Beta'ed by my good friend LancerGaShinda
Thanks for your help and support.
The Spontaneous.
Chuck could feel a rush of adrenaline spreading into his veins like molten metal. It was a new beginning. He could feel it inside of him. He could sense it. Many things, both good and tragic, had happened to him ever since he left Stanford as a disgraced and heartbroken man. The revelation of his father's true identity kept him focused. It made him humble about his own achievements. It also made him hardened, allowing him to acquire strength and a will to overcome potential trials and tribulations, though there were times his self doubt made him wonder if he was truly up to the task. Still, ever since he had been embedded with the special quirks brought on by a highly sophisticated technology left by his father, Chuck had learned how to multitask. Not that he had much choice.
He tried burying the anxiety of what might happen to him once this was all over. That, and trying to constantly reassure himself about being capable of facing whatever it may be, even though a logical and rational part of him knew that might not turn out to be the case. He then focused his attention on where the bomb could be. Paying attention to the tiniest detail was important. Right now, in order to resolve this crisis, he had to utilize his abilities to their fullest and use every single resource at his disposal.
The G Intersect – his moniker for the iteration he downloaded not 24 hours ago – was no exception.
Perhaps it's about time I let the world see what I am truly capable of.
Whilst sprinting through the hallway with a degree of grace and agility easily rivaling that of a modern-day Olympian, he scanned his surroundings. He had no idea how he was going to find that bomb. No... He wanted to curse out. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. There had to be some way of discovering where the maniac had put it. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, trying his best to recall the building's blueprints (which he flashed on during the altercation with Casey just a few moments prior).
The flash hit him hard, causing him to fall on his knees; however, he somehow managed to regain his balance at the last moment.
Sarah immediately caught up to him, grabbing him from behind. "What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?" she asked in a voice mixed with concern and panic.
Chuck shook his head. That didn't hurt anywhere near as much as it did last time. Perhaps he got the hang of how the G Intersect worked, or he was well on his way. There was still a sliver of hope. The last thing he needed right now was to suffer the crippling effects of another dual-Intersect conflict, given how much time and effort it took for him to learn how to properly utilize his dad's creation (the O Intersect, as he now called it).
"I am fine. I am fine, Sarah. I just had the right flash at the wrong moment."
Casey panted. It seemed like he wanted to say something but he was already out of breath. His face was flushed. His feet were aching and probably swollen. In fact, it was more accurate to say the larger man was stumbling forward, rather than running; such was his physical state that Chuck felt compelled to comment.
"Your physical stamina is pathetic, Major."
"Don't push your luck, Moron!" Casey growled, looking at the Bartowski male's easy breathing and slight amount of sweat in annoyance and envy. He did not like what he was seeing.
If only I were a few years younger...
He really needed to hit the gym and start working on improving his leg strength and stamina. There was no way in hell that he, a highly distinguished Marine, was going to let some bratty civilian get one over him. His reputation as the NSA's ace operative was at stake for crying out loud!
There was no way in hell he was going to let a little nerd outpace him like that. Nope. Never again.
Chuck just smiled slightly in response. The Major was rather sharp-tongued, rude and impatient; in short, far from the nicest individual. Chuck liked to think he was pretty good at dealing with unsociable individuals, so nothing short of being designated target practice could truly faze him. People's taunts and barbs generally flowed off of him, and so far he hadn't tried to severely hurt or injure him. Though that might be due to the fact even someone like Casey knew his boundaries well and certainly wasn't stupid enough to try anything which might invoke the ultimate wrath of Uncle Sam. Or perhaps people like him were just protecting their hidden warm center with a tough shell. In Chuck's opinion, the former theory was most likely.
"Chuck, what did you flash on?" Sarah asked with urgency in her voice.
"I didn't know the Intersect worked like that. I might know where he will strike. But first, I need you guys to trust me." Chuck replied with a confident grin, a determined look appearing on his face as he gently took Sarah's hand into his own.
Sarah was aware they could die at any moment. She didn't know why, but the feeling that she would be okay began spreading from his hand through her whole body. She trusted him. Indeed, despite her nature, she trusted him enough to handle the situation; somehow, she felt compelled to take that drastic leap of faith. A huge sense of trust and warmth came over her, so she didn't say anything. She could only nod and look away from Chuck shyly.
"Find the damned bomb before I shoot you, dimwit. General Stanfield is about to take the stage." Casey grumbled.
"Aye aye, Sir. We at the NGA aim to please."
...xxxxxx...xxxxxx...xxxxx...
