A/N: We begin where we left off…
The Missionary
Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the gray.
Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah.
And now that your rose is in bloom.
A light hits the gloom
On the gray.
— Seal, Kiss From a Rose
Chapter Nine: Living and Dying (in Burbank)
Casey saw Sarah and Bartowski exit the stairwell, Sarah leading the kid, both behind her gun.
Casey veered toward the car, the driver's seat. Sarah and Bartowski began to run. Bartowski had a computer under his arm. Jesus, geek to the bitter end.
As Sarah and the kid neared the car, Sarah whipped off her purse, using the hand of the shoulder it was on, and she softball tossed it over the top of the car.
Casey stopped and caught it. "Side pocket," Sarah said.
Looking behind, Casey could not see the two men who had chased him from the other parking deck. A truck had pulled into the deck and blocked their path for a moment. Better to be lucky than good.
Casey dug out Sarah's keys and pressed the fob; the doors unlocked. Casey dove into the driver's seat. Sarah opened the rear passenger door, grabbed the kid, and all but threw him into the backseat.
He landed in a lanky sprawl, the computer falling into the footwell behind Casey's seat. The kid twisted onto his back.
Casey jammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but he heard rapid footfalls before the ignition caught. When it did, Sarah leaped in, on top of Bartowski in the backseat.
"Hang on!" Casey kicked the gas and the car bounded backward from its parking spot. The tires squealed as they backed up, then again when Casey wheeled the car toward the exit arrow painted in yellow on the concrete floor.
A shot rang out, just audible above the roaring engine. The front passenger window exploded, shards of glass spraying Casey, a shower of miniature daggers, but he was too focused to know or care.
"Casey, did they see Chuck?" It was Sarah's voice. She was astride Bartowski in the backseat, gun in hand, staring out the rear window.
"I don't know. Probably not. Maybe."
"Back up. How many?" Sarah's blue eyes glowed, but cold.
"What? Two, just two."
"Do it, now! Back up!"
Casey punched the brake and the car slid to a stop. He shoved the shifter into reverse and stomped on the gas. They had gone around a curve in the winding exit path, narrow and cavelike, and now they reversed through it.
Two men on foot were in the path.
Bartowski had risen up onto his elbows, and could just see above the backseat.
Sarah calmly lifted her gun and fired. One of the men, scrambling to change direction, fell. She fired again and the head of the second, who had simply stopped, snapped back, a gush of blood spewing into the air as he took a step backward and then collapsed.
"Keep driving!"
Casey did. The car bounced twice, soft speedbumps, as Casey ran over the two men.
Bartowski whimpered in the backseat. "You're killing them."
Sarah looked down at Chuck, her voice distant but distinct. "They were already dead. Death is the idea." To Casey: "Now, get us out of here!"
Casey yanked the shifter back and the car shot forward, over the two men again, another double bump.
Casey glanced in the rearview as the car shot along the exit path. Bartowski was looking out the rear window, holed and cracked.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck…" He kept repeating, like a perverse prayer.
Casey shoveled his hand in his pocket and grabbed his phone. "I'll call it in, NSA. Beckman can deal with the mess." Casey turned out of the parking deck, onto the street.
Sarah nodded at him in the rearview mirror. Casey watched her look down at Bartowski. The kid's eyes were squeezed shut. Casey was almost sure he saw a shadow of regret steal across Walker's face. "Are you okay, Chuck?" she asked, her voice nearer and softer.
"Let me up, please. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick."
Casey watched them disentangle from each other as he spoke his codes into the phone and gave the address of the scene. He ended the call. Beckman would call him soon for a report.
Sarah was now on one side of the backseat and the kid on the other. The kid was hugging himself, rocking. Casey turned another corner and then slowed down. He looked at Walker in the backseat as she checked behind them. Casey whistled to himself under his breath. He'd never seen Walker in action before.
Damn. Those two shots, from that position, on top of the kid, moving car, rear window. Damn. And then telling me to run them over, just to be sure.
That's one ice-water bitch.
Street lights, spaced out, created a strange, slow, strobe-light effect in the car. Sarah and the kid kept looking at each other, but only during the sections between lights.
Casey put his head down and drove.
Chuck felt like a doofus, running behind Sarah with a laptop under his arm. But then again, he had felt like a doofus for most of his life, so that wasn't so new.
It was the doofus-in-danger part.
That was new. And not great.
Chuck saw Casey change direction, angling for the driver's side of the car, the driver's door.
But Sarah has the keys.
