A/N The Mask is generally considered one of the worst episodes, which doesn't entirely account for the time it's taken me to write this. Even if we can manage to overlook the Shaw/Hannah relationships, there are still major plot holes to fill in, such as a museum that doubles as a deathtrap. Hopefully I can overcome that handicap in this version.
I didn't try to put in all the dialog during the rescue, since Chuck couldn't react to it and it would have meant a lot of italics, but the dialog from the show is in the background, more or less. I tried to put in some hints as to when he was communicating with people not in the room. Really, though, blowing the hatch was just too stupid for words, so I didn't want to write any of them.
Thanks to PeterOInNYC for helping me try to come up with some better version of the heist than they gave us.
"We have to hide him somewhere."
"It did happen."
"We'll get through it."
"Pour me one too, barkeep."
Chuck stood behind the Nerd Herd desk, eagerly anticipating the return of his sister and bro-in-law from Paris. They said they had a lot of video of the Eiffel Tower for him, and he was looking forward to watching that.
Suddenly he felt like he was being watched, and turned. False alarm. Just Jeff and Lester getting into stalker mode. He flicked an eye up to the mirrors, but there weren't many women in that area. Just Hannah, who might have been looking at him but wasn't anymore. No way Jeff or Lester would have anything to do with her.
Something grabbed his arm, and Chuck was about to take action when Casey growled, "Not here, moron," into his ear rather than 'yogurt time'. As Chuck unclenched his fist, Casey said, "Yogurt time," for the benefit of all, as if anyone cared.
The woman behind the counter at the OO wasn't Sarah. Chuck saw the brown hair and blurted out, "Who are you?" before he recognized her face. "Agent Jones?"
"Carmichael," she replied, as if he were some form of disease.
"What are you doing here, Jones?" said Casey.
"When you find out, let me know." She smacked the side of the register. "I'm locked out of all the functions on this thing except for the ones used to actually sell yogurt, and you're the first customers I've had in here. Walker said you'd key me in."
"Why didn't she do it?" asked Casey, flipping the 'Closed' sign.
"Agent Shaw was in a rush."
"Shaw's here too?" asked Chuck.
"Nothing gets by you, does it, Carmichael?" she said snidely. "Shaw pulled me off of a boring surveillance job with at least a chance of gunplay, and stuck me behind this boring counter, with a chance of yogurt, all so I could brief you guys when you finally show up, and keep up the cover." She waved at the building.
"Save it for later," said Casey. "Let's get you into Castle so you can brief us properly."
One addition of new records to the system later…
"Agent Shaw said you knew of his main task, and that I was to inform you that an operation in relation to that task had come to his attention in this area."
The Ring. Training Chuck was a sideline, and hopefully that sideline had been sidelined. "Did he say where?"
"A museum, that's all I know. He left this, with some specifics," she said, passing over a disk. Needless to say the contents were need to know, but she had no way to access them. "He didn't say why he needed Agent Walker for his team. He's briefing her on the way."
The thieves crept out of the shadows, one moving to secure a bracket on an overhead pipe as the other used an electronic lockpick to open the otherwise-impregnable hatch at their feet, four inches of solid steel. Both halves of the hatch slid into their housings, revealing a well-decorated vault below, historical treasures lining the walls and mounted on display stands. Under the hatch stood the currently reigning king of the collection, an ugly piece of hammered gold called the Mask of Alexander.
One of the thieves, less bulky than the other, shined a light straight down from the location of the bracket, lighting a spot a few feet off to one side from the pedestal. The other thief, far larger, waved a hand, and the smaller thief donned a harness, hooking it to the cable attached to the bracket. The thief dove off the edge of the hole into the vault.
With a precise hand on the remote control, the thief slowed the unspooling of the cable, slowly approaching the level of the Mask, a few feet off to one side. The thief reached out a hand, unable to reach the item. Spinning on the cable, the thief captured the shaft of the Mask's support post between sneakered feet, lifting it off the stand.
"Whoops," said a voice in the thief's ear, from the other one, waiting at the roof hatch. The dangling thief looked up, spotting a small screw or something like it, tumbling in the air, far too late to even try to catch it.
The little object fell to the floor, sparking the electromagnetic sensors with a shimmer of blue, soon lost in the flashing lights of the alarms. "Dammit," said the hanging thief, in a distinctly female voice. She lowered the Mask back onto the stand. "Shaw, what happened?"
"Something on the floor," said Shaw as tonelessly as ever. "I kicked it by accident."
"I didn't see anything." She triggered the remote, and the cable started to pull her up.
"Neither did I, Sarah." Shaw sounded unconcerned, or perhaps distracted. "Routing the alarm into the Fire network."
The sound of the alarms changed, but the hatch closed just above her head, trapping the cables. "Shaw, open the hatch!" Down something hissed, air in motion.
"I can't," said Shaw. "The fire system here closed it. I can't open it without killing the alarm and I don't see how to kill the alarm."
"Getting harder to breathe." Sarah looked down. "I see lots of vents."
"It's a slow-vac system. Do you see any air tanks?"
In a museum? "No."
"The door can't be sealed. Guests and such have to be able to escape."
"I'm thirty feet up," said Sarah.
"You couldn't exactly walk out the front door," said Shaw. "Don't worry, Walker, I'll handle it."
"Call Chuck."
"I will. You should stop talking now, save your breath."
Sarah pressed the emergency alert on her watch, before taking Shaw's advice.
At the Buy More…
"Save your breath."
"But Casey…"
"Don't 'but Casey' me! The CIA got nothing, hell, even the NSA got nothing, and the NSA has everything," snarled Casey. "You're gonna have to get close to little Miss Nobody and find out what she's doing here."
"Cozying up to Morgan in the HT room, as far as I can tell," said Chuck.
