A/N: A new story. A retelling of Our Tale. Except this Sarah Walker is a Sarah Walker without The Baby as part of her past. She arrives in Burbank as the hardened agent she has been for years, as Graham's golden girl, with no prior softening. This Chuck is somewhat different too, as you will see.

Some characters will be missing, others will not be quite what you expect.

I borrow some of the events from the first season, but their pacing and meaning have changed.

I've pushed the timeline of the story forward, so events are taking place in September 2022, not September 2007. That will also create differences.

The Missionary

It's just your mind over matter
Once you get some more control

The Brothers Martin, The Missionary

Chapter One: Patient Zero

It happened again.

It was not the first time. Not the second, for that matter.

For months now, for no reason Sarah Walker could identify, in no pattern she could recognize, with no meaning she could discern, her hands would shake.

It never lasted. A few seconds, no more. Her hands would shake. Not violently — she knew violence — but more than a mere tremor.

She recalled her grandmother's pallid, blue-veined hands, seen just before her grandmother died — their slow, tremulous shaking, a sign of the exhaustion of life.

Sarah's hands shook more quickly. For the few seconds the shaking lasted, she felt uncanny, dismembered, as if her shaking hands wanted to belong to some other body, to some other somebody. As if they were done with her.

And then the shaking would end. As it had just ended.

She was seated in first class, on a flight from DC to LA. Her long blond hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, her attractive face, strong jaw, and full lips, large, pale eyes, devoid of makeup. Her blue blouse matched her eyes; her navy slacks complimented the blouse and suggested that her eyes could darken. A pair of blue heels finished her outfit, the heels darker navy than her slacks. Each item she wore was expensive, painstakingly tailored. Her outfit was unwrinkled despite the long flight.

She was lovely and aware of it but she had little vanity. Beauty was a tool.

Sarah Walker, CIA.

She had dressed expecting to begin her mission as soon as the plane landed. Speed was essential. Find her mark, reconnoiter the situation, establish contact, and if possible, control. A car was already waiting for her at Bob Hope airport.

She ran her hands along her thighs, reassuring herself that their shaking had stopped. It had. Eyes closed, a list of bullet points ran through her mind, culled from the file in her purse.

Charles Irving "Chuck" Bartowski
Buy More, Computer Sales and Repair
Stanford University, no degree, expelled
Brown hair, hazel eyes
6' 3", 190 lbs.
IQ 174
Parents missing
Sister, Ellie Bartowski, M.D.
Rents a bedroom in sister's apartment

She called Bartowski's face to mind; she had seen his picture. Nothing about him struck her as alarming. So far as Sarah could tell, in himself, he was nothing — simply ordinary, if perhaps sadder than ordinary.

But he was mixed up in this Intersect plot; he was tied to Bryce Larkin. They had known each other at Stanford.

Bryce Larkin. The name made her squeeze her already closed eyes tightly shut. Anger and bile rose in tandem. She swallowed the bile and refused the anger. Bryce Larkin was part of her past; he had been for months, dead to her. And now he was dead, period, fatally shot yesterday after the theft of the Intersect. Fatally shot. Shot dead.

Dead. And I feel nothing.

She probed her heart, finding it empty, except for gray rags and dust.

Bryce had been her partner. They had shared missions and a bed. But he betrayed her, abandoned her, months ago. He went rogue. She had never sorted her personal response to that. Maybe she had none. Bryce had never revealed any personal stake in their partnership, in or out of bed. They screwed like professional spies, in darkened silence. She never saw his eyes, he never saw hers. Out of bed, she was "Walker", he was "Larkin" — no longing looks, no sighs, no endearments. She touched him only with the lights off and only when both of them were naked.

That was how she wanted it because it was how he wanted it — how they wanted it.

Dead. Death. A song from her childhood, the radio in her dad's car, sounded in her mind: Hello, Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again…

She swallowed again, opened her eyes, and gazed at her hands.

The shaking predated Bryce's vanishment. It would have made sense for it to start when he went rogue — but the shaking had started while they were together, partners. Bryce had never noticed it: the shaking was infrequent, brief, and it had never occurred at any crucial mission moment, never when she was called to fire a gun or squeeze a throat or bury a blade. It never interfered with her job.

The woman across the plane's aisle noticed Sarah gazing at her hands. "It's hard, honey, I know, but it will pass."

