Sarah and Casey were in the home theatre lounge at the Buy More, strategizing. Casey had activated the Nerd Herd screensaver on the plasma screen in order to keep Beckman or Graham from being able to access the screen and monitor the two of them.
"We need to figure out where he is," Sarah was insisting.
"That's not a problem," Casey replied. "He's ingested so many tracking nanocells since I met him that I could probably track him on Mars."
"Seriously?"
"Hey, every time he trusts me to get him coffee, he's ingesting more."
She nodded. "Not bad," she admitted, grudgingly.
"The only problem is that my tracking equipment is in a secure facility."
Sarah's look of grudging admiration turned into one of disgust. "Oh, good job, genius."
"Hey, they've got enough stuff here that I can improvise. I just need a little while."
Chuck was having problems with his plasma screen TV. It was getting all sorts of distortion, which was making Guitar Hero practically impossible.
Of course, he considered that the distortion might all be in his brain. He had ingested a dozen Red Bulls since he'd been there, had barely slept at all, and figured he was probably being considered a top candidate to be an interrogation officer at Guantanamo Bay at this point.
He knew that the soldiers on guard duty were starting to get a little unhinged at his manic behavior, and every time he saw General Beckman, she looked that much closer to the edge. Director Graham was still limping, and Chuck was rather pleased in a vindictive fashion just how much chaos and mayhem he'd been able to visit upon these people.
That might've also been why they'd put the shock collar on him an hour ago.
He'd gotten out of his cell again, this time naked, and gone streaking up and down the corridor. He had actually pissed on an Army Ranger, which was not calculated to make him happy. Quite the contrary – Chuck had calculated that it would be one more thing to make General Beckman a little more insane.
And now his TV wasn't working properly. So he was getting pissed.
Annoyed, he dumped the guitar controller to the floor. He turned and looked at one of the surveillance cameras in the ceiling. "Oy!" he shouted. "If I'm going to be your unwilling prisoner, you jackasses could at least provide me with some working electronics!"
And just like that, the TV flickered on. It was General Beckman, and she looked like hell. "Why, hello there, General," Chuck said, pasting a gigantic shit-eating grin on his face.
"Bartowski… I swear to God, you are my worst nightmare."
"Ah, nothing like the feel of a job well done. Thank you, General!"
"WHY are you doing this, Bartowski? We're trying to make you as comfortable as possible."
"Why? Why?"
Chuck paused, as if he was actually considering the question.
"Well, you see, first of all, I got this entire database dumped into my head against my will. And then – would you like me to check off everything else that's happened since then?"
"No, Bartowski. I don't."
"Excellent! You see, I got chased through the streets of Chinatown by John Casey in a Suburban. Then I got held at gunpoint on a helipad by both him and Sarah Walker. Also, I disabled a bomb by downloading a porn virus. You're welcome, by the way. Then, I had to fake a relationship with a woman who I managed to fall in love with – thanks, by the way, for introducing that particular element of hell to my life.
"What happened after that. Let's see, a scientist who worked for Fulcrum tried to blow John Casey and me up, and then he abducted Sarah Walker, and then he tried to abduct me. Then, after I managed to disable him, I had to land a helicopter. Guess what – never done that before.
"After that, I got abducted by and yet managed to help with the capture of one of the most wanted spies in the world. You're welcome again. I managed to take a diamond out of the clutches of Al-Qaeda and put it directly in the CIA's hands. Then, I got China's top agent to defect. I helped take down a Triad cell. Oh, and did I mention that I kept a slightly unhinged CIA scientist from blowing up the Santa Monica Pier?"
He stopped for breath, and General Beckman started to speak. "Chuck, I am well aware of everything you've-"
"That may be, but YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY GOD DAMN THING I HAVE TO SAY!" Chuck roared at her.
General Beckman actually seemed slightly taken aback.
"THANK YOU. After that, I had to go back to Stanford, confront something I didn't want to confront, and almost got skewered by a crazy Icelandic assassin. Then, my sister and I both got drugged with truth toxin and we almost died. Hmmm. Oh yeah, then I got this great girlfriend. Too bad her ex-boyfriend was some crazy Greek bastard who I had to go stalk. Oops, so much for that girlfriend.
"But it gets even better, because the crazy Greek bastard brought Bryce mother fucking Larkin into the country. Oh my, when my life is great, it's great, because hot on his tail was Fulcrum. Gosh, that was fun, getting SHOT so that Fulcrum couldn't take me. And then, after that, I got to go take on some batshit crazy millionaire.
"Let's not forget that I got tossed off a hotel balcony by the Russian mafia, and oh yeah, that you jackasses tried to pluck me right out of the middle of Captain Awesome asking Ellie to marry him. I do believe that's it, right up until two nights ago, when you apparently drugged me and Sarah, dumped her in her hotel room, and brought me here."
