A/N: The Hopes and Fears arc continues.

The Missionary

I just gotta, I just gotta know,
If you're gonna, if you're gonna stay,
I just gotta, I just gotta know,
I can't have it, can't have it any other way.

— Vance Joy, Riptide

Chapter Forty-Three: Apartment, Compartment

They'd gone around the block several times and seen nothing alarming.

The apartment building had a doorman but he did not seem overly concerned about his post. People came and went without him speaking to them or observing them closely — except for the young women who went in and out. He observed them quite closely as they walked away from him. Top to bottom, emphasis on bottom.

Casey stopped the car at a distance from the apartment complex, around the corner and out of the view of the doorman — just in case.

During a quick stop between Henny's Outdoor Emporium and the apartment building, Casey had bought three burner phones.

He had a knife out now and was opening the phones as he sat in the front seat, programming the numbers of the other two into each. Before they left the cabin, they had disabled their old phones and put them in a bag in the car's trunk.

While Casey worked on synching the new phones, Chuck retrieved the copy of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures and the pages he had found in it.

He had studied the pages several times, albeit briefly, since arriving at the cabin. He could make nothing of them.

The handwriting was in the green ink that had been used to write Zarnow's name and the marginalia in the Chomsky book, and the handwriting seemed to match, and to match the letter to Casey and the legend of the map for Sarah, but the pages were all English but gibberish English. Lots of sentences like the nonsense sentence of Chomsy's about colorless green ideas.

And yet Chuck was growing increasingly sure that it all meant something. The more he thought about what happened to him in the Intersect Lab, the more he thought that it all had to mean something. Someone had expected him to end up there, planned for it. Chuck had returned to get the Chomsky book when he could have — should have — immediately tried to escape. Although he had not experienced it as a compulsion at the time, in hindsight, going back for the book seemed to be one. It was not simply that he was curious about the book or wanted it. He — or maybe the Intersect, or both of them — needed it. Chuck hadn't felt any compulsion because he had not tried to escape, but he was now sure that if he had tried, he would have been unable to leave the book behind.

That book had been placed there for him, the pages in it stationed inside the book for him. He was meant to have it.

But why? How?

In the Lab, once he had it, his attention had been focused on Sarah and on escape. And, after they had escaped, Sarah had been almost his sole focus. He'd studied the pages after the pancake breakfast, and again later as Sarah napped naked against him, but he had not been able to understand them.

It seemed like the nonsense sentences were a code, but breaking the code was going to be hard. There were no obvious patterns either among the letters of the words or among the words taken as units. Pattern recognition was something Chuck trusted himself to be able to do. When he was a boy, Chuck and his father had often played with codes and ciphers and Chuck had been especially adept at decoding and deciphering, pushing his father to come up with ever more difficult challenges.

But this code seemed like it would require something external to it to make it clear, a key.

Chuck suspected that it was an Ave Maria cipher in which each word represented a letter — words spelling other words — but the lack of visible pattern in the words suggested that there was more than one set of matches from words to letters, and so he would need access to the different sets of matches in a key to decode the message.

Sarah put her hand on Chuck's leg, rubbing it. "Any ideas? Can you decode it? I never saw code like that in my Agency work."

Chuck nodded, running a finger along the lines again, baffled but unwilling to surrender.

"No, it's too impractical for fieldwork, too cumbersome. You'd have to carry a key — " he looked at Sarah, " — a kind of dictionary. Better to use something easier, something you can decode by a simple system, an easy algorithm, so that all you have to remember is the system or the algorithm." He paused, putting his hand on hers. "You know, like replace each letter by the next letter in the alphabet. 'S-a-r-a-h' would be 'T-b-s-b-g'. 'K-i-s-s' would be 'I-j-t-t'."

Chuck smiled at Sarah and leaned in to kiss her.

Her long, quiet sigh after the kiss kept his attention. His eyes narrowed. "What?"

She looked wistful. "I hated leaving the cabin, our bedroom," Sarah whispered into his ear. "I didn't want to ever leave. Well, except for the odor of kerosene."

Chuck nodded, blushing a bit, agreeing. "I wish — " He paused, not quite sure how to finish, "I wish we'd had more time…and not just to…you know."

