The Nerd Versus the P.I. Family
By Steampunk . Chuckster
A/N: Thanks!
Summary: Sarah Walker has uprooted her life, leaving her job with the LAPD and going it alone as a private investigator, all in the hopes it provides her with less dangerous stakes and a schedule she can control so that she can handle her most important job, raising her toddler, a bit easier. But when the single parent thinks her computer might've been targeted by a criminal, she has to request help from the unlikeliest of sources: The Buy More Nerd Herd.
Disclaimer: I do not own CHUCK, I do not own its characters, I am not making money from posting this.
He woke up in an insanely uncomfortable position, an incessant thumping sound finally dragging him out of the dream world.
Groaning at the way light streamed in from the nearby window onto his face, he held up a hand and wrinkled his face in disgruntlement. His entire right side had fallen asleep, or at least, his arm was gone. It didn't exist anymore.
The thumping got louder and he realized someone was knocking on the door.
Pushing himself to sit up from where he'd slumped to the side on the couch like the puppeteer had cut his strings and he flopped over, he blinked down at the Playstation controller that had tumbled out from his fingers onto the floor, and he looked up at the television screen.
Great.
He'd fallen asleep without leaving the map on his game. Shit.
"Well, that's not gonna be good for my stats," he mumbled.
The knocking got even louder and he made an annoyed sound, getting up and trying to move his arm around, shaking it to try to get feeling back into it.
Limping over to the door, he swung it open. "What?"
Morgan stood there with concern written all over his face. He looked like he'd been run over by a truck, bags under his eyes, his clothes askew like he'd tossed them on in a hurry.
"Dude, I thought you were dead!" The shorter man pounced, hugging him tightly, patting him on the back. "I'm so glad you're not!"
Chuck frowned in confusion, lifting his hand to pat his best friend on top of his head. "Huh? I-I mean, so am I? But what made you think I was dead?" What in the hell?
"It was like you were there one minute, and the next, you were frozen, in a crouch, just…there…and I tried to protect you, dude. But they're like fuggin' sharks. They smelled blood. And they all flocked to you and were shanking you with knives, using you for target practice. Some of those assholes tea bagged you, Chuck." He pulled back and struck his friend with a pitying look, patting his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I did what I could. But you went AWOL for so long, I finally decided to come over here and make sure you weren't dead. Like, dude, you usually leave the map. And you didn't…"
Chuck laughed, shaking his head. "Shit. My stats are really gonna be fucked."
"I got here as soon as I could to make sure it didn't get too bad."
"Well, thanks. No, I just… I was so tired, I guess I just fell asleep. And I didn't leave the map 'cause I was knocked out."
"Apparently. I tried to call you a bunch."
Chuck glanced around the room, pulling Morgan in and shutting the door behind him. "Where is my phone anyway? And what time is it?"
"Damn. You're super out of it." Morgan pointed at his drawstring pants he was wearing. "You don't even feel your phone in your pocket?"
He looked down and saw the heavy lump in his pocket. "Oh." That explained why his leg had fallen asleep too. He dipped his hand in his pocket and pulled it out. "Shit, sorry, man. Thanks for checking on me."
"You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Yesterday was just one of those really exhausting and frustrating days where if something could go wrong, it did. And I tried to unwind with video games when I came home, and I guess I was just tired enough to pass out in the middle of a campaign."
He ruffled his hair, yawning so hard his jaw popped, and he looked down at his phone. He'd missed eleven calls from Morgan and a voicemail. But it was the notification underneath that finally woke him up.
An unknown number had sent a photo. "Hm. What's this?"
"What's what? Hey, you got anything to eat? I just realized, it's like seven-thirty and I haven't had my brekkies yet, know what ah mean?" Morgan drawled in a terrible Cockney accent. "Roooiiight."
Chuck ignored him, pulling up the text, clicking on the picture to make it bigger and get a better look at it. But then he felt a jolt of pain go from the center of his forehead down to the back of his neck and his vision was covered in spots. And then came the images, images he didn't understand as they flashed across his vision.
Until he did understand.
Twenty years earlier, a CIA project called Code Magenta targeted a general and his Russian purchased warheads, disabling them and his stronghold on the island nation off of the Eastern South American coast. After Code Magenta's success, the island nation settled into a state of upheaval, civil war, and unrest.
