A/N: We add Casey.
The Missionary
Palisades on landscapes of failure in succession
One for every unkind word aimed in your direction
You're a hero, you're a villain, it depends who you're killing
You aspire without faith to be delivered
Monuments of discontent raised on lost foundations
One for every crooked mile away from your intention
You're a slave, you're a master, it depends who runs faster
You aspire without faith to be delivered
From this race against faces that dimly look familiar
Your relations replaced with strangers, you brace yourself for a shake
And when you go, you go down fighting
And when you rise, you rise quietly
— Chris Hickey, Palisades
Chapter 5: Frenemies
Chuck noticed Sarah's eyes flick to him, but a moment later she glared at the man, at Casey.
"You're a pig."
Holding his gun steady, smirking at Sarah, Casey unwedged himself from Chuck's desk chair.
"Sure, sure, I'm a pig. You and I are just different kinds of porkers," Casey shifted his eyes and gun to Chuck but spoke to Sarah. "Does he know you plan to end his night with the big sleep, not la petite mort?"
Chuck knew the phrase or the Intersect did. But hearing that man, in that suit, with that gun speak it in a fluent French accent (the Intersect's verdict), kept Chuck from fully comprehending what Casey said.
The French accent — but also the rest of Casey's NSA dossier as it displayed itself, confused and divided Chuck's attention.
Sarah's eyes flicked to Chuck again. "There's been a change of plan."
Chuck finally understood what Casey said. Casey assumed Sarah was going to terminate Chuck. The Intersect supplied a cheerful thought: Casey has the same orders.
Sarah went on. "Look, Casey, this thing — the Intersect — it involves the CIA and the NSA. No matter how much jostling there's been — "
"Jostling?" Casey cut her off, clamping his mouth around his cigar butt. "That shithead Graham tried to shut the NSA out, tried to hide what happened. If I hadn't been there, on the scene, we'd still be picking lint from our asses. Graham didn't know Beckman stationed me there."
Sarah's face showed disbelief. "You were there, at the Intersect Lab?"
"Yeah, I was sent in as security, that was my cover. Beckman slipped me in, past Graham, weeks ago, and of course, Graham never condescended to visit; there were no cameras, no computer connections outside; the whole outhouse was air-gapped. If Graham could've worked it, the lab would've hovered above ground. Infiltrating it was cake. Langley's a country club of armed, anatomically correct Barbies and Kens, after all."
"You were spying on the CIA?" Sarah was shaking her head, thinking.
Chuck was trying to keep up, but the conversation filled his head with more visions, dossiers, files, forms — Langston Graham, CIA Director, General Beckman, Director of the NSA; the Intersect Lab, isolated, the mountains of West Virginia, a single photograph, a partial set of blueprints…
"Don't play self-righteous — that's a helluva look on you, Walker. We all spy on each other, and deceive each other. Beckman trusts Graham about as much as she trusts that twisted leprechaun, Putin.
"Graham lied to the Oversight and Appropriations Committee about the whole Intersect thing, falsified the books, and the NSA would never have known if Graham hadn't been so greedy for our data and unable to steal it.
"So he made us the poor sisters in the bargain: we supplied our data, he gave us updates." Casey snarled the final word. "Beckman sent me in as an equalizer."
Sarah's head snapped up. "Wait, you were there when the Intersect Lab was attacked?"
Casey shifted the gun from one hand to the other. He seemed as comfortable with it in his left hand as in his right.
He nodded. "I was there. That's how I got here so fast, despite Graham's attempt to hide everything, delay telling Beckman."
Chuck looked from Casey to Sarah. He started to put his hands down since his shoulders were beginning to hurt.
"Keep 'em up," Casey growled, his attention centered again on Chuck. He stepped forward, the movement quick for such a big man, the light-footedness making it somehow more threatening.
All at once, Chuck whiffed stale, damp cigar and acrid sweat, felt Casey's looming, oppressive bulk.
