A/N: As you may have surmised, this arc is involved and take some chapters to sort. Hang on. More of the overarching plot comes into view in this chapter, but I will be doling it out for a while.
The Missionary
Hello, I saw you, I know you, I knew you
I think I can remember your name (name)
Hello, I'm sorry, I lost myself
I think I thought you were someone else
Should we talk about the weather?
Should we talk about the government?
— REM, Pop Song 89
Chapter Thirty-Five: Returns
Graham sat back in his seat. The van, marked as a West Virginia Electric utility van, rolled out from Langley. Inside, in the rear of the van, Graham's phone rang and he picked it up after checking to see if it was the caller he expected.
It was.
"Hello, Dr. Astley," he smiled to himself, "and how is our guest?"
"He's fine. The drug has worn off or is wearing off. I'm leaning toward starting with him tonight, after your visit. Might as well get on top of him, so to speak, keep him behind all that's happening."
"Fine, do as you wish. But one thing: don't incapacitate him for work. I have budget meetings coming up on the Hill and our recent, glowing spate of Intersect-caused successes makes it likely I will have more to spend than I ever imagined. I need him to do his Appocalypse work, and at nearly the rate he was working before. The goose and the golden egg."
Astley was silent for a moment. "Yes. Near, yes, sir. I believe I can manage that. At least for a while, but eventually the testing will have to become more invasive…"
"I understand. You've outlined this all for me, Doctor, and I have already signed off on it. Keep him working until the very last minute. Do not initiate anything invasive until you are sure the invasive work is all that remains between us and the creation of proper Intersects. As improper an Intersect as Bartowski is, I'd rather have him than have none. — But I covet a professional, a real spy as the Intersect — that was always the plan. Always."
"Yes, sir. I will be careful with him until I can't."
"Good. I will be there in a couple of hours. I want to explain Bartowski's situation to him in person, as well as take care of a bit of busy work. You played him the recording?"
"Yes, sir, of course. It sank his spirit, as you said it would."
"Very good. I want him sunken — but working — if you understand my meaning."
"I do. I will make sure he's ready for your visit."
"Good." He ended the call.
Graham was ahead of schedule. Astley had been a remarkable find. His luck had grown when the below-ground levels of the Intersect Lab turned out to be functional. Another month, maybe two, and Astley could begin tests on the first proper volunteers. Once they were ready, Bartowski would sleep with the others on Reboot Hill, sleep among Graham's collection of acceptable losses. You can't make omelets…
I seem to have eggs on my mind.
Mattress Bob touched the brakes and looked at Bryce Larkin sitting beside him in the car, staring.
Ahead of them at quite a distance, was the utility van.
"You can slow down some more, Bob. I know where we're going, knew when I saw the van. As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.."
Bob cleared his throat. "What's that, Confucius?"
"No, Proverbs. It's also partially quoted in Second Peter 2: 22."
Bob shook his head. Larkin was a smart guy, but a frat guy, and every now and then, he seemed like he knew things that no frat guy, not even a smart one, would know. Creepy.
"Did your parents drag you to church?"
Larkin gave Bob a look that made Bob wish he were wearing a warmer jacket.
"Hell, no. Never been in one — except on missions — and only once. I was in one in Colombia a few years ago."
Bob figured it was wiser not to ask.
Larkin stared at the van, now further ahead of them for a moment, then he picked up the iPad next to him, changed screens, and began typing. He did that a lot — the typing — but he never told Bob what he was doing.
Bob figured it was wiser not to ask about that, either. Running Fulcrum was a 24/7 job, evidently. Especially running it remotely.
"Will we get there soon?"
"No, not for over an hour. We'll break the tail soon; no need to follow him into the mountains today. Combat teams are ready; they'll be on the move soon. By this time the day after tomorrow, Thanksgiving, ironically," Larkin's voice became metallic, "not one stone of that damned place will be left on top of another, above ground — or below.
"It'll be like Sunnydale when Buffy finished with it. Just a massive fucking hole in the ground."
