A/N Posted 4/27/12
Many things were starting to happen at once with this story, and it started creating challenges for this novice plot builder.
Because the series took on a more dramatic bent in the later episodes so did this story. I still tried to inject levity and humor into it, but as it grew this tale became more about the romance, catharsis, and adventure that were also at the core of CHUCK. Amusingly enough, it also became a plot hole filling project to tie the larger story together much tighter.
I'll let you be the judge of whether I managed to achieve that goal.
I don't own Chuck
Chuck Versus the Lost Years
Act 4 - A Forgotten Hero
- I -
Two UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters lifted off from the twin rooftop helipads of the CIA/NSA annex at JPL and sped away at low-level. Three black Chevrolet Suburbans could be seen speeding down the access road and out the entrance guardhouse gate below them. In one of the two helicopters, Station Chief Charles Carmichael was hastily scrambling into a black nomex flight suit and donning a ballistic tactical vest. He briefly checked a small tablet computer stored in one of the rear vest pockets and then pulled the tranq pistol from the vest's chest mounted holster, checking it to assure a dart was in battery and that the gun's safety was engaged.
Station Chief Vincent Oddo looked at him disapprovingly. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have one of my extra Sigs? Those damned tranq darts don't work instantaneously, you know."
Chuck shook his head at him with a serious look on his face. "I'll take my chances. Besides, sometimes bullets don't work very quickly either, and I'd rather not have someone's death on my conscience, especially a slow and agonizing one."
Oddo frowned at him in reply.
As Chuck bent over to pull up the side zippers on his tactical boots, Oddo reached into the duffel at his feet and pulled out a Colt Mustang pistol that was holstered in condition one in a black nylon ankle holster. He held it out to Chuck. "Humor me. I'd rather not be the guy who had Charles Carmichael get killed on his watch."
Chuck frowned back at Oddo, but accepted the handgun and strapped it to the ankle of his left boot. "I'm going to try my darndest to forget this thing is here, Vincent."
"Suit yourself." Oddo looked pointedly at the agent sitting next to Chuck, shot him a hand signal, and pointed at Chuck. Stack on him. The agent nodded back.
Chuck caught it and cast Oddo an annoyed look. "I can take care of myself."
"Glad to hear it. But, I don't see the rest of your regular team here, so you're going to have to put up with Johnny and me on this one."
Chuck looked over at the agent who was wearing a tight grin sitting next to him. "John. John Rogers," the agent said matter-of-factly.
"Oh, that's just great, another John," Chuck exclaimed, as he noted that the guy was easily as big as Casey, too.
Oddo grinned at Chuck, and then said, "Overhead surveillance shows that bogies are now at the target house. Our teams will Fast Rope a half a block away and approach from the alley. We'll be over the DZ in about…" He looked forward at the pilot who turned to him and held up a thumb and two fingers. "…three minutes." Oddo pulled his Thompson Poseidon suppressed Sig P220 pistol from his tactical thigh holster, checked it, and quickly re-holstered it. "Put on your game face gentleman, this is where the fun begins."
They all pulled on their hard-knuckled tactical gloves, and Chuck cast a look at the 40mm rope hanging from the stanchion above the helicopter door. He swallowed. Oh, boy, this is going to be fun.
He looked at Oddo who showed him a thumbs-up and a wry grin. "Right behind me, Chuck, OK?"
Chuck nodded vigorously back, a look of wide-eyed excitement and determination on his face, and he swallowed again, hard.
About two minutes later the Blackhawks swooped down low between the houses on the upper middle-class residential street below and flew down the street, their rotor blades barely clearing the tops of trees and power lines along the sides. They were coming in behind the target on the street just behind it, and they weren't taking their time about it either. Thankfully the street was quiet on this Tuesday mid-morning. Abruptly, the tail of the helicopter dropped and the chopper slowed promptly to a hover about twenty-five feet over the street.
Oddo rose from his seat and grabbed the coiled rope on the floor. Another team member did the same at the opposite door. They both nodded to each other and tossed the ropes out the doors to the street. As the ropes hit the ground both men were on them and sliding down. Chuck immediately reached out and grabbed the rope. He could briefly feel agent Roger's hand on the drag handle of his vest as his feet then reached out to grab the rope by the insteps. And then the next thing he knew, he was on the ground and running to the side of the street to join up with Oddo. That was anti-climactic.
In a matter of seconds, the helicopters pivoted and retreated back up the street from the direction they had approached, staying low to mask their sound with the buildings and the trees. Oddo looked at all of them and then turned and swung an upturned hand with two fingers raised back and forth next to his head. They then trotted down the alleyway between the houses with large yards in a column of six. Another team of eight men from the other Blackhawk was about thirty paces behind them. Across the street, a woman was staring out of her front window in disbelief.
A minute later they were behind the target house. Oddo consulted a tablet in his hand verifying that this was the correct house from a satellite image. He then raised a camera scope above the top of the backyard fence and checked for lookouts in the yard and at the windows. Satisfied by what he saw, he hand signaled two men to approach the side windows as he slid the latch on the gate and slowly let it swing half way open.
