Ch. 12 Getting Read In

A/N: David and I had been worried that we might need to sign up for the Witness Protection Program, but fortunately the reviews weren't that outraged at the non-date. At least we learned at the end of the chapter why Chuck was a no-show. There was a guest review that said the part about Mei Ling was too confusing. Here's a breakdown: Mei Ling was the student with a crush on Chuck whose friend's teasing made Sarah discover that there was a second Professor Bartowski (and finally unmask her secret admirer); the day after the Maus, Mei Ling and her friend were talking about Chuck, but Sarah tried to block it out as she was butthurt from being stood up; when Chuck doesn't answer her call from her mom's house, Sarah calls Mei Ling pretending to have a computer problem that she didn't want to take to the local BuyMore (picture Jeffster's doppelgangers...wait, that might give you nightmares to think there are more than the original duo), during the call Sarah gets Mei Ling to spill the details about Chuck not being there to teach his class, his dad disappearing as well. Sarah is now worried that something bad happened to Chuck and is confused why Stanford is keeping quiet about it, so she brings in Carina to help.

And we're all caught up. Time to see how Sarah reacts to the news that Chuck is missing...(spoiler) the whole keeping a low profile is getting tossed out of the window. Some of the language gets a little salty, but that's what happens when Carina gets involved.

(October 29th, Emma Walker's House)

}0{

An hour after calling in the favor to Carina, Sarah was holding her phone away from her ear. "What the fuck, Sarah? I run a basic search on your boy through the NCIC and not only does my computer shut down, but I get ordered to report to my Director immediately! And when I get there, your new Director is reaming my Director because of me. Which meant that my Director then reamed me. Hard…and not in a good way."

Good grief, couldn't Carina go five minutes without a sexual innuendo. Carina continued. "I don't know what in the hell you stumbled into, Walker, but its big. And bad. My advice-stay away from the Professor. Whatever is going on, it's way over our pay grades."

Sarah sat down, stunned. She wasn't worried about Carina. If cats have nine lives, that former CAT has 900. Neither of them knew precisely what Chuck's connection to the government was, but Carina would be well within her rights to make sure that someone was checking into his disappearance if he was affiliated with the government when he dropped off of the grid.

Somehow Carina's search must have tripped an alert that immediately notified her director at the DEA, as well as Director Sommers. And the Director of the CIA doesn't dress down the Director of the DEA without an incredibly good reason. Especially not an interim director. Something big was going down, and it seemed that Chuck was in the middle of it.

Sarah was going to find out what.

}0{

"I asked you three hours ago about Chuck Bartowski's disappearance, and you told me that you didn't know anything."

Roan sat back in his chair. He found himself swallowing, and suddenly nervous. His protégé calling wasn't unusual. Their chats ranged the gambit from missions, to food, to the best watering holes. In all his years he had heard stories of her, he had believed them to be exaggerated…a legend spoken in the halls of Langley.

Today, he found out the legend was real. Roan Montgomery didn't experience many things for the first time at his age, but today…today found him speaking with the Ice Queen for the first time. The cold, detached tone, utterly devoid of humanity. There was no time for his normal maneuverings. That time had come and gone…if it ever existed. No, now was the time for mending some fences.

"You were the first to tell me that anything was up," he admitted to her. He paused for a moment, knowing his next comment was not going to be well received. "I did subsequently find out that he had disappeared, but it was made abundantly clear that no one was to be told anything in order to keep the search for him secret and him safe."

If anything, this information made Sarah's voice turn even icier. "I want to be read in. Now. I will be read in. He's been gone for over two days. Even civilians know that the first 48 hours are crucial to solving a disappearance. Your plan isn't working. Read. Me. In. Make it happen, Roan." There was no mistaking the parting shot as anything other than an order.

Once Carina had phoned in with the news that they had kicked over a hornet's nest and Roan admitted that Chuck was missing, Sarah had made her apologies to her mom and Molly. Her bags quickly repacked, she was making record time on the road for her trip to Palm Springs to gather her watch and phone chips and then up to Palo Alto.

}0{

As she had approached the outskirts of Palo Alto, Roan had forwarded her a message for a meeting to take place two hours later in a non-descript office/warehouse complex. Sarah was now standing in a room with Major John Casey, NSA, waiting for a videoconference to begin. The second the conference was over, she would be beginning her quest to save Chuck. The screen in front of her came to life, revealing the severe face of a highly stressed General Diane Beckman of the NSA.