He blinked, his phone slipping out of his fingers to fall to the floor. Everything went dark, and he hit the same floor moments later.
}o{
"His pulse is okay. Here, hand me the cold cloth again."
Chuck felt something cool on his forehead and he groaned.
"He's awake! Oh my God! It's a miracle! Ellie, you're a miracle worker! Chuck, are you okay?!"
"Morgan, I need you to take six steps back in that direction and stay there. Give me some room. Calm down. He fainted; he isn't dying." And then his sister's voice felt closer, as if she was leaning in. "Chuck? Honey, are you okay? Can you open your eyes for me?"
"Yeah, but, uh…maybe turn out the lights a little? My head's…head's pounding," he muttered.
"Morgan, can—?"
"On it. On it already. I shall douse the light. I am the stealer of light. The emperor of the dark—"
The lights Chuck saw through his tightly shut eyelids grew dimmer, thank God.
"Could you not for, like, three seconds, Morgan?" Ellie groused.
Chuck blinked his eyes open finally to see his sister leaning over him, gently dabbing his forehead with a cool cloth. "That feels really good. Can you keep doing that, please?"
She turned away from Morgan and gave him a worried smile, really just a slight twitch of her lips. "Of course. Are you okay? What happened?"
"I-I don't know. I guess I didn't get enough sleep or something."
"Tell me everything. Not like I'm your sister, but like I'm a medical professional." She squeezed his shoulder. "Can you sit up?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay now. Just a little bit of a headache."
"Probably from where you smacked your head on the floor. Dude, it was loud. Like WHAM! I thought you'd cracked it open. And then you weren't waking up so I called Ellie."
"Can we talk about that, actually?" Ellie looked up at Morgan again. "Because Chuck is literally the only person I want you to call me about instead of 9-1-1. I'm not your personal EMT. You know that, right? Like, if something happens to you, you call 9-1-1 because I'm not crawling out of my comfortable bed after a twenty-four hour shift to come save you." She held up a hand when he went to argue. "You did the right thing in this case. So good job."
Morgan blinked. "Oh. Wow. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Great. Moment's over." She turned back to Chuck and rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's see if you can sit up." She eased him up and he braced his palm on the floor to help her, groaning a little. "Any dizziness? Nausea?"
"No," he muttered, and he reached up to feel the back of his head, wincing as it stung like mad when he touched in a certain spot. "Ow. That hurts though."
"Yeah, well. Morgan isn't wrong. Your noggin took a real whack when you passed out. Sure no dizziness?"
"Nah. No dizziness. My head just hurts."
"What happened?"
"Like I said. We were just chatting about what to have for breakfast, he grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and just like that, like….his eyes went totally white, like the pupils just rolled to the back of his head or some crazy shit, and then, like, his limbs just turned into jelly and he went BAM! Timber, dude."
Ellie took a slow, calming breath, and turned to eye the short bearded fellow. "I asked Chuck. I already got your story about seventeen times, thank you."
"Oh. Right. Yeah, what happened, buddy?" Morgan crawled down to sit next to him, concerned.
"I'm okay," he insisted, reaching out to squeeze his best friend's arm. "Really. Sorry to freak you out." He looked to Ellie then. "Both of you."
"That's not an explanation."
"I know, I know. I'm not even sure what happened. I checked a message in my phone and then I…don't remember. I guess I just passed out."
"Have you been drinking water?"
"I don't know. Normal levels of water drinking for me, I guess."
"Well, we had a heat wave yesterday. That's why I ask."
Chuck reached over and picked up his phone, glad his case was heavy-duty because he could've had a shattered cell phone on top of everything else that had happened yesterday. He unlocked it and looked at his messages. He pulled up the top message. The image of a grainy warhead that had been there before he passed out was gone. It had disappeared. "Huh?"
"What, huh? Stop looking at your phone. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. Chuck, if there's something going on with you, some neurological thing, I won't know unless you talk to me. Or would you rather I just take you to the ER?"
He shook himself. "No, no. No ER. Please."
"Well, say something to convince me then," she said drily. "Morgan, can you get some coffee on? I think we could all use some coffee."
"Yes. Absolutely. Coffee. I've got this." He crawled up to his feet. "We're gonna get you some coffee, buddy." And the shorter man put his hand affectionately on top of Chuck's head as he swept past him.