The two men scurried toward the windows and set up below them. Presently the man toward the front of the house made a hand signal and held up four fingers, the other man at the window near the rear of the house repeated the signal and held up a hand with two fingers and an outstretched thumb. There were seven armed bad guys in the building. The man at the window closest to them signaled the O.K. for them to approach.
Oddo sent one team up the side of the house to the front corner and the other to the back door. He, with Chuck and John Rogers, took up the rear of the group headed toward the back door. The lead man of their team had a Benelli M4 tactical shotgun, and he took up position near the hinges of the back door with the rest of the team stacked up closely behind him.
Creeping over to the corner of the building, Oddo looked around and gave a couple of hand signals to the other team and the men below the windows, he then returned to the stack in front of Chuck and un-holstered his suppressed Sig Sauer and held it at low-ready. Agent Rogers was right behind Chuck with his suppressed pistol drawn at ready position sul. Chuck drew his tranq gun and did the same, his heart beating loudly in his ears. Then he heard a voice whisper into his earpiece "All other rooms are clear."
Oddo nodded imperceptibly to no one in particular and reached for a button on his shoulder mounted tactical radio with his off-hand. Chuck heard two beeps in his earpiece, then about two seconds later another beep. Breaking glass could be heard from the side of the house as the two men at the windows threw flashbang grenades through the windows into the adjacent rooms.
Boom! Boom! The shotgun-wielding man at the door destroyed the hinges with rapid shots, high then low, and then swiftly kicked the door right between the hinges, sending it flying into the house as he sidestepped across the doorway facing out with his Benelli at ready-high.
The flashbangs then exploded thunderously, the flash and concussion reaching out through the open doorway like a bright phantom fist. Broken glass could be heard tinkling to the ground all around. The two men behind the door breacher burst through the doorway, one sliding into the room low on one side of the door on one knee, his teammate stepping in high on the other side of the door. They simultaneously shouted the words "FEDERAL AGENTS!" as they crossed the threshold.
Similar commotion could be heard from the front of the house. The man with the shotgun was immediately behind the other two agents to cover the middle angle as Oddo moved in closely behind him with Chuck and agent Rogers closely on his tail. Suppressed gunshots and shouting could be heard from the front of the house. Before Chuck even made it to the doorway there was the rapid, staccato metallic pop of suppressed automatic pistols, followed by the sound of four empty cartridge casings bouncing on the floor tile.
He heard, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" shouted from the room, and as he finally rounded the corner of the door his eyes fell on a man in a black leather jacket on his knees with his pistol pointed to the ceiling and a wide-eyed look of terror on his face. As Chuck looked at the man, he flashed. On both sides of the enemy operative lay two large, lifeless, similarly dressed men; one with a handgun, and the other with a MAC-10 submachine gun clenched in their dead hands.
Both men had been expertly double-tapped in the head, and Chuck squelched the urge to retch from the sight. The entry agents quickly secured the weapons as the breaching man with the shotgun leveled his weapon on the man that was on his knees. In a matter of seconds the enemy agent was disarmed and on his stomach wearing zip tie cuffs behind his back.
It was all over in about in about ten seconds. Only two enemy agents had survived the very one-sided shootout. A minute later as Chuck watched out the living room window, three black Chevy Suburbans pulled up out front and agents started to pour out. After Chuck took a few more seconds to mentally process most of what had just happened he walked over to Agent Oddo. "These men are Fulcrum operatives."
Oddo's eyes narrowed and he looked at him skeptically. "I thought Fulcrum was destroyed three years ago. How do you know these guys are Fulcrum?"
"Trust me," Chuck replied, "They're Fulcrum. Get their pictures off to Langley, they'll confirm it."
Oddo directed his stern gaze at one of his team members. "You heard the man, get pictures of all these guys. And get the prisoners back to base and lockdown, we'll interrogate them later." The agent nodded and motioned two others to help him as they set themselves directly to the assigned task. "Okay, gentleman," Oddo, added loudly, "Lets start to turn this place upside down."
As the combined CIA/NSA team began searching the room it became quickly apparent that the men they had interrupted here had much more in mind than just a search of the building.
- II -
When Sarah walked out of Dr Dreyfus's office into the reception area, Chuck was gone. Instead, a young dark haired woman rose quickly from one of the waiting room chairs. "Mrs. Bartowski? I'm Ni-"
"Where's Chuck?" Sarah asked, cutting her off pointedly with an alarmed look growing on her face. Then her expression rapidly changed, and her jaw dropped slightly as she did a startled double-take at the face of the woman standing in front of her. Wow, the resemblance was uncanny.
Aside from the very dark almost jet-black hair that didn't quite reach her shoulders and a little darker complexion, Sarah could have sworn she was looking in a mirror. It was positively spooky. Though, below the shoulders she saw the resemblance disappeared, as she looked at the woman in her short skirt with a silk top and business jacket. She looked rather voluptuous and she was a couple of inches shorter than her. Sarah checked herself when she realized she might be lingering a bit and fought off a slight blush.