"Sunnydale? Is that Proverbs?" Bob didn't think 'Sunnydale' sounded like a city in the ancient world, but what did he know about it?
"No, Bob, it's TV."
"Oh. Oh. What about Bartowski?"
"He'll be mine. I could have taken him in Burbank, of course, but I waited for Graham to show his hand. He has. He's back in business, or he thinks he is. He's actually doing my business. — And Bartowski, he has something that belongs to me. Esau, not Jacob, was firstborn. I need to know how he got it before I take it."
Bryce jerked suddenly in his seat like he was having a seizure.
Bob did not react. It happened now and then, the seizure thing, and Bob had witnessed it several times. Larkin had nearly killed Bob when he tried to help the first time.
Since then, Bob had kept his distance. After the seizures, Larkin was always in intense pain, like he was fighting a migraine.
But Larkin never explained or acknowledged the seizures and Bob never asked.
Bob did a lot of not-asking. He had a brain beneath his captain's hat.
The iPad slid out of Larkin's hand to the floor.
Larkin's body unseized; gasping, he dropped his chin to his chest and began to rub his temples. "Shit," he whispered fiercely to no one.
After a moment, he bent down and retrieved his iPad, still cursing, but silently.
Snow began to fall, to fall heavily.
Casey had tried Carina's phone.
He'd even swallowed his pride and driven by her place quickly before he drove to his hotel. But she was not there. He was almost certain she was on a mission, in deep cover, gone to Mexico.
Chasing Tyger.
It hurt that she hadn't at least said goodbye. Something. But she had instituted radio silence before she went dark. She didn't want to talk to him. Not exactly new, that.
But now he had other things to think about.
Walker was on her way. That meant that Graham had made a move, maybe even what Walker feared most, that Graham had taken Bartowski. Damn.
Casey had hoped for two things for the trip: that he would get a chance to talk to Carina, and that Bartowski and Walker would make it back to Burbank unmolested. He should have known neither was likely.
A knock on the door startled Casey. It was too soon for Walker. He peered through the peephole; it was the young guy who'd been working the front desk.
Another knock. "I have a package for Casey, room 16."
A package? Room 16? That was Casey's room, the room he was in.
He opened the door a crack. "Yeah? A package?"
The young man handed Casey a package, a small, brown box, carefully taped shut. It had Casey's name and room number printed neatly on the top.
Casey took his wallet from his jacket and handed the young man a five-dollar bill. "Thanks."
The young man looked at the money, shrugged, and left. Casey shut the door, the box in his hands. He gave it a cautious shake as he stepped away from the door. Something heavy inside it moved.
Using one of the keys on his keychain, Casey cut the tape. He put the box on the bed and pulled the top open.
Inside was a sheet of lined notebook paper, a burner phone, and a Timex watch case. Casey did not touch anything: he studied it all slowly, bending down to see it all from up close. It all looked utterly non-threatening but it was so strange.
He reached in carefully and picked up the watch case. It had some heft; presumably, it wasn't empty. He turned it and, spying nothing amiss, opened it. Inside was a Timex watch, a divers watch, with a black rubber watch band, a black face, and luminescent hands and markings. Casey had worn one like it years ago. Cheap and reliable. Nothing special.
He put the case on the bed, leaving it open. He then picked up the phone, pinching it between his thumb and index finger. It too was unremarkable. Off. He left it that way and put it beside the bed.
Finally, he picked up the paper, less cautiously, feeling like it was the least potentially dangerous of the three items. He shook it. Nothing fell out of it or from it. So he unfolded it.
In a distinctive, spidery hand, a cursive note was written at the top. Green ink. Beneath it, drawn in the same ink, was a precise, readable map.
Casey —
The watch is for Bartowski. Tell him to put it on and rotate the bezel all the way, once.
The phone is for you. Keep it with you.
The map is for Sarah Walker. It is a map of the below-ground Intersect lab. Bartowski is there.
Graham is rebooting Reboot Hill.
Fulcrum is marching.
The Intersect war is beginning, or rather, changing — from a cold war to a hot war.
Take care of each other.
The three of you are in No Man's Land.