Sarah smirked at him, gently, as when he was asleep. "I would've liked lots more of…you know, but I know what you mean. We haven't had a chance to — "

"Talk," Chuck said, interrupting softly. "No time." His intonation was regretful, a bit frustrated.

Sarah nodded.

Casey twisted in the seat and handed each of them a burner phone.

They took them, he gave them a glance and echoed Chuck's words, No time. Casey turned around and exited the car.

Sarah nodded at Chuck, her earlier smirk all gone, her face cold sober. "I promise, Chuck, we will have time. This is no dalliance." Her words were categorical, resolved but vulnerable.

Chuck's words matched hers. "No, not for me, either."

What does she want for us, hope for? More questions Chuck could not answer.

Casey had opened and closed the trunk and was stomping his feet in the cold, gesturing urgently for them to get out of the car. Snow was falling around him.

They climbed out of the car, Chuck tucking the pages into the book and the book into the bellows pocket of the heavy coat Casey had bought him. From the other pocket, he pulled out his new gloves and put them on.

Sarah was slipping hers on too.

Casey shook his head when they joined their gloved hands. "The holiday's come and gone, kids. Walker's bird's been stuffed, repeatedly, with lots of Bartowski baby gravy. Time to zip 'em up and brace yourselves for Spyworld."

He didn't give them time to react, although Chuck saw Sarah redden; Casey went straight on. "I don't expect any problem from the doorman, but once we're inside, we need to get into Zarnow's apartment without being seen. I've put the lockpicking tools in my pocket. Do you have any idea what we're looking for, Bartowski?"

"No, but I hope I'll know it when I see it."

Casey cursed under his breath but turned into the snowy wind. "Yay. Confidence builder. Let's go."

Chuck glanced at Sarah then let go of her hand as they came into view of the front of the apartment building.

He hated letting go.

Spyworld.

Sarah swallowed hard when Chuck dropped her hand.

She understood it but she hated it. Her constant contact with him since finding him underground had been a necessity and she immediately ached for his touch.

Time to be a spy, not a lovesick schoolgirl. But I want to be a lovesick schoolgirl.

She pleased herself by her denial that this was a dalliance, pleased that she had managed the words. She meant them.

I'm not Carina, never was.

Saying anything she needed to say was alway hard for her. What she needed to say always seemed to recede from her as the moment for saying it approached. Of course, there was more, much more she wanted to say to Chuck, but it would have to wait.

She hoped Chuck knew that when she told him she loved him it was not the heat of the moment speaking. It was her heart. Her whole heart.

The heart he had helped her recall. The heart she'd always had but assigned a deep cover mission long ago. Her heart had gone dark — as Sarah had so many times. As Carina recently had. It was only now returning to the light.

As the three of them approached the apartment building, the doorman zeroed in on Sarah. She had hoped the bulky, drab work coat she was wearing would have kept him from noticing her, but no luck.

He gave her a greasy grin. Even as she recoiled from it inwardly, she smiled outwardly, forcing herself to widen the smile enough to touch his ego. God, I've always loathed this, but especially now. She cringed at her past self, at how many times she had smiled at men to manipulate them. Each time in the past she had loathed it but only now did she let herself feel it. It almost overwhelmed her.

Ignoring Casey and Chuck, the doorman opened the door for Sarah, staring at her during the entire unctuous, practiced motion. "Welcome!" Innuendo leaked from the word.

Sarah saw Chuck's gait hitch and Casey frown, but she did not react to the man. His eyes on her rear as she went inside were a physical groping. She nearly turned and smacked him.

Casey growled. "What a dickhead. A dog in heat would be more subtle."

When Chuck laughed at Casey's comment, the anxiety Sarah felt began to ease. To ease, but it did not leave her.

Can Chuck really forgive and forget my past? Or will it eventually come back to haunt him? He wants me now but for how long? I'm a million miles from the woman he must have imagined for himself.

She shook her head, frowning, as they got on the elevator and Chuck noticed. He brushed his gloved hand against hers. Smiled.

His gaze anchored her. She exhaled slowly. Focus. Compartmentalize. You're good at it. Always have been. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

She exhaled again. It had not been the doorman's Welcome that so much unsettled her.