"Thanks, Morgs," he drawled sincerely.
"Think you can get to the couch?"
"Yeah. Yeah, just, uh, maybe help me up."
She slung her arm around him and helped him get to his feet. He swayed just slightly but held himself upright, feeling the back of his head again with a wince. And as she helped him sit on the couch, she saw him touch that spot on his head yet again and she cursed.
"Ice. Of course. I'm sorry. What kind of neuro—I'll be right back. And then we're having a chat."
The way she said that made him feel like maybe he was in trouble. Did Morgan happen to mention he was playing video games with him in the wee hours of the morning? Was she gonna grill him for that?
Ellie came back with an icepack and sat next to him, reaching up to press it to the bump at the back of his head.
"Ah—Ow!" He hissed as it stung really terribly with the freezing dampness being pressed against it.
"Sorry." Ellie gave him an apologetic look. "Here, you hold it. I'm going to check your pulse again." She took his wrist and held it between her fingers as he held the ice to his head with the other hand. "Chuck, did you sleep at all last night?"
He sighed. And there it was.
"Um, I fell asleep with the controller in my hand, technically, so from that point to Morgan showing up and knocking on my apartment door, I was sleeping."
"And how many hours would you say that was?"
"Uh, depends what time it is."
"It's barely eight."
"Oh. Good. Maybe an hour and a half?"
Ellie rolled her eyes and pulled away from him, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "Chuck. Are you serious? An hour and a half of sleep? You're probably exhausted. Why didn't you sleep? You're not in college anymore."
"Look, I had a really hard day yesterday and I needed to find a coping mechanism, and for me, gaming is a prime coping mechanism."
"Gaming until you literally pass out from exhaustion at six in the morning?"
He winced. "…Yes?"
"Anyway, what's this about your day yesterday? What happened?" But Chuck was too busy staring at his phone again, at that blank spot where the picture had been, and the accompanying message that he hadn't seen earlier when he'd first looked at it, as busy as he was having something about…warheads and weird pictures of files with pictures of people he didn't know flashing across his vision.
"If it worked, send Y. You'll know."
What in the fuck did that mean? Was that what working meant: that he saw weird shit and then passed out and cracked his skull on his living room floor?
And how was the image gone? What happened to it? You couldn't go through and delete an image manually after you'd already texted it. Maybe it was timed, a timed image.
"Hey. Chuck…"
After a certain amount of time, it was deleted. Like the whole "this message will self-destruct" thing in old spy movies. But what was it? What had it done to him? And who sent it? Why? Someone who wanted him to respond now, apparently.
"Chuck!" Ellie shook his shoulder a little and he looked up at her with a blink. "I asked what happened yesterday. Are you okay? You're, like, on another planet or something."
"Sorry." He readjusted the icepack on the ever-growing bump on his head. "It was just a really long day. Super frustrating. I got sent out on a really annoying job in Lancaster. Like, the guy I had to work with was obnoxious and wouldn't let me alone, made the job last way longer than it had to. And when I left, my car overheated and I got stranded."
"What?! Why didn't you call me? I would've left the hospital to get you. Or Devon."
"Or me!" Morgan said, coming back with two mugs of coffee, setting one down on the coffee table and handing the other to Chuck. "Here, pal."
"Thanks."
"Ellie, I…made yours the way you like it. A little cream, a little sugar." The way he said it so reverently…
"Okay." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Thanks."
"Oh, sure, of course. Anything for—"
"Why didn't you call one of us?" she asked then, turning away from Morgan entirely. He just slumped his shoulders and trudged back to the kitchen to fix his own cup of coffee. The poor Beard.
"I couldn't. No reception. And I don't want you guys driving all the way out to the middle of nowhere five miles outside of Palmdale. That's shitty. So I rigged a better cell signal and called my insurance company to send out a tow truck. They did, he found me, he fixed the problem enough that I'd be able to get safely to my mechanic. So that's where my car is now. I've got a rental. But then as I was leaving the rental place, the LAPD called me to help them out with something again. And…crap, they pay really well so I went straight to the station to help 'em out."
"LAPD is still angling for ya, huh? That's so rad." Morgan came back and sat on the coffee table, blowing the steam from his mug delicately.