"Now, you tell me why that computer is slagged, and where you put the Intersect, the program. I need every damn copy, and if you lie to me, I start breaking fingers (he shrugged) or I put a bullet in your brainpan..."
Casey lifted his massive gun and slowly moved it upward, toward Chuck's head.
Chuck heard Sarah's hissed, nearly silent intake of breath.
Casey's gun had almost reached Chuck's forehead. Casey smiled around his cigar. Chuck felt himself coil.
Chuck's arm shot out, the heel of his palm driving itself violently into Casey's cigar, the cigar into Casey's mouth. Casey's head snapped back and he went down like a felled tree, backward, his gun falling from his hand, his head slamming into the seat of Chuck's desk chair, sending it crashing into the wall.
Without any intention to do so, Chuck caught Casey's gun as it fell, and somehow turned it in his hand, so that he was aiming it at Casey.
The big man stayed on his back for a second, then rolled over, and up onto his hands and knees. He was retching, coughing. "Shit! I…cough…swallowed…cough…it."
Chuck stepped back so that he could command both the vomiting NSA agent and the smirking CIA agent.
Chuck motioned the gun at Sarah. "Drop your purse and sit down on the bed."
She did, careful to keep her purse and then her feet distant from Casey, who, above a puddle of what looked like cream corn and cigar pieces, wiped at his mouth, swearing under his breath.
A moment later, Casey turned, still on his knees but straightened, and he looked at Chuck in wide-eyed, deep disbelief. "No shitting way, no shitting how! It's impossible."
Sarah laughed softly, bitterly. "Welcome to the change of plan."
Casey was sitting on the bed beside Sarah. He looked green and confused. Sarah, still with a trace of a bitter smile on her lips, was looking at Chuck with an expression he could not read. Chuck noticed that her blouse was still unbuttoned. Standing above her, he could see down it.
He averted his gaze. Her tracery of a smile plummeted into a frown and she buttoned the undone buttons.
The gun felt alien and at home in Chuck's hand. His head felt like it had been in a blender.
He knew that he knew how to use the gun. The thought of using it seemed to nauseate him, — although that might have been the tobacco and bile odor hanging in the air.
Chuck's room smelled like vomit in a humidor, the odor thickened by crisscrossed frustrations.
Chuck forced himself to ignore the odor and Sarah's buttoned blouse.
Casey wiped at his mouth again, looking at Chuck as if Chuck had been reanimated, raised.
"You're alive," Casey said, partly to himself, partly to the room, doubt at war with conviction in his tone.
"What's that mean?" Chuck said, not sure what to make of Casey's Doubting Thomas schtick.
"You have it, don't you. It's inside you. — For how long?"
Chuck began to understand; the Intersect began to process. "Since last night, I guess. I opened an email…and lost consciousness. I did not wake up again until this morning," Chuck nodded toward his chair, overturned next to the wall, "in that chair…"
Casey was staring. "No one...no one else ever regained consciousness. When you walked in, it never occurred to me that you could have it…"
"No one else?" Chuck asked. Sarah was listening intently.
"They tried to download it, volunteers, over and over. Tweaks to the program, drugs to the recipients — but always the same result. They downloaded it, lost consciousness, died, or slipped into a coma. All were dead within twenty-four hours."
"All?"
Casey nodded blankly. "All. Twenty-one volunteers to date. None woke up. All now in unmarked graves under the pines, up on the ridge above the Intersect Lab. Reboot Hill, the Lab techs call it."
Chuck stared at Casey in horror, as did Sarah. Surprisingly, Casey became self-conscious, made an awkward gesture, apropos of nothing, his weight shifting on the bed. "Gallows humor."
No one spoke for a stretch.
"So — why am I not dead?" Chuck asked.
Casey shrugged, but Chuck heard a single word in his head: compatible.
He didn't know if the conclusion was his or the Intersect's, or both, but the conclusion carried marrow-deep conviction.
