All right! Let's get to it.

Don't own Chuck. Check.

Thanks to editors, my wife and Anon. Double check.

Each of you who read, take a check. And each of you who review, take two checks!

Sorry if any of the checks bounce.

Ellie woke up. She didn't know what had roused her. Or maybe she did. Devon was perfect in so many ways, but he had his flaws, and one of them was that he sometimes sounded like a revving tractor while asleep. Like now. She gave him an annoyed shove. "You're snoring. Stop it."

Her husband mumbled, "Sorry, Babe," rolled over onto his side, and immediately faded back into slumber, this time in a more quiet manner.

It was Ellie's intention to follow suit. She was usually able to even when her sleep was interrupted. Usually. She closed her eyes.

The house began talking to her. That was one of the things about these older homes. For whatever reason, the tiny crevices or cracks would get some wind in them, and make little creaking and popping sounds. Not unlike Rice Krispies, she thought. It was initially unnerving, but you got used to it after awhile.

She began thinking about the evening. It had worked out wonderfully. The only point of irritation for her had been Chuck and Dad being impolite and separating off from the party for an hour. Quite unsociable, but at least they eventually came back and participated again. There had been some tension there, though they covered it pretty well. She wondered what it was all about, but she wasn't going to ask about it during the party, and she still didn't feel comfortable asking questions of her Dad, anyway. Well, she'd call Chuck in the morning and he'd shed some light on the whole thing.

Devon started snoring again, providing a strange harmony between the house noises and her own thoughts. Great. She had wanted to get some chores done tomorrow, and for that she needed her energy, but now she felt wide awake. She hated insomnia. Hated it.

Steamed milk. Put some almond in it. You'll fall asleep again, in what, a half-hour?

Sighing, Ellie rose from her bed, and put on her slippers and a robe over her gown. They didn't like having the heater on while they slept, and the house got frigid in the night. She walked downstairs and passed briefly from the dining room into the kitchen.

She didn't want to turn on the overhead light. Too much illumination would make her even more awake, and she didn't want that. Yawning, she flicked the switch to light the bulb over the stove. She pulled the milk from the fridge, and set it on the counter. She went to get the almond extract from the spice rack. Wasn't there. She had recently bought a whole bunch of extra spices on a whim, and now there wasn't enough room on the rack for all of them. The overflow had gone into the cabinet by the refrigerator. She opened it up, and proceeded to rummage through for the ingredient she wanted. Maybe she was more tired than she thought though, because when she finally found it and pulled, a few tiny plastic spice bottles came tumbling out. She muttered a profanity, and turned around, crouching, trying to gather the little containers in the dark.

Ellie thought she had most of them. She was starting not to care. She was starting to get tired again, and she thought maybe she wouldn't need the milk after all this trouble she'd gone through. She'd put the stuff away, go upstairs, and try to go back to sleep.

When she straightened up, Ellie saw the person standing in the corner of the kitchen by the living room entrance. Ellie became immediately alert again, even as the spice containers fell out of her hands and onto the floor. The hairs on her arms shot up, and a jolt electrified her stomach.

Ellie was paralyzed. She had never been in a situation like this before. The terror that took hold of her now was nothing that she had ever felt, even her first code blue. She needed to scream so Devon or even her father could hear, but all her air was gone. She opened her mouth, but only a weak, pitiful whine came out. She suddenly needed to urinate very badly. An insane thought came to her to ask this intruder to allow her to go to the bathroom.

The intruder stepped closer to the door, and Ellie could see the form a bit better. The person was bundled up, but it was a woman. Probably not a rapist then. Maybe this revelation or the movement of the intruder is what gave Ellie either the bravery or the desperation to finally move herself. The phone was in reach, and had been the whole time. Ellie reached for it and yanked the portable from its charger. She hadn't begun to dial yet which was lucky, considering. The bottom of the phone exploded, and what remained was wrenched from Ellie's hand. She gasped and looked up. The woman had a gun. It was smoking. The woman was walking toward her with it.

What Ellie should have done was put her hands up. Maybe gotten on her knees and begged for mercy. Maybe she should have run. Or at the very least, she should have screamed. Her throat had opened up once more, so she knew she could make noise now.

Ellie did none of those things.

Instead, she grabbed a large frying pan from the pot rack and spun around, swinging it at the woman with all her strength. Ellie had never fought before, and in her adrenaline, she had no accuracy. The intruder intercepted the swing and tried pulling it away from Ellie. That was a mistake, though, because Ellie came in with the pull and slammed her whole body into the intruder. The gun went skittering away. Ellie didn't even notice.

Her fear had her crying now, hysterically. She threw her entire weight onto the woman and began slapping at her in a frenzy, and finally screaming, "Get out of my house! GET OUT!" What she didn't realize was that by pinning this woman, Ellie was keeping her from leaving the house, had she a mind to do so. For her part, the intruder was initially grunting in pain from the slaps, but then she finally said, "Stop it! You knocked out my contact!"