"Agent Walker, it has been brought to my attention that you have some connection to Charles Bartowski, a cybersecurity government contractor who was recently abducted." Sarah hissed at hearing the confirmation that it was an abduction.

Beckman scowled at the monitor, although Sarah was pretty confident that it was her normal look. "Agent Montgomery has indicated that you and the professor were in contact during your time on campus. We need for you to assist Major Casey's team in developing information on where the professor was taken, as well as who may have been responsible." Beckman paused, although her back remained ramrod straight as she stared at the two agents.

"Agent Walker, Director Sommers is aware that you are assisting in this investigation. Let me be clear. This is an NSA op. You are to render any assistance possible to Major Casey, who has been tasked with reacquiring the asset." Sarah bristled at the dehumanization of Chuck. Asset, not Chuck or even Professor Bartowski. And Sarah was all too familiar with the term "reacquire". It served as further confirmation that Casey would do whatever it took to prevent whoever took Chuck from being able to learn whatever it was that he knew. "Professor Bartowski was working on the CIA side of a joint NSA-CIA computer system called The Intersect. We need him back on our side, and we desperately need for any opposition to not learn what he knows."

First this damn Intersect project gets me yanked out of field work and hidden away at college. Now it's taken Chuck from me. Ok, maybe the first part didn't turn out as bad as I expected. But that was because of Chuck. Whatever this Intersect thing is, it had better be worth it.

Beckman folded her hands in front of her. Roan was convinced that if anyone could find either of the Bartowskis, it would be Sarah Walker. Beckman knew that Stephen was safe, but (not surprisingly) Mary wouldn't offer up the location of whatever hidey hole she had dragged Stephen into. Mary was furious, stuck between needing to protect her husband and wanting to find her son. Beckman's eyebrows rose as she realized the look on Sarah Walker's face was the same look that Mary had given her when they videoconferenced after the attempt to grab Stephen had failed under the wrath of Frost.

"Professor Bartowski had been given an NSA watch with a built in GPS tracker with a backup to use Europe's Galileo system if the GPS was not able to function. However, he watched some ridiculous Chevy Chase spy movie and decided to put a panic button into the watch used in that movie. Nevertheless, the asset," Sarah clenched her teeth at the repeated use of the term, "activated the alert at 9:46am, but the signal dropped off within a minute. That tells us that his abductors must have known that he had an NSA device on him, and it took them a short time to identify the replacement watch. There have been no further signals from the device or the asset since 9:47am. And because we didn't have the GPS/Galileo tracker, we don't know anything beyond where that signal was detected."

"First of all..ma'am," Sarah tacked on, deliberately a beat too late, "it's Chuck, not 'the asset.' And secondly, an abduction isn't recent when it's nearly three days old." Beckman appeared furious at the corrections, but rather than tearing into Sarah, she considered what Sarah had said. "Are you compromised, Agent?"

Sarah bristled at the tone, as well as at the waste of time. "First of all, General, I'm not on a mission. Secondly, I'm not NSA, so your 49-B Rule doesn't apply to me. Finally, as I just said, Chuck isn't an asset. So, let's stop with the posturing and figure out where in the hell Chuck is being held."

Beckman looked like she had just sucked on a lemon, but she knew the search had hit a dead-end. The DNI was phoning twice a day, and he wasn't happy with a report of "no new developments". She knew of Sarah Walker's reputation, and Roan had vouched for her as well.

"Major Casey, please bring Agent Walker up to speed on the status of the search for Bartowski."

Casey sneered at Walker, unhappy with her attitude and her failure to show the respect that he felt the General deserved. "Bartowski went missing on Thursday October 28th, when he failed to respond to a priority email regarding the ongoing joint NSA-CIA project which he is contributing to."

Sarah held back from slamming Casey face first into the large screen tv in the conference room. But just barely. "Your information is wrong. Chuck went missing on the 27th of October, not the 28th." Beckman stopped sneering at Walker and turned her glare on the soon to be Corporal Casey. Casey looked back and forth between a furious General and an even more furious CIA assassin and started to wonder if his life insurance policy information was fully up to date.

Beckman turned her attention to Sarah. "How do you know that Mr. Bartowski disappeared a day earlier than the official reports?" The tone wasn't dismissive, instead curious, a little hopeful, with a dash of desperation.