Sarah turned to the woman, not understanding. "Pardon me?"

"The break-up. I know how hard it is. You get used to seeing that ring on your finger and, — well, when you take it off — that makes it real."

Break up? Ring? Real? "I'm sorry?" Sarah said, still clueless.

"I don't mean to pry, honey, but I feel the sadness radiating off of you. I saw your hands shaking, saw you look at them. Did you love him a lot?"

"Love?" Sarah responded as if the word were foreign. "I'm not in love. I wasn't in love. Ever. I've never worn a ring. — My hands shake because flying makes me nervous."

Fleshy and mid-fifty, flashily dressed, the woman smiled apologetically. "Oh, I'm sorry, hon. You just don't seem the nervous type. I overestimated my empathic gifts."

Sarah still felt half-lost in the unexpected conversation. Talking to strangers was a part of her life only when it was required by a mission. She never made small talk. Her sound was the sound of silence.

"Empathic?" Sarah asked involuntarily.

The woman shook her head, her hoop earrings dancing with the movement. "The girls in my book club at home, Milly, Madge, and Gertrude, they all think I have this gift, that I pick up on things, emotions, you know, — the heart. They think I'm better at reading people than the books."

Sarah shook her head, forcing a polite smile. "Oh, I'm not sad. And I wasn't engaged, or married, or anything. I'm traveling for work, and I'm just tired — and nervous. Like I said." She tried to inflect her words to suggest that the conversation was an intrusion.

The woman nodded, studying her skeptically. "Well, sorry to bother you. Good luck with your work."

Just as the woman looked away, the captain's voice announced that the plane was approaching Burbank.

My mark.

Reading people.

The woman's words lodged in Sarah's mind as she deplaned.

Luckily, the woman had been on the phone when the plane reached the gate and so no final conversation or goodbye had been necessary. Sarah did not like the woman looking at her.

Reading people.

Sarah's con-man dad was good at reading people. It was a point of pride for him, and part of her criminal inheritance from him. But neither he nor she was empathetic — they read people by observation, by inference; they collected data and quickly and reliably reached conclusions. They did not feel what other people felt, did not share in others' emotions.

The problem was that her dad had taught her to take the same attitude toward herself. She did not feel what she felt, she observed it. No partaker in human life, she was outside it, looking in. She knew what she felt, to the extent that she knew it, by inference. She worked that way, worked better that way. For ten years she had been a CIA agent, had distinguished herself mission by mission, in bloody terminations, and compromising, deep-cover infiltrations. She was a spy in her own breast, incapable of turning off her profession.

She knew herself professionally — and only professionally.

For herself, to herself, she was a sum of parts, nothing more. The parts interacted — they had to interact for her to stay alive — but she was nothing over and above them. She had organs, physical and emotional, but she was no organism and certainly no spirit. When she referred to herself, it was only to a collection of parts, capable of integrated activity but not one.

In an important sense — in more than one important sense — there was no Sarah Walker.

The name was not her given name (she knew her given name, Samantha, but only as she knew, say, Bartowski's given name). Her boss, Langston Graham, the CIA Director, had given her the name when she started as an agent.

Sarah Walker did not exist except as a CIA agent. Between missions, she disintegrated, fell to pieces, into parts, and did not reassemble until Langston phoned her with a new mission. She spent her downtime down, collapsed inside her empty DC apartment. She felt real only when she had a mission objective. Otherwise, she played the radio without listening or left the TV on without watching; she stared sightlessly into the middle distance. She occasionally went to restaurants and sat in dim corners, picking at an appetizer, sipping a drink, numbly observing other people live their lives without having one of her own to live.

That had been the cost of her business, the price of her staying alive. She coped with her past by isolating it from her, holding it at arm's length, herself at arm's length. What she had done was justified by her success in obtaining her objectives.

Beyond that, she would not evaluate it.

She was good — good at her job. She was a professional. Her station and its duties — that was all she knew, and all she had to know.

She found the car waiting for her in the rental lot, parked, the keys in it. As usual, she had been able to bypass the rental desk. Everything was arranged.

After starting the car, she put the Buy More address into her CIA phone's GPS.

When the directions came up, she glanced from her phone up to the rearview mirror. She looked at herself, seeing herself as she thought Bartowski would see her. She undid her ponytail — it had loosened as she deplaned — and pulled it tight again. For a moment, the pale eyes in the mirror seemed to be looking at her with the same studied skepticism as had the woman on the plane.