According to the G Intersect's intel, Andric was an infamous, very well known expert in building Improvised Explosive Devices. Such bombs – at least a certain variety of them – were comprised of conventional military explosives, such as artillery shells, and attached to a detonating mechanism. They had been deployed in and outwith conventional military conflicts. Building roadside bombs was a hobby of Andric's, which was no surprise given his long history with guerrilla warfare. Knowing his MO, Chuck could tell how vicious Andric truly was; he liked to hit where it hurt most. Which meant he probably placed the device somewhere around the center of the room for maximum casualties.
But where exactly?
As if a prayer had been answered, Chuck heard something beep. Someone like him, for whom the technology was just another way of living, could feel the ominous undertone to that beep deep inside his guts. He immediately stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon a serving tray, conveniently placed in the middle of the room. The perfect place for a psychotic bomber to hide his preferred weapon of doom.
Well, what do you know? Prayers do get answered.
"Uh... this is it."
Chuck pointed it out as Sarah and Casey immediately rushed towards the serving tray, opening it up. They came face to face with the device, which was certainly armed. It consisted of fifty pounds of C4 as well as a MacBook, on which a countdown of five minutes and thirty seconds (and counting) was visible.
Chuck looked at Sarah's face. Fear and panic was all he could see flashing in her beautiful eyes. It didn't look good. It didn't look good at all.
Neither Sarah nor Casey ever came across such a complex triggering mechanism throughout their whole careers. Needless to say, they were completely at a loss about how to proceed.
"Uh, the EOD squad is about to show up, right?" Chuck asked nervously, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.
Casey grunted in response, "Not in time. Any ideas?"
"Disconnect the laptop." Sarah quickly suggested.
"A bomb disposal team in Prague tried it once last year; it turned out to be a booby trap." Chuck interjected, recalling the incident from his previous flash about the bomb schematics.
Sarah, a bit startled upon hearing that at first, gave him an appreciative look. Even Casey looked a little impressed.
"Chuck, you brought us here. Is there anything else you remember about the bomb?"
Disconnect...
Hearing that word made a huge light bulb go off in his head. While he couldn't disable the bomb without access to the proper tools, he could simply crash the laptop and stop the trigger program. There was no need to be elegant here.
All he needed to do was think of the device as a mere laptop... and not a freaking detonator.
Computers were his forte and perhaps that was the only thing keeping a lid of sorts on his feelings of terror. That was his only saving grace in all this.
Chuck rolled up his sleeves, cracking his neck to loosen the stiff muscles. Both Sarah and Casey stared at him in absolute shock and awe as he leaned forward. "I might have an idea about what to do with this computer..."
The clock was now down to four minutes and twenty-five seconds.
"Are we really going to listen to the ramblings of a lunatic? It seems like he has completely lost it now."
Sarah took a deep breath, glancing towards Chuck who gave her a reassuring look.
"I'd rather risk my life doing something than 100% die by doing nothing."
Casey seemed to think about it for a moment. Bartowski did manage to fend off those members of the famous Wolf Pack so perhaps he was blessed with some luck. Beside even a broken clock might turn out to be right twice a day. Whether he liked it or not, this numbnuts was their only hope. They had very little time and no viable alternative options of dealing with the bomb.
"Fine, let's get it over with."
Unbeknownst to them, Chuck's fingers had already begun to fly over the keys.
During his tenure as the infamous Piranha, he was a master of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. He knew how to flood the system with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload it and prevent most if not all legitimate requests from being fulfilled. He wrote many programs back in those days which could harm a system by making it run out of memory. So crashing the MacOS shouldn't be that difficult. The only question was whether he could accomplish such a feat under so much stress and duress, especially when Sarah and Casey kept giving him such scrutinizing looks.
Despite that, being the true professional he was, he didn't have much difficulty going through the first set of commands.
[3:59]
The second line of coding turned out to be a bit trickier as Andric had programmed some decent (even by Chuck's standards) defensive measures against people like him messing with his computer. Such trivial matters wouldn't bother him otherwise, but he was running out of time.
He couldn't help but feel a strong desire to wet his pants, but somehow it didn't turn out to be as overwhelming as he initially expected.
Thinking about the safety of everyone present – especially Sarah – made him type faster than he ever had.
[2:43]
The laptop began to whir as Chuck reached the final stage of his attack. He cursed under his breath every time he made a typo error while writing the bash code. If he hadn't dedicated hours upon hours to just studying the Intersect-related subjects, he might have been able to do it a whole minute quicker.
[1:55]
"What the hell are you doing?" Casey grunted.
