A/N I have long believed that the main problem with season 3 is that the story had Shakespearean depth and power, with no Shakespeare to write it. I would love to able to write that version of season 3 someday, but dark tragic stories are sooo not my thing. This is the best I could do in the meantime, a spy-themed romantic comedy, with a somewhat more coherent plot. There are, however, little homages to the Bard scattered all throughout these episodes. There are homages to a lot of things, I was quite surprised, when I was collecting up these chapters for the PDF, how many movies were in the back of my head all throughout the writing.

John 'Ladyfeelings' Casey was in the north stairwell when the special phone in his special pocket rang. "Hello?"

"Kaleidoscope, prepare to go to local control." The phone went dead.

"I'm working now, I'll call you back when I'm on break," he said to no one. Putting the phone away, he paused a second to run his hands through his hair, incidentally managing to activate the ear bud he'd been wearing all day, just in case. Local control? Quick and dirty, and on the first day, too. He just hoped Bartowski was up to it. "Kaleidoscope local."

"Kaleidoscope, this is Eagle-Eye."

Casey grunted at all the nerd codenames.

"I heard that."

He grit his teeth. "Roger, Eagle-Eye."

"Better. Head up stairs. Third floor."

Casey stopped. "Third floor? That's Accounting."

"We caught some cell chatter indicating a sudden high-value Ring op has been laid on."

Casey saved his breath for climbing. "In the chatter?" In Accounting?

Chuck smiled, Casey could hear him smile. "Hey, I'm wearing headphones while I look at pictures. The Intersect works on sound, who knew? Or maybe that's a leftover from the Fulcrum version I got stuck with way back when." In spite of the trip down memory lane, Casey felt better. By-the-book professional Chuck just sounded too weird. "And here I thought the visual stuff was strange. Anyway, we caught a code 'I' on its way out the door."

"Code 'I'? That's an old Fulcrum code. I thought you said this was a Ring op."

Chuck the Analyst came back on the line. "Frequency and encryption are not consistent with known Fulcrum practices. The death of Fulcrum might have left the field open for the Ring, who wouldn't otherwise have a need for code 'I'."

Casey considered it, and agreed. "Even if the Ring had a new code of their own, their field agents might not know it. Meaning the code is very new—"

"Or the agent is very junior."

"That would explain how they got stuck here." Casey looked through the window, but saw no one.

Chuck ignored that. If it didn't go Boom! Casey wasn't interested. "Northside cubicles. Name is Betsy Ross."

Taking the name of an American patriot in vain! "Diabolical."

Chuck knew his teammate. "If only that was the worst of her crimes."

"It's enough. What do I say?"

"I have no idea."

Typical. Casey yanked the door open. Knows just enough to get other people into trouble. He stepped into the janitor's closet, to get the cart for this floor, just making his rounds. "What can you tell me?"

"Hey, this is all new to me too, big guy. I'll listen in, see if anything she says gives me another flash. Or maybe I should come up with a different word for flashing on sounds…"

"Try 'flush.'"

"On second thought, flash is good."

"Heh. We're gonna have to change that callsign of yours. Instead of Eagle-Eye maybe you should be Graboid."

"All right, who are you and what have you done with my friend John Casey?"

"Just goes to show you don't know everything about old Ladyfeelings, do you, Graboid? I happen to like that movie, especially the monsters. Silent killers."

"I would have thought you'd like Gummer."

"Gummer was a wimp. And the operative word is silent."

"Uh, Casey, you do realize this is radio, right? I can't exactly offer guidance with emphatic gestures."

"Don't worry, I've seen those gestures before. Now go silent, already." Casey pushed the cart out into the hall before Chuck could reply, making his way quickly and steadily around the block of cubicles, gathering trash bins. Eventually he got around to the north side. When he got to the cubicle marked 'Elizabeth Ross' he acted surprised to find someone inside on their lunch break. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting…Sorry to disturb you, Miss…" He made a show checking the name again. "Ross. Elizabeth Ross, I guess that would make you Betsy Ross, I kind of like the ring of that."

The woman put down the book she was reading, a copy of Hamlet, and looked up at him suspiciously. "Do I know you?" She touched the desk to turn her chair, and suddenly Chuck gasped in his ear.

"Oh, ow! Ah…Uncle Bob…knee surgery…gotta go, this really hurts…" The bud went silent in Casey's ear, leaving him alone with the Ring agent in her lair.

Through it all he kept a straight face, a reflex he was glad to have. At least he didn't have to worry about the moron listening in. "Does the rabbit know the falcon, or the hawk? Stop to ask it its name in mid-swoop? I don't think so."

She frowned at him. "Falcon?"

Heh. Thought so. Ring agents didn't have Chuck's knack for original call signs, and they all wanted to sound cool. "Or any other bird of prey. I'm not really married to the metaphor, I've heard them all so many times. One guy showed some originality, paraphrased Shakespeare."

That got her interest, as he'd expected. "Shakespeare knew his warrior-kings. Which play?"

"Merchant of Venice."

Her eyebrows rose.