Shaking her head, she pulled out of the parking space and started toward the Buy More. The mission claimed her mind, claimed her. Thought stopped. She exhaled softly in relief. It's just mind over matter, self-control.

The interior silence that accompanied her on missions returned, familiar, welcome.

Showtime.

She sat in the car outside the Buy More for a moment. She checked herself in the rearview again, avoiding her own eyes. Her hair was still perfect.

She was going to play this by ear. She was unsure how it would go because she had so little information on Bartowski. All she knew was that Larkin had sent the Intersect program to Bartowski's email address. Why Larkin sent it, what Bartowski did with it once he got it — all that remained to be determined. Nothing in the slim Bartowski file suggested either espionage or criminality. The only blot on his record was his expulsion from Stanford.

She surveyed the green and gold entrance to the Buy More. Hard to imagine a less likely place to find a spy. Big signs in the bigger windows announced back-to-school specials on computers and supplies, discounts on electronic repairs. Sarah could see through the windows, past the signs, but Sarah could not see far enough inside to see her mark.

People were entering and exiting the automatic doors, the people exiting almost all with a Buy More bag in hand. On one side of the Buy More was a hulking Large Mart, its neon sign stabbing at the eyes. On the other side was an UnderWhere store.

Sarah decided that it might help to have a prop. She got out of the car, purse in hand, and walked across the lot into the UnderWhere store, not the Buy More.

Inside, she quickly found the lingerie section. A manikin stood in the center of the section, barely covered by a lacy, lavender teddy. Sarah found one in her size on the table beside the manikin and she carried it to the front and bought it. The store had, as she hoped it would, a distinctive bag, the logo large, black and legible on the outside.

With the bag in her hand, she left Underwhere and walked back to her car. She was not sure that her tactic would be seduction, but it seemed likely to be. She took the teddy out of the bag and out of the package, careful not to unfold it, then put it back into the bag. She undid a couple of the small blue buttons on her blouse, tugging at it to make sure that it was open just far enough — and not too far. Seduction was a game of inches and quarter-inches, a very deliberate peek-a-boo. Then, her purse and the Underwhere bag in hand, she walked into the Buy More.

As she walked, her purposeful stride shortened, and she began to swing her hips a bit more with each step; she had no idea where Bartowski was inside, but she wanted the seduction to be in play as soon as he saw her.

The store was organized around two central aisles, one that ran from the front door to distant back doors marked 'Employee Only' and another that ran from one side of the store to the other. A desk stood at the enlarged intersection of the aisles. A small, bearded man stood in front of the desk. He was assembling a stack of cellphone cases on a small display table.

Behind the desk stood her mark, Bartowski. He was on the phone, listening, his eyes down as he wrote on a pad in front of him. Swaying, putting her long legs and high heels, her figure, to full use, Sarah walked down the aisle.

The small man noticed her first. He was delicately placing the final case on the stack when he saw her, the Underwhere bag, and he seemed to lose all motor control. He jerked — and sent the stack of cases tumbling to the floor.

She heard Bartowski say, without looking up, "Jesus, Morgan!"

The bearded man, Morgan, made no effort to retrieve the cases jumbled around his feet. He just stared at her as she swayed toward him. He put a hand out to grab the desk, both to steady himself and to get Bartowski's attention. "Not Jesus, Chuck. But, Chuck, it's an…an angelic visitation…"

Sarah and the lighthouse smile she had chosen arrived at the desk just as Bartowski looked up. He saw her and dropped his phone.

She let her smile linger on him for a second, then she bent down among the cases. "Oh, let me help." She pivoted as she bent down, making sure her bottom faced them as she bent from her waist.

"No, no," Bartowski said, "it's our mess. We'll..."

She did not need a rearview mirror to know what was happening behind her. Both men were staring at her backside, as she intended. After a second, she heard Bartowski come around the desk. In a moment, he was in front of her, down on one knee, helping her pick up the cases. "We can do this," he said apologetically.

Morgan was still behind her. He seemed to be whispering; it sounded like a prayer.

Bartowski was intent on gathering cases. He was not looking at her, and Morgan could not see her hands from where he remained, transfixed. She carefully spilled the lavender teddy onto the floor. "Oh! Sorry," she said to make sure Bartowski saw it.

He did.