Nikki smiled coyly with her hands clasped in front of her as Chuck Bartowskis's wife was studying her. She had seen pictures and videos of Sarah and knew that this first meeting might be a little different than most introductions. And it definitely was. "I'm Nikki Lawson, Chuck's office manager," she rejoined, showing Sarah her Carmichael Industries security badge hanging around her neck. "Is it all right if I call you Mrs. Bartowski? Chuck was called away on an…emergency? He asked me to meet you here, and I never thought to ask him how you preferred to be addressed."
Sarah snapped out of it. "Um… yes, Mrs. Bartowski is fine, but please, call me Sarah, Ms. Lawson," she muttered, a little nonplussed.
"Okay, Sarah," Nikki replied, with riveting eye contact, "Call me Nikki, then. I'm sorry we had to meet under circumstances like this. Chuck asked that I pick you up and take back to our new offices to show you around until he was done."
"Until he is done? Just what sort of an emergency was Chuck called away on, Nikki?" Sarah asked, her eyes narrowing.
"All I know right now is that General Beckman texted him, and he then called me and said he had to go upstairs to the operations center right away. Once we get to our office I can get more information for us."
"Oh, General Beckman. Say no more." Sarah thought for a few seconds about Nikki's suggestion to go back to the new offices. She was curious to see them, but it occurred to her that they might be able to get some information about what Chuck was up to quicker where they were. "I'm anxious to see the new place, but why don't we go upstairs first and see if we can talk some information out of someone up there before we go to the new offices? And, who knows, maybe Chuck is still up there," she offered.
"That sounds like an excellent idea," Nikki agreed, her face brightening. "I like to bust the chops of that bunch up there whenever I get the chance anyway. Let's go."
As they rode upstairs on the elevator, the two of them cast quick glances at each other, both directly, and indirectly in the mirrored walls of the elevator. Chuck was definitely right, Nikki looked… amazing, and Sarah realized it was having an odd effect on her. It was making her feel… possessive. She didn't even want to think of the word jealous. Come on! You're the one who is *married* to the guy!
These sudden dark emotions were bringing other buried feelings to her attention, front and center, and it stunned her. "You said you are Chuck's office manager?"
"Yes, I just started officially working for Chuck a couple of weeks ago. I'm doing a number of different things for him right now."
"So I've been told," Sarah quietly replied as she looked straight ahead.
*Ping* The elevator chimed announcing they were on the fourth floor.
They exited into the operations center foyer and entered a reception area with a tall-countered semicircular receptionists desk. A retinal scanner was placed prominently atop it, and a cheerful young woman seated behind it. The nameplate on the counter said, 'Greta'. There was a very imposing looking closed door off to the side and behind Greta.
"Good morning, ladies, can I help you?"
"We're looking for Station Chief Charles Carmichael, is he still here?" Sarah posed the question in her most pleasant but authoritative voice.
"May I inquire as to who is looking for him?" Greta pleasantly asked.
"I'm his wife, Case Officer Sarah Walker, and this is Chuck's… Vice President of Operations, Nikki Lawson." Nikki shot her an amused glance that she returned before continuing. "We understand he was called up here about an hour ago?"
"Just one moment Mrs. Walker. Or would it be Carmichael in the database?" she asked with an easy smile. "Let me check the roster. If both of you would be so kind as to let us check your identity on the scanner, I'll pull up the duty roster for the day."
Sarah stood in front of the retina scanner, and a sudden instant of doubt crossed her mind as she wondered if it would be accepted...and what name would come up if she was. It beeped with recognized positivity at her, and she inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She briefly raised a brow when she saw her verified name. Nikki casually did the same, also with positive results, and Sarah made a mental note to herself that she now knew one more important thing about Nikki Lawson when the title Lt. Commander appeared before her name on the display.
"Ah, so it's Walker-Carmichael," Greta observed, as she looked at the monitor and scrolled through a personnel list. "Chief Carmichael was here, but he left with Station Chief Oddo from the heliport about forty-five minutes ago. If you want any more information you'll have to talk to the Watch Officer, I'm not allowed to discuss it further in this area."
The heliport? "Can we go back to speak to the Watch Officer then? I'm a little concerned about my husband."
"Of course. I'll let Officer Watson know you're here."
After they waited a few minutes - the entire time Sarah pondering her reasons for hyphenating her name and her companion's title - the door opened with a click and a hiss. A tall blond-haired and slender man walked into the room wearing his standard issue black G' man suit with a white shirt and black tie and black rubber soled oxfords.
"Welcome, Officer Walker, Ms. Lawson. I'm Richard Watson, the Officer of the Day. Please follow me." The man then unceremoniously turned and walked back through the door.
They followed him into what appeared to be a large lounge area with chairs and coffee tables and a couple of couches. The room arched off left and right into hallways lined with offices. Ahead of them through open double doors on a curved wall was a very large room filled with workstations and large monitors strategically arrayed around the walls and other locations within the room.
This was obviously the station operations center, and it was buzzing with the activity of approximately twenty people busy doing various tasks around the room. As Sarah studied the organized chaos her eye was drawn to one big overhead monitor at the center of the room, showing a large house viewed from overhead. It had several black vehicles parked in front of it and figures could be seen walking around outside the building.
