CHAPTER 52
Beckman was unsurprisingly angry when they first connected to her for a debrief, but as she listened to the situation her features softened. When they finally concluded with Ryker's death Beckman let out a snort. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"I know we went off book, General, but-"
"It's understandable," Beckman said holding up a hand to everyone's surprise. "It was personal. It happens. I'll let this pass since it was technically a Carmichael Enterprises job… but no more. Not when it involves a rogue agent."
"Yes, General," Sarah said nodding.
"Now I assume you still have access to Ryker's money? I'll need you to transfer that back to-"
"Uh, that's gonna be a problem," Chuck said sheepishly.
Beckman's gaze narrowed as the agents turned to him. "And why is that?"
"Well, I, uh, I checked it last night and I guess I didn't really go a good job covering my tracks because the account I put the money in was empty." Chuck frowned to Sarah and Casey before telling Beckman, "I think that guy, Quick Eye, might have taken it. If he knew about us he might have expected us to get rid of Ryker. That way him taking all his cash goes unnoticed."
Beckman sighed, but didn't seem to mind much. "And we have no idea who this Quick Eye is? How they knew about Agent Walker and the girl?"
"I think he's likely the one who accessed Sarah and Casey's files a few weeks back," Chuck posited. "I'd imagine some version of things would be in her file, as would her current assignment."
"The girl wouldn't have been in there though, right?" asked Casey.
Sarah nodded. "Graham kept her out of it. Only ever referred to her as 'the package'."
"So did Quick Eye," Chuck reminded them. "He only ever said that you were here and so was what you took. He never mentioned the baby."
After a moment of thought Beckman said, "I'll have traces put on names of note from both of your files and this Quick Eye account. Hopefully we can keep from being caught off guard even if they don't check your files for themselves."
Though Beckman was taking it all well, Chuck disliked the idea of this mission being even a minor mark on Sarah's record, so held up a hand. "Um, General. There is something else."
"And that is?"
"The guys Ryker brought with him, they were only six from the list I had. Sarah and Casey helped me find about thirty other guys loosely associated with the goons in Hungary. I could send their files over so you can have the ones we arrested questioned about them. Maybe they'll out more people."
That made the General laugh. "It can't hurt." She reached over to disconnect the call but stopped herself. "Oh, right, I got your proposal, Agent Walker. I'll sign them in the morning and have the payment made by end of day tomorrow, so order the parts and begin production of the CID and CIR devices. I'd like to have agents using the first batch by the end of the year if not the end of summer."
"I'll order them as soon as I get in the office tomorrow," Sarah assured.
"Thank you, General," said Chuck.
The older woman looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "You've earned it, Chuck. I'll look into getting CE paid for Ryker if not their share of any rewards there might be for those arrested from this."
Once the call ended Chuck beamed. "I think she likes me."
"You're giving her thirty criminals for her to take credit for helping put away and a chance to improve relations with another country," Casey pointed out.
"I guess that's true," Chuck said crossing his arms, a sly smile crossing his lips as he said, "That helps me feel less guilty for lying about Ryker's money."
Both agents turned to Chuck. "What?" Casey asked, looking disappointed while Sarah frowned.
"I was gonna hand it over but I think Molly and your mom deserve it. I know Molly kind of doesn't need it, but if not a college fund then it could be a toy fund or something, and it can help your mom. Get them a good car, decorate the house, get Molly a pool or something. Either way I thought they deserved it for having to live with Ryker's threat over them." Looking to Sarah he said, "If you don't want me to give it to them then I could use it during my next Piranha donation."
Sarah smiled solemnly as Casey shook his head. "How the hell do you not take the money for yourself?"
"I've thought about it," Chuck said frowning. "I told you once I was in a bad place with bills and didn't have much saved… I thought about it, but Piranha was supposed to be about more than that."
"But the Piranha didn't take Ryker's money."
"They deserve it." Chuck shrugged. "Plus I'm about to get a bunch of money." Of course a lot of that was going to disappear, but his point remained.
