A/N For the benefit of those who don't know, there's a Facebook group for Chuck Fanfiction, and we'd love to have some new members.

Let's bring out our bad guys, shall we?

"They have to sanitize both trucks."

"She's going to kill you."

"Have fun with it."

"You busy?"

Castle, several days ago...

Chuck pulled up the next item on his list. "How about Aldebert de Smet, a/k/a, The Belgian, currently in his cleverly-named villain's lair in in Gstaad, Switzerland, planning to auction off a diamond of great value to the CIA?" Chuck could feel a 'no' hovering, but he was willing to let his father make that call.

"Not good enough," said Orion. "Send it in and let the CIA send someone else to handle it."

"Okay, Dad." Chuck sent it in so the CIA could send someone else to handle it.

A few days later, in Aldebert de Smet's cleverly-named villain's lair...

He strode into the room as if he owned it, a tall bearded man in a fitted tuxedo. His companion, a younger woman in professional garb, seemed less sure of her surroundings. "A room full of international psychopaths," she muttered. They descended the stairs. "What if they recognize us as CIA, Agent Rye?"

"They might come after you with a knife, Greta," said her companion jovially. "That would be great. Get it, 'great', 'greta'? No?" She looked at him blankly and he sighed. He indicated an older man in the corner, meeting some of the guests. "That's the seller, Aldebert de Smet, aka The Belgian."

"Like the waffles?" asked the woman.

"Don't tell me you're growing a sense of humor now," said the man peevishly. "He's known for industrial espionage, not precious gems. I'd love to know who at Langley twigged to this whole thing."

"So would I," said the woman. She went forward to examine the gem, like so many others were doing, since only a fool would bid on a gem he hadn't authenticated himself. When they were all satisfied they backed away as a group, and no one approached the stone after that. She went back to her partner and nodded.

Rye led them over to some unclaimed chairs in the back row, so no one would be sitting behind them. "This whole auction seems odd. I see underworld players from all over Eastern Europe. Why would they care about a diamond?"

"Collateral?" said Greta.

"I guess," said Rye. "Have to be a hell of a big deal, in that case. When we win the competition they won't be happy. They may try to kill us."

The woman ran her fingers over a particular area of her skirt, and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Fingers crossed."

"The cane volto diamond..." said the auctioneer.

Those same few days later, in Castle...

The speaker didn't give him any warning. "Chuck, we're almost ready."

Chuck put his normal routine to one side. His father had been acting stranger than usual, lately, even for him. This was the first complete sentence he'd gotten out of him in days. Maybe now he could find out what was going on. "Almost ready for what, Dad?"

"You remember the Collective, right?"

"I remember some pretty uninspired security coding and getting shot at. None of us told Sarah. You're welcome."

"Exactly," said Orion, skipping over that last bit. "You took down the security, allowing me to raid their servers, and you got shot at while taking some of their custom hardware. Now we're ready to use both."

Had to be pretty important for him to not notice a looming death sentence. "For what?"

"Getting your mother back."

Switzerland...

Rye and Greta met over by the staircase. "I can't believe we messed that up," he said.

"It was my fault," said Greta. "When I kicked the gun out of that last assassin's hand I also pushed that Russian's hand up. Sorry." She didn't sound sorry.

"Don't worry about it, Greta," said Rye, more than magnanimous now that someone else's name would go down for this screw-up. "Look at the bright side, judging by the screams, you probably put that guy's cartel out of business. Not to mention, these guys don't just carry a hundred million francs in their pockets. There'll be a money transfer, so we have until then to get a closer look."

Greta looked confused. "Sir?"

"Yes, I mean we're going to steal it," said Rye, with a sigh.

Castle...

"The asterias virus?" said Chuck, smiling at the odd name. "What does this one do?"

"There are others?"

"Oh, yeah, Morgan told me about one, well, the idea of it, from one of his training exercises." Not the exercise itself, obviously, that would be kept confidential, but talking about the premise was safe enough. "It consumed the entirety of the databases of the world before you finished flipping the switch."

"Sounds like something from a video game," said Orion. "I can't imagine any computer-based organization making something like that. They'd be putting themselves out of business."

"Some of them might, just to show that they could," said Chuck. "Those guys we stole this thing from probably would. They didn't strike me as the brightest box of bulbs in the store."

"Good thing we shut them down, then. This little toy is bad enough."

Bad enough that both of them had risked Sarah, that is, death to acquire it. Chuck doubted it was the code. The security on the Collective was nothing special to his way of thinking, so it had to be the device. "Why? What does it do?"

"The code is brilliant," said Orion, "It breeds like a virus, but evolves, like an AI. It'll eat through any defense, given enough time."

That didn't make a lot of sense. "Sounds kind of random, though. How could they predict the damage it would do?" Just doing damage was good enough for some people, but there were lots of easier ways to do that. This was top-tier stuff. No one would make it just because they could. The target had to be secure beyond belief, and they would want whatever was inside.

"That's what the hardware is for. It keeps track of the evolutions, so that when the virus finally penetrates whatever vault it's burrowing into, the data can be drained and properly recovered."

Chuck had never heard of anything like that before, and wondered if it could work, and how. "What would anybody need something like that for? And by 'anybody' I mean us." How would it help recover his mother?

"I don't know what the original buyer wanted it for, but with this I can burrow into CIA secure storage. According to the information they got from that Ring secretary you captured, your mother's original files were buried there, right under our noses."

Switzerland...

Rye entered the security code, shutting down the freezing units before they'd even chilled the room, and entered the combination to the vault. "You seem to have thought of everything," said Greta.

