Chuck stretched his arms over his head with a large yawn before twisting in his chair to release the tension that had built up in his lower back; groaning with pleasure as he heard and felt the popping in his lower spine. It had been three weeks since he had started on his journey to locate Sarah's ex. At first, it was part time as he wrapped up the last of his work on the game he'd been working on, but once that was completed, he dove head-first into the search. Whatever time wasn't spent at work, with his family, or Sarah, was spent trying to track down Bruce Anderson.
The first thing he found out was that Bruce Anderson, or at least the iteration that Sarah knew, did not exist, nor did the shell company that paid for the apartment she had mentioned. The phone number was to a burner that had long been inactive and had been purchased in cash at a bodega that had been a few blocks from the apartment building that 'Bruce' had inhabited for the brief duration of his fling with Sarah.
After exhausting all vaguely legal avenues of locating the man, Chuck had resorted to the dark web, back channels, and hacking to gain more information. Slowly but surely, he had managed to break down the holes in the back story of the man who had introduced himself into Sarah's life as Bruce Anderson. The shell company led to more shell companies, until finally those shell companies led back to Washington, the CIA to be exact. Once he'd found that out, it had slowed his process down. Knowing that, if he stayed too long in the governmental servers, he was bound to be noticed. This meant he had to limit himself to brief 15-minute forays into the covert agency's systems.
He was close to attaining his goal, but knew he had to be careful. He would have to deep-dive into the CIA's systems, to avoid being tracked, he'd have to relay his signal through multiple ports, sometimes more than few times to keep the techs from locating him with any kind of relative ease. However, before setting up the complicated net of relays that would be required for this deep dive, he needed to be able to concentrate, wake up a little, and for that he desperately needed coffee.
Walking out of his in-home office and into his small kitchen, he smelled the coffee he hadn't remembered putting on. "You look like hell," The voice made him jump.
"Ellie!" He sighed with a slight growl in his voice, "What are you doing here, you startled me."
"We were out of coffee," She shrugged, "So I figured I'd come over and co-op some of yours."
"Ellie, that key was for emergencies only," He groused, shuffling into the kitchen and retrieving a mug from the cupboard and poured himself a cup of the strong coffee his sister had brewed before doctoring it to his liking, ignoring the fact she was staring at him the whole time.
"Okay, spill," Ellie demanded, "What is going on with you? You look like you haven't slept for days, and I know the game has been finished for a while now. What is keeping you up this time?"
"Sarah," Chuck murmured, sitting at the table and quietly sipping his coffee.
"Okay… didn't need to know that," Ellie grimaced a little.
"Oh my God, not like that," He protested, "Not that I wouldn't want to… but it wasn't that, we're not there yet. I offered to help her find her ex, Molly's father."
"Oh, Chuck," Ellie slipped into the seat beside him and placed her hand over his, squeezing it sympathetically. "I thought you guys were doing okay."
"What are you talking about?" Chuck challenged, arching an eyebrow at his older sister, "We're doing fine. On our first date she just happened to mention that if she were ever to meet someone who wanted to be with her for the long haul…"
"You," Ellie interjected.
"…It might be helpful if she could get her ex to officially relinquish his parental rights," Chuck explained.
"…So that you could adopt Molly." Ellie finished for him.
"I didn't say that," Chuck protested.
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Ellie chuckled at his affronted face, "Charles Irving, you have been in love with that girl since you were 18 years old, nearly 10 years apart has done nothing to diminish that fact. A lot of men would run the other way when they realize the love of their life had a child with another man. You, on the other hand, chose to play cyber sleuth to locate said other man, I take it that's why you have dark circles under your eyes and look like you stuck your finger in an electrical socket."
"You got me there, sis," Chuck gave a half-shrug, "I thought it would be a fairly easy thing to do, track down some guy who ghosted on her two years ago. It didn't take long to figure out that was so very far from what really happened."
"So, what really happened?" Ellie tilted her head to the side, watching her brother's face as he explained about what he had, or rather hadn't, found. He then explained how he'd had to resurrect his hacker persona to get more information, and where that had led.
"You're telling me that this Bruce guy, or whatever his name is, is involved with the CIA?" Ellie's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.
"Yeah," Chuck nodded, "I very nearly have him identified, the next step will be to locate where he is. But first I have to set up some secure server relays to bounce my signal through so that they can't find me while I hack their servers. It will take me a while to locate the information I need and can get in and out before they can find where I really am."
"Chuck, you know I don't like you doing this," Ellie advised, "What if you're caught?"
"Then I guess you'll be getting your Christmas card from whatever black site they drop me into," Chuck shrugged non-chalantly.
"That's not funny," Ellie gave him an unimpressed look.
"It wasn't a joke," Chuck shook his head. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a nap and get back to work to locate Sarah's ex."
"This discussion is not over, Charles Irving," Ellie called after her brother as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom.
The alert on his computer went off, summoning him back to his computer. He slid on the glasses he had worn since the day he surrendered himself to the fact he wasn't as young as he used to be. Typing in the password and going through the security protocols to access the system of his own design, he quickly pulled up the source of the alert. "Oh boy," He sighed, the kid was at it again, he didn't know how long he could shield him from the attention of the covert agencies. The apple most certainly did not fall far from the tree.
He'd already had to convince the kid's professor at Stanford to obscure his test scores on the subliminal image mid-term which was actually a test on image retention in disguise. If the man hadn't been a good friend, the attempt would have been wasted. Not to mention if the NSA knew how many times the kid had accessed not only the CIA servers, but theirs as well, he would be conscripted so fast his head would spin. He had to admit the kid was good, even without his help, it would be hard for the clandestine agencies to know he had been in their servers at all. Even if they did know how easily he had breached their security protocols, it would have taken them years to find where the hack originated from as, when he was accessing government systems, the kid routed his signal through at least two dozen other servers around the world. However, since he knew the originating source, he only ever watched that terminal.
