- and then his eyes flew back open.

Chuck was standing in a completely white room. He looked down at himself. Dressed all in black, with a long black trenchcoat. Black sunglasses completed the image.

He looked at Sarah. Also all in black, except her outfit was leather, and very, very tight.

"So," Morgan's voice floated out of mid-air. "What do you need?"

He paused, and then muttered. "Besides a miracle…"

"Guns," Chuck replied. "Lots of guns."

He heard a rushing noise, and then saw shelves flying toward them from out of nowhere. Sarah stepped forward, getting very close to Chuck as the shelves blasted past them, causing Chuck's trenchcoat to whip around in the wind.

Finally the shelves stopped. "This'll do," Sarah said, stepping past Chuck. Reaching up to the shelf, she selected her usual handgun duo of a Colt 1911A1 and a Desert Eagle .50 caliber. She tucked those into her waistband before grabbing four Uzis to attach to various points on her body.

Chuck, meanwhile, had grabbed several H&K MP-5 submachine pistols. Loading those on various points of his outfit, he also slid about twenty-five clips of ammunition onto his belt.

Finally, he reached down, and pulled a duffel bag from a bottom shelf. "Explosives," he said, and the shelves started moving again, stopping when the C4 explosives showed up.

Chuck packed the bag with several large bricks of C4, along with fuses and timers. When they were finally ready, Sarah said, "Okay, Morgan, jack us in."

In the blink of an eye, the room disappeared, and they found themselves standing before what Chuck had always THOUGHT was the Gas Company building in downtown Los Angeles. Striding forward, he stepped through the automatic doors. There before him was a security checkpoint, with an X-Ray scanner and a metal detector.

Chuck placed the duffel bag on the scanner belt, and stepped through the detector. Needless to say, it went off.

A security guard with a wand approached him. "Sir, please remove your coat and place any metallic items on th-"

Chuck opened his coat, and the guard's jaw dropped. "Holy shit…"

Chuck reached into the trenchcoat, removing two of the MP5s. He brought them up to face opposite directions and fired off quick bursts, taking out four security guards.

As he began to move across the lobby, another security guard raised his radio to his lips, saying, "Backup! We need backup!"

Unfortunately for the guard, Sarah chose that moment to walk in. She raised her 1911 and put a bullet in his forehead.

She had just crossed the lobby to join Chuck when they heard the sound of pounding footsteps. As they watched, thirty men in camouflage uniforms and helmets spread themselves across the lobby into tactical shooting positions. When they were all set, one of them took aim and yelled, "FREEZE!"

Chuck and Sarah did NOT freeze. In fact, quite the opposite. The two black-clad rebels dove in opposite directions, opening fire as they went – Chuck in bursts of automatic fire, Sarah one shot at a time from each of her handguns.

Thirty against two is normally very good odds. However, the military troops weren't expecting these two. With the grace of ballerinas and the ruthlessness of Mob enforcers, they danced around the room, jumping off of walls, maiming troops, killing them with their own guns. A pillar behind Chuck began to disintegrate as he hid behind it, but he remained safe, finally popping out to dispatch his tormentor.

Finally, all thirty troops were dead or almost there. Dropping their empty clips to the ground, Sarah and Chuck headed for the elevator.

Agent Casey put his hand against his earpiece. He looked at Big Mike, and then at Agent Larkin and Agent Longshore.

"They're coming for him," was all he said.

When the elevator reached the 22nd floor, Sarah pressed the stop button. As she opened the emergency hatch in the roof, Chuck boosted her up. Then he handed the duffel bag up to her, and pulled himself up.

Sarah was already shaping the bomb. It was going to be a doozy. Setting it on top of the elevator, she set it to a contact fuse – the moment the elevator hit the ground, the bomb would blow.

Chuck grabbed on to the elevator cable with a carabineer, and Sarah held on to him. Pointing the Desert Eagle downward, she fired one, then two shots, and the elevator cable disconnected from the car. They went shooting upwards, and the elevator went plummeting downwards.

As they reached the rooftop access, Chuck looked down. More than five hundred feet below, he watched as the elevator crashed to the bottom of the shaft, the bomb on top exploding. The fireball grew, grew, reaching for Chuck, and then retreating.