She saw him freeze as he stared at it, still bent over. And then the teddy was picked up — Morgan had moved in a blur around her other side. He picked up the teddy and held it up, held it out from him so that he could see it, holding it toward her. Sarah stood at the same time, abandoning the cases she had been picking up. When she stood, she was standing behind the teddy as Morgan brandished it.

Bartowski stood too, and when he saw her, she realized that it must seem almost as if she were wearing the teddy. Morgan had helped her without knowing it. She saw Bartowski see her in the lingerie, saw his jaw drop as his phone had dropped a moment before. His eyes seemed to glaze over, and then he came to himself, reached out, and snatched the lingerie from Morgan.

"Sorry, sorry! Morgan!" He glared angrily at the small man, who was staring at the lavender bunched in Bartowski's hand. Bartowski then seemed to realize he had the lingerie, and he held it out to her like an offering, trying to unbunch it as he did.

It looked for all the world like he was caressing her teddy.

Sarah smiled at him again, a smile loaded with suggestiveness. "Soft, isn't it? I loved it when I tried it on; it felt so good against my skin…"

Bartowski's eyes glazed over for a second time.

Morgan whimpered and turned away from them. "Bathroom break, Chuck. Five minutes, um, maybe ten." He disappeared down one smaller aisle, walking awkwardly.

"Morgan, the mess!" Bartowski called after him — but the small man was gone. Sarah reached out and took her lingerie, careful to make sure her hand made contact with Bartowski's.

He faced her immediately, blushing crimson. "Sorry about all this, about him. We hired him from a petting zoo. He's still learning to work among humans."

Sarah giggled in response, careful to make the sound bubbly, light. She let the lingerie unbunch in her hand like a translucent flag. Bartowski kept his eyes on hers despite the lingerie, then he bent down and grabbed the Underwhere bag, and, holding it open, put it beneath the teddy. Sarah poured the lavender into the bag.

"I didn't mean to embarrass you," she said as she took the bag from him, treating him to a throaty laugh.

He smiled at her and bent down again, quickly gathering the cases in his arms and then dumping them on the small table.

When he looked at her again, he had almost returned to his normal color. She was watching him closely. He was befuddled, as she intended, but there was nothing suspicious about his manner.

Years of missions and her years of her father's training had made her an expert at detecting secrets and lies. She could detect guile at ten paces and in a split second.

Bartowski was guileless.

Why did Larkin send the Intersect to you, Bartowski? She needed to understand the situation and since her Morgan-aided seduction had gone so well, she decided to keep playing at it. What is going on?

"I'd like to help you," Bartowski said, then seemed to hear an echo of what he had said, and immediately added, "I mean, can I help you?"

His initial question unsettled Sarah, recalled the woman on the plane, but she ignored that. "I just moved to LA and I need to buy a laptop…"

Bartowski nodded as he moved back around the desk. As he went around it, he noticed his phone, still on the floor where he had dropped it. "Oh — just a second…"

He quickly bent down behind the desk and picked up his phone, stood, and put it to his ear. "Hello? Hello?"

He waited for a moment, then shrugged and put the phone on the desk next to the pad.

"They'll call back. I hope. — So, a laptop?" His smile was self-deprecating, yet professional. She gave him credit for his recovery speed. He carefully kept his eyes off her Underwhere bag.

"Right. I saw the signs outside. I don't need anything fancy, just something to use at home. My work provides me with a computer but I'm not supposed to use it except for work."

He grinned at her. "I understand. Big Brother might be watching. No need for your personal life to mix with your professional life. Companies these days are not above hiding spyware in employees' computers."

Sarah had to exert herself to keep from reacting. To cover her effort, she leaned toward him, making a show of reading his nametag. "So — Chuck — are you a computer whiz?"

It took him a moment to respond. She saw something pass behind his eyes, but it was too fast for her to identify it. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. We have a few laptops that would probably work for you. Follow me, please."

Sarah did. As she followed, she looked at him. He was tall. She knew that, but in person, he seemed taller than 6' 3" and his build seemed more athletic. He was no bodybuilder, but he did not give any impression of weakness. He moved well and seemed well-coordinated, but he had no particular physical presence and gave off no suggestion of any capacity for violence. There was nothing coiled or tensed or situationally aware about him. He moved…normally, his backward glance at her when he turned to see if she was still following him was simply friendly, interested. She had known few men like him. Most of the men she knew were con men or agents or criminal marks, all liars, men with secrets, men prepared to do violence or to respond to it.

