A/N Act I is behind us. Now, Act II.
Thanks for reading and reviewing!
No more updates this week. Chapter 5 will not be posted until next week.
Don't own Chuck.
ACT II
CHAPTER FOUR
The Push and Shove of Being
"Dr. Woodcomb? Ellie?" Beckman answered the phone.
"General, I was up. I saw your text." Ellie's voice sounded curious, but definitely on its way to worried. "Is there news about Sarah?"
"Yes, and I will go ahead and tell you it's not good news...Not the worst," Beckman added hastily, when she heard Ellie's intake of breath, "she's alive. But the Intersect, or Quinn, or both, have done more damage…"
"Oh, God, no. Tell me everything you can, please, General."
Beckman supplied Ellie a brief but exact narration of what she knew, up to and including to the attack on Carina. Ellie was silent, clearly upset. Beckman told that Ellie that she had emailed her the video of Sarah at the motel front desk. Ellie retrieved her laptop from her bag and watched it, providing running commentary to Beckman as she did.
"Yes, that's Sarah. But she's moving strangely. She's been hurt. That clerk...don't you think he sort of looks like Chuck? See, Sarah has noticed. No, she's not really flirting with him; her response is...well, a somatic memory, I think. Her body reacting in a way that does not reach full consciousness, full rational uptake. She can't give the reason for her action, but there is one. Two things are happening at once. She's pretending to flirt but is also genuinely affected by the somatic memory.
"I agree, it looks like she is blushing a bit, but notice that she is not actually paying attention to the clerk unless he's attending to her; the blush isn't...about him. The response is to someone else, a somatic memory of someone else, a memory that she feels but isn't conscious of as such. Chuck.
"She's manipulating the clerk. She's good. I've never really...seen her do that, although I knew she could, intellectually knew she could..."
They talked for a moment more about the video before Ellie pushed for more information on the attack.
After listening, Ellie added, "We know the faulty Intersect had damaged and was still damaging Sarah's memory. I am reasonably sure now that large-scale damage has been done to her memory. There's no other explanation ready to hand for the attack. Carina's details all fit.
"But it is strange: her somatic memory, her embodied habits, skills, obviously even some emotional reactions, are still in very much in place. That's strange. But not unprecedented in amnesiacs. And it is a hopeful sign. This sort of somatic memory is not the same as the personal memory we think of first when we think of memory, the internal pictures, items that provide our sense of ourselves as having been present in particular past moments. But the kinds of memory are connected and the somatic memories can lead to the recovery of the personal ones, if they remain to be recovered. Sorry, Diane. Doctor-speak, I know. Occupational hazard."
Beckman was silent for a moment, processing. When she spoke, it was not as the General, but as someone who cared for Sarah.
"No, I understand. But, Ellie, Sarah's embodied responses are the responses of a spy, of someone quite deadly, a trained assassin…Before Burbank, she was Langston Graham's Enforcer..."
"I know, Diane," Ellie said softly, her voice complicated by thoughts she now felt comfortable sharing, "...Sarah and I have had some...talks during the past months. Of course, they were talks with Sarah, so I don't have lots of details, and, frankly, I didn't need them, didn't push. But Sarah wasn't, Sarah isn't, an assassin by nature.
"She was an assassin by miseducation, by mis-nurture. Her father and then, well, pardon me, Diane, but then, you people, the CIA, NSA." She heard Beckman sigh. "Yes, her responses are an assassin's responses, but a reluctant assassin's responses. Sarah Bartowski did not come to be ex nihilo; she was always in there too, if I can put it that way. She was always a real possibility for Sarah Walker.
"Remember, Diane, Carina is alive. Sarah could have killed her, but she didn't. She didn't. She is deadly; you said it. How many times do you know of when she failed...to terminate a target?" Beckman offered no number; that was her answer. "Exactly," Ellie concluded. "If she had really wanted to kill Carina, Carina would be a corpse.
"We have to save my sister...And wait, a really important question: does Chuck know any of this?"
"No, I haven't told him. I wanted to try to get a handle on the situation before I told him, but I suppose he has to know. Do you want to tell him?"
Ellie did. "Yes, yes, I will tell him…"
"I'm sorry, Ellie, I just knew how hard this would be for him and I didn't want him jumping in before we knew…" Beckman let the sentence trail off into nothing. The rationalization already sounded empty to her.
