Scene XIV – CIA Facility

The next morning, Casey met Chuck at the entrance of the plain-looking CIA facility to escort him inside. Chuck was not moving particularly well after his class the previous night, but it was nothing four or six Advil couldn't help.

However, the medication wasn't helping him deal with the mocking grin on Casey's face. Casey chuckled under his breath a couple of times, trying to goad Chuck into talking about the incident with Morgan. Chuck decided to ignore him, so the pair rode the elevator in silence, a bad Muzak version of REO Speedwagon's "I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You" filling their ears. The Muzak was only slightly better than talking to Casey would have been.

Sarah had called Chuck early that morning, waking him from a sound sleep. Today was supposed to be an off day, at least at the Buy More. Chuck had been looking forward to a couple extra hours of sleep to heal his various bruises, especially the ones to his ego. However, duty called; they were asking for his help.

He couldn't pass that up, in more ways then one. It was nice to be needed; that didn't seem to happen often enough in his spy role. Besides, you didn't exactly say 'no' when the CIA came calling, especially when your neighbor was an NSA killing machine.

The pair took the elevator to the third floor, exiting into the empty, sterile white hallways. The Muzak slowly faded as the elevator doors shut, replaced by silence interrupted only by the sounds of their echoing footfalls.

About halfway down the main hall from the elevator, Casey opened a door on the left-hand side of the corridor. They entered into the corner of a large rectangular room with three sets of doors and long windows running the length of the back wall, one set for each interrogation room. Their two prisoners from the other night were in the end rooms; the middle room was empty.

Under the middle window sat a long desk with three sets of recording equipment. Each set of equipment was hooked to an overhead monitor displaying the current feed from a corresponding room. The monitors displayed the current time and a running counter of the feed from its room, with the center monitor not recording.

A pair of rolling office chairs sat pushed away from the front of the desk. Perched on the right end of the desk was a small computer terminal; the screen-saver was running, the CIA emblem dancing randomly about the screen.

Towards the center of the room was a large rectangular wooden table with a dark stain surrounded by a scattered formation of six chocolate-colored leather chairs with high backs; both the chairs and the table looked like they had seen better days. The table was covered by half-empty coffee mugs, notepads and fairly orderly stacks of paper. Sarah sat in a chair on the far side of the table; hearing them enter, she set down a stack of papers and stood up to greet them.

As Chuck and Casey made their way towards her, Chuck eyed a stack of boxes and computer equipment sitting in the other corner of the room running along the hallway. He recognized the items from the suspects' office; a cleaning crew had swept in and packed up everything that looked relevant. Most of the boxes had obviously been opened since their move, likely explaining the stacks of papers on the center table. However, the computers looked like they hadn't been touched.

Chuck was stunned: given what the suspects supposedly did, the computers should have been the first priority. "What, nobody's looked at the servers yet?"

Casey answered, "Nope. Whenever we ask the IT department when they could spare a guy to take a look, we get the confidence-inspiring response of 'some time soon'."

"Ah." Chuck had some experience working with information technology departments at the Buy More. They usually weren't the most efficient operations. Why should the CIA be any different?

"That's why I had you come in," Sarah said.

Chuck's face went flat. "What?"

"We need the computers set up, and we need to find out what's on them. We can't wait any longer."

Chuck's heart sank. Of course it was. His job was to do his job, only for the CIA, and for free. Thinking through what he would need to do, he hoped - and searched - for a way out. "Well, I can set up the systems, but I'm not sure it will do us any good, unless these guys feel like sharing their passwords."

Sarah pointed to a set of compact disks in envelopes stacked on a corner of the desk. "We did get a guy to bring down some password-hacking software. Should be plug-and-play; boot the computer with the disk in the drive, and the software will lead you down the path. Let me know if you find anything." She turned back to Casey; she started showing him some notes on a yellow legal pad.

Well, at least the hacking software would be cool. Still, Chuck was in a grouchy mood because of his assignment. He looked around the room, searching for a likely place to set up the machines. The center table was covered, as was the desk with the monitoring equipment, so they were out. There wasn't any other furniture in the room. "Can I get an extension cord, a power strip, and maybe a long folding table?"

Without looking up, Casey responded, "What you see is what we have. Make it work."

