Usual disclaimer for the Land of Litigation, no rights to any characters portrayed.

While the constant vigilance was wearing on them, Clan Carmichael were feeling a little more secure as they were fairly confident that they were ready to face what they thought was coming, at least they were until Stefan pulled his stunt. One of the most promising side effects of the Bartowski Intersect was the vitality that the hosts acquired, and the fact that their general physiological state was steadily improving the longer they had it. They were fitter, stronger, faster and better co-ordinated all the time (not only when they were accessing the Intersect) and actually appeared to be getting younger. There appeared to be something in the make-up of the new Intersect that hooked into the body's physiology with some low level interfaces and, well, initiated a reboot on the degrading processes in the body to turn back the ageing process, and force an overall improvement.

Given the magnitude of what they were facing, Stefan decided that it was worth the risk to see whether he could tap into that for people other than the optimal Intersect hosts like his children and Sarah, and as he'd managed to survive with an earlier version of the Intersect, chose to use himself as a guinea pig. Therefore, without telling anyone else he reworked the Bartowski Intersect structure to form a "Bartowski Lite Intersect", removing most of the data storage and access functions that put the heavy dependence on the brain's data retention capabilities and mainly forming it around the motor control functionality (much like Manoosh's Intersect glasses had) as he believed that the revitalisation would be linked to that side, and once he'd tested and debugged the changes to the Intersect code, loaded it into himself one night. He understood what a risk he was taking, but who knew better than Stephen Bartowski (no matter what name and face he was wearing now) how to build intersect versions to achieve a given purpose? No-one other than him had ever made any notable achievements in the Intersect space, yes, he'd needed Eleanor's help to fix the brain interface issues that related to human neurology, rather than the technology that he knew so well, but he wasn't touching the elements that his daughter had contributed so much to fixing, he was just cutting down the size of the code to reduce the impact and load on the host's brain.

The code wasn't 100%, and he was having some issues, but it generally worked, so when he was still alive and sane and feeling better after a couple of weeks, he told Chuck and Ellie what he'd done. After berating him soundly for being so stupid, they worked with him to resolve the issues and optimise it for his brain, much like they'd done for the full version that they both carried. It only took a few more weeks to get his version to the point where he wasn't experiencing any detrimental side effects and he was getting almost as much of a boost from it as the others were, at which point they clued Mary in on what he'd done (Chuck had of course told Sarah immediately and she'd gone to Stefan straight away to abuse him for risking himself that way).

They didn't suggest anything to Mary but she could see the same potential and need that Stefan had, so she wanted to load the lite version too. Sarah and her children did try to talk her out of it, because there was no testing of long term affects as yet, and they weren't comfortable that it was totally safe, but Chuck and Ellie's stubborn streaks came more from her than from their father, and she wasn't budging, so they followed much the same process as they'd done with the full version, backed it off a little, loaded it into her and spent the next week or so optimising it for her brain. Mary had a similar genetic make-up to Stefan and similar intelligence and data retention levels, but she hadn't had an intersect in her brain before so, much like Ellie had found, the immediate affects were rather more pronounced on her than they were on Stefan, which added to her children's and Sarah's concerns. After a couple of weeks, though, the side effects seemed to be dissipating and she was beginning to show the benefits of the revitalisation effects.

At this stage, they still hadn't told anyone else about what Stefan (and now Mary) had done, but the others were beginning to notice, for a start both their proficiencies in all aspects of the defence/operational practices had jumped remarkably, and that was hard to cover up, but they were also starting to show the revitalisation and boosting effects of the Intersect, so when the others started asking questions, they all sat down to discuss Stefan's stunt. Obviously the others were interested, but no-one was downplaying the potential danger of the process, the first step was to get all the testing done for everyone (initially they were only going to do it with those who were interested, but then it was decided that it would be better to test everyone a) to get a better baseline for the group, and b) in case the others decided at a later stage that they were interested), to see what the probability was for the process to be safe for them. This wasn't an exact science, but the genetic markers and data retention levels appeared to be a common element among those who it was successful for, so they looked for these elements first. Not surprisingly (given that the gene markers that they were looking for came from Scandinavian bloodlines), Carina was the next most obvious candidate for the process, so they went through the loading and optimisation process with her as she'd been eager to do it.

