up back in Burbank. He was too tired to charter a plane back to NSA headquarters tonight, so he would just spend the night here and report back in the morning. He wasn't even sure Beckman was particularly worried about Bartowski anymore. He always had a habit of finding his way back to them, eventually.

Honestly, Casey felt some grudging respect for the geek. When he met him two months ago, Casey wouldn't have even noticed if he crushed him under his boot, but it took a certain something to break out of an NSA detention centre seven times. Well not all the way out, if you ignore #4. That was a really pathetic one. Of course, if Casey was in charge, Bartowski would have been shot by now. A blown threw kneecap was sure to slow him down for a while.

By the time that morning rolled around, Casey was looking forward to getting back into missions. The Buy More hadn't been the war zone he was born for, and it showed through the nightmares he still had about the place. The things he had seen... the contents of that fridge, Big Mike with a foot long... and the heavy oppression in the air whenever Jeff was around.

Casey shuddered and threw a grunt into his empty hotel room. He had been around Death plenty, but Jeff was something else entirely.

Since it was still a few hours until there was a flight he could get back to DC, he decided some TLC was in order for a few of his guns that he kept on his person before bed. These ladies hadn't seen much action in the last month, but Casey wouldn't let them think he didn't care about them anymore. He had been distant with them, but he was ready to show them how he really felt about them once more.

"Hey Casey, I brought breakfast," Chuck said as he pushed through the hotel door with a box of doughnuts while Casey was cleaning out the bore of his trusty Browning.

Casey grunted his thanks to Chuck. The nerd had his uses.

"You heading back to DC today?"

Affirmative grunt. Casey reached for one of the doughnuts, leaving the rest of the gun pieces in front of him.

"Cool. I'm thinking of heading over to the east coast one of these days. You know, ever since I got locked up, the world just seems so more open, you know?" Chuck said.

Casey grunted in agreement, "I know what you mean. I once spent two weeks hiding in a wall of this dictator's mansion. The whole mission ended up being a bust, but by the end of it I was just happy to-" Casey suddenly stopped himself and did a double take.

"Bartowski, what are YOU DOING HERE?!"

That took him a while to realise Chuck thought to himself. He flashed Casey a Bartowski grin, before rushing out the room before Casey could grab a hold of him. All this running away was doing wonders for his stamina.

Casey grabbed the gun parts in front of him, assembled one in just a moment and chased the nerd out of the room, growling from the back of his throat.

The Hunt begins again.

Chuck and Morgan's 'gaming night' had finished around 5 o'clock this morning, when Morgan collapsed from absolute exhaustion. Chuck had just laughed it off since it had been great to see his bearded buddy again after not seeing him for a week or so. Through some miracle of luck, no one had really noticed his disappearance. Before being thrown into his bunker, he had convinced Beckman to let him quit his Buy More job and tell Ellie he was finally moving out of the house. He let Ellie believe that he was doing it so he seemed more mature for his relationship with Sarah and that the past few weeks had been hectic as he settled into a new home and job.

Whatever the case, Chuck had made it his mission during his relatively frequent escapes to pop in on his family (Ellie) and friends (Morgan), just to let them know he was alright and getting by. He was sure Ellie wanted to come see his 'new place', but she was just so happy with his moving on with life that she was happy to just let him be. For now at least.

Technically, if you thought about it, Chuck did still have a new place to call home. And he even saw Sarah on a regular-ish basis.

Last night's escape had been pretty fun to pull off. After opening up the security camera, an Intersect flash had hit him on how the system worked. The camera had 2 feeds coming off of it: one to the security room and another that saved the content straight to disk. Using some of his electronic wizardry, Chuck could inverted the clock timer in the camera and have the security feed read straight in from the recorded hard disk. After spending a couple of hours just lying on the bed, Chuck was sure there was enough recorded footage to make good his escape. He patched in the footage, threw together his door scrambling device again and...

"Hey-o!"

Chuck threw his pizza box from gaming night to the side, stood up to stretch and wondered where he would head today. It was unlikely that his absence would go unnoticed for much longer, that is if it hadn't been found out by now. Probably no time to talk to see Ellie since Casey and Sarah were probably still in Burbank, but he could probably call her from a payphone at some point today.

