Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

I'm getting old and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you're gonna let me in

I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

And if you have a minute, why don't we go?

Talk about it, somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything

So why don't we go

Somewhere only we know?

Somewhere only we know

"Somewhere Only We Know"

Keane

May 17, 2036

Westside Medical Center, Los Angeles, California

"Mom!" Stephen called as he rushed into the waiting area at the hospital. In the early morning hours, the area was mostly deserted. The palest morning light mixed with the fluorescent lighting overhead made everything almost glow with whiteness.

Sarah lifted her head from her daughter's shoulder. Her son appeared as if he had rolled out of bed and immediately jumped into his car. Cozette was right behind him, her long hair pulled up in a messy bun perched atop her head, dressed in a very similar fashion.

"Stephen," Sarah breathed. "Who called you? It was the middle of the night—" she started as she rose to her feet.

"It was Max, wasn't it?" Ally asked sheepishly from behind.

Stephen hugged his mother just the same, muttering over her shoulder, "Actually, it was Uncle Morgan."

Sarah sighed and chuckled to herself. It must have started with Max, as Sarah knew Ally called him while the ambulance was still at their house. Once Max told his father, all bets were off. Sarah was sure everyone in their immediate circle who wasn't elderly and prone to health issues potentially exacerbated by stress knew Chuck was in the hospital.

"I wasn't going to stay away, Mom, you know that," Stephen insisted. And wherever Stephen went, Cozette followed, Sarah thought, warm inside when she thought how happy she was that her son had found the love of his life at such a young age.

"Where's Abby?" Stephen asked, scanning the immediate area and not seeing his other sister.

"She went to get some coffee," Ally explained. "She should be back any minute."

"What happened?" Stephen quizzed his mother. "He passed out?"

Stephen had released her. She turned, crossing her arms and looking at the floor, feeling her son's eyes biting into her back and her daughter scrutinizing her from the front. It was worse than that, Sarah thought. But she couldn't explain it at all, never mind in mixed company. Her daughters knew absolutely nothing about the Intersect.

"He did," Sarah said hesitantly. Her mouth remained open, but she couldn't think of how to explain further. She tried to add more to the front of the situation. "They said he woke up in the ambulance. Aunt Ellie met us here. They ran…tests…and she's…running more tests," Sarah said, slowing down as she thought of the right words to say.

"Mom, it's worse than that," Ally exclaimed, jumping to her feet and moving closer. "He was confused…or something," she added, flipping her hand to indicate she was speaking about something imprecisely.

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked, more sharply than she had intended. She hadn't realized either girl had witnessed anything when she had run into their room while they were asleep.

Ally looked at her like she couldn't believe what her mother had said. "You ran into our room because you were afraid of him! Dad," she added, the one word an exclamation of disbelief. She added, "And then Aunt Ellie wouldn't let us see him, even though he was awake."

Sarah rubbed her hand over her eyes, exhausted from her early morning wake up and struggling to think clearly. "Mom, is that true?" Stephen asked, his voice tight with a concern he kept close to himself.

Sarah decided to start at the beginning, keeping it as generic as she could. "A couple of months ago, your father woke up in the middle of the night and somehow fainted in the kitchen. He was out for about ten minutes. Aunt Ellie ran a whole bunch of tests. Nothing was wrong…other than what she thought was prediabetes. His blood sugar was spiking and then crashing. He's been having…migraine headaches on and off since. He had one period of memory lapse," Sarah explained.

"Mom, is this a serious neurological thing? Is that why you didn't tell us?" Ally asked anxiously, her eyes filming with tears.

Sarah felt the entire situation spiraling out of control. Coupled with her own worry, it was close to overwhelming. "It was literally nothing," Sarah insisted petulantly. "You both had just gotten back from Mexico and spring break and you had your theses to write…all of that. That's why we didn't tell you. Getting everyone upset about prediabetes…that can be controlled with diet and exercise."

"Hey, Dork," Abby said with familiar affection, her childhood teasing now evolved to companionable sibling relations. "Hey, Cozy," she added, using the nickname everyone but Stephen and Griffin used for her brother's fiancee. Abby looked more put together–her hair was smooth and brushed and she had put on makeup in the waiting room. She saw her mother and sister, wondering at the tension she had just rejoined.

"What's…going on?" Abby asked, able to cut the tension with a knife.

"Something is wrong with Daddy," Ally wailed at her sister, the undertone of accusation in her voice directed at her mother. Sarah's eyes misted when she heard her adult daughter use that term she had used when she was little. "Something serious."