What was surprising was who, according to the numbers, the next best candidate after Carina was, but Jeff's red hair should have been a give-away as to his Scandinavian blood. He had little hesitation in jumping into the process, too, so it was initiated for him. Next came Josie (once again, her mother's red hair was a clue), and she jumped in as well. The others were more marginal, and Chuck and Sarah tried to talk them out of it, as there was no way of gauging the risks if there was an adverse reaction to loading the Intersect. The Bartowski versions were obviously safer than any previous Intersects, but Chuck, Sarah, Casey and Stefan were all too aware of what happened to people when they were overloaded by the Intersects, images of the brain dead victims and recipients of the Fulcrum Intersect attempts were seared into Chuck, Sarah and Casey's brains, and Stefan had seen as well as them what the affects of the Ring Intersect were (less catastrophic but still far from promising).

Therefore it was surprising that Casey overruled their objections and went with the process, he knew the risks as well as anyone, and knew that they really needed him to face what they had coming, but what the others didn't really know was how much the effects of the damage to his body were still holding him back, if there was a reasonable chance or overcoming that, he was prepared to take those odds (and there was another element that Chuck and Sarah did understand, if it worked for Casey, then the likelihood that it would be safe for Alex was pretty good, and Casey was quite prepared to be the test case if it made his daughter safer).

While Carina, Jeff, Josie and Casey were going through the acclimatisation and optimisation processes, they managed to get the others to hold off until they had a better idea of how the first batch were handling it. The one who was pushing for it who was probably most at risk was Zondra, she had no significant indicators of the genetic markers that they'd come to believe were key to success with the Intersect, even though her data retention was good (if not great), so there was a significant degree of risk there and they didn't want to take the chance of losing her. Her native ability meant that she was very good as she was, trying for enhancement via the Intersect was only sensible if there was a reasonable chance of success, and it didn't look like there was in this case.

Carina, Jeff, Josie and Casey had varying experiences with the acclimatisation process, as expected, it was easiest for Carina, and worst for Casey, but Josie didn't have much worse a time than Carina and Jeff didn't have much better a time than Casey, and they all assimilated the Intersect properly within a few weeks and started improving. That brought them to the decision process for Alex, Heather (she WAS part of the Clan now, she'd proven herself time and time again, just as they'd proved to her that they were the only ones looking out for her), Kathleen, Emma and Zondra, and with Zondra overriding all their objections to her loading the Intersect, it was unanimous.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey were surprised (to say the least) that Kathleen and Emma insisted on going ahead with it as well, they were the family's "senior civilians", no-one wanted them to be part of the fighting at all, and no-one have ever thought that they'd consider it, so they hadn't even been asked about it. They'd been talking between themselves , however, and had come to the decision that if the process was safe, they'd take it to improve the family's chances of getting through what was ahead of them. Like Ellie, they really didn't want to have anything to do with the fighting, but they believed that it was their duty to step up and do their part in protecting the kids and the family, and the only way that they could be effective at that was to have the Intersect. When it proved impossible to talk them out of it, and given that all the markers and test results showed that they had as good a chance as Casey or the others of being OK, everything was set up for them to load the Bartowski Lite Intersect.

Given the concerns that they had for Zondra, Stefan and Ellie stripped the version that was loaded into her back much further than the ones that had been used so far, in hope that that would minimise the impact on her. They loaded that version into her and monitored her closely, at first keeping any optimisation to the elements that made it sit better in her. As she became acclimatised to it and more comfortable, they slowly re-added the elements that had been removed so that she could be eased into it. As a result of this process, it took over a month (almost twice the time it did with the others) for her to get up to the "full" version of what was loaded for her, but given that it reduced the risk and impact as she was being brought up to speed, they decided to follow the same process (if maybe a little bit quicker) with the others.

Therefore, the starting version that was used for Zondra was loaded into the other four a week and a half after Zondra got it, and they were ramped up over the next few weeks, so that they were properly acclimatised with versions that were optimised for their brains within a month. Around the same time Zondra became fully acclimatised to her version as well.