"Charles what are you up to?" The man grumbled under his breath as he observed how skillfully the kid cut through the digital red tape in order to ferret out the information he was looking for. The man's eyes widened as the kid's search of a cover name revealed the actual name beneath. "Oh boy, this is not going to end well."
"Seriously?" Chuck huffed disgustedly as he quickly copied the information he was looking for and backed out of the server, his mission accomplished. The name that everything had traced back to was the last name on earth he ever wanted to see or hear... Bryce Freaking Larkin! Of course, it had to be his nemesis at the root of all the issues that popped up in his life.
He knew it wasn't true, but it just seemed like the man's name kept popping up, unwanted, in his love life since the day he found Bryce and Jill together in his bed. His brief moment of self-pity passed instantaneously, allowing him to focus on the next step, telling Sarah... about everything.
He would figure out where Bryce was in the morning, but for now, he needed sleep... well maybe a couple fingers of scotch first, but then definitely, sleep.
Chuck had just come downstairs and poured himself a cup of coffee when he heard an alert from his computer indicating he had an incoming message. Furrowing his brow in curiosity, he made his way to his office and took a seat in his plush desk chair. He typed in the passcodes to access his system and pulled up the message. He was surprised to find it was a live video call, only the video of the originator was nothing but a vague shadow caused by scrolling alphanumeric code.
"Good morning Piranha," A digitized voice came over the speakers, surprising Chuck, who at least had the good sense to not show it on his face.
"Piranha?" He inquired, trying to keep his upper body still as he typed in the activation codes to start a trace on the call, "I don't know who you are trying to contact, but this is a private residence, I don't sell fish here. Perhaps you should try the pet shop in Huntington Beach, I think they have a large selection of exotic fish."
"I would think you would give more respect and thanks to the person protecting you from the nation's intelligence agencies," The digital voice countered.
"Why would I need such protection?" Chuck challenged, "I'm a private citizen living a normal life, nothing that would cause any such organization to take any particular interest in me, unless they were interested in having me develop a security protocol for them. Then again, wouldn't they have their own programmers on retainer for such a thing?"
"I wouldn't be so arrogant, if I were you," The voice reprimanded him, "They don't know because I disguised your digital signature, although I must applaud you for the security measures. If they knew you were trying to track down your college roommate, the NSA and CIA especially would be in contention over who would arrest and sequester you first."
"And how would you know?" Chuck raised an eyebrow.
"Because I've been keeping an eye on you since the first time you popped up on their radar," The voice explained, "I have shielded you, discredited you, so that they would lose interest in the highly skilled hacker Piranha. Or should I say burgeoning software mogul, Charles Irving Bartowski?"
Chuck turned white and couldn't hide his shock, "Who… Who the hell are you?!" He demanded.
"The powers that be know me only by my code name, Orion," The digital voice said, but the vague undertones of the real speaker's voice could be softly heard, "I should be honored you remembered the name," The digital shadow and scrolling code began to fade along with the digital voice, slowly revealing the face of a real person as his voice became clearer, "But you know me better as 'Dad.'"
"Dad?" Chuck gasped, gob smacked, "What the hell is going on? How… why… where…"
"One thing at a time, Son," Stephen J. Bartowski gave his son a soft smile, "I don't know how long I can secure this line and we have much to talk about. Can you meet me? I have a place, off the grid, I can send you the location. However, you must leave your phone, pager, smart watch, anything digital behind. I promise, everything will be explained."
"I…" Chuck stammered, "I have so much to ask you, where have you been, why did you leave…"
"All will be explained when you get here," Stephen insisted, "Can you come?"
Knowing he had informed Morgan that he would be working from home that day and the next, he nodded, "Yeah, I'll meet you."
"Good," Stephen nodded, posting a series of directions on the screen that slowly scrolled until it gave the address of the final location, trusting that his son's eidetic memory would capture everything. He was one of the few people who knew that this was the skill behind all of Chuck's academic and professional success, the man's mind was a steel trap, and why he was able to retain so much information in Fleming's class to the point where he was very nearly forcibly recruited to the CIA his sophomore year. "I will see you when you arrive. I do have one stipulation, stop trying to track Bryce Larkin's whereabouts."
"Why?" Chuck inquired, confused, "I am trying to track him down for an important reason."
"I know why you are trying to find him," Stephen gave him a small smile, "I would have done the same thing if your mother had a child before meeting me and needed to find it's father. It's a commendable thing you are trying to do, Charles, and I will help you by giving you a method to contact him when you get here. But you must stay out of the CIA servers, it's for your own safety and freedom, please trust me on that."
"Fine, I will stay out of their servers," Chuck agreed, "Let me go get dressed and I'll meet you there."
"I look forward to seeing you soon," Stephen nodded and disconnected the call, leaving Chuck staring at a blank screen.
It only took Chuck a moment to get up and dash up the stairs to his room. After a quick shower, shave, and brushing his teeth to rid them of the scuzz and smell remaining from his several fingers of scotch the night before, he quickly got dressed. He pulled on a grey t-shirt with an image of an Atari joystick and 'Classically Trained' printed on the front. A blue and navy striped button-down shirt went over top, sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. He finished off the look with dark wash jeans and his favorite pair of black chucks. He exchanged his smart watch for an analog watch that had been a gift from Ellie and Awesome when he graduated from Stanford with his master's degree. Grabbing his wallet and his keys, he headed back down the stairs and hopped in his Aston Martin. Accessing the control panel in the car, he entered a few commands, effectively disabling the GPS on the vehicle. Backing out of his parking space, he turned down the road, on his way to see his father in person for the first time in nearly 15 years.