Terrific. There was a single unused paired outlet towards the corner with the boxes, but no table meant he'd either be sitting Indian-style or laying on his stomach as he worked, and no power strip meant he could only have one machine up at a time rather than working on them in parallel. It all made for a long day.

Chuck rolled up his sleeves as he petulantly shuffled over to the computer equipment.

Scene XV – Buy More

Morgan looked like death warmed over. He barely heard the pimply-faced teenager ask her question - for the third time. He shook himself out of his fog. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

The customer had clearly had enough of Morgan. Arms folded, she enunciated, "The. Latest. Smoking. Popes. Album. Idiot."

Finally registering what she was saying, he responded, "No, no, you don't want that! The band just threw together a bunch of cover songs to get out of their record contract. That's a terrible album. Besides, take it from me: you don't want anything to do with anything with the word 'smoking' in it." He nodded sagely.

The girl shook her head and walked away, disgusted.

"Stay away from cigarettes!" Morgan shouted after her. Even raising his voice seemed difficult given his energy level. He wanted nothing more than to collapse into a chair somewhere; the urge to find a cigarette was driving him crazy. At least he had gotten the message out to one young person.

Jeff and Lester wandered up. Without Chuck around, Lester was technically in charge of the Nerd Herd desk, which meant that absolutely nothing was getting done.

Lester said, "I see even the young girls know to stay away from you."

Jeff added, "Probably better. Sixteen will get you 20, dude."

"Don't do the crime if you won't do the time."

"That's what Mom always said."

Morgan asked, "Isn't your mom actually doing the time right now?"

"Yep. She practices what she preaches." Jeff actually looked a little proud. Morgan just shook his head.

Lester said, "So, my compadre and I were about to head out back for a little constitutional. Interested?" Jeff pulled a carton of cigarettes out of his pants pocket, giving them a little shake.

Morgan's face was shocked. "C'mon, guys, you know I'm trying to quit."

Lester feigned shock. "Really? I had forgotten. Jeff?"

"Why, me too." He put away the cigarettes.

"Well, if you're trying to quit, I might have a little something here you'd be interested in." Lester patted his shirt pocket suggestively.

Morgan looked cautiously interested. "What's that?"

He pulled out a green box. "Nicotine gum. Guaranteed to wean you off that nasty cigarette habit, one minty chew at a time."

Jeff obviously was bothered by the 'nasty habit' comment. "Dude!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms.

Lester shook his head, holding out a hand. "No offense."

Jeff immediately calmed down. "None taken."

"Why can't I just walk down to the drug store and buy a pack myself?"

"This is the good stuff. Prescription only, my friend."

Jeff added, "I borrowed a prescription pad from my doctor."

Lester turned to look at Jeff. "Really?"

Jeff just nodded. Lester muttered, "Speaking of getting twenty…"

Morgan said, "So what's the catch?"

"Nothing for nothing, my friend. Nothing for nothing."

"What do you want?"

"I believe you have an almost-new Xbox game in your locker, given to you as a Christmas present. Straight-up trade."

Jeff added, "Plus a bag of Cheetos from the vending machine."

Lester directed an annoyed look at Jeff. Jeff shrugged. "What? I'm hungry."

Lester rolled his eyes. "Fine. The Xbox game and the bag of Cheetos, and you're one step closer to ditching that disgusting addiction."

Jeff once again looked insulted. "Dude!"

"No offense."

"None taken."

Morgan looked completely torn. "C'mon, Anna gave me that game for Christmas. She wrote me a note inside the case and everything. I can't trade that."

Lester said, "OK, Morgan. Your call." He turned to walk away.

Jeff looked dismayed. "What about my Cheetos?" he whispered angrily.

Lester whispered back, "I'll buy you the stupid Cheetos. C'mon."

As the two started to walk off, Morgan agonized further. He let them get twenty feet away before calling out, "Wait!"

The pair turned around, evil smiles on their faces. "Yes?" Lester asked.

Morgan caved. "I'll go get the game."

Jeff's raised his eyebrows. "And the Cheetos?"

Morgan sighed. "And the Cheetos. Man, you guys are so wrong." He trudged past them towards the back of the store, shoulders slouched.

Jeff looked at Lester. "Think he'll figure out we replaced the real gum with Trident?"

