Hello. I did promise to get the next chapter done by St. Patrick's Day so I just got it in under the wire. Good thing, too, since I have to work tonight. Just part-time work; nothing to get excited about.
A lot of people commented in the last chapter that they thought Chuck forgave Jill too easily and should stand up to her. I agree to an extent, but he did have a history with her, and remember I'm writing the story as if we don't know what really happened with Jill yet. Obviously we'd like to see someone kick her ass in, but all I can say is just let the story play out. I guarantee the result of this arc will be better than the show. Hopefully. :-D
And the better news is, I was actually conscious for my birthday and St. Patrick's Day this year, so that's already an improvement over last year. Hopefully one of these interviews I went on this week will turn out to be something. In the meantime, I think people would agree a deep-dish pizza from Gino's East is an adequate replacement for a birthday cake. At least it has less sodium. :-D
Anyway, writer's notes over. As always the parts I get from the show are the property of NBC and Fake Empire Productions. Please leave reviews. And remember, just because you see a lot of show canon it doesn't mean it will stay that way. (cue the ominous music...)
Enjoy!
Hotel Amarano - Burbank, CA
March 3, 2016
12:30 PM PST
Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and Carina gathered around the monitor to listen to General Beckman as she gave the team their next assignment.
"I have the intel on your new mission. Turns out our deceased doctor, Guy LaFleur, obtained a list of CIA code names for the agents he worked with. We have reason to believe this is a list of Fulcrum operatives. This may be our only chance to find the corrupt agents within our ranks."
"Great," Sarah replied. "Where is the list now?"
"Intel thinks it's hidden in Guy's hotel room at the Waldron. We need to get that list before Fulcrum does."
"We'd have to break in," Carina said. "The FBI still has that place sealed off as a crime scene."
"How hard could that be?" Casey said with a shrug. "It's the FBI."
"Get whatever you can from the hotel room and bring it back to base," Beckman ordered. "Chuck, once they have Guy's personal effects, see if you flash on anything. But while they're doing that, make contact with Ms. Roberts. You seem to have made a solid connection with her. Use that to find out anything you can."
"General…um, what if she doesn't know anything?" Chuck asked nervously.
"She may know quite a bit and isn't aware of it. Any little piece of information we didn't have before would be helpful. Get to it, team."
The monitor went blank. Casey and Carina exited to get ready to head to the Waldron.
"Everything OK, Chuck?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah, actually things are great," he replied, although it was obvious to Sarah that he looked a little conflicted. "Why do you ask? Is this some spy thing I don't know about? Some psych evaluation?"
"No, more of a…friend thing. I just wanted to make sure that you're OK."
"Yeah, being with Jill is…it's kind of like having my old life back. Back when things were easier. When I wasn't getting expelled, when ex-friends weren't sending me government secrets, when I wasn't going on dangerous missions…"
Chuck saw Sarah's look become a bit despondent. "Not to bash our cover. You guys have helped me so much to get through this. It's just nice to…be with someone who knows the real me."
"Well, from everything I've seen, she seems like a great girl," Sarah replied, praying Chuck couldn't tell she was trying to hide what she was really feeling.
"I should…I should take Jill to lunch. Talk to her…like Beckman wanted."
"OK, we'll call you later."
"Bye," Chuck said, as he walked out of the room.
"Bye," Sarah replied. She watched the door close and stared at it far longer than she wanted to.
Hotel Waldron – Los Angeles, CA
March 3, 2016
1:30 PM PST
Sarah and Carina crawled through the ventilation system in the ceiling above LaFleur's room. Time was of the essence as they had to meet Chuck right away to see if he flashed on anything they collected.
"A little slow there?" Carina said in a mocking tone as she waited for Sarah to round a corner.
Sarah exhaled in annoyance. The only thing worse than the image of Chuck kissing Jill last night was trying to hide her feelings about it. And she was crawling through an air duct with the one person she had no chance of hiding her feelings from, no matter how good of a façade she could put up.
"It's work time," she grumbled. "Do we have to talk about this?"
"Hey, I'm not the one going slow here."
Sarah reached the grate and took out a small screwdriver to work on the bolts holding it in place. "Lay off, will you?"
Sarah lifted the grate and pushed it forward. She slid downward and dropped into the room, holding onto the vent so she flipped forward and landed on her feet. A few seconds later, Carina used the same maneuver to enter the room as well.