Ellie broke the momentary silence, swallowing her annoyance. "Can you have Carina meet me and Chuck, after she has gotten some rest, and after she's made the drive up? No, not here at the apartment. At Castle. Have her text me a time."
ooOoo
Beckman ended the call to Ellie and then called Carina, relaying Ellie's request and then reading Carina in, giving her a succinct but exact recap of the Intersect saga.
She then ended that call and put the phone down. She rubbed her eyes. The night had not helped with her exhaustion. Not one damn bit.
She considered calling Roan. Hearing his voice might help her cope...but then she thought of Madeline and decided against it. Seeing Madeline had made the rumors about her and Roan weigh more heavily on Beckman. Maybe she'd call Roan tomorrow, after she'd gotten a few hours of sleep, when she'd be less likely to try to corner him, to force him to confirm or deny the rumor.
But she realized that she couldn't sleep, she needed to make one more call. Huntaker needed to know what was going on. Likely, the Intersect Committee would meet sometime tomorrow...rather, today. It was almost time to go to the office. She picked up her phone again and called the Senator.
ooOoo
Sarah was dreaming.
She was eating at a Thai restaurant. Her meal was delicious. She asked the waiter what it was.
"Cobra. A new dish."
Her companion-she couldn't see his face clearly-spoke. "Me? I'm fantastic."
Yes. Absolutely, yes. "Yes, you are."
She continued. "Without you, I'm nothing but a spy…" She could feel her eyes filling with tears. "Nothing but a spy…" Her feet felt cold. She was going to have to leave him.
Her feet were cold. She woke up. For a spinning moment, she could not remember where she was. But then she did. The house. The bed. She needed to get out of it. A clock beside the bed read: 6:46 am.
She stood up and took inventory of herself. The soreness had lessened. But she was still stiff. She stretched herself, twisted around, bent at the waist: loosening up. She knew she needed to be out of the house soon.
Washing her face in the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror. The confrontation was not as disorienting as the one in the dressing room had been. Part of it was that she had now seen her reflection a few times, in the dressing room, the hotel, here; part of it was that she felt more like she was her body. For those first few hours, she felt like she had a body, but that it might or might not be hers.
Its numbness and stiffness and soreness had a role in that alienation, but she also could not remember being that body. If nothing else, the fight with...Carina had helped her find her way back to her body, made it feel less like a rental and more hers, her.
That fight. She felt woozy, guilt rushing over her.
Carina. What had happened? It had all been so fast, so confusing, so automatic. Had she killed the redhead? She made herself remember-huffing to herself as she did because she could remember so little in general.
She had been strangling Carina with the shoelace. The memory made her stomach knot, but she forced herself to continue reliving it. As the redhead lost consciousness, Sarah realized that she had slackened the shoelace. Had she slackened it soon enough?
In the aftershock of it all, she had thought she killed Carina, or likely had. Now, she was less sure. She now thought she slackened the shoestring in time. That was a good thing; her stomach unknotted a little. That was in the foreground, but in the background was the larger, deeply distressing fact: she knew enough about killing to know when she was approaching the point of no return with a victim-knew it so viscerally she had not had to think about it, to have a moment of conscious realization. Automatic.
What kind of killer was she? A killer, yes, she was; she was darkly certain of that, the knowledge indubitable, bone-deep, abysmal.
But was that the final verdict? The last word before sentencing? She felt like it was not the whole story, that...
What about the wedding set? Had she been married, or had the rings been part of some pretense, some...con (the word hit her like a blow) or...cover (that one too). She looked at herself in the mirror again. Studied her face. Tried to do surveillance behind her own eyes.
Killer.
Assassin.
Spy.
The word from her dream.
Another word came to her mind again: 'enforcer'.
Enforcer, enforce!
Enforce what? For who? Why?
Spy.
'C' is for heart and heart is for…?
I am nothing but a spy. But I know nothing about the spy I am. I know nothing about the spy I am nothing but. Her feeling of incompleteness haunted her.
"Me? I'm fantastic."
Who was Mr. Fantastic?
'Mr. Fantastic' made her think of the Fantastic Four, and then she frowned: she was a DC, not a Marvel girl.
DC, Marvel? What did that mean? What was she thinking?
Her head buzzed and crackled like a cheap transistor radio, buzzed and crackled with answerless questions.
She turned off the bathroom light, gathered her things. She slipped from the house and glided to the car. She needed to get rid of Carina's car and get another. She also needed to capitalize on the name she'd been given by Carina: 'Sarah Walker'.
Who is Sarah Walker? She cast her eyes at the rearview.