She glanced back at Officer Watson. He'd been watching her looking at the monitor. "This area is secure, we can talk freely here." He motioned to the seating. "Would you like to have a seat?" It sounded more like a command than a request so Sarah remained standing. Nikki picked it up too and followed Sarah's cue as they wandered closer towards the double doors and watched the commotion in the room beyond. Finally, Watson shrugged his shoulders and walked over to stand with them. "Yes, your husband is at that house with my boss, Vince."
Sarah turned to look him in the eye. "Was that Nicholas Quinn's base of operations?" She had spent several days trying to find that house before finally trying to kill Quinn on his jet.
"We think it might be," answered Watson, "We raided it about thirty minutes ago, and right now it's being searched for anything useful to the investigation that Quinn or his associates might have left there."
"Did Chuck participate in the raid?" Sarah's face was flat, nearly void of expression as she slipped into her well practiced operative mode. Her eyes, however, were betraying her a bit. She was a little agitated, and confused, because she didn't understand why the thought of Chuck doing this made her feel that way.
"Yes, he and the Station Chief were in the first two groups to breach the building. The timing turned out to be very critical." He paused as if to consider his words. "They stopped a group of men getting ready to demo the house. The place was filled with explosives."
Both the women turned to Richard Watson with a stony gaze. "Did your people have any idea what they might be walking into?" Nikki Lawson asked with ice in her voice.
The watch officer took half a step back clearly caught off guard by the glare and the icy tone. "We knew that the bad guys were in the target house, but no one suspected they were planning to destroy it. Fortunately, we arrived when they were still in the house. They were searching for something in the house, as well as prepping it for demolition. Seems they knew we might be coming and didn't want to leave anything for us to find that would link them to being there...as well as maybe make it some of our guy's last mission."
*Chuck's* last mission! All of the sudden, Sarah collapsed onto one knee and gasped loudly, her vision filling with jagged, bright white light accompanied with intense pain. And with the pain came a recent memory, equally intense. She was with Chuck, in their apartment living room, talking about the direction of Carmichael Industries, and the dangers their lives were constantly exposed to by their work, and… babies? Is this real? Am I losing my mind? One last mission?
As the flash receded she slowly became aware again of her surroundings, and someone talking to her, crouched next to her holding her arm and rubbing her neck where it met her shoulders. She turned to see a very distressed Nikki Lawson. "Sarah, are you okay? You had me worried there for a minute. I thought you'd had a stroke or something."
"I think…I'm O.K...now…it's passing." Her expression turned to one of confusion. "Where are we?"
"We're in the Ops Center, remember?" The look of distress on Nikki's face was not dissipating. "I think we should go back downstairs to see Dr. Dreyfus about this."
Watch Officer Watson then re-entered the room with a colleague who was carrying a medical kit. Sarah looked at Watson like he was a complete stranger, a puzzled look on her face. She then turned back to Nikki. "No. No, I'm fine now. I'll talk to the doctor about this later." She only had one thing on her mind at the moment.
"Where is Chuck?"
Watson pointed at the monitor in the Ops Center again, his eyes narrowing; "As I said when you asked before, there, at Quinn's base of operations."
Sarah's face became clouded with anger as she jabbed her own finger toward the screen. "Tell me, where that house is, Officer...Officer…"
"Watson," Nikki interjected.
"That house, Watson, tell me where it is....right now." Sarah Walker looked like she was about to tear somebody's head off, and Richard Watson didn't want to be any party to that.
When Sarah and Nikki strode briskly into the elevator Nikki looked at her and muttered, "Vice President of Operations?"
Sarah glanced guardedly back at Nikki from the corner of her eye, and showed her a restrained smile. "Frankly, after all the things Chuck said you do for him I didn't think 'office manager' came close to cutting it."
"VP of Operations works for me. Thanks for the promotion," Nikki replied as she studied Sarah closely.
Sarah caught the look. "I'm alright. Really."
Nikki didn't say a word, responding instead with only a solicitous smile.
- III -
His hands were a blur on the keyboard as he adjusted the encryption algorithm on the fly. Chuck Bartowski was in his element, and in the zone. So far he'd stayed three steps ahead of the very robust encryption software on the computer into which he was hacking. As he keyed in a final line in machine code his fingers flashed to the F12 key and then to the Enter key to execute the applet he'd just written. The screen flashed once and then he was in.
"Muahaha, once again the Piranha has left nothing but bones," he proclaimed, clenching his fists in front of him in victory and shaking them. "Now, show me what you're trying to hide from me in here Quinn… while you rot in hell," he quietly added, interlacing his fingers to crack his knuckles.
Chuck then looked at the activity going on in the room around him as his focus shifted from the task he had been totally absorbed in to the easier task of just accessing and searching the files he was after. He swiftly typed in a search string and sat back to watch. Several NSA forensic techs were scanning the room with backscatter x-ray equipment looking for hidden vaults and stashes. They swept the rooms methodically marking the walls, ceiling, and floor with small cans of spray paint as they went if they saw something on the devices that looked out of place.
