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.
As Crazzywally said, there are a lot of irons in the fire. Time to take a few of them out.
"Not for me."
"Run for it, Grimes!"
"It was kind of hard to miss."
"Remember me, buddy."
Chuck woke up, finding himself lying on the floor all tangled up in his blankets. It was an interesting view of his room, not one he was familiar with. He tried to remember how he got this way, but aside from a visual of Morgan telling him to remember something (while hanging in mid-air, no less), he remembered nothing. He struggled out of his blankets and pushed himself up, tossing them on the bed before he headed to the bathroom.
On his way back, he heard a noise from the living room and went to investigate. The place looked clear until he came around the couch. Facing the door was Morgan, surrounded by pillows like a fort, with a water pistol in one hand and that tranq gun Chuck had won in Dubai in the other. Sound asleep and snoring. Chuck looked to see if maybe he'd tranqed himself but didn't see a dart.
He tugged the gun out of Morgan's hand (those darts were expensive), got some towels and put them by the door. On the floor. Over the furniture. He went back to bed, closing his door with a soft click.
From out in the living room, he heard the sound of Morgan yelling, combined with the rhythmic beating of water against the door, as Morgan practiced his two-fisted shooting with one hand empty. He put the dart gun on his bedside table and flipped his sheets straight-ish. The water ran out before the yelling did. Chuck got back into bed, listening to Morgan moving around out there.
"Thanks, Chuck."
He must have discovered the towels. "You're welcome, buddy," he called back. "Go to bed. Get some sleep."
"Good idea," said Morgan, coming closer. After a second, Chuck heard the sound of something heavy and damp falling into the tub. "Y'know, I think I'll go to bed, maybe get some sleep."
"Good idea."
The basic principles of holographic technology are pretty straightforward. What we see of an object is the scatter it creates in the light, in multiple dimensions. If the scatter is recorded and played back, the image of the object that made the scatter is reproduced.
The applications of these principles are less straightforward. What counts as an object? What is the medium it exists in, how is the scatter measured and captured?
If the object is a plot, for example, a fiendish machination for evil ends, the scatter is all the setup required to bring that plot to fruition, just like a chess game is a series of moves. Capture the series, you capture the game. Capture enough games, you might begin to capture the minds of the players, at least as regards their chess-playing.
Capturing fiendish plots is a lot harder. That's what the Intersect is for, taking the scattered data about the machinations to recreate the purpose that created them. Capture enough plots, and you might be able to capture the plotters.
Of course, that works both ways.
A wasn't actually in the lab, of course. It was even more difficult for him to get away from his office that it was for Clyde Decker. Still, he could see on his screen the remnants of the glass diamonds that had been destroyed to retrieve the chips hidden inside them. He felt a mild pang of regret about the gems-they were pretty-but the mission came first. "The chips are in the framework?" A framework he'd called Jubilee because of the diamonds, but one name is as good as another.
"Yes, sir," said the lab boss. Jubilee created a three-dimensional lattice with a globe of the Earth at its center. "Our test case performed splendidly." He entered a command and the globe displayed a number of lines moving across its face from place to place. The terminal points of the lines glowed blue.
"Shaw?"
"Yes, sir. His known missions, of course, but also his more, um, aberrant behaviors. His regular trips to Paris, for example." The globe rotated to show France, and the axis shifted to time instead of place. When they filtered for the specific day the pattern became obvious, blue lines circling the city, all within a day's travel, to allow for an off-the-books trip. Easy to find, once you knew what to look for.
Excellent. And now for the point of the whole exercise, the stuff they didn't know to look for. "Anything else?"
"We believe so, sir." At several places along the lines red dots appeared. "The datum about Miss Prince had high correlations to a number of other cases, in which female operatives of no single stripe were killed in the line of duty while in the same general location as Shaw, at the same time." A line of images appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Dark-haired spies, just like his wife. "Shaw killed them?"
The tech sounded offended. "I can only give you the data crosses, sir. Beyond that would be mere guesswork."
Unprofessional. B would approve. "Give me those." They could arrange for it to be discovered by the CIA and let them do the legwork to confirm. "Have you tried it with many people at once?"
"Yes. Once we discovered these dead ends we tried it with a few of the dead agents as well, but the number has to remain small. The sheer number of the entries make it necessary to limit any queries to only a few agents at a time, and with live agents of course the problem is worse." The longer they live the more reports they file.
"That will not be an issue," said A. Bartowski's team didn't have that many members, and he'd already passed along the names, in order of importance. "Use the new list. Start with Walker, and that half-day gap that Shaw discovered." Unlike Shaw, the gaps would likely be of more value than the crosses, and harder to fill in. "Then expand the search. Trace every step, plug every hole."
In a Verbanski Corp. locker room...
"What the hell are these things, Harris?" said John Casey as a low-rank nobody finished tying his gloves.
"This is a hand-to-hand combat simulation, John," said Corporal Harris. "The gloves leave traces of powder on your opponent, and theirs on you. If a blade were to go where the powder is, would it kill you? If the answer is yes, you lose the point. If you go down to the mat, you lose the point. Non-fatal touches are evaluated by the ref, and you could both lose points. Whoever reaches zero first loses. Got it?"
Casey tried to flex his hands. Bringing stiff unpadded boxing gloves to a knife fight. Terrific. "How many points to start?"
"Eleven."
Whoever loses least wins. That's war for you. Grunt #1. "Let's get this over with."
Harris led the way on to the mat, where a great many members of Verbanski's command waited patiently, lined up against the wall. None of them wore the gloves John wore. One woman carried some kind of wand, and Harris picked up another one.