Who am I? Who is this I in me?
How could she find out? She realized that she had an idea. That was a surprise, wasn't it? —Was it? Wasn't she a...spy?
ooOoo
Ellie was driving Chuck and herself to Castle. They would use the Orange Orange entrance, as would Carina when she arrived. Or, they would if Chuck ever righted his ship.
The news about Sarah threatened to sink him. He was terrified for her, Sarah, first and most importantly, but then also terrified for them, and then also terrified for himself. He was third. He was so terrified he couldn't speak, hadn't spoken since he'd watched the video from the motel and heard the story about Carina.
Ellie knew Chuck. She knew him well enough to know that it was not just the factual predicament that was terrifying him—although it was sufficiently terrifying. But Chuck had lived in fear of Sarah leaving him, of her leaving, period, since she first came to Burbank.
At first, Ellie understood, he feared that she would want to leave, then he feared that she might be reassigned, then later he feared that she would run from their relationship and its rapid development. But the underlying fear was always that he would not be enough for Sarah, that she would want somewhere else, someone else, something else more than him. The fear had retreated after they had gotten engaged, and retreated farther after the wedding, but Ellie knew it never entirely surrendered.
Ellie did not share Chuck's fear that Chuck was not enough for Sarah. She knew Sarah well enough-and had watched her closely enough (for almost five years)-to know that Sarah was completely committed to Chuck. But was this Sarah the committed Sarah Ellie knew, or someone else, someone new, or someone old, someone anyhow different from the committed Sarah?
ooOoo
Carina dreaded facing Chuck. Beckman made it clear he would know what had happened, but she did not want to have to face him, to tell him the story in person. She did not want to tell it at all, if for no other reason than her voice was raspy, her throat sore, her neck bruised and tender. But of course, the real reason was that she knew how much Chuck loved Sarah.
Even though she was not interested in making choices of the sort Sarah and Chuck had made, and even though she mocked the choices, she respected them. The choices were the right choices for Chuck and Sarah. She was sure of that. What had happened to them was nightmarish—yet another bizarre spy-fi twist to Sarah and Chuck's spy-fi twisty romance. But would this be the twist that untied them?
Beckman had read Carina in, into the entire Intersect saga. Carina had no choice but to believe it.
Believe, so that you may understand. Huh, that year at a Catholic school wasn't wasted entirely, and she had looked outrageous in the uniform...She laughed internally...
Anyway, the Intersect seemed to turn everything topsy-turvy. Hearing the story had helped bring Chuck and Sarah, and the two of them as a couple, into clarity for Carina. The Intersect! Damn, why did anyone think that was a good idea?
Facing Chuck after the way she had treated him over the years, not knowing the burden he carried...well, Carina was ashamed of herself, and that was uncharted emotional terrain for her. And then there was Chuck's sister...
Carina was more than a little intimidated by Ellie. Carina was honest enough about herself to realize that she didn't displace much water in life—she was a hovercraft, light, agile, dancing, wakeless. Ellie was a battleship—she ran deep, displaced lots of water, left a wake behind her. None of that meant that Carina found Ellie humorless or dour or judgmental—Ellie was none of those things. Not often at any rate.
Carina felt unreal in comparison to Ellie Woodcomb, like Carina was only playing at life, like she was on the stage, stagey, while Ellie was living real life. That feeling was a rude reversal for Carina, who for years had thought that her job, with its forced exposure to shadows, and its omnipresent threat of injury or death, made her the one really living; everyone else was conniving at agreeable illusions. She felt like she was the one conniving when she was around Ellie.
Admitting it was bitter, but Carina had started to feel like that around Sarah too. Hell, she had always felt a little like that around Sarah. That was one reason she'd liked to take what Sarah wanted; it seemed to balance the scales somehow, temporarily anyway, as if she could thieve some of Sarah's depth from her.
But someone else, Quinn maybe, or something else, the Intersect, really seemed to have stolen Sarah's reality from her. Carina shuddered. She and Ellie and Chuck and Beckman, they would figure this out. They had to.
ooOoo
Chuck had surprised both Ellie and Carina. He had listened carefully and with real, but controlled distress to Carina's story. After hugging Carina, he pressed her about only one detail in the story: had Carina used Sarah's name? She realized she had. She'd used both 'Sarah' and 'Walker'. Chuck's eyes widened.
"I see that's significant, Chuck, but why is it so important? And I am sorry. I used her old name. Habit took over. For both of us, I guess." Carina's hand traveled to her throat.