"You're the one in control of the money," Sarah told him, "it's your choice what you do with it."
Later that night when Sarah returned from her shower she found Chuck on his laptop, looking up to her with a grin as she sat on the bed. "It's all set up. You can tell your mom about the accounts next time we see them. I was thinking we'd stop by to take them for lunch and check in on them tomorrow, if that's okay."
Sarah leaned over, holding his cheek as she kissed him. "That would be great."
"I figure we can say you just have a lot of money saved up and want to give some to them," he suggested, looking back to the computer.
"No," she said running her fingers through his hair to make him look at her, "you're taking the credit for this."
"I don't need the credit," he said reaching up to take her hand in his and bring it to his lips. "You know I did it. That's enough."
Her saccharine smile turned salacious as Sarah reached over to close the laptop before pushing it away and straddling him, her lips crashing against his and forcing him back to the pillows.
As much as a lot of the last few days had hurt, Chuck couldn't help but think it had come out positive. She'd opened up to him before that found the bug in her hair, and though everything after that was forced on her she didn't fight it as hard as she could have. She wasn't bothered by her mother and sister meeting them. A petty part of him also thought it sucked it wasn't just for him like her middle name had been, but she'd told him first, and had told him vaguely about her father and her childhood when she opened up to him about finding Molly. That was enough, and even the rest not being just for him was good since it meant she was opening up more with Casey, Ellie and Devon as well.
It finally felt like maybe the Bartowski Curse was breaking.
While they rested, thousands of miles away Quinn raged upon finding Ryker's accounts empty. "First he wastes the gift I gave him and now this," Quinn said pounding his fist on his desk. "This whole thing was a waste of time." That alone unsettled Quinn, but then he sank into his seat wondering, "Who has it?"
A quick search found that the records didn't show any withdrawals or transfers from his accounts. It was as if the money simply vanished. Quinn found his gaze once again drifting toward his Bartowski board. "Maybe he isn't just some idiot who's decent at fixing computers," Quinn said shaking his head, "maybe he's actually good at using them…"
He turned back to his computer, setting up a virtual machine and new nesting relay before bringing up government databases. Though a quick check of Chuck Bartowski found little of note, he brought up the downloaded copies of Sarah and Casey's files, scanning them until he found the notes of their recent assignments. All of them were associated not with Chuck Bartowski but Charles Carmichael, so Quinn switched his search and found the CIA and NSA files on Carmichael.
Carmichael was a certified field analyst with incredible scores in all but his Operational Procedures and Protocols exam, which was still above average. Graham had given Quinn a brief file on him, but seeing all the assignments linked to Carmichael made it clear there was more to Bartowski than the idiot Graham took him for.
He started it all off by disarming a bomb to save General Stanfield and hundreds of others. Then he helped capture a scientist leaking secrets to North Korea, played a role in the capture of La Ciudad, dismantled Peyman Alahi's network by stealing his precious diamond, and took out a major Triad leader. He stopped an escaped asset who murdered his handlers, captured an Icelandic spy, stopped the theft of nuclear codes, took out the head of a smuggling ring and captured dozens of Fulcrum agents.
Carmichael brought down a billionaire counterfeiting money, captured a dozen Russian criminals on US soil. He topped that all by capturing the head of the Gentle Hand, outing their CIA informant, and taking out a bomber before disabling a dirty bomb in Rio during Carnival. He followed that up by taking out Sasha Banacheck with Roan Montgomery, who even gave a special note to commend 'Agent Carmichael's' intelligence, quick thinking and fortitude, saying he was a tremendous spy. Carmichael was credited with helping stop Fulcrum from getting their hands on something that would out agent identities, capturing Mr. Colt to keep him from selling off a rare device, taking out an entire Fulcrum cell and stopping their progress on a secret project, surviving an attack by a Fulcrum agent within the LAPD, and a role in stopping the assassination of the Premier of Costa Gravas.
And all of it in less than a year. All because he got the Intersect instead of Quinn.