Sarah dialed back her rage towards Casey, to answer the General. They had been antagonistic towards each other since the start of the briefing, but Sarah knew that she would need the General's help in order to find Chuck. In a more respectful tone, she replied. "Ma'am, Mr. Bartowski was supposed to meet me on the evening of the 27th. He had been in regular contact throughout the day. The last communication was at 2:53pm. I had…obtained confirmation through his sister that he was looking forward to attending the party where we were supposed to be meeting."

Sarah was quiet for a moment. "General, I would request that I be officially seconded to the US Marshal Service so that I can operate domestically. I will keep the investigation as invisible as possible, but I will need to be able to induce cooperation should that be necessary. The other option would be for me to just acquire information through enhanced interrogation techniques, but that will eventually lead to questions if people around campus keep disappearing."

Sarah pondered for a moment. "Speaking of people around campus disappearing, I learned that the elder Professor Bartwoski abruptly left campus the following day. Has he been captured as well?"

Beckman's expression turned impressed. "No, Agent Walker. Stephen Bartowski was taken into protective custody by…well, suffice to say that Stephen is secure and will remain that way. Agent Montgomery can confirm that information if you feel it necessary." Sarah had noted the slight dilatation in Beckman's eyes at the mention of Roan. Interesting. Yet another of your conquests, Roan? She also spotted that Chuck's father was 'Stephen' even though Chuck had been 'the asset.' "I will have the DNI approve your temporary duty reassignment to the US Marshal Service. Will you need credentials on an expedited basis?"

"No, ma'am." Sarah kept her face perfectly straight, but Beckman gave a little smirk. The CIA was prohibited from operating domestically, but they were also in the business of skirting rules. She was confident that Agent Walker already had a Marshal cred pack, probably in a hidden pocket of her jacket. "If you can have that reassignment be active as of now, I'll get to work on tracing the last known location of Chuck."

"We need to reacquire this man immediately," Beckman continued. The videoconference immediately went dark as Beckman jabbed a button to disconnect without any dismissal. Sarah sent Casey a glare that had him worried about how long he might live.

Sarah strode towards the door to the secure conference room, tossing over her shoulder, "Let's go. I'm going to need one of your SUVs. Bartowski is a creature of habit. He normally grabs coffee at Lou's Diner every day around 4pm. We'll see if he got his coffee on schedule, assuming anyone can remember at this point." He quickly followed her out the parking lot. He nearly put up a fight when Sarah stood by the driver's door of the SUV with her hand extended for the keys, but then he decided that discretion was the better part of valor in this particular fight.

Casey wasn't pleased with being ordered around by a CIA skirt. But this was the CIA's top agent, and she not only was on a mission, she had better intel than what the NSA had given him. This was a high profile op, and he was determined to see it end successfully. He headed after her, muttering about nerd chocolate and CIA peanut butter.

}0{

(Three days earlier)

John Casey hurried into the NSA office in downtown LA for an urgent secure videoconference with his boss, General Beckman. He didn't run, as that wouldn't be appropriate. But he came close. The door had barely closed behind him when Beckman started the briefing.

He immediately knew something was wrong. Beckman normally had him stick to the formality of him standing before her at parade rest. Also, he normally was the one waiting on her, not her on him. He quickly deduced that this must be urgent, and it took a lot for General Beckman to give expediency over anything.

"Major. We just received a distress signal from a high value contractor who is based at Stanford University. He triggered the alarm on his NSA watch." Beckman gave a slight sigh of irritation, then corrected herself. "Well, a 1969 Timex that he modified to contain an NSA alert signal. I have personnel from San Francisco canvassing the area. But you are my best tracker. I need you up there immediately."

"The contractor is Professor Charles Bartowski, Department of Computer Science. He and his father, Professor Stephen Bartowski are working on a cutting edge computer system vital to national security. When completed, it will give field agents a massive advantage over the opposition."

Casey looked skeptical. He'd heard of plenty of "revolutionary" computer systems over the years, but almost all were more hype than reality.

"Was the father taken as well?" Casey wasn't thrilled with having to hunt down a missing egg-head. But two of them would be an even bigger headache. He's probably at some comic book convention and pushed the alert as a joke.

General Beckman smirked at the question. "There was an attempt to grab Stephen." Casey noted the familiarity but showed no reaction other than a raised eyebrow. "The grab team evidently thought that it would be easier to grab the father at his home instead of campus. For decades, Stephen has been known in the IC as Orion. What isn't common knowledge is that his wife, Mary Bartowski, is CIA Agent Frost." Casey let out a low whistle, familiar with rumors regarding one of the most successful deep cover operatives during the Cold War.