Sarah and Casey are still in Burbank... Chuck couldn't help the smile that came across his face as a plan began to form. He knew they wouldn't have left after being up for a whole day straight chasing him and messing with his former handlers was becoming one of his favourite hobbies. Checking his watch, he saw that he still had time before Casey would usually be up and moving. Going up against Sarah didn't seem as good as an idea though. She never was a morning person...

Chuck had ducked around the corner of the hallway before Casey had even left the hotel room. One thing to be said about constantly running away was that he was nowhere near as clumsy as he was even one month ago. If he had tried to get away from Casey back then he would more likely than not end up tripping on his own feet just leaving the door.

Nowadays he could pull off the jump down entire flights of stairs, bounce off the wall at the end and just keep going. Casey wasn't going to be chasing him that fast, having been caught unawares, but Chuck liked having the distance between them anyway.

Once he was down on the ground floor, he managed to navigate his way to the staff quarters. By the time he came out the other end of the staff room he had changed into a uniform of the hotel, which he had nabbed from one of the open lockers. In combination with all the guests currently at the hotel for the art show hosted that night, it would make it pretty hard for Casey to spot him, which was good as Casey had just come out of the staircase, right between Chuck and the front entrance.

Chuck cursed himself. I should have just run out while I had the chance. Casey was scanning the reception area before heading towards the exit to see if he could spot Chuck out on the street. Chuck used the opportunity to duck into the hotel dining area, where breakfast was being served. He strode across the room, trying to seem confident without catching anyone's eye. But halfway across the room, one of the patrons flagged him down, indicating that they were ready to order.

Chuck barely had time to register the two men and woman at the table before he glanced at the woman and the flash caught him. In his time at the bunker he had got much better at interpreting his flashes for as much information as possible, since it was his main job when he wasn't escaping to provide information to the government and it was also an extremely useful tool to get out of supposedly 'secure' compounds. Not so secure when you had all the layouts and plans in your own head. Chuck had got pretty good at calling information up whenever it was available.

And yet he couldn't help as his eyes bulged at the arms dealer in front of him as the information flooded into him. It was incredible how the Intersect combined with the human mind could take data points and use it to recognise someone just off of the description alone. There right in front of him was a wanted criminal and enemy of the state.

"La Ciudad."

Now it was the woman's turn to have her eyes grow wide. No one should recognise her. She never lets anyone see her face when she is under that alias. Well, not entirely true, she would just kill whoever did recognise her.

Of course, it was only after saying her name and as she was already reaching for a concealed weapon that Chuck realised all this. How did he manage to get himself into situations like this?

Casey turned back into the hotel, furious that Bartowski had gotten away again. He needed to get back to his phone in the hotel room and call this in so that the NSA could start tracking him as soon as possible. Once he got his hands on that damn nerd...

Whatever Casey's intentions were towards Chuck was interrupted as said nerd came bursting out of the dining area, screaming his girly head off as a woman chased after him with a revolver bigger than her head.

"Casey, help!" Chuck yelled as he ran towards the exit.

Casey could barely hold off the eye roll. Only the nerd would somehow get a complete stranger gunning for him in less than a minute of meeting them. He was a little tempted to just let whoever this woman was just kill Chuck here and now.

This job sure was frustrating sometimes.

"Get down!" Casey yelled at Chuck, pulling his gun up and taking aim. The woman's eyes widened "NSA, I'm bringing you in-" Unfortunately Casey didn't get to finish that thought as the woman stopped and started aiming at the much more imminent threat. Casey threw himself to the side, towards the hotel check in desk and just managed to dive behind cover as the shooting started.

The moment he was out of sight, he kept moving further down the desk, as bullets tore through the wood like paper. Splinters shot out behind him, but he kept his head down, moving fast. Within seconds of disappearing behind the desk, he peeked out the complete opposite end and began firing at where the psychobi- lady was firing from. Well, where she used to be at least. Looked like he wasn't dealing with an amateur either as she had also moved to cover, even as she kept shooting. He caught the movement of her sliding into the cloak room from the corner of his eye and adjusted his aim to hit her.