But she had been wrong to consider Bartowski nothing, as she had on the plane, after reading his file. He gave off no suggestion of violence, no suggestion of anything that would give him standing in her world. But he did give off a definite suggestion — a definite suggestion, for lack of a better word, of life, of human life. He was a living human being, very alive. There was a suggestion of creative power in him. The only power Sarah knew was destructive.

Bartowski stopped in front of the near end of a long display table. Laptops of various sizes and colors lined the table. He smiled at her. "Since you use laptops for work, I'm not going to insult you by launching into my patented, award-winning, guaranteed spiel. Instead, I'll just answer questions if you have any. The laptops here are arranged by manufacturer, and by price, cheapest to most expensive.

"If all you really want is something for email, the internet, some casual wordprocessing, maybe some simple games, this — " he pointed to the first one, "or this — " he pointed to the fourth one, "either will do nicely. This one," he was still pointing at the fourth, "is both more powerful and more dependable, with longer battery life, so if you want to take it to, say, a coffee shop, it might be your best bet. But if not, if you're really, strictly, going to use it at home, the first will certainly work."

She nodded. "You're not going to try to upsell me?"

He shrugged. "My manager, Big Mike, is currently secreted in his office worshiping a dozen jelly-filled Dunkin' Donuts. I'm under no pressure to upsell you — not that I would even if he were on the sales floor, I'd just talk to you in a softer voice."

She smiled at him again, flashed her suggestive smile. "Softer?"

He blushed again. "Softer…but still only about the computers." His eyes dropped reluctantly to her Underwhere bag and hers followed.

When he looked up, he realized her eyes had trailed his.

He shifted on his feet and shifted his tone. "So, you're new in town? You already have a place?"

Again, he stopped. He shook his head. "I..uh…I'm not prying, like, trying to get your address. I just meant that it seemed like you already had a place."

Sarah giggled again. "I do."

She did. It had been arranged. An apartment had been secured and was supposed to be ready for her arrival. She was not sure she would use it, need it, but she had it. A short-term lease place. "It's not far from here, actually."

He nodded. "Good, glad you're all set up. LA can be a lonely place for newcomers. It's the land of the wholly self-involved. Everyone's dreaming, even awake. Especially when awake."

Sarah kept her eyes on the computer nearest to them but responded, calculating. "Not you? You don't have dreams, Chuck?"

He seemed to stiffen — either because of the question or because of her use of his name. Earlier she had simply been reading it aloud.

"No, I mean, well, sure. But you know, no Patient Zero dreams. My dreams are smaller."

"Patient Zero?" Sarah asked.

It was her day for unpredictable chats. That was one reason she did not make small talk. No way of knowing exactly where it might go, or how it might go wrong.

"That song by Aimee Mann, you know, off her Mental Illness album? About the conquering actor who comes to Hollywood only to fail?"

She shook her head. The only music she knew was from the car radio of her childhood.

He started to sing softly, just to her, with a voice that surprised her.

They served you champagne like a hero
When you landed, someone carried your bag
From here on out, you're patient zero
Smelling ether as they hand you the rag

He stopped and looked at her. She felt her jaw drop. The lyrics struck her as eerie, having just landed herself.

Mental Illness? Ether? Patient Zero?

He sang again in her silence.

Life is good
You look around and think
I'm in the right neighborhood
But, honey, you just moved in
Life is grand
And wouldn't you like
To have it go as planned?
Go as planned

No one had sung to Sarah since her grandmother died. None of her stock spy reactions seemed appropriate. She just stood there, a blue statue. Finally, she made her mouth move. "Is singing part of your spiel?"

Bartowski looked around self-consciously. "No, I don't think I ever sang in here before. I forgot myself a little."

Sarah felt lost. Who was seducing who? She refocused.

"So, I think this one," she pointed to the fourth, "will do. Is it easy to set up?"

"Sure, basically plug and play." He squatted down and slid a door on the bottom of the table. He reached in and produced a white box with a color picture of the computer on it. "We have one left in the box."

He stood and walked past her. She followed him back to the desk. After he put the box on the desk, he pulled open a drawer and took out a tablet, a credit card reader attached to its side. He scanned the box and then told her the price.

She put her Underwhere bag on the counter beside the computer box and dug her wallet out of her purse. She opened it and handed him a credit card. He ran it and handed it back to her.

