A/N: Ownership of Chuck is not a Trojan Horse designed to hurt the FF community. Oh, wait...is that what we are up to? Oh, crap.
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Casey leaned forward and gave Sarah a quick kiss on the cheek. "Congratulations, Sarah. I'm happy for you. For you both." He reached for Chuck and shook his hand. "It's about time, Bartowski. Time you made an honest woman of her."
"Thanks, Case," said Chuck with a happy grin. "But you know us. We had to have a little complication added, just to make things interesting."
"You really asked Graham? You got balls, kid. That must have been scary," he said. "That dude is hardcore."
"Well, yeah. But it was so worth it," replied Chuck with a loving glance at his fiancé. They were holding hands and he pulled her hand up to his lips to kiss it. She smiled back at him with love.
The hostess came and took them to their seats. They were having lunch at a small Turkish restaurant in Georgetown.
Casey said, "What are you guys still doing in DC? I mean, other than busting a bunch of lowlifes trying to steal Intersect components?"
"Just waiting for Ellie's test of the new Intersect. She's running it this afternoon. We thought it might be interesting to see. You know, all things considered," said Chuck.
"Yeah. I think I'll come along and watch it too. Like you say, it might be interesting."
Sarah said, "So, Case, tell us about your plans. Why the stop in DC on your way back to LA?"
"Not much to tell. Like you, I'm relocating my permanent residence to LA. I've come to like it there. Shipping my shit out. I'll leave enough furniture so the place shows ok to prospective buyers. I spent all morning with the real estate agent who is going to show it for me. When I get a buyer, I'll be able to do the whole thing by mail. No need to come back for a closing."
"What will you do with the furniture you've left here?" asked Chuck.
"Donating it to the local Good Will. It's still decent stuff, but I don't want to pay to ship it across the country."
"That makes sense," said Sarah.
The waiter came and took their orders.
"How was the rest of your stay with Marie?" asked Sarah.
"Great. We had a good time. She was happy for the distraction. She was getting pretty bored by herself in Nice. I'll bet she heads back to Paris sometime soon. She's getting itchy to get back to work."
"She's a great spy, Case. She was a solid partner," said Sarah.
"Yeah," said Chuck. "And she can lip-read in Italian. You never know when that might come in handy." They laughed.
"So, tell me about the wedding plans," said Casey.
"It's going to be a double wedding, with Ellie and Awesome. Ellie will be my Matron of Honor and I'll be her Maid of Honor. So her actual ceremony will take place first. That's about the extent of the plans so far. I've talked to my college roommate to be a bridesmaid, and Langston's daughter, Karen. So far that's that."
"Well, that's not all, Sweetie," said Chuck. "We are going to ask Morgan to officiate for us."
"The little gnome?" said Casey with a snort of laughter.
"Yeah. I think he'd take that responsibility pretty seriously," said Chuck.
"No argument there," said Casey. "He's been your best friend for your whole life, though. I just figured you'd have him as your best man."
Sarah's face held a wide grin.
"Naw, Case. I had someone else in mind for that," Chuck said and looked at Casey seriously until the older man looked up and caught his gaze. "Casey, will you do me the honor of being my best man?"
They could have sworn that Casey's eyes got a little glassy for a moment or two as he looked at them both with surprise. He looked down for a few seconds at the table in front of them and nodded.
Looking up and meeting Chuck's eyes with his own he said, his voice a little strangled with emotion, "Yeah, Chuck. I will. I will be proud to stand with you. Very proud."
"Thank you, Casey. Thank you," said Chuck, squeezing Casey's forearm.
Casey grunted.
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Later that afternoon, they stood in a control room adjacent to the Intersect chamber in the NSA building at Fort Meade. The room was filled with computer stations and monitors and was, at the moment, a little crowded. There were the two volunteer agents, Shelly Mathers and Richard Noble, dressed in hospital gowns, Ellie, two medical technicians, three Intersect computer scientists, Graham, Beckman, and most of Team Bartowski.
Ellie spoke up, "Ok. Let's get started."
She took both of the volunteers into the chamber. It was a plain steel room, with two reclining medical chairs set up before a very large computer screen. The chairs were surrounded by medical equipment to monitor the health of the volunteers as the download progressed. Ellie and her medical technicians sat them into the chairs and hooked them up to myriad monitoring devices. The readings from the monitors would be followed by the medical techs from the room they had just left.
Graham said, "I'd like to stay if I may, Doctor. I don't want to put my people through something like this alone. I'll just stand at the side."
"Certainly," she said, handing him a pair of blackout goggles that the scientists had used on occasion to make sure that they didn't accidentally expose themselves to the encoded images. "Just put these on before we start."
"I certainly will. Thank you," he said.
Graham stood to the side silently and held the goggles Ellie had handed him.