Chuck saw her remove her purse from her shoulder and toss it to Casey, all with one arm and hand, all while running, and the toss was perfect, just above the top of the car, landing in Casey's outstretched hands. "Side pocket," Sarah said.
Casey found the key and jumped into the driver's seat. Sarah opened the rear passenger door and suddenly her hand, an iron clamp, was on his neck. She pushed him down and forward at the same time, into the backseat. He had no choice but to dive in, the computer falling out of his grasp and onto the floor.
Chuck twisted on the seat, managing to turn over just as Sarah jumped in after him, landing on him, a knee on each side, gun in her hand.
Everything slowed down. Chuck felt like he was seeing double: but he was not seeing two of Sarah at the moment, he was seeing Sarah from the night before and Sarah at the moment, not two present images, but one past, one present, both terrifying, both vivid technicolor.
Her blue eyes had gone frosted, as if she'd been flash-frozen, inside-out. She was terrifying and beautiful in equal measure.
"Hang on!" Casey yelled and the car bounded into motion, backward, then forwards. Chuck heard a shot and shattering glass.
Sarah paid no attention to the car or the shots. She stared out the rear window, all observation and all thought.
"Casey, did they see Chuck?" Her voice was urgent, calculating.
"I don't know," Casey answered. "Probably not. Maybe."
Sarah glanced at Casey, then back to the rear window. "Back up. How many?" Sarah's eyes were aflame with cold.
"What? Two, just two."
"Do it, now! Back up!"
Chuck realized with a wave of nausea what Sarah had in mind. The car skidded, stopped. Chuck braced himself against the back of the front seat, although Sarah's weight would have kept him in place. Even in the raging motion, adrenaline tearing through him like a brakeless locomotive, he could feel her against him.
Chuck got up on his elbows, peeked out the rear window. Sarah lowered her gun, her hand rock steady while everything around them was chaos. She exhaled and pulled the trigger twice.
Two explosions in the car, the sound of Sarah's gun, deafening Chuck, so close to his ears. He blinked and when he opened his eyes, both men were on the ground — in the path of the car.
"Keep driving!"
Chuck understood Sarah. Oh, God! And then the car bounced twice. Chuck probably only imagined, probably did not hear, crunching bones, bursting flesh.
He whimpered, a little kid at a horror movie. "You're killing them."
Her eyes met his, close, but her voice was far away. "They were already dead. Death is the idea." Then she turned to Casey. "Now, get us out of here!"
Two bounces again, and Chuck's stomach wrenched inside him, sickening. Chuck looked back at the bodies, blood pooling around them. He felt his consciousness stretch and snap back with a sting, like a rubber band. He closed his eyes, opened them.
He was muttering something, half exclamation, half imprecation, but he had no idea what.
Casey said something but Chuck could not interpret the sounds as words. His ears were roaring so loudly that they drowned out the engine. He could not see but maybe his eyes were not open.
"Are you okay, Chuck?"
Sarah was looking at him, her eyes were her eyes again, not burning cold. Her voice was hers again too. He was all lost; the world boomed and buzzed and roared around him.
He thought he was going to be sick, and said so. Sarah got off him; it took a minute. But they had done this dance before, sort of, under last night's blue moon.
The killing moon one night too early. Chuck hugged himself and rocked, trying desperately not to be sick all over the car.
Sarah pulled the trigger effortlessly, twice, overcome by the occult calm that always settled on her in the midst of bloodshed.
She shot the first man in the chest, center mass, and dropped. Rotating, adjusting, she shot the second man in the head, the shot causing a fountain of blood that shot up as the man fell. They were both dead, she was confident. But she was not going to take the risk.
To risk Chuck — she needed to protect him.
The men needed to be dead. "Keep driving!"
Casey ran over the men. The car went up and down, up and down.
Chuck looked up at her, his face aghast. "You're killing them."
The occult calm, Sarah and not-Sarah, responded. "They were already dead. Death is the idea."
The occult calm left as Sarah told Casey to get them out of there. When it left, Sarah felt the full force of Chuck's expression, a hammer blow. Casey said something but only a part of Sarah heard, The other part of her was cringing, shrinking. Everything dimmed.
She scolded back her senses. "Are you okay, Chuck?"
For a moment she thought she had spoken a language other than English. Chuck seemed not to understand her. Chuck said he was going to be sick. She was sickening him. He wanted her off him.
She got off him, aware for the first time since that she was on top of Chuck again. Gun in hand again. And he had witnessed her kill two men.
She was all sudden self-conscious. Fuck, fuck, fuck… She didn't know if the words were hers or Chuck's, if they were being spoken or recalled.