"We don't know that," Stephen interjected, trying to keep things calm. He was worried, but over something his sisters knew nothing about.

"Forgetting things…losing time…personality changes…those are signs of serious cognitive decline. Alzheimer's…dementia," Ally pronounced. She had just graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology, headed for her master's degree in the fall.

"Aunt Ellie checked for all of that in March. Everything was normal," Sarah told her daughter.

"But they ran a CT scan and not an MRI, isn't that right?" Ally argued, having listened closely to what her aunt had said when she'd first come to talk to them earlier.

Sarah was overall bewildered, but she remembered Ellie saying at the party she wanted to do an MRI, that Chuck hadn't had one in a very long time. "Yes," Sarah answered.

"The CT scan would have ruled out tumors, growths, injuries, brain bleeding…but an MRI would be needed to tell anything else for sure," Ally argued, her knowledge at full power here.

"If Aunt Ellie only did a CT scan, it was because that was all she thought Dad needed then," Abby countered. Her pre-law graduate.

"They're running the MRI now," Sarah informed them. "They were just waiting for an available instrument." The truth, that Ellie was running the MRI in her research lab, was not important. But Ellie had modifications to that specific device that took Intersect activity into account in the scans, a technique she had devised and perfected while she had been working with the U.S. government. "We'll know in a little while," Sarah added, shifting her eyes to her son, making sure he saw the subtle flare of her eyes, and all it encompassed.

Abby was much more in control of her emotions, rarely displaying anything but her stoic front, something Sarah knew was part of herself manifesting inside her daughter. Sarah knew Abby was worried, but it was her sister who was more of a wreck. Cozette saw this as well.

"Ally, did you eat anything at all?" Cozette asked. At the other girl's blank stare and subsequent blinking away of tears, she added, "Come on, let's get a little something. Help you keep your strength up." She put her arm around her future sister-in-law and gently guided her into the hallway towards the cafeteria.

Abby moved to talk to her brother once her mother sat back down. Abby's face was unreadable when she looked at Stephen. "Aunt Ellie was really worried. She was trying to hide it, you know, put on her doctor face and all that. But Ally is probably closer to the truth than anything." She sounded fatalistic, factual, almost like the way their Uncle John was when he talked. It was unnerving. The faintest hint of emotion was there when she added, "What is Mom gonna do if something happens to Dad?"

Stephen had more in his head than anyone, including his parents, knew. Pieces of missions that were never recorded anywhere somehow filed and collated by his brain into his unique Intersect. A hundred different instances of his mother doing extraordinarily dangerous and difficult things…to ensure that nothing ever had. He had almost as many pictures of his father doing the same.

But in truth, Stephen was more worried about that than anything else.

XXX

Ellie actually texted Sarah first, telling her she needed to speak to her and Stephen alone. Sarah had texted back that both girls were here and waiting. Ellie's answer was a request that Cozette distract them long enough that she could talk to them privately first, then bring in the girls afterward. Stephen never flinched, and sent his fiancee on that mission. Meanwhile, Sarah was terrified.

Ellie came out to meet them once Cozette had departed with Ally and Abby. Sarah's stomach was in knots, nausea threatening to eject from her stomach what little she had eaten earlier this morning. Sensitive to his mother's mood, Stephen put his arm around his mother and almost held her up as her legs shook when they moved through the office door.

It dawned on Sarah that she had last been in this office the Monday afternoon after Stephen's ninth birthday party, on the day they had found out that he had been born with an Intersect. She looked up at him, his eyes the same color as hers but the rest of his features almost identical to his father's. It was as if she could see them both–the little boy and the grown man at the same time, none of the years in between of any relevance.

Her son was a spy, but first, he was his father's son. So long ago it was difficult to remember, Sarah had been assured by Chuck that no matter what he did, he would always be the man she fell in love with. He had defied every odd, every rule that could have caused him to fail in that promise. He never, ever had, not once, in all the time she had known him. Sarah had been just as worried at first, when her son had decided to become a spy…until she understood that he could do so and not lose himself, the way she had until Chuck had changed it all for her. He had his father's heart and his mother's strength to protect it.

She needed that strength now, she thought. She could tell by her sister-in-law's face that whatever it was she was going to tell them, it was bad news.