Others, whom he was hoping were bomb disposal technicians, were finally removing over a dozen covered five gallon paint buckets from the house that apparently, judging from the smell, were filled with a slurry of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The three-gallon plastic cans of gasoline that had been set around the poor man's demolitions had been removed straight away before the team had removed the detonators and the cell phone triggering device.
It had been a very tense several moments before the cell phone trigger had been removed. A call could have come in at any time to trigger the charges, and everyone in the building knew it. The whole operation could have been being monitored by someone nearby and blown to immolated little pieces with a simple phone call, and Chuck, Oddo, and about twelve other agents had just started their search of the house when the charges and the cell phone detonator were discovered, innocuously hidden in cardboard moving boxes.
The choice of explosives was most likely designed to try to deflect an investigation. Uncomplicated, untraceable, and very effective, there would have been very little left of the large house, and what was left would have left rather ambiguous clues as to who was responsible.
An NSA technician marked a square on the hardwood floorboards not far from where Chuck was sitting in a large office area. He looked curiously at the markings on the floor and back at the triple monitored workstation on the very large teak desk he was sitting at, when two techs approached the spot with a small battery operated circular saw and a pry bar.
"No-no-no-no, guys, hang on there a minute," he blurted out as he fixed his gaze on the lead tech. "What exactly did you see under there?" This place was really starting to give Chuck the creeps, and he was quickly learning to carefully watch his step around anything to do with Nicholas Quinn, whether the devious bastard was dead or not.
"Looks to be a hidden storage vault of some sort, sir," the tech answered, "Approximately two-by-two-by-three. Judging by the image it's made of steel, some sort of opening mechanism, and wiring to it that appears to be power and control."
"Let me see that gizmo." Chuck pointed to the x-ray equipment lying on the floor and the forensic tech picked it up and handed it to him. He almost let it get away from his grip - it was heavy! Studying the device a minute, he quickly deciphered how it operated and pointed it at the area around the desk. The other agents immediately stepped out of the way – it seemed that none of them wanted to be in front of the thing when it was on. File that one away in the old memory banks.
Wiring from the marked spot on the floor led to the wall next to the desk and terminated at a box within the wall. The box appeared to have what looked like a wi-fi antenna on it. He swept the x-ray viewer back toward the discovered vault and looked carefully at it on the devices monitor. "Take another hard look at this and tell me what you see," he said to the NSA tech.
The technician looked over Chucks shoulder at the monitor for a moment as Chucks finger traced the outline of the inside edge of the vault and stopped at the corner of it. He then let out a low whistle as he stared at Chuck. "Thanks sir, you just saved us all from a world of hurt."
Chuck handed the device back to him and stepped back to the workstation. "Give me a few minutes with this. I think this PC controls that thing from the wi-fi card."
He pulled the small tablet PC from his tactical vest pocket and plugged it in to the USB port of the workstation as he removed the thumb drive he'd previously been using with the same hand in a single motion. Tapping the tablet face he pulled up a program that started to search the executable files on the PC's hard drive for the type he was looking for, and then he pulled up a password search program as the executable program files started to scroll down the PC's monitor.
The activity in the room attracted the JPL Station Chief's attention, and Oddo came over to watch over his shoulder as Chuck worked.
As executable files that met his search parameters started to fill a window other windows started to pop up on the second monitor showing results from his previous searches. Station Chief Oddo pointed to one of them and said, "What's this? CAD files? Schematics?"
Chuck clicked on one of them, and OrCAD booted up, showing a printed circuit board design. "Holy techno-widgets, Batman."
Vincent Oddo pointed to the notations at the bottom of the drawing and both men turned and looked at one another. "Pull this data off now," Oddo said flatly. Chuck didn't say a word, but he did wonder just how much Oddo knew about the Intersect.
Pulling a small solid state portable hard drive from another of his pockets, Chuck swiftly plugged it in, and started transferring files to it. He then switched his attention back to the search results of the .exe files. He highlighted three of them and pulled the code into a compiler. There; that one. He studied the code for a moment. Switching back to the source window, he was about to click the executable when he was interrupted again by Vincent, "What are these? Videos?"
"Yup, MP4. Give me a couple of seconds with this. I think this is the program that controls that vault", Chuck said, pointing to the floor, "Then we'll have a look at one of those MP4 files."
Chuck clicked the program file and a window displayed on the monitor showing just a password box. He started his password search program on his tablet and watched the characters scroll rapidly by on the password box. He then moved the cursor over to the other monitor and double clicked one of the video files...and his face turned as white as a motel sheet.
Sarah was strapped to a chair, and her head was strapped to a rest. Her eyes were being held open with eye speculums, and they were fluttering and dancing around as she cried out in pain. Someone off camera was talking to her, taunting her. It sounded like Quinn.
"You bastard," Chuck growled under his breath. Quinn's voice faded away as he was flooded with every emotion he knew he had within him, and a couple he didn't recognize, in the span of a heartbeat. Sarah was alternating between gasping, catching breaths, and cries of what had to be pure agony. He knew how tough Sarah was.