As he laid down suppressive fire, he searched for Chuck out of the corner of his eyes. The moron had somehow managed to hunker down behind the sofa in the middle of the reception room. Trust him to pick the place which only protected him from one direction. The kid might be well versed in pop culture and surprisingly skilful at escaping top security bunkers, but he didn't have a hope in hell of surviving out on the battlefield.

"Moron," Casey yelled out to him as he paused in his fire, making sure not to use his name so that at least if he failed here, no one would know his name. "Can't believe I am saying this, but take the Victoria and get to Walker." Casey threw the keys to Chuck, who immediately began running for the stairs to the underground car park. He leapt up and continued laying down fire so that the woman in the cloakroom didn't shoot Chuck in the back.

He had to dive back down as two men came into the reception and started firing at him. This time he rushed to the centre of the desk and pulled a phone down to the ground with him. He had managed to leave his phone back in his hotel room after chasing Chuck, but that didn't mean he couldn't get a call out.

Sarah threw her mobile back down on her bed. Casey wasn't picking up his damn phone and they needed to get back out there now. She couldn't believe Chuck had managed to escape the facility in less than 12 hours. It was honestly getting ridiculous. How could it be possible that someone with absolutely no training was capable of breaking out of the highest imprisonment techniques that the United States had to offer?

Part of it could be put down to the Intersect, but Chuck must have had some incredible skills all of his own to have evaded them as well as he did. Maybe there was something to be said for playing too many video games. She remembered when they were chasing him around San Diego on his third escape, where he met up with his 'Comic-Con' friends who lived in the city. Apparently Chuck had found the inspiration in between his escape attempts to begin planning his own small event at next year's event. Quite how he thought he was going to make it, well, thinking about it, he would probably have given them the slip easily by then. Whenever they tracked him to someone's house, Casey and Walker would always arrive just 10 minutes after he had left.

She had only been called about the most recent breakout fifteen minutes ago, as they had only just discovered that the security footage wasn't matching up with the cell. How they hadn't noticed Chuck wasn't in his cell, she had no idea. The people working at that bunker must be the most terrible agents the NSA had ever seen. Prisons go decades without breakouts, but when they have the lone asset to keep an eye on, there are 8 attempted escapes in a month. Only one of them they even managed to contain. The rest Sarah had to come in and clean up.

Suddenly, Sarah's phone began to ring, pulling her from her analysis of Chuck's escapology abilities. She hoped that Casey had seen the 3 missing and very urgent calls she had made and that he was calling her back. Sarah had to give him credit; Casey was an excellent field operator. No one cared about the job more.

"Agent Walker-" Casey didn't get any further before he was cut off.

"Casey, well done on learning how to work a phone! I've been calling you over and over to tell you that Chuck has got back out again. I know we only just got off this last night, but we need to-"

"Walker, I know about Chuck. He's here at the hotel. Well he was," Casey said, before a rustling and some bangs came through his end of the phone. "I've sent him over to you. Make sure when he gets there that you lock him down until you get extraction."

Sarah nearly laughed at the idea as more bangs issued from Casey's end of the phone. "Casey, you and me both know Chuck doesn't make it that easy. If you let him go alone, he's just going to run again." Sarah heard more sounds coming over the phone, before it finally clicked what she was hearing. Sarah felt an exasperated sigh come out of her, "Who are you shooting at, John?"

Casey grunted. "No idea. They started it. Well, actually, Bartowski probably did but- Oh sh-"

Sarah heard Casey drop the phone just a moment before a bang much louder than gunfire blasted through the phone's speaker. The next thing that she knew the line went dead with static.

AN: So this is the first chapter of a story I've had sitting on my hard drive for ages. Thought I'd post it and see if it tickles anyone's fancy. If you want to see more, please leave a review, I wouldn't mind continuing it with more ridiculous breakouts, oblivious Chuck friends, BuyMore-PTSD Casey and an extremely frustrated Sarah.