With all the Clan's adults settled into carrying some version of the Bartowski Intersect, testing and practice to consolidate their capabilities stepped up, only Chuck, Sarah and Ellie carried the full versions, but that wasn't a big differential when it came to fighting, what the significant differential was was each individual's capability to make use of the Intersect, Chuck, Sarah and Ellie were obviously the ones with the best Intersect interaction, after them came Mary, Carina, Stefan and Josie, after them Casey, Jeff, Alex, and Heather, and the ones who had received the least benefit were Zondra, Kathleen and Emma. But of course that didn't factor in the people's native ability, so Casey and Zondra were still more capable than Stefan and Josie, and Jeff was only a little better than Kathleen or Emma. Overall, that still meant that Chuck, Sarah and Ellie could handle fifty to one odds or better generally, Mary, Carina, Casey and Zondra (and possibly Heather) could manage probably thirty to one, Josie, Alex and Stefan could manage twenty to one, and Jeff, Kathleen and Emma could still handle ten to one odds. On top of that, their kids being who they were, Molly, Susie and Wendy could all hold their own against a capable operative or soldier, and the Bartowski kids could probably handle rather more than that, so in the space of a few months, their position was greatly improved, it was probable now that the other side could throw a force of hundreds against them and they'd be able to hold out.

One thing that was hard for Josie was that they'd asked her not to tell her parents about the new Intersect that Stefan and Ellie had developed, and especially not that she (along with the rest of them) was carrying a version of it now. She understood that it wasn't that they didn't trust them, but more that they didn't trust everyone around them, and therefore wanted to hold off until they were at Castle Carmichael in a secure environment before discussing it. So at this point they were hoping that there'd be birthday party or something to get them there before everything hit the fan with BGRU (as it would obviously come out then).

In the mean time, the revitalising process and the boost to strength, speed, co-ordination and endurance was progressing in all of them to varying degrees. One thing that was showing up in Casey and Mary was that debilitating injuries that they'd accumulated in a lifetime of action were already having notably reduced affects on them. This was something that Stefan, Ellie, Chuck and Sarah had been hoping since they noticed the apparent rejuvenating properties of this new Intersect's affect on the body, but it was nice to see that their theory on that had been borne out. Mind you, this also reinforced the decision to keep all of the kids well away from the intersect until they were out of their teens, at least, because the way it interacted with the body's processes was obviously far more profound than they'd initially imagined.

There was another item that Stefan, Ellie, Chuck and Sarah kept from the others, given that it was so dangerous to the family (as it would be something that government and other organisations would do just about anything to get their hands on), Stefan and Ellie had managed to come up with a method to extract (but not delete) the contents of Intersect databases from the Intersect hosts' heads. This was how they built the skills and other databases that were being loaded into everyone, they extracted the contents of the databases that Chuck and Sarah (and Stefan) had in their heads, and selectively combined, compiled and reformatted them into something which would work seamlessly with the Bartowski Intersect. Even though the extraction method didn't delete the existing Intersect Databases, they created a variation of this which located any Intersect Database and Software patterns (much as the copying mechanism did for the databases), and then wiped the entire structure out of the brain. When they ran this mechanism on Chuck's head he was out for over 24 hours, as he had 15 years of multiple Intersect versions and numerous Intersect updates (all of which were written to new areas of the brain) that needed to be cleaned out before they loaded the Bartowski Intersect. Sarah and Ellie were panicking when he didn't come to, and Sarah sat by his side the entire time until he woke. Stefan recovered in less than an hour when he got his head cleaned out, and Sarah only took about 15 minutes to recover. Chuck got the full version of the new Intersect Database (other than known false data and duplicates which had been excised) with the considerable extensions that they'd added from their own research over the past ten years, the database that Sarah and Ellie got was reduced by about 25% to avoid creating undue loads on the brain (Chuck's head had been crammed with multiple Intersect versions and databases for the past sixteen years or so, so he could handle it, they didn't want to overload the newer Intersect hosts up front), the version that Mary and Stefan got was only about 50% of the full database, as they inherently had less capacity than their children (or Sarah), and weren't utilising the data access mechanisms of the Intersect, so they essentially just had skills databases for the motor control functionality. The Intersect database that the others received was based on the one that Stefan and Mary got, but anything that they'd already mastered, or was unlikely to be useful to them was removed, once again to reduce the load, so Zondra, Kathleen and Emma only carried around 30% of the size of the database in Chuck's head. Of course, any of them could have the database updated to add skills or data if needed, given that the longer they had and used the Intersect, the less affect an upgrade would be likely to have on them. For that matter, it would be feasible to update the "Lite" version of the Intersect to the "Full" version down the track if it was required and the person could handle it OK. Basically, the Bartowski Intersect had come back to the original intent for the Intersect, to be a teaching tool to add skills for people, even though the majority of the skills loaded were most definitely not what was originally intended.