The file wouldn't be much use to Quinn since little of it beyond the missions was true, but he still downloaded a copy of it just to have. With all those deeds linked to his name, Quinn wondered if he would even need to interfere much in his life. Sooner or later people would come looking for Carmichael. Not just Fulcrum or the Ring group he'd heard of from a few contacts, but anyone wanting to prove themselves, anyone looking for a reward.
"Early day at the office?" Ellie asked sat at the table when Chuck and Sarah left his room dressed for the next morning.
Checking her bag, Sarah looked up with a smirk. "Chuck just got a big contract to develop his detector and reflectors. We're gonna order the parts."
"And I have to send some files to Beckman," Chuck said pocketing his phone. "After that we're gonna go shopping so she can help me pick out some good professional clothes to replace the ol' Nerd Herd uniform. Then we're gonna take Emma and Molly to lunch."
Ellie was beaming as she watched them. "Look at you two." When they shared a confused look they turned on her she chuckled. "You sound so normal."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Chuck said shaking his head while Sarah did take it as one.
"Thank you," Sarah said sliding her bag over her shoulder. "What about you? When do you have work? Would you want to join us?"
"You two enjoy yourselves," Ellie said waving her hand. "I trust you to keep him from picking out anything too embarrassing. This idiot wanted to rent an orange tux for a dance in high school."
When Sarah looked to him he explained, "Me and Morgan didn't have dates so we thought the whole thing was dumb and wanted to dress like the guys from Dumb and Dumber."
Though she nodded, Sarah turned to Ellie assuring her, "No orange tuxes."
She walked them to the door so she could lock it behind them, waving behind them with a smile. "Have fun you two," she said before closing the door.
While she went to clean up her bowl, Devon came out of their room dressed in his bike gear. "Hey, Babe, I'm gonna go for my ride. You need anything while I'm out?"
"Not that I can think of," she said hurrying over to kiss him as he stood with his bike by the door.
"You sure you don't want to come with? I could switch it to a run."
"You go," she said patting his chest, "I have a few things I wanted to go over before showering."
Once he left, Ellie locked the door and made her way to her room to dig out Orion's laptop. Besides going over her scans of Chuck post Fulcrum Intersect she wanted to try and refine the neural integration so Chuck's next upgrade could potentially be even smoother and less stressful. With the Fulcrum Intersect in there she wanted to make sure hers put as little stress as possible on his brain.
It was in the midst of looking over her notes that a notification popped up with a greeting from Orion. Clicking it and typing back Hello caused the screen to go black and be filled by his usual coded silhouette.
"Good morning, Eleanor. I hope I'm not interrupting."
"No, I was just looking over the integration notes," she said not mentioning Chuck's scans. She's been fairly careful about what she told Orion. She still didn't know who he was and helpfulness didn't always equate to being truth worthy. "I want to make sure this next update doesn't place too much strain on Chuck. Physical skills could end up putting more than the knowledge flashes."
She saw Orion's silhouetted smile as he nodded his approval. "I'm glad you're doing so much to protect your brother. I wanted to let you go over the encoding process for the modules I've completed so far."
"Send them over." A second later a small notification appeared in the corner telling her a transfer was in progress.
"I hope it's not too much to ask," Orion said cautiously, "but how are you doing, Eleanor? I saw your fiancee on the news."
"You did? Uh, I'm fine. I wish I could do more with this to help with this."
"You're doing incredibly," Orion assured. "But your fiancee, hopefully he wasn't in danger. I've heard Alejandro Goya has some… shady friends."
"Nothing Chuck, Sarah and Casey couldn't handle," she said with a laugh.
Orion nodded. "And how is your brother? Is he having trouble after the attack?"
Ellie shook her head. "No, not that I know of. If he is then Sarah is helping him."
"It's a shame they couldn't run," Orion said somberly. "I can't imagine how heartbroken he must be having the chance for freedom taken from him."
