Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters, yada, yada.

As soon as Carmichael Industries' uprated S-97 helicopter touched down in the middle of the common area of Castle Carmichael, the General hopped out and stomped across to Chuck and Sarah's house, Casey watched her as she came and turned his head to tell them "She'd pissed", Chuck just shrugged and said that she was going to be a lot more pissed pretty soon. Sarah greeted her at the door and asked if she wanted to see Josie before they got down to business, but she gruffly answered that if she was being summoned here the way she was, there must be something urgent to attend to? At that Chuck nodded and led the way to the office.

Once they were in the office, Casey shut the door behind them and Chuck activated the communications jammers and white noise generators before he brought up the images that they'd dredged up in the time since they found that first one on the screens around the office. She kept turning to look at all the screens with her mouth open for a couple of minutes before she could speak, and when she did the first words that came out of her mouth were "How is this possible? I watched him being blown up in that explosion!" With that Casey brought a chair to her and basically pulled her into it, as she kept looking at the images that were being displayed. They gave her a few minutes to compose herself before the discussion began.

Chuck started by apologising for the abrupt way he'd summoned her down here, but said that he expected that she understood now why they insisted that she had to come down straight away, and why they couldn't discuss anything over communications links? She nodded grimly, still trying to get her head around all this. Sarah stepped in to explain that no-one else knew about this yet, the three of them had been in the room when the first image showed up and they'd called her straight away, then kicked off the searches to find anything else that may be out there (waving her hand around at the screens). Chuck tagged in again to ask whether she could get them a copy of the raw video that she'd watched of the explosion so that they could analyse it, and whether there was any DNA confirmation that the correct person's remains had been buried? She said that if they sent someone they trusted back with her, she'd hand deliver the video to them and get them safely escorted back to the plane to bring it back here. On the remains, no, they hadn't managed to get any close matches to his DNA after the explosion, but had put it down to the fact that he was the closest one to the device when it blew, which was probably lucky given that someone blew up the man's remains recently, which would have made it even harder to get a match, looking at Chuck. She then asked if there was any real proof that this was Graham? Chuck shook his head, but pointed out that the image recognition systems were consistently getting at least 90-95% match to Graham on nearly all images, which was a very high rate, also, it made sense, whoever was pulling the strings on this was a master of the game and obviously knew all the players and all the tricks, there couldn't be many people at that level and Langston Graham had been one of that select few.

She was quiet for a few minutes more, and then asked how he could have done this? Sarah answered that one, as it was closer to her con background than the spy background that they all shared. In a way it was a kind of slight of hand trick, it looked like Graham had employed a very good double/impersonator and sent him into the Intersect room to die in his place, changing the biometric information in the system to match the double's, so the system recognised him as Graham. Graham would have stayed away from the CIA facilities altogether that day (if not longer) so there were no gaps in his replacement's movements, and everyone would have just taken the replacement as him. She also pointed out that Graham wasn't really close to anyone, he kept everyone subservient and just gave orders, so there wouldn't have been anyone in a position to pick up on any subtle nuance flaws in the replacement, all he'd have to do was give out orders and dismiss people once he'd given them their orders and that would be accepted as normal behaviour. At that point she stopped and looked up at the others, saying that that was the way the prisoner substitutions would have been done, too, they'd update the details in the system, the guards would bring the substitutes in under some pretence, they'd swap clothes etc and the real prisoner would walk away, free and clear. She also went into the more effective methods of faking a death (just as they'd done for Heather) which could explain the majority of the "dead" agents that were popping up in this new organisation away.

On the topic of "dead" agents, Chuck then went over his theories about the Ring's process to revive people. Chuck pointed out the dangers he perceived in this process, detailing the behaviour and personality changes that they'd seen in both Bryce and Shaw, and especially what Bryce was like after he'd been through the process twice. The Ring obviously didn't care if the people they brought back were killing, torturing or raping indiscriminately, all they cared about was the results that they got out of them. He showed them the records he'd found of what Bryce was like when he went back to the Ring the second time he was brought back, and even Casey blanched at the reports of what Bryce had been doing. With that information, Chuck proposed that they make an effort to identify anyone who'd been brought back and determine what the nature of their behaviour was, they were all dangerous, but ones who had gone totally over the edge like Bryce needed to be dealt with. On that note he brought up Shaw, he had to be expected to turn up at the Chicago Intersect project, and Mary and Carina were up there, exposed. Yes, it was possible to defeat him with a bit of help (as he'd found), but he was unstable, amoral and very dangerous, so he was worried about them. The General and Casey committed to organising for a trusted team to be put in position there to support Mary and Carina.

With Chuck and Sarah's tag team explanation, it was becoming clear to the General that what they were telling her was both plausible and possible, and she could see how this could have panned out, but they still didn't know what they were up against. With the big issue out of the way, they ran her through everything they had to date, and it was all bad news, she'd gone from aggravated to shocked to terrified in a very short time, what they had so far told the story that they were up against the worst adversary that they'd ever faced, and they still didn't know the scope of that adversary. What was worse was that they had no idea who they could trust, they were prepared to trust the President, himself, and perhaps a dozen other individuals who weren't part of their circle, but outside of that, they had no confidence in anyone. They brought Heather in to fill the General in on what she knew, and give her an insider's view of how the new organisation worked, after she was taken back downstairs the General said that she presumed that Ms Chandler would be returned to custody once she'd been properly debriefed, and she was surprised (to say the least) by the abrupt "No!" she got from Sarah. Once Sarah had her attention she explained that they already had ample proof that the "good guys" no longer controlled the prison facilities, or the agencies that ran them apparently, so sending Heather back in there would probably be a death sentence, or worse. Therefore, she would remain in the bunkers here except when let out under escort until they had resolved this issue, and then we (waving a finger between Chuck, Casey and herself) would decide what to do with her, adding that General, personally would be consulted for her opinion, but outside organisations would NOT be read into it at all (this last stated while locking gaze with the General to demand a response). The General sighed and nodded, agreeing that the old rules didn't apply any more, and that they couldn't trust anyone else.