"Usually, yes. But I hadn't eaten and I was so wrung out from being out there in the heat…" He snapped his fingers. "That's it. Heat stroke. Doesn't heat stroke do weird shit to your brain? I bet that's what happened, El. I was out in the blazing sun for a few hours because of my car fail. And then I went straight to a hot car mechanic's garage, then to the LAPD and got right back to work, barely ate anything all day because I didn't have much time to, finally ate super late thanks to Casey sending one of his detectives out for my dinner, and then went straight from there…" He stopped, realizing for the first time this morning that he'd nearly forgotten the hours he'd spent on Sarah's couch, sipping wine and talking, losing track of time, not caring about time at all, and just basking in her presence. "I had about half a bottle of wine last night."
"Jesus, Chuck," his sister breathed.
"So that didn't help, I'm sure. And then when I got home I wasn't tired. I…I was a little wired I guess."
"All that wine'll do that," Morgan said sagely.
"So I played games with Morgan 'til I fell asleep. I'm sure all of that stuff together really did a number on me, huh? No wonder I fainted." He still clutched his phone tightly in his palm.
"Maybe heat stroke, sure," Ellie reasoned. "But it's no wonder you passed out. Not only spending all that time in the sun without hydrating, not eating food all day, and then finally eating super late, but then drinking a bunch of wine instead of water and getting an hour and a half of sleep?" She shook her head and pushed her hand through his hair. "Brother, you have got to take care of yourself better."
"Yeah." He cleared his throat. "I know. I know that, El. Sorry."
She pressed her lips together and gave him a dubious look.
"Well, you just said the thing about the wine, Chuck, but you didn't say where you got the wine." And a smug smirk stretched over Morgan's face as if he was the one who'd been at a woman's apartment until the wee hours of the morning instead of Chuck.
Sighing, he sent his best friend a look.
"What? What's he talking about, 'where you got the wine'…?" Ellie asked.
"Chuck didn't sleep because he was with Sarah," Morgan drawled happily, grinning with his teeth showing. And then he sipped his coffee, smug again.
Ellie whipped around to face Morgan. "What?" She whipped back to face Chuck. "What?!"
Chuck cleared his throat and moved the icepack again. "Um." He glared at Morgan.
"Don't glare at him. Were you trying to hide it from me? Why would you hide that you went on a date from me?"
"It wasn't really a date, okay? And I wasn't hiding it from you. It was the one good thing about yesterday slash last night and we were having a conversation about the bad things that could've caused me to pass out this morning. That wasn't one of 'em. The…wine I imbibed while I was there aside. But that wasn't her fault; she knew I'd had a bad day and she was helping."
"Yeah, I bet she helped. Pretty exhausted there, eh, ol' boy?" Morgan's grin hadn't dimmed at all behind the beard as he stuck his foot out and poked Chuck's shin with the toe of his Vans he was wearing.
"Morgan, that's disgusting," Ellie mumbled, glaring at him. But she did, however, turn back to give Chuck an expectant look.
"What? No! Can you two stop? Jesus Christ. It wasn't… That didn't—Look, it's none of your business anyway." He sat up a bit straighter, affronted. "We just sipped wine and talked and she made everything better."
"I bet she did—"
"Morgan."
"Shut up, Morgan."
Chuck sighed as his best friend widened his eyes and pretended to zip his mouth shut, even locking it with an invisible key and tossing it over his shoulder.
"Well, that's good that you were with Sarah and she made you feel better. What, you think I'm gonna knock you for that? For having a shitty day and seeking out someone who you knew would make it better?" Ellie smiled at him, looking pleased as punch. "That's pretty cute, actually." She cleared her throat, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. "Things going pretty well there, then, huh?"
"I mean, it's continuing and at this point that's all—Listen, I don't really wanna have this conversation right now. I just passed out and hit my head and I'm tired."
Ellie went rigid. "Tired like…you can't keep your eyes open tired? I checked you for a concussion already and I don't see any of the signs, but if you can't stay awake, that might—"
"No, no. Whoa. Breathe. I'm just tired. I'm not about to lose consciousness, El. I don't think it's a concussion situation. It's a… I-didn't-get-enough-sleep situation."
He turned his phone over in his hand. "If it worked, send Y. You'll know."
He had a feeling it worked. That really felt like it'd worked, whatever the hell that even meant. And as Morgan and Ellie argued about Sarah again and what may or may not have happened while he was at her apartment until the early hours of the morning, Chuck looked down at the message again. He used his sister's and best friend's distraction to type back an answer.