"The grab team was heavily armed, mostly former special ops troopers led by an FBI agent. They tried to force their way into the house. None made it past the front door. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, there were no survivors to interrogate. At the time, Mary wasn't aware that it was a coordinated attack also targeting her son. Frost has Orion at a secure location."

"Any suspects, ma'am?"

Beckman looked furious. "The FBI agent and one of the gunners were suspected Fulcrum. If all else fails, you can question Sarah Walker. She's CIA, but on a sabbatical of sorts as a grad student at Stanford. She is not suspected of having a role in the kidnapping. But, she apparently was in contact of sorts with the younger Bartowski. With him in Computer Science and her in Linguistics, they would have little in common. Still, you can see if she spotted anything unusual recently. If there was a threat, or Bartowski was being followed, she may have picked up on it."

Casey frowned at this instruction. "Ma'am, do you really think some CIA analyst who was benched is the best lead we've got?"

Beckman closed her file and stared at Casey for a moment. "She's not some analyst. Sarah Walker is a field agent. One of their best. If Fulcrum was snooping around campus, she may have made their personnel. With Graham's fall from grace," both Beckman and Casey smirked at the hubris of their interagency rival, "the Acting Director found it convenient to relocate her away from the Beltway. There was no indication that she took part in any of Graham's overtly illegal activities. But when have the pols up on the Hill ever bothered themselves with pesky things like facts when they get in the way of a juicy soundbite?"

"Within the halls of Langley, she is known as the Ice Queen or Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer." She fought to keep the grin off of her face at Casey's stunned expression. "That's right, Major. Fulcrum just pissed off Frost and messed with the Ice Queen."

}0{

Casey stared at the Ice Queen as she wove the SUV through traffic as if it were a race car. He was well aware of how dangerous she was by reputation. He now not only understood the reputation but was beginning to think perhaps it was a bit undersold. He studied her without her knowing, he hoped. He found himself wondering in a distant part of his mind whether he could take her in a one-on-one fight.

It had been some time since he had sparred with anyone equal to himself, and he began to doubt he could win due to rust. He chose his words carefully. "I've been the one tasked to locate and recover the Professor."

Sarah noted the precise phrasing. "Or kill him to prevent whoever is holding him from learning whatever it is they are after." It was not a question, and Casey didn't disabuse her of the completion of the unspoken portion of his statement.

She didn't speak but in her mind she promised herself it was not going to happen, not even if she had to take on the whole NSA. Chuck Bartowski was…is a good man, the exact person who intelligence agents are supposed to be defending and protecting. Sarah seethed at the bureaucratic ambivalence towards the life of a strategic asset. She found herself angry again at the idea that he was some asset. He isn't a damn asset, he's Chuck.

Casey and the other agents gave her plenty of space as she marched towards the doors to Lou's Diner.

Sarah had been studiously avoiding Casey's eyes. It wasn't his business why she knew that Chuck liked to grab a coffee from Lou's on the way from his townhouse to campus. She certainly wasn't going to share that she knew exactly how he took said coffee. Nor was she going to admit how she knew exactly what time he would swing by the deli on his way to class. That was not going to happen. It was none of their business that she continued to practice good tradecraft and conveniently happened to have memorized Chuck's schedule.

Lou told them that Chuck had been by the morning he was taken, but didn't show for his usual afternoon coffee. Because Lou was being helpful in the search, Sarah decided to play nice and not use Lou as a punching bag when she had acted possessive towards Chuck. Sarah found she had to tame down the glares that she couldn't control.

It was something about those…those damned brunettes. And her constant referral to him as 'my Chuck'…if Lou had said it one time, just one more time…she paused as she noticed the sandwich board. Who the hell did she think she was to name a sandwich after him on her menu?! And why in the hell did she remember specifically that Chuck didn't come by on Wednesday afternoon?

Sarah was fuming as Lou directed all of her responses to Casey. She was attempting to ignore Sarah, who had been the one asking the questions. Sarah stormed back out to the NSA SUV with Casey in her wake, the two of them leaving behind a junior agent to review the security footage just to verify if what the deli owner had said was true.

Sarah peeled out of the parking lot, slamming Casey back into his seat before he could even attach the seatbelt. "What in the hell is your issue, CIA? You got nothing out of her. We're no closer to reacquiring the asset." He stopped speaking as a glistening throwing knife rapidly appeared in Sarah's hand.