Bartowski baby gravy. Why did Casey have to say that? It was still in her mind, churning her feelings slowly, deeply.

Had it bothered Chuck, that image, that thought? Not just its crassness but its reality.

Her worry stayed, it would not compartmentalize.

Spyworld had gotten more complicated for her.

Zarnow's apartment door still had yellow police tape across it, although the tape was beginning to sag.

Sarah and Casey looked at each other, then he stepped back from the door, fishing the lockpick tools from his pocket and handing them to her. "I've heard you're good at this."

Sarah nodded, somehow embarrassed by Casey's words, though this time he hadn't intended to embarrass her. He was telling the truth. She was good at it.

But she felt Chuck's eyes on her the whole time as she knelt by the door, unrolled the tools, and went to work.

The access of self-consciousness made her fingers clumsy, but it still did not take her long to open the door. She quickly swung it open, and she entered, staying low so as not to rub against the police tape.

Do not cross — the words on the tape, and Sarah felt a twinge as she went beneath it. Chuck and Casey ducked and followed her inside, and then she shut the door.

Zarnow's apartment was stale, the air heavy. An empty wheelchair dominated the living room and could be seen from the small foyer in which they stood. A bloodstain browned the carpet. Sarah heard Chuck's sharp inhalation.

The thought of what happened there rushed back at all three of them. Zarnow's mother killed. Fulcrum.

They walked in silence into the living room, giving the wheelchair a wide berth. "What kind of evil bitch kills a helpless old lady?" Casey breathed out the question in an almost-whisper.

Chuck was pale, silent.

The room had been searched — either that, or Zarnow and his mother were lousy housekeepers, and Sarah did not think they were.

Chuck needed a distraction. He was staring fixedly at the bloodstain.

"Okay, let's search. Casey, you search here," Sarah said in a calm tone that belied her own feelings, a tone for Chuck, "and Chuck, find Zarnow's office. You search there. I'll check the other rooms."

Chuck nodded but without changing the locus of his gaze. After a moment, he blinked and left the living room. He opened a door. "Here's the office," he said in a monotone and went in, his face still pale.

Chuck was trying to cope with what he had just seen. His hands were trembling.

It was not that he had forgotten what Zarnow had done, sacrificed. But the last months had been so busy with so much that he had pushed the facts aside. Now they came back, all the more awful for coming back in the stale air and the brown bloodstain.

He gave his hands a shake, trying to calm himself. Back when it all happened, Sarah had told him that he was Zarnow's life's work, the Intersect was, and that Zarnow was not going to give that work to Fulcrum. It felt strange, thinking of himself as someone else's project, one that mattered so much to that someone else.

It didn't help that his feelings were so jumbled anyway, that the scene with the doorman had angered him, reminded him of who Sarah had been. Watching her kneel to pick the lock had intensified the feeling. All she had ever been was a spy — did he really think she could leave it all behind and choose him.

Zarnow had chosen him but that was different. Casey's comment about gravy — had that shaken Sarah? They'd never talked about family in anything but the most abstract terms. Could a woman with Sarah's training and skill set, her habits, want the sort of life Chuck still hoped for, despite the advent of the Intersect?

He tried to push it all from his mind. He and Sarah would talk; he would find out what she hoped for them, if anything. I love her.

He was clinging to her comment about this being no dalliance, to her telling him she loved him, to all that happened in the cabin and to what it felt like. Despite Casey's redescription of it.

And — he needed to remember that there was no future to worry about until they mastered the present, until they understood what was now happening.

Graham had kept Chuck so busy in part because he wanted to prevent Chuck from asking questions, from thinking. The headaches had helped

But Chuck was free and the headaches were gone and Chuck had questions.

What was the connection between his parents' past and his present?

Had Graham been telling the truth?

...

More questions pressed him but he shook his head at them, refusing. The wooden desk chair in front of Zarnow's computer squeaked when Chuck sat down in it.

Besides the computer, Zarnow's desk was littered with fountain pens, rollerballs, pencils and papers. A small book rack stood on one corner of the desk, holding several science and mathematics reference books and manuals. But what caught Chuck's attention was the bottle of fountain pen ink pushed back to the back of the desk.

