A/N1. Got to this to revise it a day or two earlier than I expected, so I will go ahead and post it.
I fear I overestimated the number of readers who would know the Ludlum book from which I have borrowed motifs. Apologies. If you don't know it, much of what I am doing may seem willfully strange. Sorry about that, but I hope that by now you are beginning to see how this goes, what it is doing, and how it is like and unlike the Chuck finale.
Among other things, we are exploring past Sarah by following amnesiac Sarah as she works to come to herself, as she works to once again become Sarah Bartowski. (Of course, that is not quite how she understands what she is doing.)
Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Don't own Chuck or The Bourne Identity.
ACT II
CHAPTER FIVE
Drone and Dive
Carina was unsure what to make of it, what to make of it at first, anyway.
Chuck had been focused and silent from the time he had agreed to take on the burden of the Intersect again, and had heard about the termination order. He had not fallen apart, hardly winced, barely blinked. He was resolute. Carina knew he was terrified for Sarah, wholly desperate to be on the way to San Diego. But he was holding himself together. Sarah had told Carina once that Chuck was a hero, her hero, the only true hero she had ever known.
Carina now had a palpable sense of what Sarah was talking about. The bumbling, gushing nerd of Carina's first acquaintance had grown. No doubt Sarah had a lot to do with that. But however it had happened, over the past five years, Chuck had become his own master: by winning Sarah, Chuck had won himself.
ooOoo
Carina and Chuck had arrived at the DARPA facility and promptly been taken down an elevator, to what must have been a sub-sub-basement beneath the old, three-story brownstone. The top floors had been converted to a set of office suites. According to the small bronze plaque by the door, offices for criminal lawyers, tax lawyers, and accountants.
A house for the truly evil, Carina snarked to herself.
She noticed the plethora of cameras around the building: outside, inside and even in the elevator. Concealed all, but noticeable to a person who knew what to look for. The guards at the front desk were no joke. Elite soldiers in plain clothes. Carina had known enough men of that sort to be familiar with how they...moved. One of the soldiers rode down on the elevator with them. When the elevator got to the bottom floor, it stopped and a voice over the intercom told them to hold still for a scan.
A few minutes later, the doors opened. As she stepped out, she could see that there was an extra set of doors for the elevator, that the elevator's own doors were behind heavy steel doors. Getting off that elevator would not be easy unless you were invited.
Carina had expected something smaller, but the hallway they entered ran on for a distance, far beyond the footprint of the brownstone above. A woman walked out of an office and walked toward them, a business smile on her open face.
"Charles Bartowski? Carina Miller?" Each nodded and she shook their hands energetically but briefly. "I am Dr. Smith," one of Chuck's brows arched and she laughed, "no, really, that's my name. Please come with me." Chuck glanced at Carina and she could that he was still controlling his desperation, but that the control was becoming harder for him. Energy was radiating off him in waves, even as he tried to be pleasant.
Carina was expecting a full sci-fi movie experience, but the room they were led to was a plain, white room. There was one small desk, and on it rested a laptop. Dr. Smith stopped them at the door. "Mr. Bartowski, please push 'Enter' on the laptop when you are ready. You will not need to watch the laptop's screen: the entire room is a screen. I believe you have done this sort of thing before, so I don't need to tell you anything more, take any more time."
Chuck nodded and stepped immediately into the room. Dr. Smith retreated from the doorway and, after Carina did too, Dr. Smith shut the door.
There was a panel next to the door with a screen that read: "Ready". A moment later, the screen read: "In Progress". And another moment later, it read: "End."
Dr. Smith looked at the door, expectantly. It opened, and Chuck came out, eyebrows up, blinking beneath them. But other than that, he looked as he had when he had gone in. Carina had expected smoke or heavy-metal music, something portentous. Not just blinking Chuck. But that was all there was.
"Are you okay, Mr. Bartowski?" Chuck closed his eyes and nodded. "No dizziness, disorientation?" Smith stared into his eyes.
"No," Chuck answered, "that was the least...invasive...I've ever found that."
The hint of a proud smile showed on Smith's face, animating her eyes and undoing her curt manner. Carina noticed for the first time that Smith had freckles. ;
"Well," Smith commented, "we've worked to improve the Intersect, to make downloading it more seamless and to make its functioning more integrated with the brain. Your…'flashes' should seem less like visions, less like visitations, and more like memories.