"We know that Chuck contacted me just before 3pm, and we know that he didn't make it to his 4pm coffee run." Sarah focused on the road, while the knife remained a centimeter away from Casey's throat, completely steady despite the SUV rocking from side to side as Sarah raced through the traffic. "There's a one hour window for Fulcrum to have grabbed Chuck. We're going to find every second of surveillance camera and satellite footage for that one hour and find out who took him and how."

Sarah stopped talking, but Casey was confident that whenever she found this Bartowski character there wouldn't be many left standing from the Fulcrum team that grabbed her guy. Oddly, he found himself respecting her more for her dedication, even if it was to a civilian of sorts.

}0{

Chuck sat in the workshop of an underground bunker in Barstow, looking over the Fulcrum Intersect. He had a series of guards constantly watching him. The computer they were allowing him to access didn't have internet access...which he had to admit was smart on their part. He didn't know where he was in their underground base- or lair as he preferred to think of it. After he had regained consciousness and realized his predicament, he had pressed the panic button on the watch that he had refurbished for the NSA. They had taken it from him shortly afterwards, but he was pretty sure that the alert had gone out.

But Chuck still had an ace up his sleeve. He didn't have to rely on the NSA panic button. He just needed to get access to the outside world. Fortunately for him, the Fulcrum goons watching him weren't as tech savvy as they should have been. He quickly discovered that the printer they had physically connected to his computer also had wireless capability, and it was still connected to the Wifi for the secret base.

He wondered what it said about him that he had Sarah's phone number memorized but not that of his NSA contact. In the meantime, he was evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the Fulcrum Intersect as he "worked" on the upgrade they were demanding of him. Based on what he had been told, their Intersect computer was located on site. But he had already noted several flaws with their prototype. It would turn their agents into vegetables, not superspies.

}0{

The rumors were already flying around the NSA substation when the SUV came to a screeching stop-perfectly lined up in a parking space directly in front of the building. Once she was cleared through security, Sarah began barking out orders, transforming the main conference room into a war room, with an entire wall of monitors quickly tasked with displaying all of the surveillance footage from the area around Chuck's off campus house.

When one of the techs wasn't fast enough to access the satellite imagery for her, the tech was soon physically ejected from his seat, and promptly replaced with another tech who found the proper motivation to do exactly what the irate CIA agent demanded when she demanded it. The gathered NSA team watched in amazement as Sarah tracked multiple feeds simultaneously. Finally, she yelled out, "Stop!"

Pointing to one of the monitors on the outer ring, she had spotted a distant shot of Chuck's front door showing three men in a phalanx formation dragging someone out to a waiting van. Sarah then had the satellite footage loaded to the main monitor and positively identified Chuck (or at least his curls) as being the unconscious man being carried by the thugs.

Those Fulcrum agents were dead men walking. The speed of the abduction established that the men were trained professionals. That meant that tracking them would be more difficult, but it also meant that they would be less likely to accidentally kill Chuck. Their professionalism wouldn't spare their lives. They had taken something that belonged to the Ice Queen after all.

ATM footage from a nearby bank was able to show the make model and license plate of the van holding Chuck. Sarah, Casey and a grab team piled into the waiting SUV, as Casey barked out directions to the nearest highway patrol headquarters. As they tore off to the CHP, Casey also called back to Fort Meade to have the desk warriors compile all satellite footage of the Palo Alto area at the time of the abduction. Thanks to Sarah's quick work, they now knew what to look for.

En route to the CHP station, Casey called in a report to Beckman on the rapid developments. He took her terse "Good" to show that she was thrilled with the results. Taking that to mean that she was in a good mood, he put in a request for firepower for the…he glanced over at the steely-eyed determination of the CIA assassin next to him…the rescue of Bartwoski.

Sarah ordered around the highway patrol officers in their own headquarters the same way that she had the NSA analysts. And she got the same results. She was on the warpath and everyone (or almost everyone) was smart enough to stay out of her way. Within moments, everyone in the room was scanning a bank of monitors to locate the car that the kidnappers had used to snatch Chuck. She had already tracked the Fulcrum van headed south on the I280. She had also been the one to spot the transfer of Chuck from the van to a waiting car at a rest area. The transfer had been one of those "blink and you miss it" moves, but Sarah hadn't been fooled at all.