Lester shook his head. "Doubtful. But even then, we'll already have the game. And then the fun begins." The two bumped fists.

Looking after Morgan, Lester added, "Besides, it's bad enough having one co-worker who smells like an ash tray."

"Dude!"

Lester looked at Jeff pointedly.

Jeff slumped. "Yeah, I know."

Scene XVI – CIA Interrogation Facility, Main Interrogation Room

The printer hummed with quiet efficiency, building a stack of printouts page by page. The printer represented something of a moral victory for Chuck; however, that victory had come with a cost.

Every time that day that Chuck had asked for something, Sarah or Casey would rather irritably tell him to make do with what he had. He finally convinced the duo that he needed a printer by telling them that he would need to transcribe about fifty pages of code onto notebook pages, which would take at least ten hours. Of course, he could also print them out in about ten minutes with a decent printer.

Being a CIA facility, Sarah reluctantly made several calls and filled out a requisition. Her conversations often involved a raised voice and talk of calling Director Graham. She was obviously unhappy with the distraction; neither Casey nor Sarah seemed to be making any headway with the suspects – not that they were exactly going out of their way to fill him in. Chuck started getting grouchier.

While waiting for the printer, Chuck took a moment to check out both of the detainees. Davis still looked bored more than anything; he seemed to be counting holes on the ceiling tiles.

Walking back across the room, he stole a quick peek at Sarah. She sat at the center table, trying to make sense of the stacks of papers in front of her. She looked exhausted; Chuck wondered if more coffee would help.

Arriving at the window to the third room, Chuck observed Cushman with his head face down on the table, resting his head on his arms. Casey was trying to talk to him, but the suspect refused to pick his head up off the table. Occasionally, Cushman's head would move as if he was responding to one of Casey's questions, but the motion always quieted quickly.

Casey delivered one final threat, which elicited absolutely no reaction from Cushman. Obviously frustrated, Casey exited the room. Sarah raised an eyebrow as he shut the door behind him.

"No, nothing," he said tersely in response to Sarah's unspoken query. He walked over to the monitoring desk, pressing a button to digitally mark the current point on the recording.

Chuck wandered partway back towards the table, looking back and forth between the pair. "Two days, and nothing from either one of them?"

Casey looked disdainfully at Chuck as he took a seat by the center table. "Not nothing," he answered, holding up a pad of paper with some writing on it. He reassessed. "Well, nothing much."

Sarah stood up and took the pad from Casey. "Suspect #1 is Brent Davis. He is the majority owner of BD Security Associates, the same company that owns the offices we raided the other night. The company does security assessments for businesses, assessing their defenses against hackers, viruses, etc. And apparently, he's gay." Sarah gave a little sideways look at Casey with a knowing little grin.

Chuck, following her gaze, asked with a low laugh, "You didn't…?"

Casey spun the chair around, glaring at Chuck. Then he mouthed one word: "Mor-gan."

Chuck's amusement faded in a hurry. "Point taken. Suspect #2 is…?"

Sarah gave Chuck and Casey each a curious glance, but continued, "Suspect #2 is their developer, Jeremy Cushman. Seems like he's the guy who does all the coding and the legwork, while Davis does the business development and sales."

Casey said, "Research suggests they're a small start-up outfit, which means long hours and low pay. The company was founded early last year, and they only have a handful of customers. Business details are sketchy at best; they haven't even had to file taxes yet."

Sarah said, "Davis won't say anything else other than to ask what he's done wrong, and demand a phone call and a lawyer. Cushman won't say anything about what he was working on; he won't violate the nondisclosure agreement with their client without some kind of warrant, and he's complaining about a headache."

Sarah stopped. Chuck raised an eyebrow, not bothering to hide his surprise. "That's it? Really?"

Sarah ran a hand over her tired eyes, a frustrated expression coming to her face. "Chuck, if these guys were agents, we could interrogate them a bit more vigorously. As it stands, we may need to pass them back to the police for processing, and they wouldn't look kindly on some of the techniques we would normally use."

"The police aren't the problem; it's the damn lawyers," Casey interjected.

Chuck ignored Casey's political commentary. "How much longer can you keep them?"

"Without charging them? We've got enough evidence that they tried to penetrate a CIA server that we can keep them another day or so. But then we'll have to file formal charges, which means turning them over to the cops."