"Ok," said Ellie. "We are ready."
The heavy vault door slid shut with a clang, plunging the Intersect chamber into darkness. Ellie's voice spoke over the speakers into the darkness, allowing those in the chamber to hear the activity in the control room.
"How are the readings?" she asked.
"Steady," each of the med techs manning the readings from the medical monitors responded.
Ellie said, "Shelly, Richard, you ready."
"Yes," said Shelly.
"Affirmative, Doctor Bartowski," said Richard.
"Director, put on the goggles."
"Done," he replied.
"Ok. Here goes. Three...two...one," said Ellie.
One of the computer techs pushed a button on his keyboard and the Cipher was lowered into the heart of the Intersect computer. There was a whirring sound as the computer read the software.
The screen of the monitor in front of the volunteers flickered and suddenly glowed with static. A moment later it blinked once and words appeared.
FULCRUM THANKS YOU
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"What the hell?" yelled one of the scientists in the control room. "Is your screen going crazy?"
"Yeah," said the other. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea."
Ellie spoke up, "Shelly?...Richard?...Langston? What's going on in there? Guys?" She turned to the medical techs, "What do the monitors show?"
"Nothing, Doctor. We're cut off," one of them said. "A virus from the Cipher, I think."
"I thought you looked at it after we got it back," said Beckman angrily.
"We did, General. It looked ok to us," one of the Intersect scientists said.
"Did you look at every line of code?" she demanded.
"Well, no...I mean, not every line..." said one of the younger scientists.
"Idiots. Dr. Bartowski, can you tell what's going on in the chamber?" asked Beckman.
"I can't get through," Ellie said, stress in her voice. "The communication is down." She turned to one of the scientists. "Open the door. Stat."
"It's not working. I can't open it," said the man.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"The whole system is frozen. I can't do anything," he yelled, clearly a little overwhelmed by events.
"So, open it manually," Ellie demanded.
The control room was bedlam with scientists poking in furious frustration at keyboards.
Ignoring the confusion behind her and only concerned with her patients, Ellie ran from the control room to the door of the Intersect chamber. Although she tried several times, entering the code in the keypad did no good. She grabbed at the heavy steel handle and yanked. Nothing happened.
Casey appeared at her side. "Let me," he said.
She stepped aside and he grabbed at the handle, pulling with all his considerable strength. The handle didn't budge. Chuck came to the other side and put his hands next to Casey's. Together they pulled to no avail.
Chuck said, "No go. It's an electronic lock. It's still getting juice."
Sarah said, "Ellie, how much air is in there?"
Ellie thought for a few moments and said, "A few hours. No more. It's not a large room. And for security there's no venting."
"Shit," she said. She spun to face an NSA agent. "Get me some tools." She turned to Chuck. "Can you see if you can unfuck the computers?" She pounded on the door and yelled, "Langston? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Shit."
Beckman said to Chuck, "Come with me. Let's go to the computer center adjacent to my office. Maybe the problem is restricted to the Intersect computers and we can bypass it."
"Good luck, guys," said Chuck following Beckman.
"You too," said Sarah, looking harried and worried.
Beckman's office was down a few corridors and up a flight of stairs. Shortly Chuck and Beckman arrived at the computer center in front of her office. There were a half dozen or so computer stations set up and manned by computer scientists in white coats. A few large monitor screens were mounted along the walls, standing by if there was a need for a presentation of some kind.
The scientists there were as chaotic as they had been in the Intersect control room, shouting at one another and trying to get their machines to cooperate.
Beckman barked, "What's going on?"
"We're locked out of the mainframe, General. Some kind of virus hit us. We're trying to isolate it, but no luck so far," said the man who looked the most senior.
"Dammit," she growled.
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The tools arrived and Sarah wasted no time in popping the cover off the keypad. She looked at the wiring to see if she could by-pass the commands the lock received from the computer and order it to open. She had learned this somewhat basic by-pass method at the Farm years ago. She knew Chuck would be better at it than she was, but he was off looking at the computers.
Casey said, "Well?"
"I can try, but I'm not optimistic."
"Ok," he said. "Go for it. In the meantime, let's get ready to blow it." He turned to one of the NSA men nearby and said, "Get me a demo kit from your armory. And a drill. The biggest, most powerful drill you can find."
The NSA man ran from the corridor without a word.
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Chuck looked at the chaos in front of him. All these computers were locked out from the NSA mainframe. He had a plan. But his plan had...ramifications.
This was the Federal government. Six years ago, they had had an entire taskforce of cyber-security experts operating with the sole purpose of arresting him...arresting the Piranha. If he did what he intended, they would know. His secret would be revealed to the very people who had been looking for him. Morgan was the only one who knew now. He hadn't even told Sarah, thinking it was ancient history and would make no difference. At this point he deeply regretted not telling her earlier.