Chuck took a quick breath and released it. "Not a problem, Carina, I understand. It is important because we can see that Sarah's still Sarah...in some ways...at least. She's in San Diego. She went to high school there. It's a city that will tap into her memories. You told Sarah her name. If her spy instincts, skills, are largely intact," Chuck swallowed hard as he looked at Carina's bruised neck, "as they seem to be, then context and need may cause her to fall back into or mobilize habits or routines formed with her father. She'll use connections he taught her to try to figure out who she is, who Sarah Walker is.
"We need to go back into the files, Graham's and the relevant others, and find out about Sarah's father. I have no idea how to contact her father, but maybe we won't need him. Maybe she'll cross paths in the present with her father's past."
Beckman had been listening in from DC, her face displayed on one of the monitors in Castle. "That's a good idea, Chuck. I will put a team of analysts on it right now." Carina nodded her agreement with the idea and Beckman's response.
Ellie broke in. "Sarah's dad involved her in his cons, so, yes, maybe you are right, Chuck. If she wants to get information on someone, that desire will engage an old habit, an old procedure," Ellie sounded more hopeful as she went on. "But it's been so long since she lived there, so many years…"
"Yes," Chuck conceded, "but Sarah's memory is faulty. It's hard to know how she's experiencing...time. Obviously, there may no longer be anyone around who her father dealt with or used—but maybe there was a pattern to her father's cons…a place, a neighborhood."
"We can hope," Beckman began, "and in the meantime, I want Chuck and Carina in San Diego. We can't use local law enforcement—the Intersect is too much a secret, and Sarah is too...dangerous...I don't want to risk exposure or...casualties. Her not killing Carina is good, but Carina is her old friend. If she feels threatened, what might she do to someone she genuinely does not know?" No one answered, so Beckman continued. "Ellie, I am going to free you up from your research duties at the hospital, tell your superiors that the NSA needs you as a classified consultant for the next week or two.
"Let's hope we can find Sarah and bring her in soon. On top of everything else, I am worried about the man Carina saw outside Sarah's motel room door. I just can't get myself to believe that his being there was a coincidence. Carina, do you remember anything more about him."
Carina narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips. "Tall, thin but not spindly, black hair. Nice ass. I'd know him again—from the rear, anyway."
Beckman's eyes rolled a bit, but she nodded. "Well, let us know if you remember anything that might help us ID him from the front."
ooOoo
Beckman clicked off the Burbank feed and picked up her phone. She had a text from Huntaker. The Intersect Committee would have a video conference in thirty minutes. She wasn't looking forward to that, although at least she wouldn't have to face Huntaker's righteous indignation in the flesh.
She leaned back in her chair, hoping to close her eyes for a few minutes. As she looked at the ceiling, she said aloud but softly. "Sarah Bartowski, come home. Let's bring the story of the Intersect to a happy end."
ooOoo
Sarah had left Carina's car in the back corner of a large parking lot, in a spot obscured by a dumpster. She had then taken a bus to the Carmel Valley branch of the San Diego Public Library.
Inside, she had found a row of computers for public use and she sat down at one on the far end next to the wall. Once on the internet, she pulled up a map of San Diego and its surroundings, allowing her eyes to pass slowly over it, waiting for a tug or spark or...something. And then it happened.
San Ysidro. When she saw the name of the neighborhood, she felt an interior click. No images, no feelings, just a click, recognition. What she needed she could find there. Even if she didn't yet know what it was.
She searched for information on the motel she had stayed in. Had there been a report of a crime there? A killing? A redheaded victim? No. Sarah exhaled slowly before she realized she had been holding her breath.
Who was, no, who is Carina Miller?
Sarah wasn't in a huge hurry. She wanted to search the names, Sarah Walker, Carina Miller, but she was afraid doing so might set off alarm bells. Evidently, Rebecca Franco had. Someone knew Sarah had used that name in the past. She was going to have to be careful and not dredge up another name from God knows what place in her head.
She moved to a carrel with high sides and sat down. She started digging through Carina's purse again.
She'd seen the DEA badge, so she set it aside. She found various expected items. Makeup, lipstick, sunglasses (very expensive, very nice), a brush, and a notepad. She flipped through it. There were names and phone numbers on several pages, all names of men. But there was one woman's name and a number. Zondra. Sarah felt a stab of anger, and then a wave of relief as she stared at the name. She couldn't bring any face to mind, or any memory, but she felt like she knew Zondra. She did not understand her layered reaction.