Casey seemed to be recovering, more in control of himself, less green-tinted. He glanced at Sarah. "You knew he had it?" Sarah nodded. Casey went on. "How?"
She took a moment and chose her words carefully. "What he said. What he did."
Casey nodded, then he smiled a weak but gloating smile. "He bested you, too!"
Sarah's mouth hardened and her face went blank. "That's not what I meant. We," she stopped, shifting her attention to Chuck, "he saved General Stanfield tonight. He, Chuck, Chuck figured out that there was a terrorist plot against Stanfield. Given what Chuck had already done, and what he'd said to me…" she paused, glancing at Chuck as if replaying all his words to her, the ones before and after the defusing, "...I trusted him. He defused a bomb planted in Stanfield's suite; I watched him do it. I was standing right there." She finished by staring at Casey.
Casey held Sarah's eyes for a long moment, then he turned to Chuck. "You defused a bomb?"
Chuck sighed. In a flash, Chuck field stripped Casey's massive gun, doing it while keeping the disjoint parts all in his hands, then he tossed them all to Casey. He caught a few, but others landed on the bed or the floor.
"Yes," Chuck said quietly. "Now, I'm going to clean up the puke. Who knows about you two, but I can't stand it. Besides, Ellie will kill me if that doesn't come out of the carpet. She almost evicted me after Morgan regurgitated grape soda in here. Purple — but it didn't smell as much like carrion."
Without another glance at the two spies, Chuck turned and left the bedroom.
Sarah watched Chuck leave the room. Tiredness descended on her, heavy — and sadness. She put her fingers to her temples and rubbed them.
Casey slouched forward, his elbows on his thighs.
He still had some of the parts of his gun in his hand. But he kept his head up, staring at Chuck's dark computer monitor as if it might suddenly light up, delivering a philippic.
After an expectant moment, he dropped his head.
"I've had missions go south, but this is full-on Heart of Dixie. I have no fucking clue what to do next."
"We need to talk to Graham," Sarah said after a silence, her voice flat.
Casey's face came up, eyes glaring. "Okay. And Beckman. The Intersect just walked — walked — out of this room, after a night in which it apparently disarmed two deadly intelligence assets and it foiled a terrorist threat. It — "
"He," Sarah said, interrupting, "not it. — How did he disarm us?"
Casey blew out a breath. "I overheard about the Intersect while at the Lab, but I'm no scientist. I can't explain much. But I know the program has…safeguards…like how computers have antivirus protection and firewalls.
"The Intersect, if it worked, was supposed to defend itself from threats. It would happen, you know, automatically, like a reflex. When we became concrete threats, it treated us as malware."
Sarah blinked at Casey, for half a second taking him to be making a joke. But he was serious. "Does the Intersect have offensive as well as defensive capacities?"
He shrugged. "Don't know, I don't think so. The program's supposed to begin by a…pairing, like headphones to a cell phone, Bluetooth, except it's not, and that it's supposed to take time for the pairing to become…complete or stable."
"How long?"
"I have no idea. No one lived through the pairing before."
Casey emptied the parts of his guns from his hands onto the bed, adding them to the parts there, then began picking up the others off the floor.
Still bent down, he turned his head in her direction. "Think the kid'll run?"
She bit her lip at the thought, then shook her head. "No, not yet, anyway. He needs us, needs to know what we know."
Chuck leaned against the bathroom sink and looked at himself in the mirror.
He looked like he always did, like himself — and he didn't.
Double.
It wasn't that he was seeing double, or having double-vision. It was more like the difference between what you saw when you closed one eye, monocular vision, and what you saw when you had both eyes open, binocular vision. But that still wasn't quite right. He was seeing with both eyes, but the Intersect was seeing with his eyes too. It was like he had more than two eyes, or like his eyes had undergone subtle, corrective surgery. The world seemed clearer to him, its edges sharper, its colors more saturated. His depth of field had increased.
That was great — except the world he could now see better, see farther into, was worse, far scarier than he had imagined it to be.