"Cozying up to the bearded troll, who just happens to be the Intersect's best friend? That doesn't seem suspicious to you?" Casey's face twisted up in disgust. "Not what she's doing here, idiot. What she's doing here."
"Thanks for clarifying."
"Don't mention it," said Casey. "She says she's some sort of computer geek, so take her with you on an install, see what she's got and why she's got it."
"I doubt there's anything a Buy More can throw at her that will test aaand he's not listening."
No, Casey was not listening. He was looking at the front entrance of the Buy More, and the woman currently walking toward them through it, wearing the white pants and orange tank top of a yogurt server from across the parking lot. People stopped and stared. She wasn't blonde. She wasn't Sarah.
"Boobs," said Jeff quite audibly.
Morgan's managerial instincts pulled him out of his office into the relative silence. He fetched up next to Hannah, the only man in the store willing to do so. "What's up, Hannah?"
She indicated the brunette stranger. "Who's that?"
Morgan frowned. "No idea. I wonder what happened to Sarah?"
"Who's she?" asked Hannah, wondering that he would know her name at all.
"The usual counter girl at the Double O. Tall, blonde. Drop dead–" Hannah, not being either of those things, turned to glare at him. "Uh, well, you know, um, pretty. Not my type, though. I think I hear my phone ringing, 'scuse me."
By the time Hannah turned her attention back to the pantomime, the yogurt lady was gone, Casey held the bag she'd brought in and was carrying it off to the break room, and Chuck was on his way over to the Nerd Herd desk. "Gotta go, Nerd Herd emergency." He grabbed a bag and headed for the lot.
What the hell is a Nerd Herd emergency?, wondered Hannah, and she grabbed her own bag to follow him and find out.
At the museum, one long drive north later…
"You made good time, Agent Carmichael," said Shaw, dressed in a museum worker's coveralls. He grabbed a handtruck loaded with a crate of some kind, and briefed Chuck as they walked. Much of it Chuck already knew, since Jones had been feeding him data about the museum all the way up, but there was more. "I had to crash the system to keep the alarm from going outside the building," said Shaw. "No one's coming and they can't open the door, but we can't open the door either, and Sarah's got about five minutes of air left." He maneuvered his cargo toward the back of the building as Chuck found the museum manager and introduced himself.
The manager described the scene as it appeared to them from the outside, and nothing he said hinted that the situation was anything but an accident. Fortunately the manager knew more about 3000-year-old antiquities and their maintenance than he did about current computer systems. A slow-vac fire system seemed a bit weird, but Chuck could understand their desire to avoid the use of chemicals.
If only the man would shut up. And back off. Chuck hated hoverers. Just as he was about to ask the man to give him space, another voice spoke up. "Excuse us, sir," said Hannah. "Leave it to us, we're the professionals."
"Hey, Hannah," he said, mainly to inform Shaw that there was someone with him. "Why are you here?"
"You said emergency," said Hannah, sliding into the seat next to him and opening her bag, not that this looked like a tool job.
"Take the database," said Chuck, shunting her off into something important, but not to the cause of getting Sarah out of there alive. He took that task for himself, seeking out the program that was running the fire-suppression. It shouldn't have been a stand-alone, but apparently Shaw's ham-fisted manipulations had delinked the process, and now it was running out of control.
Sarah had less than a minute of air left. "Don't," said Chuck suddenly, sounding distracted. "Wait for me." He looked up and saw her looking at him, and gestured toward her station emphatically. "No, I mean it, don't wait for me."
"Oh," said Hannah. She clicked the mouse a couple of times, until the screen lit. "System has rebooted. DB starting up."
Chuck's fingers were flying, faster than she'd ever seen anyone type before. "Let me know the second it's back up," he said, as if time mattered.
"Uh…done."
"Hold on to something," said Chuck, and he pressed the button.
The hatch opened slowly, allowing air into the chamber but not in one blast, so as not to damage the artifacts. Casey was holding onto the cables as Chuck had directed, so Sarah wouldn't swing or possibly even fall. "We've got her, Chuck," he said, gesturing Shaw to activate the winch manually. "Which is more than I could say if Agent Special here had had his way."
"What difference does it make?" asked Shaw, as Casey gently guided Sarah's limp body out of the hole and onto the ledge. "She's dead anyway."
Suddenly Sarah jerked, gasping and coughing as color flooded into her face. "Or not," said Casey.
"Yes!" shouted Chuck, standing up with his arms raised in triumph. He looked at Hannah and for some reason they both said at the same time, "We are invincible!" and burst out laughing. She lunged while his arms were up and snatched him into a hug, which he returned, a bit. Sarah was alive and she'd helped, even without knowing it. "Not bad for your first mission."
"Hardly that," she said, releasing him.
He was more than willing to let her go. "First Nerd Herd emergency, then."
"That it was."
"Splendid work," said the curator, coming in for his own congratulatory handshakes. "Top notch. I can't thank you enough."
"Anytime," said Chuck.
"Okay," said the man. "How about tomorrow? We're having our gala opening, unveiling the Mask of Alexander. Everyone in the art world's going to be there and I'd like you to be also."
"Oo, lovely," said Hannah. "I've never been to a museum gala before."
"And you aren't now," said the curator. "I'm not inviting you, I'm hiring you, to insure that there's no more, what do you call them, bugs."
Hannah deflated, sadly. Chuck cleared his throat twice. "Bring your little black dress, anyway," he said. "Museum's aren't really my thing. I'll do what I can to make sure you get some time in the Sun King." He grinned at them. "Get it? No?"
Hannah offered her hand to the man. "It's a date."
"Magnificent."
"Yes," said Chuck, his smile a little forced. "Isn't it?"
A/N2 I hope you'll drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.