"Good afternoon, John." Gertrude had invited him over to spar, and Casey had assumed it would be with her, but while she had her gym outfit on she wasn't wearing the gloves. She stood facing the others, and now turned her attention to the spectators. "Gentlemen. Ladies. This morning we had an unscheduled free-for-all take place instead of the regular drill. Can anyone tell me what happened?"
For a second no one said anything, then..."Our instructor went nuts," said Blue Four.
Casey was confused. What the Hell?
"And what did you do about it?" Gertrude asked the idiot who'd spoken up.
"We defended ourselves," he said, as if it was obvious. The only obvious thing was that he was an idiot.
Gertrude gave him more chances than Casey would have. "Did you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Didn't look that way to me," said Gertrude. She moved closer to Four. "Let me ask you this. What would have happened if you had been attacked out in the field the way you were in this room? Would you have defended yourselves then?"
He nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"And your enemy?"
"On the ground, ma'am."
Casey grunted approval. Maybe not such an idiot after all.
"Was your instructor this morning left on the ground?"
Silence from Four. From everyone.
Idiots.
Gertrude backed off. "Yesterday we were attacked by a traitor. Corporal Swan infiltrated this building, attacked your comrades, and almost escaped. The only reason her attempt failed was because of Private Grimes and his new patrol routing system, and the responses of the men under his control, including many of you. You all know this?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Blue Four, proud of his teammates' accomplishment. The others behind him also confirmed.
"Then you all know that any of you could face, at any time, an opponent who yesterday was a comrade. An opponent who could take advantage of that comradeship to take you down to the ground first. Are you going to let that happen?"
"But ma'am-"
"Bang! You're dead. Anyone else?"
Silence once again. "It's a hard thing," said Casey.
Verbanski shifted her focus. "Which is why we're fortunate to have here today my friend Colonel John Casey, USMC."
Casey stepped forward and swept the crowd with a military gaze. "I hate traitors." None of the weak sisters broke. "Which of you losers is my opponent?"
Verbanski stepped back, looking to the far door. "Private McHugh, front and center."
Alex walked out onto the mat, her gloves blood-red to Casey's blue. Her eyes were cold.
Chuck me. Casey glared at the traitor. "Gertrude?"
She met his gaze squarely, calmly. "You'll thank me later. Right now, the only thing standing between your opponent and total! world! domination! is you. Failure is not an option."
Casey groaned his opinion of the idiotic scenario, and looked to his opponent. Somehow he couldn't see her wanting total world domination. "Alex?"
Private McHugh flowed into an attack position. "Dad."
Casey snarled. Four breathed out, "Hardcore!"
Chuck woke instantly when his computer beeped at him. His decryption program, started yesterday before they'd even begun to test the virus, had finally finished its work. He crawled out of his bed and went to check the output. Good folder structure. He clicked open some of the documents, viewed some of the images. His mother looked so young!
He opened a search engine and typed ORION
Casey was down two points before the reality of the situation sank in. Alex had already conquered the world twice. On his watch. She got the nifty graphics and he got sounds of despair. Women crying. Flag-draped coffins. 'Surrender.' 'No choice.' It was all very effective.
No way could he let that stand.
He let her come in, then spun in a circle and hit the back of her head with an elbow, pushing her forward over his foot. He put that foot on her back as she lay there. "Stay down."
"About time," said Verbanski. "McHugh loses a point."
Casey grunted, lifting his foot. That's more like it.
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT FOR ME, SON, replied Orion instantly.
"Alex initiated a stalemate," said Verbanski. "Both lose a point."
Casey flexed as his daughter released her hold. "What?"
"You don't win this game by not losing, John."
"We've got her files, Dad. We can prove Mom isn't a traitor."
The speaker came to life. "That's excellent news, son," said Orion sounding very strange, some combination of emotions impossible to convey over audio. "Do we know who is?"
Casey was tall, Alex was not. She slid in under his attack and punched straight up from her knees. Not hard, but it didn't have to be.
"Oo," winced Gertrude, while Harris used the wand to remove the powder. "You should lose two points for that, John, but I'll only take one."
His burner phone rang, and A picked up instantly. "What have you got?"
"A large gap in Agent Walker's time, sir, fairly recent."
"John disemboweled Alex, while she stabbed him in the kidneys. Both lose a point."
The audience cheered. When they came to face each other Casey held up his hand for a fist-bump, and Alex obliged. As their gloves touched Casey hit Alex in the chest with his other hand.
"Treachery, I like it," said Gertrude, as the woman officer can up with her wand. "Alex loses a point."
"So why did it take you this long to call me?" snarled A.
"Finding the gap was easy, sir, filling it was less so," groveled the tech. "But we believe we have done it."
A decided to be forgiving. "Tell me."
"John Casey has one point," said Verbanski. "Alex McHugh has zero. Casey wins." Everyone cheered as the two combatants shook hands amicably. Those cheers died as Alex swept Casey's legs out from under him and he fell heavily to the mat.
She stood over him and touched her red hand to his chest. "Don't ever lie to me again," she said in the silence, giving her father a most Casey-esque glare. "Do we have an understanding?"
Casey nodded his acquiescence, and his lover and his daughter helped him to stand.
Echo Park...
"Maybe," said Chuck. "The agent in charge of the mission was named Clyde Decker."
"The origin of the gap is in Budapest, sir," said the tech, "The agent in charge was a man named Kieran Ryker."
A/N2 I hope you'll tell me what you think because this is really hard and it's nice to hear.