While the new Intersect versions were being loaded and bedded in for everyone, they were keeping up a high state of alert as they kept scanning for any information about BGRU activity and Quinn, especially around LA. It was apparent that BGRU was gathering a force in the area as they were getting more hits locally, not a lot, but a lot in comparison to what they'd been seeing from them over the past eighteen months, and they weren't getting any hits elsewhere on Quinn, so it looked like he was still in the area, too. If BGRU was carrying out any active surveillance on Clan Carmichael, they were obviously better at it than they used to be, as they'd been watching for that and hadn't seen anything. Luckily there were a few of the party rebels in the crew that had been brought in, so they were getting hits on them to give an indication of where BGRU was collecting, and a little bit of an idea of what their movements were.

Given that they now had some indication of where BGRU was collecting, Chuck and Stefan knuckled down to search real estate and utility records for those areas, trying to identify the specific location(s) that they were using. It was too risky to have any of them out there, so they kept to satellite imagery, security camera hacks and the searches they were doing to try and find the sites. They did finally track down an Internet portal at one of the sites and Chuck put his Piranha hat on to do his magic, quickly copying everything he could find and scrubbing any evidence of his visit before removing the hacks he'd used to get through the portal. Once again, they were using multiple levels of encryption on the files (they hadn't gotten any less paranoid after the first purge, unfortunately), and it took Chuck and Stefan almost a week to crack the encryption. They didn't find as much useful information as they'd like in the files that Chuck got, but they did get some interesting routing tables and logs in the system files what showed a fair bit of promise to track down some of the BGRU locations around the world, so Chuck got Jeff working on those, as that sort of thing was right up Jeff's alley.

While there were references to the operation that was being mounted against CI, it appeared that Quinn and the others running the operation were playing their cards close to the chest and not recording too many details. There was an indication that they had been holding off on any attempts of surveillance on CI to prevent being identified before they were ready to make their move, and that they only knew of the location of the CI office (which tied into Riley and co's MO). There was enough in the notes, however, to show that they were bringing people in one at a time by various types of transport (commercial flights, small planes, trains, cars, ships) to keep them off the radar, and that process was taking a lot longer than they'd planned or liked. They were also having a lot of trouble acquiring and bringing in the vehicles, weapons and equipment that they needed for the operation, and the funds to cover the operation were drying up far faster than they'd like, too. That last struck Chuck as something he could use, so he started a series of events that resulted in the charges for a number of their locations to go up in a very short time (simple enough to buy the buildings and tell the tenants that the costs were going up) to push them down the path to consolidate to one or two buildings, which would make it a lot easier to mount a strike against them. He also started a number of deals to try to ensure that the vehicles, weapons and equipment that they were getting were doctored and likely to fail. The last big step was to initiate a series of seemingly unconnected events that led to many of the known personnel coming in to be diverted, held up or detained, to cut the manpower that they had available in LA (the main problem with this last one was making arrangements to get them picked up and dealt with before they could get away).

He was quite aware that he wasn't playing fair, but when an organisation of nefarious low lifes are coming after you and your family, only an idiot would hold off on stacking the deck against them. In the midst of this he took the MiniStar to DC to meet with the General and get her to start organising for a few trusted strike teams to be available in LA on a date that was coming up, as Quinn and his council were supposed to be meeting in LA on that day. It was expected that they'd be meeting at one of the locations that they had left by then, but if not they'd interrogate the people that they found until they got the location out of them. The General looked at him when he calmly added that last and he grimly shook his head, saying that he didn't want to do that, but these people were still coming after them as a symbol of what had taken down so many organisations on their side of the fence. If they weren't prepared to stop coming after the family, well the family would go after them and stop them. The General nodded, the casual statement had given her pause, but the look in his eye when he clarified his position told her that, inside, he was still the man who had caused her so much aggravation when he'd worked for her as he'd always try to find a non-violent, and certainly non-lethal solution to the situations they were in, and she usually had to be the one to explain to the higher ups why the operations hadn't gone as planned. As he was leaving he came around to hug her goodbye (NOT a common occurrence in her office) and as he was doing so he whispered in her ear to find a way for her and Roan to come down to Castle Carmichael for at least a week once this current situation was dealt with. She looked at him and he smiled, saying that it could all be a flash in the pan. At "flash" her eyes widened and he nodded, then gave her another squeeze and sauntered out of her office.