Chuck reached for it and picked it up. The bottle was wrapped in a label that went all the way around it, but the ink could be seen above it. Noodler's Hunter Green Ink. It was the same shade as the ink on the pages.

After staring at the bottle for a moment, Chuck shook it, not quite sure why.

Something moved inside the bottle, something solid, not just the sloshing ink. Chuck tried to see inside and, by tilting the bottle, he was able to see what looked like white plastic in the green ink. It was a little like looking into his Magic 8-Ball when he was a kid, but with a green, not bluish-purple liquid, and with no response like Reply Hazy, Try Again!

Although, to be honest, that did seem to be the world's response to his latest questions.

Chuck opened the center desk and searched. He found a pair of small, needle-nosed pliers jammed in the back, and he took them out of the drawer and put them on the desktop. Carefully, he unscrewed the lid on the ink, then he submerged the long nose of the pliers into the bottle. It took a second of fishing, but he finally, delicately closed the pliers around whatever was in the ink.

When he pulled it out, he realized it was a small plastic pouch, ziplock and opaque. He grabbed a tissue from the box in front of the books and wiped the pouch clean. It was like a scene in a movie, like National Treasure. He pulled the pouch open and peered inside. There, dry and gleaming, was a flash drive.

He wiped his fingers again to make sure they were clean — green ink had already stained the tips of his index and middle fingers and thumb — he took the flash drive out of the pouch. He spoke Sarah and Casey's names loud enough for them to hear him. He was sure this was why he had come, why he had the book. He took it out and put it on the desk, then he turned on the computer as Sarah and Casey joined him. With a smile at them, he brandished the flashdrive. "It was hidden in the fountain pen ink bottle."

Sarah walked to him and put a hand softly on his shoulder. Her other hand rested on his neck, her thumb caressing him. Casey grunted puzzledly.

Chuck inserted the flash drive into the computer. An icon appeared on the screen. And then there was a ding. Chuck felt the Chomsky book vibrate. He picked it up and looked at it more closely, finally laying it flat and running his hand along the middle of the book. He felt a lump in the spine. "Look, Chuck," Sarah said, calling his attention back to the screen.

Three words were blinking there.

Retinal verification required.

"Damn," Casey said, defeated.

Chuck shook his head and leaned in toward the small camera mounted on the monitor. The light on it was glowing green. The computer screen changed, showing Chuck's retina. A line went from the top of the image to the bottom, with various features of the retina lighting up. The screen went blank. Chuck sat back, feeling the way Casey had sounded.

The camera went off, the green light gone. But then the computer screen lit up again.

Password?

Chuck typed in the Chomsky sentence. The screen darkened. The three of them held their breath, and then it lit up.

The contents of the flash drive were displayed.

The drive's name was also displayed at the top, Personal Journal. Below it was a list of dates, beginning the same fall that Chuck had enrolled at Stanford.

"How'd you do that?"

Chuck shrugged. "The drive was heavily encrypted. But I was able to access it by passing all three security measures. The book has some sort of activator inserted into the spine. The retinal scanner was set up to accept my scan. And you saw me enter the password."

"How the hell did Zarnow have access to your retina, kid?" Casey growled, sounding angry, as if he resented some violation of Chuck's privacy.

Chuck shrugged again. "I have no idea. But all this was planned. Something in the Intersect made sure I got the book, had it with me."

"But his phone had a different password, right?" Sarah asked.

"Yes, Avram, Chomsky's middle name. But Zarnow did not consider me finding his phone. That wasn't among the possibilities he foresaw. But he foresaw me being bunkered. He mentioned that Chomsky sentence to me when he came to Burbank."

"So, this is his journal," Sarah asked, "and it goes back that far?"

"Yes, that's almost the same time I started at Stanford."

"We don't have time for you to read all that, not even with the Intersect helping, Chuck," Sarah said. He felt her lift her hand, look at her watch. "Can you remove the encryption so that you can look at the information somewhere else, on another computer?"

"Yes, but even that will take time. I'll start. You two keep searching. Maybe this isn't all there is to find."

Casey left. Sarah bent down and kissed Chuck's ear. "Great job, Chuck," she whispered just before she went back to searching.