"On the whole, the Intersect should seem less...alien, less, well, like you are possessed," Smith hummed a few bars of The Exorcist's theme, smiled at Chuck's tight smile in response to her humming, then stopped, self-conscious, and went on, "and it should seem more like you are clear-headed and quick, especially on spy-ish tasks. Still, there'll be the ineliminable strangeness of 'remembering' things you never learned..."
Carina saw pain register deep in Chuck's eyes, and heard him mutter under his breath. "I can remember more than I know, and she can't remember what she knows…The Intersect gives and the Intersect takes away...Damn the Intersect."
Smith hadn't heard what Chuck said, but she knew he spoke. She paused for a moment and he shrugged apologetically. "Just talking to myself." Her brows contracted but Chuck waved his hands. "But I did that long before the Intersect."
"Please tell your sister, Dr. Ellie Woodcomb, how much I admire her work on the Intersect. Her notes, her research, and suggestions, have guided most of what I have done.
"I'd like to meet her one day, talk to her, if they ever let me out into the sunshine again. I'd like to think she and I would be friends." It was Smith's turn to shrug. "It's...uh...lonely down here. We spend a lot of time below ground. To be honest, it feels like I'm in prison...half the time. I guess that's the cost of truly being on the cutting edge of this sort of research. You don't belong to yourself."
Chuck looked like he was about to speak, but then decided against it.
"A couple of things you should know, Mr. Bartowski." Smith sped up her delivery; she could tell Chuck was past ready to go.
"This version of the Intersect will take an hour or so to start to function. It has to...make itself at home in your brain. Its better integration means it is not quite as plug-and-play as earlier versions. Also, what you flash on, what the Intersect 'knows', you will come to know. You shouldn't have to flash to recall information a second time; it should just be there-especially for you, since your brain seems...especially hospitable to the Intersect."
Chuck nodded once and turned. Carina could see the urgency in the set of his shoulders. The clock was ticking. She thanked Dr. Smith and hurried back to the elevator.
The same soldier rode up with them. Carina took a moment to look at him more closely. Handsome. Rugged. She wished she had more time. She felt his gaze slowly sweep along her when he thought she was unaware. Oh, well, maybe she could find him again after all this ended.
She noticed Chuck's hand. He was tapping his middle finger and thumb together, unaware that he was doing so. Her heart went out to him. She simultaneously felt a spike of envy for Sarah. If something like this had happened to Carina, there was no one out there like Chuck to care about it, to care about her. No one who would risk everything for her, for the sheer love of her.
She tried to push the feeling away. She looked again at the soldier. He was still handsome, still rugged. But she saw him in her mind's eye as the nearest in a long line of handsome men, stretching back farther than she liked to admit, even to herself.
She was ruefully willing to bet that few of them remembered her as a woman, a person, but that many remembered her as...a gifted sexual athlete. Damn them.
But it really wasn't just their fault, even if they were partly to blame. One side of her mouth turned down, a half frown.
She complained occasionally about men objectifying her. But the truth, the real truth of hard record, was that she often assisted in the objectification: she wanted them to touch her without being able to touch her and so she dropped her subjectivity along with her underwear, inviting them to know her body but effectively forbidding them to know her. Sex was nothing more than (nothing less than, but nothing more than) the coincident, cooperative pursuit of pleasure; it involved no compelling mutuality. Sometimes, she wondered what that compelling mutuality might be like...She shook her head. They were out of the brownstone, out in the sunlight again.
This was the problem with visiting Chuck and Sarah, and it was one reason why she had only phoned since the wedding. Seeing them together, or now, seeing them apart like this, made her think things, feel things, she did not want to think or feel, did not know how to think or feel.
The way she lived had worked for her for years. It still worked. The coincident, cooperative pursuit of pleasure had been successful, very successful. But she did now surely know one thing: the pursuit of pleasure was not identical to the pursuit of happiness. Pleasure and unhappiness could, and did, coexist. Often. Pleasure could distract from unhappiness, but it could not eject it. Another truth of hard record.
ooOoo
Sarah left the carrel and walked in the direction of the man she had seen, the man she believed was watching her. He was standing, looking at a book on the far end of an aisle. He hadn't gone far.