Never before had she killed and been so utterly aware of it. In the past, it was the accomplishment of the objective, understood as the end to which all her carefully deployed means led inexorably.
Death was the final cause of her termination missions and was justified as such.
But Chuck's expression jammed something inside her, made her self-aware, aware of what she had done as her choice.
Chuck had moved as distant from her in the backseat as possible.
He was hugging himself, rocking.
Sarah looked at him. She had done it for him — for the mission. But she understood just enough to know that telling him that would make it all worse.
Street lights brightened and faded.
Casey had been watching the rearview, but no one was following them. He had driven in the opposite direction from Chuck's house.
He had been driving in aimless circles for the last twenty minutes, staying distant from the hospital but not going any farther from it.
His phone rang. "Casey, secure." He glanced up at the rearview as he answered, not checking the street but instead looking at Walker. She was pale. Casey put his hand over the bottom of his phone. "It's Beckman." Sarah nodded once.
"Give me a minute, ma'am."
Casey pulled off the street into a small parking lot beside an old-fashioned-looking church building. The sign out front read: All Are Welcome at Little White Chapel.
He parked the car and shut off the engine.
"Sorry, ma'am. Wanted to park the car."
"Casey, what's happened?" Beckman's patience was clearly at its end.
"Bartowski's fine, General. So too is Agent Walker. I'm fine. Bartowski and Agent Walker are in the car with me, listening."
"Go ahead, Agent Casey." He put his phone on speaker.
"Everything went sideways at the hospital. It all seemed okay until I was walking Zarnow to his car. He seemed keyed up but trying not to show it. I thought it might just be weird science vibes or something. And he knew me from the Lab, though he didn't say so.
"We went down the stairs. He parked in a different parking deck — there are two at the hospital — than Agent Walker parked us in. To get to his, we had to leave the building. When we stepped outside, he immediately stepped in front of me. I heard him gasp. He stepped backward into me. I caught him and there was blood on his chest, I spun him around and felt another shot hit him. He put his hand on his chest as I dragged him behind a sculpture. He looked at me, put his hand on my face, and said, "Stop them. Keep him safe; tell him I'm sorry that…." He was dead before he finished the sentence."
Casey purposely avoided looking at the rearview, though he heard Bartowski's intake of breath.
"I looked up. Two men were running down the stairs of the deck. They must have been on the third or fourth floor. A medical supply truck parked in the street between the deck and me. I went back into the stairwell but not up the stairs — into the hospital. I kept my head down, my arms around myself, and made it to the other side. I went running to the car. I found Bartowski and Walker there; we got in the car and the two men started shooting. We got away, but then Walker told me to reverse course. I did, and she shot both men, then I ran over them. Twice. Backward and forward. My expert opinion is…they're dead."
"Yes, they were taken into Providence St. Joe's ER. Both were declared DOA a couple of minutes ago. I'm working with local law enforcement, and with people on the hospital staff, containing and spinning this. National security. There doesn't seem to be any surveillance video of any of this. Graham had the system shut down just before you arrived. Local law enforcement will publicize the story I give them. — Do you think there was another team, anyone else?"
"No, ma'am. And no one else saw Bartowski, and we're not sure if those two did. But I guess they won't be talking."
"Alright. Whoever this was, they couldn't have had much time to organize. Zarnow didn't know until just before dawn this morning, so there wasn't much time for any organized play against us, the Intersect. I believe this was confined to the two men at the hospital.
"Go to Bartowski's apartment. But approach it with extreme caution. Casey, you take the point and make the initial sweep. Have Walker bring Bartowski once you're confident all is secure.
I would send NSA teams to both places, but the whole point of all this is to keep the circle as small as possible. Call me again if everything there is okay, and I'll advise you on what to do next. I'm going to talk to Graham as soon as we end this call. Anything else, Agent Casey?"
"No, ma'am."
"Any idea what Zarnow meant when he said he was sorry?" Beckman paused. "Mr. Bartowski?"
Casey answered No, and looked around at Bartowski. Bartowski shrugged.
Casey shook the phone, glaring at him, and Bartowski looked embarrassed. "No, I've got no idea."
"Well, we'll try to puzzle that out. For now, I want you out of sight as soon as possible."
Casey spoke up. "I have Zarnow's phone; I intended to give it back to him when he got back to his car.
"Maybe, once we're back at Bartowski's, he can examine it, see if there's anything on it that might help us understand what happened."
"Good. Yes, work on that once you are there. Call me with any results."
"We will."
Beckman ended the call and Casey started the car. No one spoke from the rear.