Chuck turned as she left. Disbelief welled up in him as he watched her leave and for a moment he could hardly imagine that the cabin had happened or that Sarah had just caressed him and kissed him. She was the most amazing, complicated woman he had ever known, the most mysterious. She loves me?

His disbelief brought another Magic 8-Ball response floating to mind: Signs point to yes.

Yes. He would take it. He would believe the signs

Facing the computer, he started the work of removing the encryption, setting up the necessary program and then letting it run. He was tempted to peek at the journal but he did not yield to the temptation.

He was searching through the other drawers in the desk when he noticed that the small light camera on the screen was again glowing green. The feeling of being watched unsettled him.

The screen went blank.

Chuck tapped it with a finger and waited. It lit up, but this time an animated figure was displayed on it.

Chuck's mouth fell open.

It was Green Lantern, the DC comics hero, and Chuck's childhood favorite. The animated figure smiled, saluted Chuck, and then vanished.

Chuck blinked and the screen showed the journal entries again.

The decryption was done, much faster than Chuck expected.

He stood up, leaning his weight on his hands, his hands on the desktop. He had lived through some sort of visitation.

Green Lantern.

He pulled the flash drive out of the computer and put it into his pants pocket.

Sarah was smiling to herself as she searched Zarnow's chest of drawers.

Chuck was special. What a mind!

She loved all of him, mind and heart. But she loved most how his mind was inside his heart, guided by it, tempered by it. Even when he had been so hurt by her actions, so angry, he had never truly sought revenge. She knew he had thought about it, maybe even wanted it and wished for it and promised it to himself. But he was not the sort of man who could hold a grudge; he was not the sort of man who could not forgive.

She needed to remember that when she started to worry about her past. He had already forgiven her for a deadly, intimate trespass after the El Compadre.

Her smile deepened. A flash drive in a bottle of ink.

Carina sat down.

Two men from the group around the fire approached Tyger. He talked to them quietly; she could feel the power he had over them, over the whole scene. Their conversation was visible but not audible.

At several points, Tyger glanced at her as they talked.

She crossed her legs and let one foot dangle, drawing attention to the length of her leg, the pressure increasing the shapeliness of her calf. But she hugged herself with her arms; she wanted to look needy, not brazen.

Her mission was to get close to him, seduce him, and find out about his network of drug importers and distributors in the US.

To do that, she needed him to buy her damsel in distress routine, emphasis on damsel.

But as she sat there, dangling her foot in the firelight, Tyger bait, she felt revulsion steal through her. Deep dislike. For herself. For what she was doing. For herself and the job.

She tried to ignore it. Compartmentalize, like Walker! she commanded herself.

Biting the inside of her lower lip, she tried to force the self-dislike away.

She'd never been troubled by the job before, ashamed. A conscience? Now?

The question received no answer.

Tyger had crossed to her and was standing near her, the flames behind him, making him into a silhouette, obscuring his features.

"You shouldn't be here," he said in English. But as he spoke, his eyes started on her crossed legs, her dangling foot, climbing slowly toward her face.

Carina shook her head, trying to use her internal disquiet to create an external impression of vulnerability. "Yes, I'm sorry." She kept her voice small, helpless. "Are you the leader, the boss? I was beginning to get frightened. All these men…" She hugged herself tighter as she spoke.

When he smiled, his white teeth seemed to shine out from his silhouette. She saw his eyes fall again to her legs. "Yes, I am the leader. Call me Tyger. With a 'y'. And nothing will happen to you here. Nothing that you do not want to happen."

Carina had been doing this a long time. She knew when she had set the hook.

He wanted her. The decision was made. Even near the fire, Carina felt a chill spike through her, like she'd been stabbed with an icicle.

The men around the fire were watching the conversation, the fire reflected in their eyes glowing orange.

Tyger extended a hand and nodded toward the largest of the group of small buildings near them. "Come with me. We'll find you a bed."

She took his hand, wishing she were someplace, anyplace, else.

A/N: And so the new arc is underway in earnest. Lots to get done.

Love to hear from you! How about a review, especially if it's been a while?

An extra thanks to Neil Horne for technical consultation.