"I did," said Rye arrogantly. "You're up. We'll need you to verify-" the drawers in the wall started to slide open, revealing dozens of identical gems. "Um..."

"They can't all be real," said Greta. "The auctioneer said the gem was extremely rare." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a lens.

"You carry a loupe around?"

"What's the point of knowing anything about gems if you don't?" asked Greta. She held the lens to her eye and one of the gems to the lens. "It's a fake." She maneuvered the large gem in front of the small magnifier for a few moments. "I see something small embedded in it."

Rye reached out for the diamond and the loupe. "Switch it out with our fake." He put de Smet's fake in his pocket and took the loupe over to another of the trays sticking out of the wall, while Greta put their own fake gem in the empty slot.

He took another gem out from a tray and held it up to the magnifier. "How do you tell?" he asked, shaking the loupe angrily. "Is this thing on?"

"Glass is a liquid," said Greta, going to get her property back before he could damage it. "A real diamond is a crystal, it has precise edges. A fake made out of glass will only have perfectly precise edges for a short time before the glass flows and blurs. There are other visual clues, but the edges are the easiest to see."

"Well," said Rye with a laugh, handing back the loupe. "I learn something new every day."

"While you're alive," said Greta.

Castle...

While the information was welcome, the timing of it confused Chuck. "That secretary's still alive?" They managed to interrogate her? Someone that highly placed, he figured the Ring would move Heaven and Earth to have her eliminated before the CIA wore her down.

"Well, no, not any more, but Sarah sent her a 'Sorry we paralyzed you' card a while back and that broke her resistance. She told them a good bit before the Ring finally got to her. It seems they use a lot of your own assets against you, including the Vault, until recently."

Chuck remembered his trip into the vault. He remembered its firewall, too. The original one. It was flimsy and weak. "Um..."

"This firewall is the best I've ever seen, too. Really polished, and I mean that literally. It's almost like I'm looking at my own work, except I could never make anything as smooth as this."

Chuck remembered overwriting that firewall, while he was taking over the system so he and Sarah could get to Casey before he was supposed to be tortured. He smiled weakly, at the image of his father on the screen. "Yeah, the would explain why you need the...thingie..."

"You bet. That's why I needed you, the Piranha. Only you could penetrate the Collective, to get the only thing that could penetrate this firewall."

Chuck wrestled with his conscience, and lost, as usual. The bus called Sarah was still coming, but he lifted his father from where he was lying in front of it, and lay himself down like a good son. "Well, not the only thing..."

The next day in Switzerland...

"Okay, time for us to do our part," said Rye. He zipped up his coat partway.

"Assuming he doesn't recognize us from the security footage last night and kill us before we even get on the gondola."

"You're so upbeat," said Rye. "It's refreshing. I erased the footage. He knows someone was in there but not who. He has no reason to suspect us."

"Except that we're the only ones getting into the gondola with him."

"As far as they can tell we scheduled this departure. He's leaving early."

"Shhh."

Aldebert de Smet and his bodyguards arrived just as the gondola docked, minimizing their exposure. Rye and Greta boarded without looking at them and moved to the back, as the Belgian's party took positions at the front, spreading out slightly to even the load. In moments the gondola started moving down the mountain again, the rocky terrain dropping away rapidly.

When the drop became fatal Rye pulled out his gun and pointed it at the Belgian. "All right, de Smet, you're coming with us."

De Smet's men pulled out guns of their own as Greta turned to her partner and asked, "You're doing this now? How stupid are you?"

"I'm not stupid," said Rye.

"Excuse me," said the Belgian.

Greta ignored them all. "The obvious tactic is to wait at least until the midway point, to minimize any time they would have to formulate an escape plan. Then-"

"You're outnumbered," said de Smet, uselessly.

"We're the good guys here," said Rye.

It was like no one was talking except her. "-when you pull out your gun you start shooting, you don't wave it around. You must be some special kind of stupid to think this would work." Greta flung her arms out dramatically.

Her knives flew to the other end of the car.

Rye and Greta followed, as several of the Belgian's men suddenly found themselves in pain or without guns. Chaos broke out as men surged back and forth, fighting, making the gondola rock as it hung from the cables. Someone fell against the wall and pulled the emergency release, causing the doors to open over the deadly drop.

Rye fought neatly and precisely, disabling his enemies, as Greta dived toward the Belgian and took the case from his hand. "Gotcha!"

"Good work, Greta," said Rye, dropping the final henchman to the floor. We walked over to her. "Let me have that."

"Don't worry," she said, as he passed the open door. She kicked him through the portal into the open air. "I've got it."

De Smet heard his former enemy screaming as he fell. "What-?"

The woman held up a finger. "Wait for it."

Silence, sudden and complete.

She lowered the finger. "So nice." She looked up, as if suddenly remembering that there was someone else on the gondola with her. "You were saying?"

"Can we make a deal?" said the Belgian.

"Gee, let me think," said Greta, pulling out her own gun. "No." She pulled the trigger several times, leaving everyone unmoving on the floor except her and the operator. "You're not gonna cause me any trouble, are you?"

He didn't turn around. "No, ma'am."

"I didn't think so." Greta stepped away from him and put the case down. Unzipping her coat, she reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a palm-sized circular phone, pressing her thumb in the center. When it lit she put it to her ear. "I got the stones."

A/N2 Apologies to Summer Glau, but her version of Greta was by far the coldest. Exit Rye. Not a popular character, but he was less of a fool here. I hope you'll tell me what you think because this is really hard and it's nice to hear.