The proof was in his room.
Two spies, assassins, were seated on his bed. Each had come to LA to kill him, each hunting a program that he now incarnated.
He leaned down, down, until his forehead touched the cold marble sink top. He pressed it against the marble harder, letting the cold surface cool his fevered, tenderized brain.
Eyes closed, he stood bent like that for a few moments, then he stood, shook his whole body, and bent at his knees. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink and grabbed a can of carpet cleaner and a couple of towels from a pile of old ones Ellie kept there for cleaning.
Towel and cleaner in hand, he went back to his bedroom.
As he neared the door, he heard Casey ask: "Think the kid'll run?"
Sarah answered: "No, not yet, anyway. He needs us, needs to know what we know."
Chuck entered the room with his cleaning supplies. He tried not to look at either Sarah or Casey. He walked past them to the mess on the floor.
He took one of the towels and put it down on top of the vomit. It began to soak it up.
He put the other towel and the cleaner on his desk. Only then did he turn to look at the two spies. As he did, Sarah's purse began to ring. She started to get up, recognizing the ring, but Chuck motioned for her to stay. She sat back down reluctantly. He walked to the purse and took her ringing phone out of it, her CIA phone.
Sarah watched as Chuck punched at the screen of her phone once, then a second time. He spoke, and she saw his earlier anger return to his eyes.
"Agent Sarah Walker's secure phone. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. — How may I help you?"
Casey chuckled beside Sarah.
A voice sputtered, on speaker. "What? Who is this? What's happening?"
It was Graham, as Sarah knew. Graham collected himself. "Listen to me: the unauthorized use of this phone is a serious matter." It was Graham's domineering voice, replete with power
Chuck spoke again, more loudly, seemingly unfazed.
"Agent Walker, please tell this person who I am, and that I have your authorization to use your phone." Chuck held her phone toward her. Sarah noticed the phone was shaking.
"This is Agent Walker. You are talking to Chuck Bartowski. He — "
Chuck turned the phone toward himself. "He is — I am — the monster to your Frankenstein, Director Graham," Chuck intoned the title and name slowly, distinctly, "this is Chuck Bartowski, the Intersect, speaking…Agents Walker and Casey are with me."
The phone went silent.
And then Graham spoke, his voice sounding much different, unsettled, unsure but carefully measured. "Agent Walker, are you hurt, in danger?"
"No, sir. Not hurt. I don't think I'm in danger." The anger in Chuck's eyes made her wonder. "Agent Casey isn't hurt either. We've run into a…complication."
"Mr. Bartowski," Graham said, matching Chuck's prior slowness and distinctness, "am I to understand you have downloaded the Intersect?"
"Yes," Chuck replied simply.
The phone went silent again. Casey looked at the phone and then at Sarah.
"Mr. Bartowski, does the term Sandwall mean anything to you?"
Sarah saw Chuck jerk, tense. He swallowed, then nodded. "Covert Operation Sandwall. Funded off-book. Intended objective: infiltration of a counter-intelligence network, believed to exist…" Chuck slowed,"...inside the CIA."
Chuck stared at Sarah and she stared back at him.
"Alright, Mr. Bartowski, what you just said, coupled with the information that caused me to call Agent Walker together make me willing to believe what you just said. Do you understand how valuable you now are?"
Chuck nodded, then realized Graham could not hear the gesture. "Yes," he said, his throat obviously dry.
The towel on the carpet beside Chuck had now absorbed a lot of the liquid; its center was a darker blue than when he first put it down.
"Agent Walker," Graham said, the whole bizarre, absurdist drama continuing, "I've been sent security footage from The Ritz-Carlton that apparently shows you and…Mr. Bartowski attacking the man guarding the suite of General Stanfield, then leaving the suite a few minutes later. Shortly thereafter, the General's security team found a bomb — a defused bomb, marked by a sign in ballpoint ink — in his room. Is that right? Is that what I'm seeing?"