Agent Casey looked up in disgust as the building shook and the sprinklers came on.

He whirled to Agent Larkin and Agent Longshore. "Find them," he growled. "NOW!"

The pilot of the Huey on the rooftop was radioing for help. "We are under attack!" he screamed. "We are un-"

His head jerked to the left, and then his face stretched, and shifted, and suddenly, Agent Larkin appeared in his place.

Agent Larkin opened the door of the helicopter and stepped out. There was the annoyance, Sarah, beating up several troops, but the real threat, Chuck, stood at the other end of the roof.

Seeing Larkin, Chuck pulled out his two handguns – both Browning Hi-Powers. He began firing at Larkin, emptying the clips in both guns.

Larkin watched the bullets approach him, and then, with impossible speed, simply moved to dodge the bullets. His gun came up, and he began to fire.

Chuck's eyes went wide as Agent Larkin's bullets flew toward him, but then time seemed to slow down. Chuck bent over backward to an impossible angle, twisting his body to make the bullets miss him, but one still caught him. It grazed his right shoulder, enough to knock him over.

As he lay on his back, the wind knocked out of him, he watched Agent Larkin approach, gun aimed.

When Larkin reached Chuck, his face took on an almost pitying expression. He shook his head. "Only human."

"Dodge this."

Larkin whirled, and for a brief second, saw Sarah, just before her gun discharged directly in his face. His body flew backward, but just as it hit the rooftop, it morphed back into the body of the pilot.

Sarah pulled out her cell phone. "Morgan," she said. "I need to know how to fly a Bell 212 Huey helicopter."

"You got it," she heard.

A moment later, she could feel the information entering her brain as it was implanted into her via the Intersect. Opening her eyes, she said to Chuck, "Let's go."

Agent Casey looked up with disgust as Agent Larkin re-entered the room. "They escaped," Larkin reported.

Casey shook his head and rolled his eyes – and then his eyes widened, as a Huey slowly dropped to hover directly outside of the room he was in.

He looked out in disgust and despair at Mr. Carmichael, sitting behind the minigun in the Huey's doorway. "NO!" he shouted, drawing his gun, as the minigun opened fire.

The stream of bullets flying out of the gun made its way across the room. Down went Longshore. Down went Larkin. As the bullets gradually came toward him, Casey scowled and gritted his teeth.

Down went Casey. Chuck stopped firing. He looked across the room – there was Big Mike, tied to a chair, and clearly straining against his bonds.

"Come on, big guy," Chuck whispered as a vein began to stand out on Big Mike's forehead. With one gigantic yell, Big Mike stretched the bonds to their limits – and they popped. He stood up, and began running across the room toward the open window.

That's when the door opened – and Agent Casey stepped into the room. He raised his gun and fired, hitting Big Mike in the back of the leg. Big Mike stumbled and nearly fell, his momentum carrying him out the window.

Chuck saw this, and making a split second decision, jumped out of the helicopter – attached to it by the rope around his waist that was tied to a cabin anchor. He grabbed Big Mike in midair.

His muscles strained against the weight of the much larger man, and the helicopter dipped noticeably to that side, but Sarah was still able to pull to the left and fly away. As she did so, thought, Agent Casey fired off two more shots, putting them right through the hydraulic line for the tail rotor.

"Shit," she whispered. Using brute force to muscle the collective upwards, she rose to the level of the top of the building. Chuck let go of Big Mike's hand, and Big Mike dropped the ten feet to the rooftop. Then Chuck rappelled down to the roof of the building – and the Huey's tail rotor failed.

As the helicopter fell, Chuck could see Sarah desperately unhooking his rope and tying it around her waist. Just before the helicopter impacted the building across the street, she dove out, headed for the side of the building Chuck stood on.

The helicopter struck the building with a vicious explosion of fuel and glass, sending a cloud of debris behind Sarah. She did her best to shield herself as she impacted the building Chuck was on top of.

Chuck almost went over the roof's edge because of Sarah's momentum, but he was able to hang on just long enough. He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief –

To be continued…