"Bartowski, this is for your own good."
"General, you wouldn't know what was for my own good if it hit you in the face with a two-by-four!"
General Beckman looked up sharply. "What?"
"I said, you wouldn't know –"
"I know, shut up," she snapped. "It's just… Major Casey said the same thing twelve hours ago."
"Really," Chuck said. "So, that means Casey knows."
"He and Agent Walker are… efficient."
"Excellent. I expect I should be out of here within a day or so, then."
"That's not going to happen, Bartowski. If Walker and Casey tried to break you out of here, there would be… consequences. For them."
Chuck's face went pale and his eyes went wide. Then his features hardened.
When he spoke, his voice trembled, but there was definite steel beneath it. "General, let me assure you… if anything happens to Sarah…"
He paused, collecting himself. "I will be the last person you ever see."
And with that, he attempted to turn off the television, but accidentally hit the "channel up" button on the remote instead.
What he saw on the screen astonished him.
"Holy… shit…"
"We cannot bring Larkin in on this," Casey argued.
"He knows almost every CIA facility like the back of his hand," Sarah shot back. "Once we figure out where Chuck is, he'd be invaluab-"
She was cut off by Casey waving his hand. "What?"
He pointed at the television. The Nerd Herd screensaver was flickering. It popped, then disappeared. The screen went blank, and then –
Chuck appeared.
It was pretty clear he saw them, because his eyes went wide, and his jaw dropped.
"Holy… shit…"
"CHUCK!" Sarah shouted, jumping up from the couch and running to the screen.
His face broke into a huge smile. "Sarah!"
And at that point, the stress of having been awake for thirty-six hours, still trying to shake a Rohypnol hangover, and the weight of guilt and fear she'd been under broke her. Tears began cascading down her face, and when she tried to speak, she couldn't make anything come out.
Chuck's expression changed to one of concern. "Sarah, are you okay?"
Behind her, Casey rolled his eyes. "She's had a bit of a rough day or so."
Chuck ignored him. "Really, Sarah, are you all right?"
She wiped her face with her sleeve – that's the grey sweater she was wearing the day after I "broke up" with her, Chuck realized – and took a deep breath. "Yeah. I'm okay."
"What's been going on?" he asked.
Casey stepped forward. "Yesterday morning, your sister came home and discovered that you weren't in the apartment. She realized rather quickly that something was wrong, and called Rampart Division. They had detectives assigned to the case right away.
"Then, when we got to your sister's apartment, Walker threw up in the sink and almost passed out. Your sister's fiancé insisted on taking her to the hospital for tests. That's when we found out that she'd been administered Rohypnol.
"Devin insisted on having Ellie do a rape exam. When that turned out to be negative, we figured that somebody must've drugged you both to disable Walker and kidnap you."
"Yeah, General Beckman told me that Sarah put two NSA agents in the hospital during that," Chuck interjected.
A small smile crept onto Sarah's face. "Good to know," she said softly.
"Anyway, they managed to fake a fax to the Buy More and voicemails to both your sister and Walker. What they weren't counting on was the codes that you and Walker had set up for phone calls, and so she realized immediately it wasn't you.
"We figured it had to be Fulcrum or the Agency, and since Fulcrum hadn't said anything, that narrowed our choices. It was pretty much confirmed when I called General Beckman a few hours ago."
"And said that she wouldn't know what was good for me if it hit her in the face with a two-by-four," Chuck finished.
Casey looked puzzled. "How'd you know that?"
"Because I said the same thing a few minutes ago, and General Beckman told me you'd said it."
Casey nodded.
"Chuck," Sarah interrupted, "we're going to get you out. We just need to know where you are."
"Well, that's a problem," Chuck replied. "I don't have a clue."
"Your body is loaded with tracking nanocells," Casey told him. "We'll figure it out soon enough."
Chuck shook his head. "I'm in a room with a blocking field around it. The signal will never penetrate."
"Dammit," muttered Casey. "Well, that's out."
"Anyway," Chuck continued. "You might want to be careful, if for nobody's sake other than General Beckman."
"I don't understand," Sarah replied.
"Well, Sarah, I kind of told her that if anything happened to you… that, well, I would kill her."
As odd a thing as it was to smile about, Sarah got a little smile on her face and looked down. Casey arched an eyebrow. "That's mighty chivalrous of you, Bartowski, but threatening the life of the NSA Director probably isn't the wisest course of action."
"Got nothing to lo-"
And he was cut off. The signal had obviously been isolated, and the NSA had disconnected him.
"Alright," Sarah sighed. "We need to figure out a way to find out where he is."
"I have an idea," Casey replied.
"What is it?"
"We need to go talk to Ellie Bartowski."