Ellie frowned as she noticed again Orion's odd concern for her and her brother. He'd even eased up on his suspicion of Sarah and Casey after Ellie mentioned their plan to help Chuck run when Graham forced the execution order on Chuck before his death canceled it. She assumed it had to do with his guilt over what happened with Morgan because his interest in helping them years earlier. He was clearly reclusive and didn't have many people he interacted with. Ellie wouldn't be surprised to find that she and Chuck had been the only people he'd talked to in the last few months.
"Being on the run like that isn't freedom, especially not for someone like Chuck."
"I suppose you're right," Orion said somberly. "You and your brother deserve better than that. He's special."
"You don't need to tell me," Ellie said with a laugh. "I doubt most people could handle one Intersect let alone three different ones." It was only after the words left her mouth she realized what she'd just said. She felt an odd comfort with Orion and had slipped because of it.
"What do you mean three Intersects?" Orion asked with a hint of panic. Did she figure out who he was, and that the government's Intersect wasn't the first Chuck downloaded?
"Well," she sighed, figuring it wasn't the worst slip, "they were on a mission a while back and found a Fulcrum cell building their own Intersect, which they forced Chuck to download."
Orion gasped. "They made an Intersect?"
"He said it killed two people and drove all the others exposed to it insane and ruined their minds. He was the only one who survived it. The way he describes the flashes is painful but the scans I did show no change or damage. I think it's more to do with how the information is accessed during a flash. Luckily he hasn't flashed from it much that I know of."
Orion frowned, looking down in thought as he realized his son now had four Intersects in his brain. He still remembered going into his office ages ago and finding his little boy sat in front of his monitors after downloading the Intersect model he was testing. He'd been terrified he'd just murdered his own son, but Chuck wasn't changed at all, just a bit confused about what he saw. Maybe that early integration was why Chuck could support not one but four separate Intersects without his mind breaking or any brain damage.
"I'll try to get the upgrade done soon. I'll look into this Fulcrum Intersect and see if I need to modify my removal program. If anything happens or the Fulcrum one begins to damage or hurt him in any way let me know. I-If necessary I believe I could block the Intersects to keep them from activating. It would cut the flashes off before they did any significant damage."
"That would be great."
"The problem is it would block all of them, and any re-upload would negate the blocker."
"So the combat upgrade would negate it." Ellie sighed. "I'll keep it in mind. Thank you again for helping him."
"Anything you need, feel free to contact me," Orion said before ending the transmission and sinking back into his chair.
He felt such guilt over what he'd done to his son. Not only abandoning him and his sister, but creating the Intersects which now threatened to leave him brain dead. Worst was that he hadn't spoken to him since Ellie took the laptop he sent. It felt like he'd abandoned his son yet again. He knew then he had to make amends as Orion and help Chuck, especially now that he had his own cover business, but maybe it was time to consider making amends as Stephan Bartowski.
"If only I could tell you everything," Stephan said with a sigh, hoping that his removal program for Chuck might work for the first man he doomed with his Intersect and free the woman he loved.
He just needed to make sure he wasn't caught before then.
"I need your team to go to Hong Kong. We believe Orion might be there."
"We're in Moscow finalizing a deal, Sir," said the blonde Fulcrum agent code named Red Tail.
On his phone was a video call from an bald, oval faced Vincent Smith, who sighed. "Let someone else handle it."
"I can't, Sir," Red Tail said hesitantly. "I was told the Elder's demand I secure this deal."
Vincent groaned. "Be careful. Volkoff is… unpredictable at times. Say the wrong thing and none of you will make it out of there alive."
"Thank you, Sir. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help with Orion."
"If the Elders demand it then it must be important. I'll handle Orion myself." With that Vincent ended the call.
Red Tail led his team to an empty office building where a pair of guards waited in the lobby to examine them, making sure they weren't wearing wires or bringing any kind of recording device. Once they were cleared they took the elevator to the top floor. The elevator dinged as the doors slid open and the men exited, two of them holding submachine guns. They found the entire floor was barren except for a single desk in the middle of the common area with a chair on either side of it.
Occupying one of the chairs was an older brunette woman with her jacket draped over the back of her chair. She looked oddly normal in a buttoned blouse and cardigan, greeting them with an even expression despite the men aiming guns at her warily until Red Tail waved a hand to have them stand down.