Sarah turned back towards Casey. "Hey, I may have found something. Come take a look."

"In a minute. I gotta hit the head."

Sarah sat back down and re-examined the document she had been reading. She apparently had some trouble understanding what she was reading, because she would periodically read parts of the document out loud with a confused tone to her voice.

While she was reading, Chuck walked back over to Cushman's room. Cushman just lay there like a lump. Something bothered him about the scene; he felt like he was missing something. He stood there for a moment, trying put the pieces together. Finally, he figured it out. Without really thinking, he blurted out, "Let me take a try at him."

"No, Chuck, we really need the information off the computers. We need something to loosen their tongues, and the computers are the best shot." She put both arms back on the table to support herself as she looked back over the document.

"C'mon, I did a pretty good job with Liniman."

Sarah never even looked up, but her tone did get a bit sharper. "No, Chuck. Focus on the computers."

Chuck felt dismayed; he knew how to get Cushman to talk. A little more assertively, he said, "Look, Cushman's a programmer, and I think…"

Frustrated, Sarah slammed the table with her hands before turning around, eyes aflame. "Chuck! Just do the computers."

Chuck clenched his jaw. A little more sharply than he intended, he replied, "Fine." He walked slowly back over towards the computers.

Sarah sat down and picked up the stack of papers from the table, angrily rifling through them. Unable to focus, her eyes kept flipping over to Chuck as he headed past her back towards his corner. Sarah's expression held equal parts anger and frustration.

Unable to contain herself, she shot out of the chair and stalked after Chuck. Hearing Sarah's angry footsteps, Chuck turned around and watched her approach, arms crossed, his facial expression as closed as his body language.

Before she had quite gotten over to Chuck, she hissed, "What's your problem?" She crossed the last few feet to stand a little too close to him, trying to keep their conversation somewhat private in case Casey returned quickly.

Matching her heated whisper, Chuck asked, "My problem?"

"Yes, Chuck, your problem. Why can't you just do what I ask?"

"Well, next time you ask me to do something, I'll do it. But you've just been ordering me around all day."

"We've only got so much time, and we can't sit around and debate what to do all day."

"What debate? I'm just trying to contribute, and nobody's listened to a word I've said all day."

"That's not true."

"Oh, really?"

"I got you your printer, didn't I?" Even as she said it, Sarah's eyes seemed to acknowledge how lame the statement sounded. Her frustration only grew.

"Oh, thanks so much. I only had to beg for that."

"As part of the team, sometimes you need to just follow orders."

"Yes, but if I were part of the team, wouldn't that imply having at least a little input?"

Sarah spoke as if explaining things to a child. "And you do. But sometimes, you just need to follow orders so we can get things done efficiently. Like right now."

Her tone amplified Chuck's anger. "Great. You'll say, 'Chuck, just wait in the car.' And I'll say 'Yes, Agent Casey.' 'Yes, Agent Walker.' And maybe at the end of the mission, I'll get a 'Good job, Chuck,' and a pat on the head."

With a cruel smile, she said, "Well, maybe if you actually stay in the car that time."

Chuck's eyes went wide at her statement; she might as well have slapped him across the face. Her words struck directly at his deepest insecurities.

Sarah's steely expression drained from her face almost as soon as the last word left her mouth. Her eyes showed her regret; there was a long, awkward pause before she spoke. "Chuck, I…" Her face was apologetic, but she couldn't seem to force out any other words.

"No need to say anything else." The glint of the pendant on her necklace distracted him for a moment; he swallowed hard. He didn't know what he felt, but he needed to walk away. In a soft voice, he said, "I'll just be over here working on the computers."

The door to the hallway opened; Sarah and Chuck immediately looked over, expecting to see Casey return. Instead, a guy in a blue dress shirt and dark slacks pushed a dolly carrying a laser printer and several reams of paper through the doorway. "Somebody order a printer?"

Chuck raised his hand, glad for the distraction. Pointing over towards his corner with the raised hand, he cleared his throat and said, "Please put it over there." He turned away from Sarah and walked over towards the spot he had indicated, not giving her another look.

He didn't see Sarah stare after him for a long moment, helplessness and sadness clearly etched on her face.