Whatever they were doing had to be extremely bad for her to react this way. As she gasped trying to collect herself Quinn was talking to her, but none of the words were registering in Chuck's mind, his focus was completely on Sarah and his face was painted with pure horror. "You BASTARD."
Momentarily, Chuck felt a hand on his shoulder, and Vincent took the mouse from his hand and closed the video. "I'm sorry, Chuck, you shouldn't have had to see that...and I you need to snap out of it, man. Look," he said as he pointed at the vault control program.
Slowly Chuck's gaze refocused on the password box to see that it was almost filled. The password was a long one. It pulled him jarringly back to the present. Do_NOT!_ trust_ bO_ d3R3K!_ $$!
Presently, the last character fell into place – one more exclamation point - and a button at the bottom of the window became highlighted. Taking a deep breath to collect himself, Chuck clicked it. And with a combined pneumatic sound, and the whirring of an electric motor, a section of the flooring retracted down and slid to the side as the steel door of the vault slid open in the opposite direction.
Oddo stepped over to the vault and began carefully removing items from it and placing them on the edge of the large desk. There were a number of things inside it, including what Chuck knew to be Intersect components from previous flashes, and some other unrecognizable electronic devices he'd never seen. There was a zippered black leather case about five-by-seven inches, a portable hard drive, and a small memory card wallet. Then Vincent pulled out a camera, a cell phone, a S&W 5906 handgun, and a small black box. The handgun and the cell phone looked like Sarah's.
Chuck glanced at the items on the desk while he was working at the computer. His eyes fell on the small black box piled with the other items. Curiously he picked it up, and when he opened it his heart leapt into his throat. He pulled the contents out and examined them as he held them in his fingertips. His eyes were almost brimming over as he swiftly stuffed them into his flight suit sleeve pocket and zipped it shut. Station Chief Oddo watched it all without saying a word. He knew exactly to whom they belonged.
Then Chuck picked up the rectangular leather case and opened the zipper that went around three sides of it. That was when he heard Agent John Roger's voice from the doorway.
"Uh...Sir?"
Both Chuck and Vincent looked up to see Sarah Walker and Nikki Lawson standing in the doorway with a rather cowed-looking Agent Rogers standing behind them. Nikki looked hard-eyed and collected, but Sarah's expression was one of a woman who was about to kill someone with a single blow and knew exactly how to do it, in any number of ways.
"We need to talk, Chuck." Sarah's voice had a hard razors-edge to it. Nikki nodded in agreement, sending Chuck a message of alarm with her eyes.
"Sarah! What are you doing here?" The whole scene sort of overwhelmed Chuck and the case he was holding slipped from his hands and fell to the floor with a thunk, it's contents spilling out with a clatter. His eyes fell on several rectangular objects that looked like they had a diffraction grating with holographic symbols embossed on them. And he flashed. It was wickedly painful and violent, and he fell to his knees as he instinctively looked away from the cards. His head was spinning as he was instantly overcome by a migraine so intense he thought he might pass out.
Sarah and Nikki bolted across the room, and when Sarah came to Chuck's side to take hold of him, she stared down at the cards. With a loud gasp, she then fell into a heap on top of Chuck. Nikki, seeing the cause and effect of what was happening, quickly gathered up the contents of the case, shoved them back into it, and zippered it shut. She then tucked the case into the back of her skirt waistband as she caught Oddo's questioning eyes falling on her. "C'mon, lets get these two out of here," she commanded as she shot a pointed look at the Station Chief.
"I think I know what just happened here," exclaimed Oddo.
"Yeah," Nikki said with unmasked disgust. "This was how that son-of-a-bitch Quinn brain-washed Sarah." She motioned to Rogers and another agent with him. "C'mon! Help us get Chuck and Sarah up and somewhere comfortable where they can lie down." She pulled out her iPhone to dial Ellie Bartowski's number.
- IV -
Three blocks away from Quinn's safehouse, a seething Edgar Sloan sat in his 7 series BMW watching the activity around it through a compact spotting scope propped on the steering wheel. They were clearly NSA and CIA cleaners, and his crew had botched the job. Now he had to come up with an alternate plan to recover the Intersect equipment that he knew had to be stashed in the house. He'd considered for a moment just calling the detonator and just taking out the entire raiding party, but he wanted the equipment more. And as it was, he couldn't tell from where he was sitting if any of the people on-site were important enough to sacrifice the Intersect Intel.
Biding his time seemed to be the prudent course of action under the circumstances. He'd just have to rely on the last four remaining Fulcrum sleeper operatives he had well hidden within the CIA. Those four were the only ones inside that had escaped being identified by what was thought to be the Intersect 1.0 over three years ago. He'd have to use those assets wisely if he wanted to obtain the equipment and use it to help rebuild the Fulcrum organization.
After picking up his phone and ordering the surveillance team two blocks behind him to take over his watch of the house, Edgar Sloan started his car and drove away.
- V -
Sarah awoke lying on her side on an unfamiliar bed with a splitting headache. As her eyes slowly refocused she realized she was face-to-face with Chuck Bartowski. He had a gentle smile on his face as he looked into her eyes. "Hi", he said, reaching to brush her hair back from her eyes with his fingertips.