Casey could have been driving a hearse.
A rare evening fog began to settle in as Casey left the Chapel parking lot.
Casey parked Sarah's car where he had parked his the night before, in a dark spot at a distance from Chuck's apartment complex.
He took out his gun, checked it, then turned.
Sarah was sitting in the shadows of the backseat, passenger side. The darkest shadows obscured her face. Bartowski was still hugging himself but had stopped rocking. He glanced up at Casey.
Casey knew shock; he'd seen it as a Marine, again as an agent. Bartowski was not in shock, but he was damn close.
Casey turned to Sarah. He still couldn't see her face but he addressed her.
"Talk to him. This won't take me long. We traded phone numbers earlier, so I'll text you the all-clear. I left the keys in the ignition."
He saw her nod, a shift in her inky silhouette. Casey kept his face toward her but shifted his eyes toward Bartowski, underlining what he told her to do. Talk to him.
Casey got out and closed the door quietly.
He held his gun close to his body and started toward the apartment complex, walking quickly but not so quickly as to draw attention.
He disappeared into the thick fog like a magician.
Chuck glanced at Sarah. "Do you think someone's waiting out there?"
Sarah did not respond for a moment, when she did her voice was foggy, matching the night.,
"I don't know. I don't think so. What happened today, well — Beckman's probably right. The attack felt a bit impromptu. — It had something to do with Zarnow, obviously, but I can't say if he was part of it or a victim of it. I don't understand but I'm sure Graham's working on it."
"Graham," Chuck spit, "I thought Zarnow was Graham's guy. How could this have happened?"
Sarah shrugged. "No idea. We'll find out. Maybe Zarnow's phone will have an answer. Maybe Graham or Beckman will turn something up. Remember what I told you: spying is waiting."
She stationed her gun in her lap, nearby, and extended her hands, her fingers. She had been gripping it so tightly for so long that her hands ached.
The reaction was a moment late, but Chuck scoffed, the sound embittered. "That's not all it is. I found that out tonight, didn't I? You shot those two men and then told Casey to run over them." No hostility just stunned disbelief.
He went on in the same tone of ununderstanding, a note of pleading added in: "What's it like to be able to do that? In cold blood, no lashes batted? — Or to be able to…pretend to want a man, touch him, pretend to undress, and instead put a gun to his head? — What's it like to be able to do that?"
Sarah shook her head and turned to the window, staring into the fog as if she were responsible for it, as if she were creating it or it was following her.
I don't know what it's like, Chuck — and that's what it's like. I avoid knowing. There's no light on the dark side of me. I'm a moveable fogbank.
Sarah's hands started shaking; she shoved them under her legs to hide them.
Silence cramped the backseat like a dead fat man between them.
Chuck rubbed his face with both hands, then stared out of the front window.
"Chuck," Sarah explained quietly, "you're valuable. My job is to make sure that nothing happens to you. Casey's job too.
"Back there, at the hospital, those two men were going to happen to you.
"They shot at us; they killed Zarnow.
"What I did, what Casey did, was to protect you. — Don't turn away from me, Chuck, listen. Even if you don't want to hear.
"If they hadn't killed you or kidnapped you, if they had just seen you, then they would have known you. No more hiding in plain sight. And if they saw you, Ellie and Devon would be in danger, potential bargaining chips to use against you. Sometimes, Chuck, it's you or it's them. I wasn't going to let it be you."
She looked at him intently, although, in the shadows, she knew he could not likely read her expression. "Casey either," she added.
Chuck nodded. When he spoke, his voice was shaky but solemn. "I don't want people dying because of me. Good guys or bad guys."
Which do you think I am, Chuck? Sarah took her gun in her hand again. "You don't get to choose other people's reasons for dying, Chuck." Sarah paused and glanced at him as he looked away. "Or their reasons for living."
Chuck reached down into the floorboard and retrieved the computer.
He held it in his hands and pondered it in thoughtful silence as if it was a talisman.
Sarah knew Graham wanted her to talk to Chuck about what Zarnow told him, Zarnow's pessimism about Chuck's long-term prognosis. This is the time, Agent Walker, now, she heard Graham say in her head.
She started to do it, to put her hand on Chuck's arm and to begin a new, different seduction, and insinuate herself into his thoughts, exert control over them — but she couldn't.
Instead, she climbed into the front, the driver's seat, and left Chuck and the computer alone.
Her phone buzzed. Casey sent her the all-clear.
A/N: More on Zarnow next time — and Ellie makes plans to come back to town. — Drop me a review, please!