When he got home he tracked down Josie and told her that he'd asked her parents to come down for a week or so when they had a chance, and asked her to contact them and organise a way to get the genetic marker and data retention tests done for them, perhaps spin something about tests she was having done which needed her parents' information to be accurate. She looked at him and asked him why (she looked so much like her mother when she did that) and he countered by asking her how she felt. When she replied "great" he asked what the results of her last check-up were, she narrowed her eyes at him as she said that she was healthier than she'd ever been in her life, wondering where he was going with this. Chuck was uncharacteristically serious when he nodded and said "exactly" going on to point out that they were ALL in that position now, this latest Intersect version was rejuvenating their bodies and they were all in better shape than they'd been in ages (as well as stronger, faster etc), then looked at her and asked wouldn't she like her parents to be in the same boat? That was when she realised what he was saying. He explained that Stefan was working on a DMI (De-Militarised Intersect) version which primarily activated the "body repair interface", with a few mechanisms that would be useful for self protection and other functions, and that should be able to be implemented in less than a week if they wanted it. He also pointed out that this wasn't just for them, Kathleen and Emma had indicated that they'd prefer to be rolled back to a version like that as soon as possible, as they didn't want to be warriors, and Ellie, Stefan and Jeff had also indicated similar wishes, as soon as the main danger was past, they all wanted to be downgraded.

After talking to Josie about getting things organised for her parents to be ready for the DMI, Chuck went down into the bunker for a change of pace, IE to see Stefan and the others about the new toy that Casey had asked Stefan to come up with for him. With the probability of an impending battle, Casey was worried and wanted more firepower. One day when they were in the lab, Stefan had been working on one of the weapons modules that they used in the Odysseys, SUVs, S-97s and planes (and on turrets on the house roofs) and when Casey saw it, he knew that it was what he'd been after, the weapons modules had a railgun with a five round cylinder on the rear and a pair of Support Weapon versions of the CI assault rifles, these were 1.2M long with a pair of axial magazines each, so each one carried about three times the ammunition that an assault rifle did. What Casey had asked of Stefan was for him to modify the weapons module into a portable Squad Support Weapon that could be carried and used individually, so this was the demonstration of what Stefan had come up with. The SSW had a much larger cylinder for the air supply, slung under the railgun, there was also a halfpipe shaped batteries that wrapped over the top of the weapon, the standard assault rifle pistol grip and an integrated bipod. As it would only ever be fired via the AR targeting interface, it was not a shoulder fired weapon, it was either fired from the hip or off the bipod. At 1.35M long and hefty, it wasn't a nimble weapon, but this test was to see whether it was handy enough for Casey or Chuck (or Sarah, Carina, Zondra, Mary, Josie, Heather or Alex) to use in the field. Casey put it through its paces first and he loved it, it was a hand held weapon of mass destruction, five rounds of 50mm artillery and over a thousand rounds of 10mm rifle ammo with incredible hitting power and accuracy. Chuck was next up and while not quite as enthused about the killing power as Casey, agreed that it was quite usable and effective, the girls all tried it and agreed that it was up to the job, it was a bit hefty and unwieldy for them to carry (especially Mary, Josie and Alex), but they could get it into position by themselves and once it was in position they were as enthusiastic as Casey with its effectiveness. Once it had the seal of approval Stefan got the request to build at least a dozen ASAP, and that would be at least tripled as soon as he had the time, so they that they could have them in the gun cabinets in the houses and in the vehicles for when they were needed.

Anyway, they had things headed towards a confrontation, they were assured that they'd have the strike teams they needed on site on the day, and most other elements were in place, now they just needed to make sure that Quinn and all the other major players were there when they struck, and that none of them got away.