"Hi." She rubbed her temple and blinked, then looked again, as his smile transformed into something a little goofier. She looked at him curiously as she tried to pinch off the pain in her head.
"I got to Fast Rope out of a Blackhawk today, honey."
She lay there looking at him feeling a conflicting mixture of pride in Chuck's easy and natural ability to do the heroic, and an overwhelming anger and want to keep him safe and get him away from the constant risk associated with their jobs. "I'm going to gut Station Chief Oddo with my smallest knife when I see his sorry ass," she said, as a scowl grew on her face.
Now obviously confused he said, "What? I don't understand, I thought you would get a kick out of hearing that."
"Maybe Sarah Walker does, but Sarah Bartowski clearly does not," she replied, visibly disturbed by the duality of the words she'd just uttered. "I thought we were trying to get away from these sorts of risky ops, Chuck; wasn't that the reason for realigning Carmichael Industries' mission?" She rolled onto her back and groaned. "God, I need some aspirin. About half a bottle should do the trick."
Chuck reached over to place his hand on hers, and she turned her head to look at him again. He didn't say it, but she could see that the words 'I love you' were written all over his face. As she gazed into his amazing hazel eyes, they caused her smile to grow no matter how hard she tried to squelch it.
Upon hearing the conversation coming from the room, Nikki Lawson appeared at the doorway of the large bedroom they were in with two one-liter bottles of water. "How are you two doing?" Nikki didn't wait for an answer. She crossed the room and handed a bottle to each of them as Chuck and Sarah gingerly sat up. She then settled on the corner of the bed. "I've been instructed by your personal physician," she said looking at Chuck, "Your sister, to make sure that both of you drink all of this. Then I'll have another one for you and something for your headaches."
Chuck looked around the strange room and down at his clothing. He wasn't wearing the Nomex flight suit any longer, and a sudden look of anxiety crossed his face.
"Don't worry Chuck, I have them. I'll keep them safe for you for the time being," Nikki anticipated.
Sarah watched the relief wash over Chuck's face and looked back and forth between Nikki and him. "Am I missing something here?"
"Yeah, you are missing something, honey, in more ways than one," Chuck said apologetically, "but I think we're going to have to discuss it later. Sorry. Where are we, Nikki? What happened to us?"
"Still at the safehouse. We borrowed one of the bedrooms. We were going to transport you to the hospital, but Ellie said you'd be okay here after we told her what your vitals were. Both of you were exposed to the technology that Quinn used to wipe Sarah's memories." Both Chuck and Sarah's eyes grew wide at the revelation. "What is the last thing you remember, Boss?"
"I have a vague recollection of you and Sarah standing in a doorway with disgusted looks on your faces. Don't remember anything after that."
"And you, Sarah?" Nikki asked.
Sarah stopped drinking from the water bottle and looked at Nikki thoughtfully. "You and me in an elevator, and you thanking me for the job promotion." She looked around. "This is Quinn's safehouse?"
Nikki nodded an affirmative to Sarah as Chuck uttered, "A job promotion? Is there something I'm missing here?"
Sarah and Nikki exchanged look of amusement, then Sarah answered, "Yeah, you are, sweetie, but we should probably save that discussion for later, too."
"Touché", he laconically answered. He looked at Nikki, "You mentioned you talked to Ellie?"
"Yes. The whole Woodcomb family is on the way out here from Chicago right now. Their flight should be arriving right after the dinner hour. Ellie wanted me to tell the both of you to expect lots of tests at the annex medical center tomorrow. It will probably take most of the day, and she wants you there at 7:30 am. Your appointment with Dr. Dreyfus has also been moved up to Thursday, and he wants both of you there for that."
Sarah and Chuck looked curiously at each other. Things were moving very fast, indeed. "Who is minding the office right now?" asked Chuck.
"Morgan's been there since you called me this morning. He called me a little while ago to say he was about ready to close up and head home because the computer contractors are just about done for the day. He says you owe him another day off."
Chuck rolled his eyes, "I'll bet he had a real tough day browsing the Internet from your workstation."
Nikki smiled briefly at that and glanced at her watch. "Chuck, I've finished transferring all the files from the computer you were working on and the forensic team will be taking the PC case back to the Ops Center for further evaluation."
Looking at him meaningfully with a shocked and disturbed look in her eyes that acknowledged something she'd seen and that they now shared, she then continued, "The techs have disabled the vaults self-destruct mechanism, so moving the computer shouldn't be a problem now. We'll drop the data you and I collected, and most of the other collected tech at Castle, and then I'll take you and Sarah to your car."
Nikki then cleared her throat, very purposefully capturing both of their undivided attention with a very penetrating gaze. "Ellie's team will be coming to Castle sometime tomorrow to examine some of the tech that was recovered." Pulling the leather case from her skirt waistband, she waved it in front of them. "Under no circumstances are either of you to open this case; that is unless you're interested in having a repeat of the long nap, memory loss, and headaches you both have."