What would happen? He'd hack his way in and they'd investigate how he did it. His past as the Piranha would come out. He expected the warrants for his arrest were still outstanding after only six years. The investigations were probably quiescent, but the warrants would be outstanding. So, he'd be arrested. He hoped Sarah would wait for him. But, no, that wouldn't be fair to her. It would be better just to let her get on with her life without him. At the thought of Sarah, he almost sobbed aloud.
None of that mattered at the moment. Three lives were at stake, including Langston's. There was no decision to be made. None. He sighed heavily and he acted.
Chuck stepped down amid the frantic men and women.
"Can you get outside... to the internet?" he asked firmly.
"Yes, but what good would that do? We're already here and..."
Chuck sat down at an empty monitor and powered it up. Extending his arms out before him with his fingers interlaced and facing away from him, he cracked his knuckles. He pulled up the webpage for the National Security Agency and said, to no one in particular, "Somebody get me a bottle of Chardonnay, please."
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Sarah was having no luck with the keypad and growled in frustration. At that moment the elevator down the corridor opened and two men staggered out of the cab carrying a large heavy drill awkwardly between them.
Casey sprinted down the corridor to the two men and grabbed the drill from them. Nestling the drill in his arms, he ran back down the corridor to the door.
"Where?" he asked Sarah.
She pointed to a spot on the door. He put the point of the drill bit onto the spot and turned on the machine. It began to howl as it tried to bite into the reinforced steel of the door. The bit was skidding around the steel, so Casey told one of the men who had been carrying the drill to lean on Casey's back to increase the pressure on the bit.
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Beckman watched her scientists mill around helplessly. One or two of them were at their keyboards, trying to get around the computer virus Fulcrum had gifted them with, but many seemed busy consulting with each other seeking some kind of a productive approach.
One of them stopped to look at what Chuck was up to, and froze in place. Beckman saw him reach out silently to pull on the sleeve of a woman near him. She turned to look at Chuck's monitor and also instantly froze with what she saw. One by one the scientists turned and gathered to look over Chuck's shoulder. It became crowded and the senior man gestured for someone to put a clone of Chuck's monitor up on one of the wall mounted larger screens.
Beckman couldn't see Chuck's face, his back was to her, but she saw his fingers moving on the keys – moving faster than her eyes could follow. He was talking to himself quietly. He seemed to be in a zone of some kind. She looked up at the screen on the wall. Boxes appeared and disappeared too quickly for her to follow. Lines of code that were totally meaningless to her were entered and replaced. With nothing else to watch, she focused her attention on the seven NSA computer experts who were watching what Chuck was doing.
With mesmerized awe, they stood stock still and totally silent. The only sound in the room was the clicking of Chuck's keyboard. Eventually one of them grabbed a young man by the sleeve and gave him an order. The younger man ran from the room as if he were on fire.
They continued to watch. The man who had left ran back into the room a few minutes later with an open bottle of Chardonnay and a wine glass. He brought them to Chuck the way a courtier would approach royalty with a gift. Hardly breaking his concentration, Chuck thanked the man, ignored the glass and raised the bottle to his lips. He had drained a quarter of the bottle before he put it down on the table.
Beckman had a hard time believing what she was seeing. The reaction of her people was baffling to her but it couldn't be denied. Among the seven people watching, she knew they held ten PhD's in computer science and/or computer engineering. All seven were watching the screen with stunned expressions on their faces. It was her impression that these men and women weren't merely watching someone accomplish something that they could not themselves accomplish. They were watching someone do something that they had believed until moments ago could not be done by anyone. They looked like nothing so much as a collection of 6 year old children watching their first magic show and questioning long-held assumptions about the nature of reality. A new box appeared on the screen and all seven of them gasped aloud in unison, one of the women clutching at her throat in profound shock.
What the hell are you up to, Chuck Bartowski?
After about thirty or thirty-five minutes of work, the monitors of the computers nearby came alive and, with a flourish, Chuck pressed a button on his keyboard. Moments later, he spoke into his watch.
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Sweat was pouring off Casey as if he were running a marathon in the tropics. The noise of the drill was partially deafening them all. Sarah had assembled and formed the plastic explosive to the shape they would need to crack the lock on the door once Casey had completed the hole.
It was a long shot. They couldn't use too much explosive or the metal on the inside of the door would fly off with the explosion and create shrapnel that would ricochet around inside the Intersect chamber, possibly wounding or killing the people inside. As such, she went light, knowing that they could always try again soon after the first attempt when the hole would be that much larger.
Suddenly there was a click, almost felt more than heard above the noise of the drill, in the door's mechanism. Casey pulled back the drill as the door began to open.