"Where's the pic that was here? Who are you? What do you want?"
He hit send and turned the phone over again, setting it facedown on his thigh. "Okay, can you two stop? I'm handling my own dating life, thank you."
"Sorry." At least Ellie seemed contrite as she pat his knee. "I'm just glad you at least got to see her yesterday. I know you like her a lot."
"I do. A whole lot. And it felt really good to be with her."
"Oh, really?"
"I'm literally going to strangle you," Ellie said, snapping her gaze to Morgan.
He gulped. "You know what?" He glanced at his watch. "I've got an early shift at the Buy More today, so maybe I should go, uh, home and…change into my green shirt." He climbed up to his full height and took a few big drinks of his coffee, leaning down to set it on the coffee table. Then he stopped and turned back to Chuck with a hopeful look. "Unless you need someone to look out for you today. I can call Big Mike and tell him that I—"
"Buddy, you have to go to work. Thanks." Even though Chuck knew part of his offer was that he didn't want to go to work in the first place. He didn't blame him for it. "But you gotta go. If you skip out one more time this month, even if you had good reasons the other times, Big Mike might actually write you up. Like, for once he might write someone up. And it'll be you. So go. Get outta here. I'm fine."
"I'm off for two days," Ellie said, rubbing Chuck's arm. "I'll stay a few hours and make sure this freaking dumdum doesn't have some sort of relapse or something."
Morgan nodded. "Then I leave you in good hands." He walked around to the back of the couch and leaned down to kiss the top of Chuck's head. "Call me if you need anything. Love ya."
"Love you too. Thanks for saving my life, Morgan."
"Oh, you bet!"
He was gone then, leaving Chuck with his sister and the phone he had in his grip. He looked at it and saw that the mysterious texter hadn't replied. And maybe they wouldn't until he sent the answer they'd asked for. This was so weird.
"What?"
He looked up at Ellie. "Hm?"
"Don't put that innocent look on your face like I'm not seeing you stare down at your phone. What's going on? Is it Sarah? Did something happen between you two…?" she asked carefully.
"We didn't sleep together! God!"
"Ew! Chuck! I'm not Morgan! I'm not talking about that!" She shivered. "I meant an argument or a tough discussion or something. Ugh. Jesus."
"Oh." He blushed and cleared his throat. "No, no. Nothing like that. No argument, no tough discussions. It was just really, really nice. Calming. It felt good after all the shit yesterday to just sit on her couch and talk to her." Chuck sighed, lolling his head to the side to look at his sister through his eyelashes. "I really like being around her. So much."
Ellie made a sweet humming sound, pouting a little. "I'm glad. See? And that's all I'm gonna say on that. Because I am much better than Morgan."
That made him laugh, but it jiggled the icepack against the bump on his head and he winced. "Ah…okay, note to self. Don't laugh I guess."
"You scared me, buddy," she said, frowning, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. "Don't do that. You're my only family I've got in the whole world. No freaky brain episodes. Heat stroke, sleep deprivation, those are things we can fix." She pointed at him. "But that's on you to make sure you drink enough water and eat regularly and get sleep. I know your job is running you ragged."
He gave her a flat look. "Ellie, you're a neurosurgeon. Nobody gets to complain to you about their job running them ragged."
"No, hey, it's different. Everything's relative. I'm trained to do my job and I'm good at it. And yes, it's exhausting sometimes, and it can be sad and hard and a whole slew of things. But it's what I do. That doesn't mean that someone else with a different job doesn't get stressed when they're being spread thin." She squeezed his shoulder. "And you, my dear brother, are being spread thin. All this stuff with the LAPD using your skill sets, on top of the Buy More sending you off to freaking Lancaster to deal with obnoxious customers. Maybe you need a bit of a vacation."
"Eh. Maybe. I can't take the time right now, though. I think the LAPD is working on a case and I can really be of some help. I wanna be. What if I can do something to help them crack this case and it stops a bad person from hurting innocent people?"
Ellie sighed, nodding. "Yeah. I see what you're saying. And I hope you aren't offended when I say this, Chuck, but… you're not a cop. And it isn't your job to save the world. You don't have to be at their beck and call. Let them solve their own cases here and there, huh?"
Chuck shrugged. "If I can help, I want to."