Casey had started to have serious respect for her skills, even if he and his NSA team were a little in awe of how relentless she was as she tracked down the professor. Back at the CHP headquarters, one of the junior NSA agents had made the unfortunate mistake of referring to Chuck as "the package." Due to his bad choice of words, he was no longer on the team assembled to rescue Chuck. Casey was sure once the agent came out of the concussion protocol, he could begin physical therapy for his other injuries.

The injured agent's replacement was an attractive brunette, much to Sarah's consternation. But the new NSA agent, Anne Neuberger, had taken one look at how Sarah would glance from the monitors to an image to Chuck and back, and knew exactly what she was seeing. She not only wisely kept her opinions to herself about how cute she thought Chuck was, she also only spoke to Sarah when absolutely necessary.

Sarah had tracked the vehicle now carrying Chuck to an exit off the I15 near Barstow. Traffic camera coverage in the area was unfortunately light. There wasn't much interest in that part of the state, so available satellite coverage had been tasked elsewhere. Sarah was on the phone with an analyst in at the NSA headquarters to track down any overhead imagery from civilian sources when a text came through on her spy phone.

She couldn't help herself and told the analyst to shut up. Actually, she yelled. She yelled so loudly, everyone around her went quiet. Casey watched as she raised the phone to look at it, and he noticed her hands shaking.

*Your secret admirer would like to take you to a showing of Tron. Text 3489117017 if you can pick me up.*

"He's still alive," she breathed.

Casey however wasn't impressed. "Secret admirer? And what in the hell is Tron? Besides, that isn't even a phone number you are supposed to send the text to. We don't have time to go running on a wild goose chase."

Sarah fumed at his dismissive attitude. "There are three people who have this phone number. The DCI, the DDO and Chuck. And I can guaran-damn-tee you that neither the DCI nor the DDO are inviting me to see Tron!"

Casey backed down with her words which gave Sarah a moment. First what in the blue hell was Tron. She knew it was him, but she had to figure out the clue he sent. She really hoped he wasn't still playing their game. She knew the number was the key to finding him. She just had to figure out how to solve the puzzle.

A quick search showed that Tron was a sci-fi movie that had come out in 1982. That definitely sounded like something that Chuck would know. Plus, one of the stars was Bruce Boxleitner, who went on to play a spy in the tv show Scarecrow & Mrs. King. It has to be Chuck. Sarah pulled out her spy phone to make some calls. Soon she had a number known to very few people on the planet. Casey was grumbling about a "waste of damn time", but he was smart enough to not try to stop her.

"Authentication code?"

"Morning glory," Sarah replied.

"Very well, Agent Walker. Sitrep." How in the hell does she know who I am? Damn, she's good.

Sarah took in a deep breath. "Agent Frost, I received a text that I believe came from your son. It mentioned the movie Tron? Is there a connection between Chuck and that movie?" The confusion and hope over the movie was clear in Sarah's voice. Meanwhile, Casey was giving her a hard look for not only calling Frost, but referring to the package…professor as Chuck.

Sarah heard a distant gasp over the phone. "I've got you on speaker. My daughter Ellie is here, as you just heard, and she is getting a little emotional over your message." There was a pause on the line. When she continued speaking, she sounded less like the legendary Agent Frost and more like a worried mom. "Tron is Chuck's favorite movie. We've got proof of life." Sarah sagged down in her chair in relief. Casey walked away from his computer to see what Sarah had discovered. The mood of everyone changed. Before they had all been fairly sure…or at least mostly confident that Chuck (no one dared called him anything but that at this point) was alive, now they knew. This was officially a rescue operation.

"Please, please get my baby brother back to us. I'll let him watch that movie at Christmas from now on, as well as his Twilight Zone marathon. God, I remember the time Chuck and his idiot friend Morgan were in high school and they arranged a Tron themed geocaching game. They were both covered in mud and dirt by the time they got home." Sarah's heart clenched at the combination of love and pain in Ellie's voice.

Mary spoke up, her tone once again crisp and business like. "Ellie, we'll have time to reminisce later. We need to find Chuck."

"Actually," Sarah spoke up excitedly, "I think Ellie may have just found him." Sarah quickly hung up with a promise to call back shortly. She excitedly turned to Casey. "That's it. Geocaching."

A/N2: Every time Sarah starts to get away from the spy life, the Intersect pulls her back in. Several reviewers have spotted the significance of the names of non-canon secondary characters (we'll put a glossary after the epilogue to lay that out). But the printer internet connection exploit by Chuck was a nod to the infamous Stuxnet attach on Iranian centrifuges that reportedly used a software vulnerability from Stuxnet (Printer Sharing).