In her ear Sarah heard Chuck, "Sarah, anything happen down there?"
"Yes," she said, "the door just opened. Whatever you did, it worked."
"Excellent. I love you."
The lights came on in the room and Ellie pushed past everyone to check on Langston, Richard and Shelly. Thankfully, the trio appeared unharmed.
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Beckman watched as Chuck stretched and rose from his seat, one hand clutching the bottle of wine. He took another big swig and began to walk towards her. The scientists moved aside silently, mouths agape, jaws slack, arms hanging loosely at their sides, and eyes wide. Every one of them stared at Chuck in awe, mixed with a healthy dose of amazement at what they had just witnessed.
He approached Beckman slowly and took another swig of wine. Rather than looking triumphant, he looked incredibly sad.
As he came close to her, she put a finger to her lips, silencing him. She gestured for him to enter her office. Once he did, she closed the door behind him. Rather than look at her, he walked across the room and looked silently out the window at the sea of cars in the NSA parking lot.
"Chuck, what...?" she began to ask.
He turned from the window, looking like he was about to cry. And then he told her.
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Graham was reassuring Ellie that he was ok when one of the Intersect scientists stepped up to the door to the Intersect room and said, "The General wants you upstairs. Director, Doctor Bartowski, and Agents Walker and Casey. Wants you in her office right away."
"Ok," said Ellie. "You guys are no worse for the wear after that scare. You can change back to your regular clothes," she told the volunteers, with a relieved smile. "Glad you're not claustrophobic."
Together the four of them made their way to Beckman's office. Passing the computer scientists standing by their machines, Graham said, "Thanks, guys. I don't know what you did, but you really saved my ass down there." He gave them a grin and a wave.
The men and women had been engaged in conversation, heads together and voices muted, but animated. They looked up at Graham with dead-eyed stares and responded with silence. After a moment or two they put their heads down and went back to the discussion they were engaged in.
The door to Beckman's office was open and they entered. Chuck was standing by the window holding a mostly empty bottle of wine, his back to the room. Beckman was perched on the edge of her desk, a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table, a mostly empty glass in her hand. She gestured with her hand for them to close the door.
"What's going on out there, Diane? I thanked your people and they looked at me like I was insane," said Graham.
"There was nothing to thank them for, Langston. They didn't have anything to do with saving your life," said Beckman. She drained the glass she was holding and poured herself another one. Then she poured a full glass of whiskey into an empty glass that had been sitting on the table.
"I don't understan...," he stopped as he got the implication of her statement. His eyes went to Chuck's back.
The room fell silent. Chuck turned around slowly. There were the streaks of tears on his cheeks. He looked at Sarah and said, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
She looked at him in confusion and rapidly growing concern.
He looked at Graham and said, "I'm the Piranha."
Graham grunted in surprise and stared at him in shock. He sat in one of Beckman's side chairs heavily, as if his legs could no longer support his weight. Still staring at Chuck, he reached out blindly for the glass of whisky on Beckman's desk. Beckman slid it into his hand without a word. He took the glass and drained it in a single swallow, his eyes never leaving Chuck.
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A/N2: I acknowledge this chapter's similarity to the events of Chuck vs. La Belle Dame sans Merci, by my good friend Grayroc. I would be honored to steal from that wonderful story. It is truly one of my favorites and I recommend it to any of you looking for a fun tale. In this case, though, I stole (rather blatantly) from a different author and a different story. May I recommend to all of you The Retrieved Redemption by O. Henry? It is also one of my favorites. All Chuck needs to be Jimmy Valentine is a flower for his lapel.
A/N3: A word about canon. The sabotaged Cipher blew up the computer and killed everyone in the Intersect room. (BTW, why were there pictures on the wall behind the agents in canon? How's that work?) Computers melt down. Computers overheat. Computers malfunction. They don't explode from bad software. I know there are a plethora of computer experts among my readers and I'm prepared to be corrected if I'm wrong about that. Anyway, how could software blow up the Intersect computer? The only thing I could envision is that it triggered a self-destruct mechanism. Why the government would build something like that without multiple safeguards I don't know. Luckily, none of that applies to New Day, where the Fulcrum sabotage was merely to fry the Intersect computers and cut off the room. And we already know that the government by now was smart enough to have the information backed up offsite.
A/N4: So, the cat's out of the bag. In canon we didn't know this about Chuck until Season 5, when someone decided that it would be sort of cool to make him a top hacker. Nevermind that it was a dumb retcon by that point in the show. But now what in New Day? Will Chuck's fears of arrest be realized? Like you guys, I tend to doubt it. But what will happen? Stay tuned and let's find out, huh?
A/N5: As usual, I'd love to hear what you think of this one. I've had this Piranha reveal planned for a couple of years now. You guys think it worked?