— Green
Casey was rereading the note when another knock sounded.
Softer.
Casey peeked again. Walker.
He opened the door. She strode in, snow still unmelted in her hair.
Her jaw was set but her eyes were vulnerable. She waited for Casey to close the door.
"That son of a bitch took him, Casey. That vulture doctor, Astley, she's got him. Somewhere." Her voice cracked.
"Stay focused, Walker. You know the drill. He needs you cool, Icee cool." Carina had mentioned the name to him before she left Burbank.
Walker almost smiled, which was as much as Casey could have hoped for.
Her eyes hardened. She swallowed.
But before she could speak, Casey went on."Look at this stuff. It arrived for me out of the blue, got my name and room number on it. I've checked it, no explosives, no anthrax. What do you make of it?"
Walker did not immediately look at any of it, she looked at the door, then at Casey. "Someone knows you're here?"
"Not much of a secret, remember. We agreed I would travel under my name and only hide in the sense that I would stay in this out-of-the-way dump. But look at this stuff, Walker. It's about him, the kid, Bartowski."
That moved Walker. She picked up the note and quickly read it. She stopped, exhaled, and read it again more slowly, studying the map for a moment.
"Green? Who the hell is Green, Casey?"
Chuck had walked around his cell without touching anything several times.
He did it partly to get his blood flowing, to dispel the lingering effects of the drugs, but he did it also because his realization about Sarah, his feelings for her, the truth of it, had shaken him. It wasn't that he wished he felt otherwise. No, that season was past, long past. It wasn't that she was not near so that he could tell her, though he longed to say the words to her. It was that he finally understood how far back the feelings stretched.
He had been in love with her from the beginning. The blue moonlight above the El Compadre had sealed the deal. But then everything happened — gun to his head and Intersect in his head, lots of stuff involving his head — and he shut off contact with his heart, then he refused to reestablish contact with it. He had been, at times, a bastard to Sarah — at the very least, he'd been deliberately unkind, and that was because it took so much energy to refuse to feel what he felt. But he had not fooled himself, not himself in the form of the Intersect, anyway. The Intersect knew how Chuck felt even when Chuck refused to know. He still found that both comforting and frightening.
He tried to pull himself out of recollection and into the present.
He had troubles enough now, and he would never get to make amends to Sarah if he didn't find some way back to her. He believed she was coming for him. But he was not just going to sit and wait. He would fight back somehow. The Intersect had some surprises for Graham. This Burbank Pinnochio was hewn of ironwood but pinstripe Gepetto had missed that fact.
It was time to rope the puppet master in the puppet's strings.
Except — except Chuck was unsure how to access the powers of the Intersect that might help him. In the past, the Intersect allowed him to defend himself or the people he cared about from immediate attack. But could it be used offensively and not just defensively?
Chuck took a deep breath and tried to relax, as much as he could in the circumstances. It wouldn't help to try to force anything.
He was almost certain that he was being watched, so he tried to make his actions seem less purposeful, and more random, than they were. He wandered around, finally allowing himself to touch things. He started at the desk, opening the drawer to find a neat arrangement of paper, pens, and paperclips. Sitting down in the desk chair, he adjusted it to suit him better, then used it to roll from the desk to the kitchen area. Seated, he pulled open the refrigerator. It was stocked, and with things he liked. From there, he rolled diagonally to the TV area. He got out of the desk chair and walked to one of the bookcases that flanked the TV. He had never seen so many DVDs in one place, movies of every kind. Lots of his favorites were there.
He crossed to the other bookcase, the one that held books. He ran his finger along the spines of the books on the top shelf. Almost all were novels, science fiction, and fantasy, along with some of the classics, old and new.
And then his finger came to a stop. On the shelf, in between a copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz and A Confederacy of Dunces was a battered copy of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures. Chuck felt something inside him click, and he pulled the copy off the shelf, doing his best to make it seem like whim.
The copy was a paperback with a dark green cover. The spine was frayed, the title on it almost unreadable; the covers had been creased. If he had not known the book, he would not have recognized it on the shelf. Chuck looked at the first page. A name was written in green ink.