"Come on Chuck, you can do it," he muttered to himself, completely ignoring the whining from Sarah's NSA counterpart.
He had already begun saturating the system's process table and the fork functions he was utilizing had started slowing down the CPU by consuming its resources. An infinite loop of programs had begun repeatedly launching the copies of themselves, accelerating the process of resource starvation. He hoped to destroy the system beyond repair by executing multiple loops at the same time. While he knew for sure this procedure was more than enough to make the whole system crash and burn, it would be for naught if the countdown reached zero before that happened.
He felt another distinct urge to wet himself. If his attack didn't work, he alongside a whole lot of people would end up dying. That didn't seem like the best way to reassure himself but it would do for now.
[1:20]
include stdio.h
#include sys/types.h
int main()
{
while(1)
prnha101();
return 0;
}
His finger hovered over the ENTER key. If he made the smallest error in executing the final command or if it didn't work as fast as he expected it to, the bomb would blow up. However, a small part reminded him that this was no time to be a coward. Especially when so many lives were depending on him in the first place. He had to live up to his father's name. He couldn't give up at the last moment just like that.
He had to do this.
"Mr Bomb, meet Mr Piranha." Chuck hit the key after squeezing his eyes shut, as he silently began praying.
[0:59]
As the timer shifted from green to red, the HTML coding lit the computer screen like a Christmas tree. All of a sudden a figure formed within the code. A small fish with sharp menacing teeth and white glowing eyes emerged on screen, consuming the countdown window; before Sarah and Casey could even realize what truly happened, the entire system short circuited, dying abruptly on the spot.
Trembling from head to toe, Chuck ruffled his head. He just wanted to go home right now. It was only through sheer willpower that he managed to stand on his feet once again.
"What a day!" He breathed in a sigh of relief.
""What a day?" That's the best you could come up with, Twidget?" Casey shook his head in annoyance. Though it was pretty obvious how stunned he was by what Chuck had just done.
"You're welcome, Major Blue Falcon!" Chuck muttered. Saving Sarah and stopping this bomb from exploding made his whole system surge with pride. He felt right in being able to help people out like that. It felt amazing how even someone like him could be... a hero to someone.
In many ways, from this day onward, everything about his life was about to change forever. He didn't know whether it was for better or worse yet.
Sarah couldn't help but feel astonished at Chuck's unique feat of intelligence and resourcefulness. And she wasn't even taking the incident with Mauser into consideration yet. She was completely mesmerized by his capabilities. Never expecting him to turn out to be... such an incredible guy. Her instincts told her there was more to him than what she saw in those files. She couldn't put a finger on it yet, but she knew there was more to these mysterious changes Chuck went through, a story Chuck never revealed to anyone. A part of her was eagerly looking forward to the day when he would finally let her in and see what that was all about.
No dreams. No tricks. She finally had to admit it to herself. She was seeing stars right now. Chuck had won her all over again, just like he did five years ago back at Harvard.
"Damn! That was far too close for my liking." Chuck let out a hearty laugh, then turned to see Sarah looking at him with curiosity and awe. His sudden swivel caused the blonde to step back a bit, given how close they were. "Not bad for a not-so-special agent, huh?"
"Not bad. Not bad at all." Sarah replied with a warm smile, almost appearing to be in some sort of trance as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "You were really amazing today, Chuck!"
Chuck grinned bashfully in response and rubbed the back of his head. "Thanks. Dunno much about bombs but when it comes to computers and tech stuff, I am the real deal."
The sound of clapping from the sidelines caught the trio's attention. When Chuck looked across the room to see what it was, he saw General Stanfield applauding them with a big smile. Everyone standing nearby slowly caught onto the rhythm and, one after another, joined in the revelry. Applause and cheers came down from all around, especially baffling as he looked around the small crowd beginning to gather around them. Casey didn't seem affected by it at first glance, though it was hard to get a read on Beckman's ace operative. Chuck couldn't help but feel a bit uncomfortable at the amount of attention he received, whereas Sarah quietly smiled in his direction, gently squeezing his arm, trying to congratulate him in her own way.
Perhaps this day wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.
...xxxxxxxx...xxxxxxxxxx...xxxxxxx...
Note: I tried the whole FB group thing but it's just kind of lot less welcoming than something like Shield hero discord for example. May be people are just lot more reserved without the anonymity or I am just into different stuff compared to other Chucksters. So I have decided to not post any chapter links or previews in future there. Since most people only reach out to me only here , I dunno if it's a great idea to do the FB thing as well.