This had to be the most bizarre thing Ellie could ever imagine a home invader saying, but what was even odder, and caused Ellie to suddenly stop in confusion: She could have sworn she recognized the voice. Ellie shifted her weight off the intruder, but remained in a crouch to jump her again. Ellie took a good look at her. It was hard to tell in the dark, and the woman's hair was wrong, but her face was familiar. Insane, but…. "Jill?"

The reaction of the intruder was unexpected. She yelled out, "NO!" and whipped her legs up to slam into Ellie's abdomen. Ellie flew backwards. She might have been able to grab some purchase if her foot hadn't then connected on one of the spice bottles that were on the floor. Ellie's body twisted around, and her head cracked onto the corner of one of the kitchen counters. She went down.

Omigod! What had just happened? What the fuck had just happened? Ellie! Ellie wasn't supposed to have been there. She wasn't the target! They had taken so much caution. Staking out the home for days. Taking extra care so hopefully they wouldn't be noticed. Waiting for the proper time to confirm that their target was there. Then, they chose the most likely moment when the security systems might be off to sneak in. They had stood in that goddamned closet for two hours after everybody had gone asleep to make sure they wouldn't be detected. They had been quiet. She knew they had. And even if they had been found it should not have been by Ellie of all people. Jill couldn't believe this. She couldn't believe that she had opened her mouth. Why not just give Ellie a fucking business card? Then she had panicked. Ellie had recognized her voice, and Jill had snapped. And now Ellie…. Oh God, was Ellie dead? If she was dead, Chuck would…. would…. Jill rushed over and immediately bent over Ellie to check her pulse. Strong. Thank God.

"Roberts!"

Vincent's voice, behind her. Jill turned to look that way. That was a mistake. Jill heard a noise from the other side. She turned her head just in time to see a human rocket shoot towards her. Too late. He connected grabbing her sides and throwing her. She went colliding into her partner. To Vincent's credit, he didn't lose his gun.

When Jill recovered her bearings a moment later, she saw that the man who had thrown her had scooped up Ellie and had made a beeline just out of the kitchen.

"Hold it." Vincent brought his gun up. The man holding Ellie (her husband?) froze. He turned around. Though clearly unhappy – understandably so – this man was calm and cool. He would have had to be to have taken them suddenly by surprise.

Vincent, ever unflappable himself, said, "This is unfortunate. You're not the person we're looking for. Maybe you can help us find him though."

The man slowly shook his head, and said, "I don't think so."

Suddenly, a steel partition slid down into the doorway separating the dining room from the kitchen, and notably, separating Jill and Vincent from Ellie and her rescuer.

What?

There might be some point in the future when Devon would think of his brave words followed by the falling of the steel door. The timing had a cinematic quality which was certainly awesome.

For the moment though, he was as shocked as the intruders on the other side. What?

It didn't matter. Ellie was hurt. He had to get her out of there. He'd figure out the weird steel door later. He wondered if he could get to the front door with her. Get her out.

"Devon, listen to me."

The sudden voice from nowhere made Devon yelp in fear, but he recognized it. "Steve?"

Devon had no idea where the voice was coming from. An intercom? He looked around. He didn't see any intercom, hadn't known one existed. (Of course, he also hadn't known about a sliding steel door!)

"Go down the hall with Ellie into the library, now!" Devon heard his disembodied father-in-law say.

Devon ran in the direction he was told, even as he said to Stephen (wherever he was). "What about outside?"

"Not safe. There's a panic room in the library."

"Wait. What?" Devon ran into the library, just in time to see one of the shelves swing aside to reveal another steel door, which was itself sliding open. Just as his mind was trying to register this new revelation though, he heard running footsteps. He didn't turn around, but dove in through the steel door. He looked around to see the two intruders burst into the library from the hall, and then the steel door slid shut behind him.

Devon stood with his unconscious wife in his arms in a panic room that he hadn't known about, having been directed there by his invisible father-in-law to escape from two home invaders with guns, and said the only thing that made sense.

"What?"

Vincent and Jill stopped dead and looked at the steel door. They didn't bother trying to open it.

"This isn't good," said Jill.

Vincent said, "It could be worse. At least now they'll be out of the way."

"Yeah? Suppose they have a phone to call the police in there?"

"Nobody's calling the police. You may not understand who we're dealing with, but I do."

"Is that right?"

The cold response hadn't come from Jill. On the steel door in front of them, an LCD screen suddenly showed a face made up of scrolling white characters on a black background. The picture was of a middle-aged man wearing sunglasses. The voice was distorted. Jill didn't recognize him, but she thought the man looked very angry.

"You've made an error, Vincent", said the man, as he typed something into a device on his arm. "This is the house that Orion built."

Then, all hell broke loose.