Gustav Zarnow
Chuck fought to keep back a gasp. Dr. Zarnow's copy of Chomsky. What the hell was it doing in Chuck's cell? He started to thumb through it slowly. The text was covered in yellow highlighter, the margins full of green marginalia written in Zarnow's controlled, exact printing, so exact it seemed typewritten.
Chuck fought the urge to stop and continued thumbing until he was almost to the end. But then he noticed a sheet of paper tucked in between the pages of the final chapter. The compulsion to take the page out and look at it was overwhelming, but Chuck did not do it. Nonchalantly, he returned the book to the shelf.
A moment later, he heard a sound from the door, an unsealing sound, and heard a whoosh as air pressure adjusted. Dr. Astley walked into the room carrying a metal tray. On it was a vial and a syringe, a few cotton balls, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
Chuck winced. He really did hate needles. "I didn't order room service."
Astley frowned. "Please, don't try to be funny. I am not funny."
Chuck raised his eyebrows. "You're humorless, but you are funny." He grinned.
Her frown deepened. "You will have a visitor soon and we will want you to be in a receptive mood. Sit down on the end of your bed."
Chuck did. She put the tray down beside him and took up the vial and syringe, using the first to fill the second. She pushed the end of the syringe and a bit of the liquid now in it squirted out. As it did, she smiled and turned to him.
"Give me your arm."
Chuck did as she said, seeing no option. She wiped his arm with a cotton ball wetted with rubbing alcohol. As this happened, the two soldiers who carried his stretcher entered and took the stretcher and gurney from the room.
He was watching them when she stuck him with the needle.
"Hey!"
"It's done. I advise you to sit down, Mr. Bartowski. Your visitor will be here soon."
She put a bandaid on his arm where she had given him the shot and she left without a word. Chuck moved to the couch and sat down. Whatever she had given him was already making him feel warm all over, rubbery.
Casey held out his hands. "I have no idea who Green is. I don't recall any agent with that codename, do you?"
Sarah shook her head. "No. When did you reserve this room?"
"While I was at the gate in Burbank."
"Well, for now, I say we take the stuff with us. What do you think? Would Graham go back to the Intersect Lab, start over there?"
Casey shrugged. "You know him better than I do. My grasp on Graham's plans reaches no further than my answer to the question, 'What Would a Complete Asshole Do?'"
Sarah nodded. She stared into space for a minute. "It's exactly what he would do. Graham hates to lose. He'd like nothing better than to rise, a phoenix from his own ashes."
"So, the kid's up there, in West Virginia? Reboot Hill?"
"Yes, and I'm going to save him."
Casey put a hand on her shoulder. "There's no guarantee about this, Sarah. If we do it, we're rogue. Across the line. Graham doesn't do betrayal. You know — you used to be in the business of undoing his betrayers. Maybe Beckman can help us after the fact, but…" He shrugged again, an eloquent finish to his comment. "And then, if the note's right, there's Fulcrum too.
Sarah lifted her chin. "I'm going, going now. It will take time to equip and reconnoiter, although luckily you are familiar with the place — if you're willing to come with me."
She looked at him, the vulnerability returning to her eyes.
Casey shook his head. "Shit, if I had any damn sense, I'd have left Burbank when you came waltzing into Bartowski's bedroom, the kid in tow. The only reason he could have still been alive, Intersect or no, was that you were already in love with him."
Sarah blinked, staring at Casey.
He blew out a long, heavy sigh. "And, yeah, I'm coming. One, because I loathe Graham and the damn CIA — he ain't my government — and two, because I'm fond of the kid, although," he put up a cautionary hand, grinning, "I ain't aching to squeeze out his hump dumplings."
Sarah's mouth fell open.
She tried to say something in response and failed, her mouth working but making no sound.
Casey chuckled and started quickly putting the items back in the package.
"Let's go. Need to stop by my DC apartment for a few items that might be handy. Holiday fun. It's on the way."
A/N: Thanks for the responses! Energizing!