"Well, sir," Sarah answered, "it was more like I attacked the guard and Mr. Bartowski defused the bomb. He identified the plot and told me about it and I deemed what he told me…credible. He was right, sir."
"Jesus Christ, it worked, it works," Graham whispered, his voice tremulous. "But it wasn't supposed to work like this."
The phone again was silent. Chuck stared at it.
"Director Graham," Casey offered, his voice careful but determined, "in view of this…change in the situation, I should inform you that I am bound to report to General Beckman. Bartowski's half ours, you know."
Chuck's face flushed. He spoke fiercely into the phone. "I'm not half anybody's, no percentage anybody's. I belong to me, myself, or to the Buy More, anyway not the CIA or the NSA. I'm nobody's agent. I'm a free agent, a citizen."
"Mr. Bartowski," Graham said, "if you are what you say you are, then you also have to understand that your value puts you in extreme danger."
Sarah saw Chuck close his eyes for a second, then re-open them. The phone was still shaking, just noticeably. "I do."
"Then, Mr. Bartowski," Sarah recognized Graham attempting to assume control, "I ask that you stay with Agents Walker and Casey. I will immediately call General Beckman and bring her up to speed. She and I will confer — then contact you all again asap. Is there someplace we could establish a video feed?"
"There is," Chuck answered, "the Buy More is closed, but I know the security codes. We can use the Home Entertainment Room. No one will be there until tomorrow morning at 9:30 am, when the manager comes in "
"That is fine. Agents, will you accompany Mr. Bartowski to the Buy More, do whatever is necessary to protect him?"
"Yes," Sarah and Casey said in unison. Sarah understood and knew Casey understood the subtextual orders.
"Then watch your phone, Agent Walker. I will text you the information needed to establish the video feed. Talk to you again soon." Graham hung up.
Chuck tossed the phone to Sarah. "Here. Give me a second to finish with this mess. Casey, come here and pick up this towel, wipe that up. I'm not touching it. Then I can use the cleaner."
Casey shook his head and stood up heavily, facing the damp towel like a condemned man.
Sarah held her phone while Chuck finished cleaning the carpet while Casey reassembled his gun.
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
Sarah did not recognize the line, or what it was from, but she knew he was quoting something.
It didn't matter what it was.
The line was her life.
She walked to the car behind Chuck and Casey, carrying her purse, handle in hand. Chuck glanced to the side at Casey, then behind, at her. She met his eyes with no expression; he looked at her with none. But when he looked away, shame boiled inside her.
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
She studied the sidewalk as they walked.
Chuck's in over his computerized head.
Chuck thought he was in control of this situation, and maybe, for the last little while, he had been, for a little while longer, he would be. But that phone call with Graham had put wheels into inexorable motion, massive, implacable bureaucratic wheels, wheels that ground everything and everyone to dust, especially ideals and idealists. She had seen it happen to people.
It hadn't happened to her, but only because she had been caught in the wheels after her ideals and idealism, and her childhood had been conned from her.
Chuck might have a program in his head, he might be able to disarm her agents and defuse a bomb, but in the long run, none of that would matter. Not enough, not nearly enough.
Graham would sit behind his ship-sized oaken desk, drawing from bottomless sources of funds, assembling wave after wave of agents, enforcing his will. And if Graham did not succeed, there was Beckman, sitting at a smaller desk (the little General could not see over Graham's desk) but with the same infinite funds, and a similar sea of personnel.
Sarah owed Chuck something. She could warn him about the absolute shit storm that was brewing.
They got in Sarah's car; Sarah drove.
Chuck was in the front passenger seat, Casey in the rear. It did not take them long to get to the Buy More.
Chuck told her to drive to the rear, to park by the loading dock.
They got out and Chuck led them up a set of stairs beside the dock, and then across the dock to the heavy green rear doors. Chuck immediately began punching buttons, lots of buttons, on a keypad beside the door. A moment later, a small buzzer sounded. Chuck pulled the door open. Sarah was standing closest to him; Casey was watching from the rear.