Saran noted that he was looking at the book-not reading it. Reading had a different posture. He seemed less aware of the book than of anything else around him. He's good at this, Sarah thought, but not nearly as good as I am. Strange to be so confident of skills that only show up as I need them...
Sarah strolled down the aisle toward him, gauging his reaction to her approach. He quelled a bit, cast his glance sideways. Sarah knew she had him. He would run or he would talk. If he ran, he would still talk, just a little later, and while out of breath.
Surprisingly, he held his place, continuing to pretend to read-to pretend poorly.
Remember, the best way to pretend to do most things is to actually do them, even while the goal of your action is something else. If you are pretending to be a window washer, so that you can case a window display, case the display while actually washing the window. If you are pretending to read, read, but without concern to understand what you are reading. You will be trying to understand something else.
More instructions.
Where had she learned these things? Why were they so deeply ingrained?
They were. They came to her mind easily, at the opportune moment. Clearly, she did not just know these things, she had lived them. They were part of the fabric of who she was. Of who she is? She had been a spy, a highly trained one, a good one, a very good one.
Tenses. So confusing. Can a woman with no past talk meaningfully in the present tense, the future tense? Or is she lost to time, to tense?
As she passed the man, she kept her attention on him but not her eyes. She heard him exhale; he thought she was going to pass him by. She whirled and pulled the pistol from her purse in one smooth motion. It was pressed sharply into his side before he finished exhaling.
"Don't move. Don't speak. Or I will kill you right here, right now. You know I can do it. You know I will do it. You know I will escape after I do it." Her whisper was low and fierce. It frightened her: she believed the words from her own mouth. So did the man. She saw him gulp.
No one was in the aisle. Sarah hissed a question. "Who do I work for?" The man looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Lost. He'd expected a different version of that question, a version about himself, not about her.
Bewildered: "You are a Special Agent, CIA."
A man. An offer. Blackmail. A girl. No choice. Too young, too helpless...too hopeless to refuse. A farm. No, no. The Farm.
A headache. Splitting.
"And why are you following me?"
If you opponent knows things you do not, that is the clandestine equivalent of the topographical high ground. Never give up the high ground. Always know more than your opponent. Always share less. Share nothing, if possible. There is no you to know. Share nothing.
The man was still confused by her questions. "Because my...superiors are worried that you are a threat to them."
"And how would I be a threat to them?"
"They are worried that you know something, might remember something, that could...compromise them."
Sarah bitterly wanted to laugh. She remembered nothing. Some threat she was. "Where am I stationed?"
The man shrugged. She jabbed him harder with the pistol. "I don't know...not for sure. I heard that you had been in Burbank. Anyway, I was told to make sure that you didn't head back there."
Burbank.
"I have a home here, a good one."
"Snoresville."
Harsh throbs behind her eyes. She clamped her teeth down, ignored the pain.
The man was a drone. Nothing more. He was there to maintain contact, but not to make decisions, not to take action. Someone else was running the show. She needed to know who. "Who're your superiors?"
The man shrugged again. Sarah believed the shrug. "How do you make contact?" The man started to reach for his back pocket. Sarah brought her foot down hard on top of his. He gave a muffled groan and stopped his reach. Daring him to move again or even to change expression, Sarah held his gaze as she put her hand into his pocket. A phone. She looked a question at him.
"I get texts, directions, everything from the phone."
She looked at it. "Is it locked?" The man shook his head. She punched the button and the phone's screen lit. She could see a text: Keep the target in sight. Report any contact she makes.
Almost without taking her eyes off the phone, Sarah delivered a surgical blow, a blow behind the man's ear with her pistol's handle. He collapsed to the floor. She checked him. He'd be ok, after some rest and some aspirin.
Sarah felt a glimmer of hope. She had a tangible lead, a lead on herself.
No one had yet noticed her or the man. She quickly rifled through his pockets, taking his money clip and his car keys. No ID.
She quickly walked into the parking lot. She hit the 'unlock' button in the fob and saw the lights flash on a gray Honda Accord. She got in and left the lot. After driving for about ten minutes, she pulled into a crowded discount department store lot. She parked the car and studied the man's phone.
The string of text messages that ended with the one she had first seen began with a photograph of her motel room door. He had known she was there, had been outside her door. Maybe it had been his footsteps she had heard, not Carina's. Maybe she'd been more hazy, more sleepy, more confused than she'd realized, at least at first.