Ellie was stiff and professional, which Sarah knew was a defense mechanism, something she needed to do to detach herself from the situation—patient versus family. "First, I just need to tell you, Chuck is fine. Completely fine. He woke up in the ambulance with no memory of anything that happened in the house after he went to sleep. He was asking for you guys, wondering why we were running all the tests we were running, why he couldn't see you, you know…Chuck," Ellie added with a smile that turned up her lips but left her green eyes dark. "I didn't tell him anything other than the additional syncopal episode. He doesn't remember what it was you explained to me, Sarah," she whispered. Stephen's eyes narrowed at that, but he said nothing.

"What did the MRI show?" Sarah asked, her voice shaking, her anxious impatience eating its way through her center.

"The standard MRI?" Ellie prefaced. "Nothing," she huffed. "He's perfectly healthy. Any other neurologist would just send him home and tell him to stay hydrated."

It was the strangest sensation, Sarah thought, to feel so relieved she shuddered when she sighed, and yet understanding at the same time…if that was true, then it had to be the Intersect, which was in some ways more frightening.

"But you're not any other neurologist, Auntie," Stephen prompted.

"Thanks to my father, no, I'm not," Ellie grumbled. She started typing on the keyboard in front of her. After a few seconds she swiveled the monitor on its stand, so that Sarah and Stephen could see the images displayed there.

"The image on the left is Chuck's brain from around 2013, the first time I scanned him as an adult…you know, after all that craziness with Corrine Winterbottom," Ellie informed, being general because of Stephen's presence. He was fully aware of this past, but mission specifics sometimes caused flashes when spoken aloud, and it would just be distracting here. Ellie pointed. "All this," she said as she ran a slender finger along what looked like white lines, ghost images of roads on a paper map, "is Intersect activity. It's so traceable because it fires along his neural pathway, just the way my father intended it to do."

Ellie tapped a few keys on the keyboard. The same image was modified, now showing contrasting paths in different colors, one still white, but another overlaid with blue. "That shows the different functionalities. The white lines are the Intersect that Chuck downloaded in 2012. The blue lines are the program my father embedded in the key, the one that allows Chuck to…interact with the artificially intelligent computer program of my father's personality."

Stephen knew that was there, after a discussion he had with his father not that long ago, when he had been speaking to his parents about choosing a career with the CIA. Chuck made it a point to tell him that all along, Chuck's father had been telling him, via that connection, that Stephen's destiny was his own to find.

"The image on the right is Chuck's brain from 2021, right after the incident with the Sentries. Jacques Robert was debriefed by the CIA and NSA, and after what he told them, General Beckman asked me to compare the schematics for the prototype to the functionality in Chuck's brain," Ellie explained, her voice softer as she realized she was relaying information that both Sarah and Stephen did not previously know.

"Why did she ask you to do that?" Sarah accused sharply. "And never tell us?" she asked. "When did Chuck even do that? I thought I would have remembered something like that."

"Beckman asked me because I destroyed literally everything else in 2012, after I…treated you," Ellie said, referring to the removal of the Intersect from Sarah when she was seven months pregnant with Stephen, which had caused the phenomenon of him developing a spontaneous Intersect. "It was for Stephen's safety, that was all," Ellie assured her. Ellie scanned the image. "It was done right after Thanksgiving. You were shopping with your mother and Molly. I know because they were still at my house then, after the kidnapping and the attack."

Sarah thought back to that time, recalling how much turmoil their last encounter with Jill Roberts had caused. They had all been healing in so many ways. Doing an MRI to ensure that the government had some scientific background information to protect their son was truly minor, and she understood why Chuck might have omitted that, not wanting Sarah to worry unnecessarily. Sarah nodded gently, acknowledging all of that with just the one gesture.

Ellie tapped more keys. The image on the right came alive with the same color overlays. Only this one was different. White lines, blue lines, and…a tiny red dot, so small Sarah thought she might have missed it if Ellie hadn't pointed to it. "This was there. I never examined this file. I just gave it to Beckman. She asked me to destroy the file, which I did, but the imager retains a digital copy. The NSA checked 15 years ago and Chuck confirmed the imager connection was secure, but it still automatically deletes those images on a yearly basis. The only reason this is still here is because of a computer virus attack that prevented routine purging for a time around early 2022."

"What is it?" Sarah asked, wondering. It seemed so innocuous, yet, she sensed the dread, almost despair, in her sister-in-law's demeanor.

"I don't know," Ellie admitted helplessly. She typed away again, Sarah noted this time with hands that shook. The image on the screen flashed to a different one. "Only this," she added with a flourish as she pressed a button, "is what I just scanned today."