"The quality of Casey is not strained, it falleth as the gentle box of hammers from Heaven."

She burst out laughing. "Oh my god…!"

He smiled too. "Well, it was better than a summer's day."

"You…don't talk like a janitor."

Like a Ring accountant would know what a janitor sounds like. "Excuse me?"

"You should talk less, no one will believe you."

Casey grunted.

She pointed. "Exactly, like that. Much better."

"Feels funny, though. Don't see how I'm expected to communicate much by grunting."

"Give it a try. And I suppose you want my trash can, to complete the ensemble?"

He grunted an affirmative.

"See? Much more the thing." She reached down and brought up her own can. Before she handed it over to him she added a last item, looking like a sealed birthday card. "I was going to give this to someone, but I don't like him nearly as much as I like you."

Casey smiled, taking the can by one edge. "Uncle Bob's bum knee acting up again?"

She released the can to him, and he took the bag, card and all. "Hamlet, huh?" he asked, as if just noticing the book she held. "I like that book, everybody dies."

"It's supposed to be a tragedy."

"What's tragic about it? A dithering idiot and his incompetent murdering family? Please, wipe them out." Casey raised his hand, thumb up."'To be or not to be? Not to be." He clicked his thumb down, like clicking a pen, or pressing a detonator.

"Clever."

He took a little bow. "That's the Schwarzenegger version."

"I don't think I've ever seen that one."

"Google it from your safe house. The CIA caught your 'I' code, the original appointment would have been an ambush."

"I wondered why you were so early."

"Yeah, well, you're gonna be late if you don't get a move on." Casey had to get both of them out of there before her real contact showed up.

She grabbed her bag and stood. "I think I'm going to take a late lunch, a long one."

"The longer the better. Get off the grid, and stay off it. We won't be meeting again."

She left, moving calmly to somewhere. Casey continued his rounds to the closet and returned the cart. "Graboid, this is Kaleidoscope."

"There, you see, Casey, Graboid and Kaleidoscope really don't go together. If we're gonna go with this whole 'giant underground predator' motif, we really need some new call signs across the board. How do you feel about Dustbowl?"

"Try 'Dirtnap', numb-nuts."

"Okay! Way to think inside the box! And Sarah can be Perfection, of course."

Heh. "Of course. Do you care if I got the package, Graboid?"

"I assumed you got it, I mean, you're Casey, I mean, Dirtnap."

"Well, thanks for that, Graboid," said Casey, that is, Dirtnap, under his breath.

Chuck heard it anyway, but contrary to public opinion, knew when to keep his mouth shut, or in this case, change the subject. "What did you do with the Ring agent?"

Casey shrugged, not that Chuck would see it. "By now she should be halfway out of the state, if she has any sense. And she does have sense."

"You let her go?"

"She thinks I'm Ring, dumbass. She'll go to her safehouse, and eventually she'll go back to the Ring, and when she does the tracker I dropped into her purse when she wasn't looking will lead us right to them."

"Smooth."

"It's not my first evil conspiracy, you know."

"And here I thought you liked her."

"Don't insult me, Graboid." Only the need to keep his voice low kept him from snarling. "She's a traitor, and I don't like traitors. I can and do occasionally respect them. She had wit and intelligence. Too bad she'll be dead soon, but that was her choice." He opened her bag and took out the package.

"Why will she be dead soon?"

"Sooner or later someone's bound to catch up to her, and both sides will believe she's a traitor when that happens, and all the Shakespeare in the world won't save her from that." He put the trash into the trash.

"Shakespeare?"

"Well, you couldn't give me a code phrase, so I had to fake it. Plus I'm a good guesser." Silence met his declaration. "What? I'm not a robot."

"Good to know. Not hatched, not a robot." Chuck sounded a little distant, like he was making notes. "You like Shakespeare, Dirtnap?"

"Yup. He knew how a soldier thinks. His St. Crispin's Day speech ranks among the purest poetry the world has ever known."

This time Chuck did make a note. "I only know Hamlet, myself."

"I like Hamlet too." Casey studied the handwriting on the envelope, her fake uncle's name in neat cursive script. He wondered what the handwriting analysts would have to say about it.

"Really? Why?"

"Everybody dies." He tucked the envelope with the intel inside his special pocket, next to his special phone. Everybody dies."Signing off now, Graboid."

"Call Base for pickup, Dirtnap. Graboid signing off."

The man came to full attention, as bearers of bad news always have. "Sir, I must report our mission was unsuccessful. We failed to obtain the package, and Miss Ross is no longer in the building."

"That's not good news, Babyface," said Dimples. "The value of this package was made quite clear to all of us. Do you know who has that data, if we do not?"

"It was received by a man in a janitor's uniform, matching the description of Ladyfeelings, sir. Shall I have him brought in?"

Dimples was strongly tempted, but—"No, no. Let him think we suspect nothing, for now. I'm much more concerned with Tough Guy, his control. Reacquiring him must be our highest priority."

"It will be done, sir. We will not fail."

"We have the Intersect within our grasp, Babyface. We must not fail."