As they stood, waiting for the card's approval, she smiled at him again, turning down the suggestiveness but without eliminating it. "We've established that I'm new in town. Any chance I could talk you into having dinner with me?"

"Absolutely," Morgan said, appearing at the end of the desk as if by magic, vigorously drying his hands with a paper towel, his face and neck flushed. "He will absolutely have dinner with you!"

"Morgan! I can speak for myself." Bartowski turned to her, looking stunned and pleased. "Absolutely. — I mean, yes. But I work until 7 pm, another couple of hours. Could we do it then? Meet you outside at 7?"

She nodded firmly. "Sure, that'd be great. Maybe you can tell me more about how to avoid being Patient Zero."

"Patient Zero?" Morgan repeated. "God, Chuck, not more Aimee Mann?"

Bartowski shook his head. "Do you want to end up back at the petting zoo? Camel duty?"

Morgan turned and walked away, shaking his head. Bartowski gave Sarah a look, evidently checking to see if she was showing any sign of wavering about asking him to dinner.

She looked him in the eyes. "I take it you're friends, not just co-workers?"

"He thinks we're codependent. But, yes, for better and worse, we're friends." He looked at the tablet. "Do you want me to print a receipt or email it to you?"

"Just print it, please. Do you have a big bag, one I can put this in," she nodded toward the Underwhere bag, "along with the laptop?"

"No problem. But I need your signature." He handed the tablet to her. She set it down on the desk and bent over it, making sure that he could see down the top of her open blouse as he reached under the desk to retrieve a Buy More bag. She pushed the tablet to him. "My name is Sarah, by the way. Sarah Walker."

He put out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Sarah Walker. I'm Chuck, as you know. Chuck Bartowski."

She took the bag off the counter. "See you in a couple of hours, Chuck."

Sarah put the Buy More bag in the trunk of her car and then got inside. She did not start the car.

She put her purse in the seat beside her and just sat.

That had gone well, but she had no sense of what was going on with Bartowski. Her instincts told her that he was not involved, but she knew he was involved.

Larkin had sent Bartowski the Intersect, that much was a fact. The Intersect was too important to be in anyone's hands but Langston Graham's. Maybe Bartowski's involvement was innocent, but that did not matter. Larkin had put Bartowski in harm's way, and if Bartowski got harmed, it was Larkin's fault.

She heard her phone ring in her purse. She took it out and answered it. It was Graham. She had expected to hear from him.

"Walker, secure."

"Good…afternoon, Agent. It is afternoon there, correct?"

Graham loved asking questions he knew the answers to. She had never understood that about him; she just accepted it.

"Yes, sir. Afternoon. And I have already established contact with my mark, Bartowski. In fact, we are having dinner together in a couple of hours."

Graham chuckled but it did not disguise the urgency in his tone. "Very good, Agent. You never disappoint. And, let me remind you, we are playing for very high stakes. The copy of the Intersect sent to Bartowski is the sole surviving copy. We need it and we cannot let anyone else have it. We cannot let anyone else even know about it, suspect that it exists. — Do what has to be done."

"Termination?"

"Yes. So far, I have kept the NSA in the dark, but I can't do it for much longer. As soon as she knows, Beckman will dispatch someone — and we know who."

"John Casey." Sarah had never met him but she knew him by gruesome reputation. The Punisher. He caused almost as much fear as Sarah — and more loathing.

"Yes. It'd be better for Bartowski if you terminated him. Quick. We can't take a chance on letting him live, neither we nor the NSA. Use him to locate the Intersect, then terminate Bartowski. You'll find a weapons cache in your apartment, all your requested items."

"Yes, sir. I'll call you when it is done."

She ended the call and put her phone back in her purse.

She snuck a glance back at the Buy More.

Morgan was standing outside the store, looking inside. Bartowski was standing inside, putting up a new sign in the window. Morgan was yelling, waving his hands — Sarah could hear him across the lot, even with her windows up — "It's crooked, Chuck! No, it's still crooked!"

Sarah shook her head, clamping her jaw. Hanging Buy More signs — what a way to spend your final hours. She glanced away from the storefront.

She heard Bartowski's voice in her head as she started the car.

Life is grand
And wouldn't you like to have it
Go as planned?

A/N: More soon. Chuck. Chapter Two: The Killing Moon.