She felt down to the bottom of the bag, and then noticed a zip pocket in its side she had not noticed before. She unzipped it and a cheap cell phone was revealed. A burner. Untraceable.
It was not locked, no passcode. Sarah went to Contacts and found only one number, but no name. The call log showed that the phone had called that number several times in the last few months and received calls from it as well. After a quick comparison, Sarah knew it was not Zondra's number, or the number of any of the men listed.
She looked up hastily, the hair on her neck standing, a warning. She saw a man move quickly behind a display of magazines. It might have been nothing, but she felt immediately vulnerable, spied upon.
But how could anyone have followed her without her noticing them? She had kept a careful watch, she realized, even though she had never told herself to do so or even consciously realized that she was. She just knew she had. It was what she did.
That puzzle of her name would have to wait. She needed answers, yes, but San Ysidro would wait. Maybe she could turn this situation to her advantage. If someone was following her, then that person must know who she was, must know some things about her.
ooOoo
The video meeting of the Intersect Committee had been as awful as Beckman expected. Huntaker had blamed all of this on her, and had thundered at her about a rogue spy. Worse yet, he had yelled, a rogue, US-trained assassin, out of her mind and on the loose in Southern California, a faulty version of the US's biggest intelligence secret in her head, making her dangerous along many, many (Huntaker had doubled up the word) different dimensions.
Huntaker demanded a termination order for Sarah Bartowski. Beckman had been able to muster enough support to force Huntaker to wait, but he had then turned the tables on her and gotten a majority to agree with him that if, in 48 hours, Sarah Bartowski was not in custody, the termination order would be given.
"In 48 hours I want her behind bars or in a body bag!"
That had been Huntaker's parting shot.
Beckman now desperately needed sleep. She needed to talk to Roan for all sorts of reasons, but mainly to hear his voice. He could always relax her, even at a distance.
But she did not sleep or call Roan; instead, she made a decision that might ruin her career. Damn Huntaker. She called the DARPA lab in LA where the pristine Intersect was being researched, and she told them to prepare for a visit from Chuck Bartowski, who would be downloading the current version.
She called Chuck and Carina. They were finishing up in Castle, about to head to San Diego, and she rerouted them to the top-secret lab. She also explained that they were now on the clock.
47 hours until the termination order. Beckman told her secretary to get her a flight to Burbank asap.
The final act of the Intersect story would close with the pristine version salvaging the faulty one, or so Beckman devoutly hoped. Huntaker had called Sarah 'beyond salvage'. But Huntaker did not know Chuck Bartowski-how far he would go for his wife. And Sarah, well, that was a woman not easy to kill.
ooOoo
Nicholas Quinn turned off the computer, the flashing light at the Carmel Valley branch of the San Diego Public Library swallowed by the green-black that engulfed the screen. The tracking compound he'd injected Sarah Bartowski with had turned out to be a good idea. His boss had said so.
God, Quinn hated having to pretend to take orders. Soon, he'd stop pretending. Still, the praise was sweet-and of course completely deserved.
Quinn smiled to himself. His ideas were good. He had, he liked to tell himself, a geometrical mind. No one could outthink him. He was not worried about Sarah Bartowski, although he was surprised she'd made it alive off the docks. A defenseless morsel like that should've attracted all the dock vermin, been finished there…
Oh, well, the world was a confused place, all push and shove, both for those who hoped for good and those who hoped for...not-good. The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Quinn patted himself mentally on the back. He was no lowbrow criminal. He was a Renaissance Man, a miniature version of Milton's Satan. Bad, yes, but witty, urbane, sophisticated, brilliant. With the Intersect, he could do away with the 'miniature'' and mount a ladder to scale to the full heights of Milton's Satan!
What a terror he would be once he was Intersected! He would do such things, commit crimes of awful majesty…
One window of his hideout, an old factory building he had commandeered secretly, shattered. Glass filled the air, rained onto the floor. One of Quinn's henchmen yelled something incoherent. A canister on the floor, the projectile that shattered the window, spewed a mustard yellow gas.
Quinn's throat scorched and closed. His lungs burst into flames. As he suffocated, he wondered: is this what brimstone smells like?
And then Nicholas Quinn and his henchmen were dead.
A/N2 I always thought Quinn was a putz, frankly, too small, too inconsequential to be the show's final villain. Let's see if perhaps we can do better...I mean worse...Well, you know what I mean. Tune in next time for Chapter 5 "Drone and Dive".