For a second, Chuck started to hold the door for her, but then he realized what he was doing; he frowned and stepped inside, leaving her to catch the door herself. She held it for Casey, who had watched what happened and who smirked at her as he went past. She followed him inside.
Chuck led them through the large, high-ceilinged stock room, piled with boxes, and past a caged area, locked, that contained a workbench mostly hidden beneath tools and broken electronics. Sarah thought of Chuck beneath the serving tray, naming the colors of the bomb's wires.
They passed through another set of green doors and out onto the darkened sales floor. They turned to the right almost immediately and walked to a corner of the store. The corner was enclosed in a glass semi-circle, with a door in the center and a sign above the door: Home Theater Demo.
Curtains were drawn behind the glass, completely hiding the contents of the room. Chuck walked in and clicked on a switch. Recessed lighting came on, a soft glow. The room was full of mounted TVs and speakers. Several leather recliners stood against the curtains, facing the TVs. On a stand in the middle of the room was an open laptop with a touchscreen.
Chuck touched it and it came on, then entered a brief code. He brightened the lights by using a button on the computer, then he turned on the largest of the TVs, the one near the center of the room. The sound was off.
"Might as well use the best," Chuck muttered. He turned to Sarah. "Anything from Washington yet?"
She took her phone from her purse. "No, but don't worry. We'll hear soon. Graham meant it when he said you were valuable. You are."
She gave Chuck an earnest look but if he saw it, he ignored it.
"I need to let my little piggy go wee," Casey announced too loudly in the quiet room. "What direction, Bartowski?"
"Out the door, on the opposite side of the store. Green door with a stick man on the front."
Casey grunted, "Dickhead," and left. Chuck turned back to the computer and began typing.
Sarah walked around the stand. She stopped in front of Chuck, between him and the glowing TV. She put her purse on the floor. He glanced up at her, then back down. "Just making sure things are set for when they send the link."
"Okay. Look, Chuck, you can't trust Graham or Beckman. Beckman at least has a soldier's sense of honor, but it's tied to country and flag. She'd sacrifice you in a minute if she thought it would protect the country. And Graham doesn't even have a soldier's sense of honor, any honor. He's Machiavelli in a three-piece suit."
Chuck looked up, spearing her with his eyes, holding her fixed. "But you seduced me, were going to kill me, for him."
She opened her mouth but no words came. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
She rotated toward the TV. The screen was bright but showed no picture, just a snowy, staticky gray. She stared at the screen for a long time as if it were an occult reflection of her. She heard Chuck typing. She knew he was done prepping; he was just typing nonsense to keep her at bay.
She decided to try a different tack. She faced him again.
"Why did Bryce Larkin send you the Intersect?"
Chuck's eyes lifted, widened, surprised. "Bryce? Right, Bryce. I've been so focused on what he sent me, how it works, I forgot to ask myself why he would have sent it."
For a moment, he seemed to be considering the question, then his eyes narrowed. "Wait, how did Bryce Larkin get involved with the Intersect? He's an accountant; he lives in Connecticut."
"Nope, but he used to live in Walker's panties," Casey said, coming through the Home Theater door, his hand tugging on his zipper, "Larkin was a CIA agent, dipshit. Walker's partner and fuckbuddy. Is that the word? I'm not current on the slang. But you get the idea. Larkin kept her lubed up for marks like you. But he went rogue and vanished a while back. Showed up when he attacked the Intersect Lab. — But Larkin doesn't live anywhere now. I killed him before he got to his car — but not before he emailed you your birthday present."
Chuck had spun toward Casey, listening. When Casey finished, when Chuck spun back toward Sarah, his expression was too complicated to name.
Before she could process Casey's words or Chuck's reaction, her phone buzzed in her hand.
A/N: The next chapter ends our first arc, Pairing. Tune in for Chapter Six, Swim Until You Can't See Land.