With that they put together everything they had on the organisation (including the images and footage of the person that they were sure was Graham, and the Puppet Master behind the organisation as well as the updates of what they'd just covered off with the General) onto a thumb drive for the General while she spent some time with Josie. Given that their world was falling down around them and they were facing a conspiracy, the likes of which they'd never seen before, she needed to be with her daughter for a while. They understood what she was going through, so it was Josie who went back with her to get the raw footage of the Intersect room explosion when the General left to fly back to D.C. Once Josie had the footage and had been safely escorted by the General's protection detail back to the SonicStar for the flight home, the General had a private meeting with the President to fill him in on the new developments, she was expecting that his reaction would be the same as her's when she showed him the evidence of Langston Graham's "return from the dead", and the scope of the organisation as they knew it now, and she was correct. It was disconcerting to see "The leader of the free world" so effectively floored by what she put in front of him, but in a way it gave her confidence that they were correct to have put their trust in him.

Back at the ranch, in view of the decision that Sarah had just made in front of the General, Sarah and Casey organised for Heather's quarters to be made more comfortable, she was still in the same room (cell) with bathroom that she was before, but they brought in what she wanted to make it more "homey" for her, permanently set the door transparency to zero and set the door lock mechanisms to be under Heather's control only (well they had override capabilities if necessary), so that she was more a resident of the bunker, than a prisoner, and had pretty much free reign down there. She understood that she'd be kept there for the long term, but also understood that a significant factor in that was to keep her safe from BGRU and those associated with it, so she made sure that Sarah knew that she appreciated what she was doing.

When Josie got back with the video, they enhanced and reviewed every frame obsessively, but they were neither surprised nor relieved when the image recognition tests and examination of the movements and behaviour both showed a rather low probability that the man they were watching was Langston Graham. They fully expected that that would be the case, but were hoping against hope that they'd be proven wrong, because in this instance being right was the most frightening outcome they could think of.

Now that they had an idea of what (or rather, who) they were up against, they had a new focus for their searches, they were still running the rest of the searches to scope out and locate the BGRU forces, but now their prime focus was on the Puppet Master himself. They started back tracing every sighting they had of Graham, in an attempt to narrow down his movements, and ultimately his location. The did have one major win in that he appeared to stay in the USA most of the time, circulating around the BGRU locations that they'd flagged, and the most common place for him to be sighted was in Chicago. The fact that their Intersect project was also in Chicago was unlikely to be a co-incidence, as he was probably banking on that to give them the push that they needed to establish a foothold.

They contacted Mary and Carina daily to get their updates and fill them in what they'd dredged up, the news from Mary that Shaw had been sighted there as well filled them with dread, as the three of them knew first hand how dangerous he was, but Mary and Carina hadn't experienced that as yet, so their confidence that they could handle themselves didn't make the others feel any better. The news that they gave them that the Puppet Master may be there as well (they never mentioned Graham's name, in case their communications were compromised or they were taken) just added to the risk they were in. Carina's emotional state was also a worry, she took every chance to talk to Charlie, because they missed each other so much, but it tore her up to see him so unhappy that she was away from him. Eventually Chuck and Sarah talked to Zondra and with her agreement, arbitrarily swapped her for Carina in Chicago, now that Shaw and Graham were probably there, the risk that Carina could be recognised as a result of her associations with Team Bartowski was too great, and she wasn't really on her game as being a mother was interfering with her being an operative. When Carina got back they had the expected heated argument over what they'd done, but after it had run on for a while Chuck brought up images of Charlie on the screens around the room and asked wasn't he more important than being in the field? At that Carina broke down and Sarah went to hold her as she told her that she and Chuck had had to make the same call about their involvement in operations, as what they had at home was more important than the fate of the world, when it came down to it.

In the meantime the more general investigations into BGRU had had a few big wins, they'd tracked down a number of the locations, including four of the major centres, with the locations identified they went through the same process to analyse the utility records again and managed to identity portals for three of the centres, plus the Chicago location. With that information they mounted the same operation they did for the first portal they'd found, disabling the controls, copying everything they could find inside the portal, and removing any trace of their visit before putting the controls back in place. Luckily the government/spy mindset didn't focus in the same areas as their's did, and their technical expertise was rather down, compared to the Bartowskis. Even Laszlo, the evil technical genius, was more of an inventor than hacker, so he wasn't anywhere near Chuck's (or rather The Piranha's) level in that field, and Manoosh was way below Laszlo, so their incursion went pretty much unnoticed.

Having copies of the files was a good step, but they still had to decrypt everything, and that was taking time. Not surprisingly, the encryption utilised at the first site that they'd cracked was simpler than what was being used at the major centres, or their top secret Chicago site, so getting into the files was talking a LOT longer than Chuck liked, but he and his father kept slogging away at it, because they had to get into those files.