Maybe Carina hadn't been sneaking to her door. After all, Carina had knocked. She seemed to know Sarah. And...Sarah knew Carina. The certainty gripped her. Sarah had tried to kill someone she knew, someone who took them to be...friends.
She tried to garrote her friend. She stopped, but, God, what sort of monster was she? She could offer excuses, but...
Killer. Assassin. Enforcer.
She forced herself to calm down. She wrote down the phone number of the phone, and the number the man had been texting. She went through the phone. Nothing else was there. No other numbers called, nothing.
She got out of the car and walked into the store, dropping the phone in the trash can near the door. She quickly bought some new clothes: a brown suede jacket, a blue blouse with little buttons that she found oddly irresistible, a white blouse, and two pairs of blue jeans, one blue, one black. She added underwear, socks and a pair of low boots. She noticed a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses and put them in her basket.
She paid for the items and went to the car. Climbing into the backseat and making sure no one could see her, she rapidly put on on the jeans, the blue blouse, the socks, and boots. She slipped on the sunglasses.
She was headed to San Ysidro. From there, she knew, she was likely headed to Burbank.
She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, her mirrored eyes reflecting the rearview reflection of her. Fitting. She was trapped in a hall of mirrors. All reflections, flitting images, and no idea who was casting the reflections
ooOoo
She had expected to drive around San Ysidro aimlessly for a while since she both knew and did not know what she was searching for, or, better, she would only know it when she found it.
It turned out she didn't need to drive for long. As she came into the depressed neighborhood, she saw a dive bar and it meant something to her. The Gull. She was virtually certain she had been there before, and that she had once been very frightened there, young there. Parking the car on the street, she took a moment to focus.
She put her pistol in the jacket pocket. She got out of the car and quickly crossed the street. Without hesitation, she pushed open the door and plunged into the darkness of the bar.
She took off her sunglasses and scanned the bar. It was filthy, crowded with unmatched furniture, but nearly empty of people.
An old man was staring into his foamy beer, a pitiable Narcissus perched above a nonreflecting pool. There was a bartender wiping down the other end of the bar, but he seemed to be doing nothing but redistributing the oily film that covered its surface.
He looked up at her, at her body. He was probably in his early sixties. He made no attempt to hide his lechery. Sarah walked to the bar quickly, giving the man's gaze no time to linger on her, dally.
When the man's gaze finally reached her face, he started slightly. Recognition. "Shit," he said in a colorless tone. The lechery was gone, replaced by caution, fear.
"I need your help," Sarah spoke softly, but making sure that menace was in her gaze, "I need you to get me some information. Cooperate, and I will pay you. Don't cooperate, and you will...pay me."
The man nodded choppily. Sarah picked up a napkin from the bar and held out her hand. The man handed her a pen from his shirt pocket.
Pocket. Pen. Pocket Protector. Herder. She leaned hard against the bar, the pain in her head unbalancing her.
Herder? What does that mean?
The man was studying her, noting her reaction, puzzled. She shook off the memory, suppressed the pain, and wrote the names Sarah Walker, Rebecca Franco, Carina Miller, and wrote the phone number the man had been texting.
She pushed the napkin toward the bartender. Why was she so sure of all this? But so unsure of almost everything else? God, her head hurt. It hurt.
Herder?
She looked up and down the bar, expecting to see a call bell on it.
Real ballerinas are tall.
Another surge of pain. Were these code phrases from her past...missions? Why did remembering them hurt so much? The pain was intense, increasing, worse than ever before...
The man gave her a curious look but then glanced at the napkin. He pointed to the first name, eyeing her strangely as he did. "Why do you want me to find information on you?"
"You know me? You know me?" She felt terrified and expectant all at once, even in the midst of pain that threatened to blind her. Her instincts had been right, better than right.
He nodded. "Sure, I mean I know you use various aliases, and yeah, I know you, although it's been years since I saw you, Jenny."
Jenny.
Sarah.
Rebecca.
Who am I?
How can there be so many of me, and none of me, all at once?...
Sarah's head was lodged in a vise, crushed between moving metal jaws. She heard a gasp of pain, her own, and then she slumped into darkness.
A/N2 This brings Act II to an end. Chapter 6 "Kill or Kiss" begins Act III.