"Okay." She shrugged back. "So why are you still staring at your phone?"
Damn it, she was observant.
And he moved the icepack to plop it on the coffee table where Morgan had been sitting, taking a sip of his coffee and setting it down too, before he rubbed his temples. "Okay, I'm gonna…" Was he going to tell her? She was a neurosurgeon, a neurologist, the smartest person he knew, and the only person he knew who might be able to figure out what in the fuck it was. "I'm gonna tell you something, but…don't think I'm crazy. Please."
She frowned. "O…kay."
He looked at the message again. They hadn't replied. He texted another message: "Answer me. Why did you send that to me? And why is it gone? Who are you?"
No response. Still.
"Chuck, you're kind of making me nervous. What's going on?"
"Sorry." He shook himself. And then he pushed his phone into her hands. "Look at that."
"Um. Okay. It…says… Wait, huh?" She squinted at the screen. "If it worked, send Y. You'll know," she read slowly. "If what worked? Who is this? This is weird."
"Yeah! I know! I got that text this morning while I was asleep. And Morgan got here and woke me up, said he'd called me a bunch to make sure I was okay when I started getting tea bagged by a bunch of—You know what? Isn't important. I checked my phone to see that Morgan had, in fact, called me like a million times. But then that text was there too, Ellie. Only I didn't see the words, I only saw a picture."
"What picture? There isn't a picture here," she said, scrolling a bit just to make sure and then gesturing at the device in confusion.
"I know. That's why I asked them where it went. It was there. And when I came to on the floor with you and Morgan leaning over me, I looked at it again and there was no picture."
"How is that possible?" He shrugged, eyes wide. Ellie gave him a confused look. "Well, what was it a picture of? Is it some kind of porn phishing thing?"
"Ew! No, it's not porn. Jesus…"
"People do that," she said with a shrug.
"I know. It wasn't porn. It was this…grainy military grade looking photo of a warhead with…numbers down the side of it."
"Like…a nuclear warhead?"
"Yeah," he said, shrugging. "But that's not the weirdest thing."
"It isn't?" She sat up straighter and gave him a look.
"Nope. This is the part that I said…well, please don't have me committed."
"Stop saying that. Just tell me."
He took a deep breath. "Okay. Ellie. When I opened that picture to make it bigger so that I could see what it was, something…weird happened. To me."
"…Like what?" she asked slowly.
"Like…" He huffed, pushing his fingers through his curls. "Like, I felt a pain in my head. It went from here," he poked himself in the middle of his forehead, "to back here somewhere…?" He moved to poke himself at the nape of his neck. "And then these…images flashed across my vision." He shook his head, still a little shaken by the whole thing. "Like pictures. Pictures of different things. Like…like files that intelligence agencies keep in filing cabinets in deep dark holes underground where nobody can get 'em. Files with people's pictures and names and stuff. And then I just…knew…about something. Something called…Code Magenta? Yeah," he rushed out. "That was it. Code Magenta."
Ellie's jaw fell open. "Code…Magenta?" she asked in a flat voice. "Are you…fucking with me or something? Are you coding some new game and you're trying out the plot on me right now? 'Cause you'd better tell me now. My brother was unconscious on his living room floor when I got here this morning and I'm still rattled and not in the mood for having my leg pulled."
"I'm not pulling your leg!" he snapped.
"God. Okay! I'm just making sure. Because that does sound like something you would…make into a video game or whatever."
"I know. I know it does. I know it sounds crazy! But that's what happened, and I just knew about this Code Magenta thing automatically. Like it was there in my head, sitting there, like I was…like I was there. And then I-I passed out. I passed out. And the next thing I knew, I woke up and you and Morgan were here and I was on the floor over there. And that picture that I saw was gone. It wasn't even here anymore. And I saw that message. That shit about how I'd know if it worked."
Ellie sat back against the couch and faced forward, her tongue darting out to lick her lips, her face twisted in thought. "Okay. Code Magenta."
"Yes. Code Magenta. That's…that's all I really remember about it. The warhead—it-it might've been Russian maybe?—and the CIA and some project called Code Magenta."
"This is batshit."
"Yeah, I know! But it's the truth! I'm telling you the truth! I wasn't dreaming, it wasn't a dream, and it happened. It happened to me. Whatever the fuck it is, Ellie, it happened. I'm not lying, you gotta believe me." He grabbed her arm.