White lines, blue lines…and a mass of red lines, seeming to have spread out from that one dot, tangled with the others and covering his entire brain, far beyond the original Intersect functionality lines. It looked ominous.

"It only shows on the enhanced MRI. Which means, whatever it is, it is something Intersect related that he downloaded at some point in the past," Ellie explained.

"But he didn't download anything!" Sarah insisted, her fear amplifying her voice. "On the rooftop at the concert hall, Ellie. That was it. The last version of the Intersect with the embedded files from the key."

"Yes, he did, Sarah," Ellie stressed, almost apologetically. "We just don't know what…or when…or why. I did a few data extrapolations. It was so small in 2021, based on how…pervasive it is now…it couldn't have been much farther back than 2021. I don't think that's a coincidence, considering you were pulled into that mission back then. There was almost nothing but cyber criminals before then."

"Wait, Ellie," Sarah interjected. "You think he's had this for 15 years?" she asked incredulously. "He was fine until two months ago!"

"That you knew about," Ellie said softly. "He could have had blips…little things he may have thought were just normal things that he never gave a second thought."

"Ellie, you said pervasive," Sarah argued. "It's in every part of his brain. Even if he was having minor symptoms for years, the fact that it's so large now…doesn't that mean he would have been having more serious symptoms earlier than now?"

Sarah's argument was logical. Ellie was nodding along. "You're right. And I can't explain it. Other than…Chuck has the genetic mutation. Those connections that he has, many, many more than an average human male, they could have mitigated the effects of…whatever this is…for even that long."

Stephen had been listening passively, trying to focus on the facts and not that they were discussing his father, someone who meant more to him than almost anyone. He could feel the anguish, a palpable wave, coming from his mother. He knew it was taking all of her strength to keep from crumbling in front of his aunt. "So what do we do, Auntie?" Stephen asked, cutting through the uncertainty with directness.

Ellie rubbed her face, trailing her fingertips into the hair above her forehead and scratching at her scalp. "I wish I knew, Stephen," she murmured hopelessly in defeat.

Sarah, already anxious, was completely overwhelmed with fear at Ellie's tone. Never in all the years Sarah had known and loved her had she ever heard the woman sound so helpless. Ellie always had been the one to try, fight for her brother and her family. This had blind-sided Ellie, Sarah was certain. She leaned forward, her hands folding over her face as tears burst forth. Her son's arms were tight around her shoulders.

"Aunt Ellie," Stephen said sharply. "I will start digging and I won't stop until I figure out when and what my father downloaded. I don't care if I have to scan every file in the damn DNI database," he swore with conviction. "Just promise me once I figure out what it is, you can do something to remove it from his head."

Ellie pursed her lips tightly, shaking her head in amazement at her nephew. "I will do everything I can, I promise you. Both of you," she added, directing her voice to Sarah, who looked up from her hands to show her tear-streaked face. "I'll contact Casey and Beckman. Jacques Robert may be helpful as well. He did work with my father's research."

"In the meantime?" Sarah asked trepidatiously.

Ellie sighed heavily. "Keep an eye on Chuck. You can tell the girls everything was normal…because it was. No doctor in this hospital would tell them otherwise. But…whatever this thing is…it's exerting an enormous amount of pressure inside his skull. It's most likely causing the migraines…possibly the memory loss. There's nothing I can do about that. Make sure he's eating a low sodium diet and he's managing stress levels. His blood pressure is normal, but he's got the potential now for an intracranial hemorrhage. It's not much help, but it's all I've got right now."

"Can we see him?" Sarah asked.

Ellie nodded. "He knows all of this already. I told him before I told you," Ellie explained. "For the record, he doesn't remember downloading anything, either. We had to sedate him before the MRI, which was unusual. He was…a little more…agitated than I would have expected, based on the way he was acting beforehand. But he should be fine to see you, and fine to go in a few hours."

Suddenly, Sarah was back in their bedroom in the dark, seeing half of his face in the light reflected from the street below, looking into the cold eyes of someone she didn't know. Like an icy cold hand down her spine, the memory made her shiver.

Whatever this was, it was taking her husband away from her. That thought transformed the fear to anger. There was nothing, and she meant nothing, that she would just stand by and allow it to do so. She rose from the chair, holding onto her son's arm. Stephen saw it there, in his mother's eyes, the fierceness of her love for his father.

It was difficult to stay so worried when he thought about whatever this was…compared to that emotion from his mother, the most powerful force he had ever witnessed in his life.