"I take it you're Red Tail?" she asked, her hands on her lap beneath the table.
"You must be Frost," he said motioning to the seat opposite her. "May I?"
"Please," she nodded.
"Thank you again for this meeting," Red Tail said sitting across from her as the two with machine guns stood near pillars on either side of him while the two others stood further back. "We appreciate your time."
"Thank you, but perhaps we can move this along. The heating isn't great here."
"Of course, pardon me." Red Tail quickly set his bag on the table and slowly removed a folder which he then slid over to her. "That's the order we'd like to place."
Opening the folder, Frost looked over the pages, flipping through them. After double checking them her brow knit slightly before closing it and looking to Red Tail. "Didn't we just send a shipment with at least half of the items listed here?"
Red Tail glanced toward the others before turning to her with a frown. "You did, but there was a problem. Some agent shut down the operation before it got out of initial testing, but we managed to recover enough data to move onto the next phase."
Frost chuckled. "One agent?"
Red Tail nodded. "I was also told that we would offer a reward if your people wanted to help us deal with him and his team."
Frost examined them all for a moment, noting their expressions made it clear this agent actually worried them. "Who is he?"
Red Tail removed another folder from his bag and slid it toward her. "His name is Carmichael."
Frost opened the folder and stared at an image of Chuck smiling up at her. It took some effort to keep her face frozen as she looked to the agents.
"Personally, once this deal is settled I was hoping to look into him myself. I think it's worth it to turn him, which I think we can manage if we lock him away and torture him for a few weeks, but others just want him dead." Red Tail shrugged. "Either way whoever takes him out of the picture gets the reward."
Frost looked through his file, noting all the things attributed to him, a slight smile finally cracking her icy expression as she closed the folder and looked to Red Tail, her hands going back to her lap beneath the table. She seemed to think it over before letting out a light sigh.
"I'm going to have to say you disrespected me and I did this to spare you Volkoff's wrath," said Frost.
"Wha-" Their confusion ended when Frost stood, raising a gun and firing two shots through the heads of the agents holding SMGs. As they fell to the ground Red Tail leapt to his feet just as she fired at where his head had been. The bullet tore through his torso, knocking him back so he tumbled over his chair.
Glancing up he saw the red haired Fulcrum agent fly back as he was shot in the chest before a second shot hit hit jaw as he and exploded through the top of his skull. A split second later the bronze skinned agent clutched his neck after a bullet tore through it, then a second bullet ripped through his nose, spraying his brains behind him as he crumbled to the ground.
Frost reached back, swinging her coat around to slide it on before walking around the table to the downed Red Tail. One hand on his chest, he held up the other and pleaded, "Please… I have a son."
Frost aimed her gun on him telling him, "Then you shouldn't have threatened mine."
Her shot echoed through the building, spraying Red Tail's brains across the cement floor as she picked up the files and walked toward one of the broken windows. A somber smile crossed her lips as she took out Chuck's image and looked at her son before setting it down and tossing a match onto the crumbled photo. Once she brushed the ashes out the window, leaving no sign of the image, she made her way downstairs where the guards guided her to a car.
Once inside she told the driver, "Take me to Alexei."
AN:
Hopefully there's enough of an implication that they told Beckman just what she needed to know, not the whole story with Molly. I could've gone into it but figured it's not important enough to go over it.
I considered Cue Eye or some variant for Quinn's screen name since the allusion was Q.I. the initials of his company, but thought it was way too on the nose for him. I see him as a different kind of hacker than Chuck, though I doubt I'll get into it much. I picture Quinn as one out of necessity, his obsessive, paranoid nature making him careful to cover his tracks where it comes natural to Chuck.
It was kinda fun going back and thinking on all the stuff that would be in Chuck's Carmichael file. How much he'd done in the span of a few months is kind of nuts.
I love Frost. Wished there was more of her in the show. I thought the absurdity of the guards here checking for bugs but letting them bring up guns showed how she's this known bad ass.