"Chuck, don't freak out," she rushed, slapping her own hand down over his wrist and squeezing reassuringly. "I believe you. I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. This is bizarre. How does a…picture do that? And to the point where it gives you that kind of…weird top secret sounding information. Then you just lose consciousness like that? What the fuck?"
"Yeah. I'm at the point of what the fuck here, El."
"I mean…what the fuck?" She held out both of her hands then, lowering her palms slowly and taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. "Okay, it's probably some weird…trick. Right? Somebody is messing with you. It's a trick. Do you feel anything weird now? Is your vision weird?" He shook his head. "Headaches?"
"Well, I mean, I hit my head pretty hard when I passed out."
"Right. You did. That's true. Ringing in your ears?" He shook his head no again. "Tingling in your limbs? Fingers?"
"No. I feel totally normal. Save the bump on my head and the pain there, I feel…like a guy who got heatstroke and not enough sleep."
She shook her head. "Somebody has to be fucking with you, Chuck. They're messing with you. Watch. Hold on." She got up and went to her purse which she'd dropped on the entry table, probably as she burst in and found him unconscious on the floor once Morgan called her.
Grabbing her phone, she walked back. "I'm looking now. Code Magenta. Look, it's an app game for kids. Code Magenta." She turned her phone for him to see and he took it. He scrolled for a while. "See anything else?"
"No, but…I mean, if it's top secret stuff, El, it's not gonna come up in a Google search. That's stuff they don't want us knowing."
"But one of them wants you knowing? You?" She raised her eyebrow. "Out of everyone on the planet, you're the one they picked. Some random guy who is the Nerd Herd area specialist in Southern California. I'm not trying to say you aren't special, Chuck, but how would someone who has access to top secret information even know you exist? And if they did know you exist, why pick you?"
What she said made a hell of a lot of sense, and he felt relief start to make its way through him. Slowly. "You're right. Yeah." He nodded, sighing. "You're right, Ellie. That's crazy. Someone's just fucking with me."
"Yeah, and you've got all the signs of someone who had heatstroke, and as nice as it felt being with Sarah last night, maybe you should've guzzled water instead of wine which only served to further dehydrate you. And on top of that, you should've eaten food during the day and gotten proper sleep. That's what made you faint. Not some text with a picture some asshole sent you to trigger some neurological trick in your head." She cupped the side of his face and smiled. "I believe you. I believe you saw what you saw, that there was a picture, that things flashed across your vision. I just think what you saw was put there by a piece of shit thinking they're really funny."
Chuck nodded. "But who's that good at technology to be able to do that? Using technology to trigger someone's brain to see some joke top secret files based off what's actually a children's game app."
"I don't know. Someone who's also a dick though."
He huffed and shook his head. "I feel better already. I'm glad I told you."
"I'm glad you told me, too. Just ignore that stupid text. They're trying to freak you out." She put both hands on his shoulder. "Feeling a little better?"
"Much. Thank you."
"Good." And she lunged for him, hugging him tightly. He hugged her back just as tightly. "Thank you for telling me what happened. For being honest. Trusting me with that."
"Of course, you're my big sister. And also the smartest person I know with lots of specifically brain and neurology knowledge. Neuroledge." He grinned toothily, proud of himself for that one.
She giggled and rolled her eyes. "I'm making breakfast. Do you have eggs?"
"Yeah. I've got some."
"Good. Lie down on that couch properly, with no controller this time for shit's sake, and try to sleep a little while I make you some food." He did as she asked, and then she bustled over with a glass of water. "And drink this, damn it."
He chuckled, drinking some water as she hurried back to his kitchen. But then he eyed her for a while over the back of the couch. And he made to grab his cell phone, pulling the message back up. Staring at it.
They weren't going to respond to anything but what they were looking for, he knew. None of his questions would be answered. And maybe Ellie was right. She was more than likely right. This was just some asshole fucking with him using some seriously high tech programming.
Still, he tapped one key and hit send.
"Y"
He let his phone fall back onto the couch at his hip and he drifted off to sleep as his sister moved through the kitchen, thumping and clanging as she took things out to begin cooking. And Code Magenta wandered in and out of his brain, haunting him, refusing to go away.
A/N: Things are officially cooking now.
Please review if you're able. Thanks for reading!
-SC