She looked at them in turn to make sure the point was made, then said, "Good. Now, finish those bottles of water so I can get you those meds, and then we can get out of here. I'll be back in a few minutes." And Nikki left the room without another word.
Sarah stared awestruck at Chuck. "Where did you find her? She is amazing."
Chuck shrugged and cast her a self-satisfied smile. "Yeah, she definitely deserves that promotion. Can I pick em' or what? Just what is her new title now?"
Then he thought of the look Nikki had given him about the data recovery and his expression sobered; he knew she had seen the video, even as he wished his experience with Quinn's flashcards had erased his own memory of it.
- VI -
It was already after the dinner hour when Nikki dropped them off at Chuck's car. They'd both been asleep for several hours after their encounter with Nicholas Quinn's flashcards, and half the day had been lost along with some memories of it. The flashcards hadn't affected Chuck nearly as badly as they had Sarah. He'd actually been awake over an hour before Sarah and had spent the time just watching her sleep.
Apparently his memory loss wasn't as bad either. He'd lost only a fraction of the time Sarah had. He figured the reasons to be his better retention as an Intersect subject and the questionable quality of the Intersect version Sarah had uploaded. He was still trying to deal with the fact that they were literally an Intersect couple. That is, if Sarah had come to grips with the fact that they were a couple, and that seemed to be the case more, and more, by the minute.
Sarah was watching his obvious musings as they got into the car. "What now, Chuck?"
"Home?"
She cast him a tight-lipped smile, "That's not what I meant, but home's fine."
Starting the engine, he and looked over at her, his distress obvious. "There are so many questions I want to ask you, but I can't. I saw some things today, Sarah...I saw what Quinn did to...the simple truth is, you've already been through so much. Baby, I wish I could talk about this stuff with you...it's so damn important...but I'm afraid I'll only make things worse if I do. There are so many things I want to share with you...so many things you already remember that I wish I could tell you more about, but I've been told not to." Chuck looked like he was about to come apart at the seams. "This is tearing me up inside, Sarah."
Sarah tried to send Chuck a message with her eyes that was meant to reassure and calm him, that wordless message that she somehow knew would always ground him. "It's okay, Chuck, I trust that you'll do what's right for both of us. Eventually, we'll get to talk about it. Just let it go for now and let's try to live in the moment. That's what Dr. Dreyfus said we should do, and I trust him too. For now, let's just go home." Chuck's hand was on the shifter and she placed her hand on top of his, and as she gripped his hand, she looked him in the eye and winked. He got the message she was sending as she pushed the stick into first gear. "Let it go for now. Let's go home. We'll deal with all of this one gear at a time."
He looked at Sarah and saw the mirth dancing in her eyes, "Ha, Ha, a car metaphor. Should I take some small comfort in the fact you don't have an accelerator or brake pedal over there?"
"Only until tomorrow, then I'll be driving. You may wish you have them over here then...at least a brake pedal." She gave his hand another squeeze, "We have a big day tomorrow, so lets go."
When they pulled up to park in front of the El Cabrillo there was a mover's truck parked outside on the street and a steady stream of men moving furniture and boxes into the apartment that only a few weeks ago was occupied by Devan and Ellie Woodcomb and their baby girl, Clara. There was an unusual efficiency in the way the truck was being emptied that set warning alarms off in Sarah's head as she watched the ballet being performed in front of them. She'd seen this more than a few times in her career as a government operative. This was a Company crew.
Sarah grabbed Chuck's hand as they walked through the entry portal to the courtyard, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing here?"
Chuck looked at the name on the side of the movers truck and flashed, "Yeah, something is definitely up, that moving company is an Agency shell corporation." As the words crossed his lips he saw Morgan standing in his and Alex's apartment doorway, pointing repeatedly to the upstairs apartment on the opposite corner from theirs. The movers were going in and out of that one also. "Sarah, something very weird is going on here."
"Wasn't that apartment occupied by that nice older couple?" Sarah asked.
"Yes. Mr. And Mrs. Addisian; they've been living there for years. They came to our wedding." They hurried over to where Morgan was standing. "Morgan do you know what's going on here?"
"It's a government takeover, Chuck. It looks like the El Cabrillo has become the NSA's latest acquisition in the fight to save the world from the clutches of evil; although, I have no idea who is going to save us from the NSA. By the way, dude, I hope you two didn't have any special plans for this evening, you have house guests."
"What?" Chuck and Sarah chorused.
"Yeah, I kind of used my old key to let them in." Morgan shrugged, "I couldn't just let them stand around in the courtyard until these… efficiency experts were through turning the place into a government home decorators showcase, now, could I?"
Sarah mouthed the name "Ellie?" to Chuck with a look of total distress as she palmed her face. She was still trying to come to grips with what she had done to Ellie over six weeks ago.
"Exactly," Morgan acknowledged, "I didn't think I needed to mention names."
Chuck placed his arm around Sarah's shoulders, "Don't worry, honey; Ellie is over that, really. She knows more than anyone what happened to you and what you're currently going through. You have to see her tomorrow anyway, so you might as well get it over and done right now."