"It was a good plan," Carina told her. "We got the bioweapon, didn't we? Chuck even saved our lives in the process. No point in getting all emotional about it, even if his ex did decide to play tonsil hockey with him afterwards."
"Enough," Sarah snarled. "I know the plan worked. And I know I signed off on it. I just didn't expect…this."
"OK, then. Let's get this done. And get out of your own head about…'this'. Chuck is really starting to get the hang of what we do here. We need his help if we want to get those names."
"And while you're at it, also get my head out of…this, Walker," Casey said from the surveillance van with zero sympathy for Sarah's plight. "God, where is Slade when I need him?"
Carina raised an eyebrow. "You're actually missing Jimmy being here?"
"He can tolerate all these lady feelings much better than I can."
"Says the person who almost blew our surveillance on Victor Federov because he was trying to get back with his girlfriend?" Sarah spat.
"And still stopped him," Casey countered.
Sarah shook her head in annoyance as she looked around. She grabbed a few items from LaFleur's table while Carina packed his laptop.
"Walker, wait," Casey called from the van. "Check your four. Thought I saw something."
Sarah turned to her right, and Casey saw a wooden box through the camera Sarah was wearing.
"This puzzle box?" Sarah asked.
"It's not on the standard room inventory," Casey replied. Bring that with you."
Sarah grabbed the box and handed it to Carina, who put it in the case with LaFleur's laptop. They then heard a noise outside.
"Let's go," Sarah whispered, quickly moving over to the opening in the vent.
Carina took a quick look for anything else and then went to Sarah. She put LaFleur's laptop case around her shoulder and took a foothold from Sarah. She grabbed the air vent and pulled herself up into the ventilation system. She then reached down to Sarah, who jumped up and grabbed her hand. Carina pulled her up into the vent. Casey switched to the hallway camera outside of Guy's room. He wound the footage back to when he heard the sound.
The sound was a man exiting the elevator and pulling out a gun with a silencer, who proceeded to shoot the two FBI agents guarding the door.
The man fished the room key from one of the agents' pockets and opened the door. Nobody was there. But the man did notice LaFleur's laptop missing. He looked around the room, but nothing else appeared to be out of place.
He got on his phone. "It's gone," he said. "Someone must have gotten to it." He listened momentarily again. "OK, I'll set it up. I'm sure they'll cooperate."
Jerry's Famous Deli – Studio City, CA
March 3, 2016
2:00 PM PST
"Really? He did that?"
"I swear; I was right there. And I mean that literally. He took out all of those guys while I was tied to him."
Jill could only stare in amazement at the stories Chuck told her about the missions he had been on with Sarah, Casey, Carina, and Jimmy. Which she assumed Chuck changed a little bit because they were top secret. She had only seen a few episodes of Jen Burton: Spy Girl, but she could understand why people would like the show. There was so much action but what was even better was hour the four actors got along on the show. And now that she knew those same four people were real agents who worked together, she had to admit the show went up a few points in her book. It was little wonder why Chuck wanted to be with these people. And given what she remembered about Chuck from the past…not to mention what he did to save them yesterday…it wouldn't surprise her to know they liked him, too.
"Well, don't sell yourself short there, Mr. Carmichael," Jill said with a playful lilt. "I imagine if I asked any of them about you, they'd say what a smart and brave person you are."
Chuck looked down abashedly. "Well, I try my best. But I mean…how do I compare to those four? The things they can do? Heck, how do I even compare to you? You're…you cure diseases for a living. You'll probably save millions of lives before you're done."
"I think it's safe to say I'm out of a job once LaFleur's findings go public," Jill lamented. "Even if all of Cole-MacGregor went down, what company would trust me to keep their research secret?"
"Hey," Chuck said confidently, gently cupping Jill's chin in his hand. "You are a brilliant scientist. You can save the world, just like I do these days."
Jill gave him a smile. She was wrong; this wasn't the Chuck of old. This was a newer, more confident Chuck. And that made him even more attractive than he was at Stanford.
"Maybe the CIA can give me a job," she said coquettishly to Chuck. "Think I could be a good spy?"
"Who knows. I wouldn't try to go against you."
"Then you could have three ass-kicking women on the show," Jill demurred, her smile growing even wider.
"Are you sure you can handle it?" Chuck asked, his smile increasing as well. "Sarah and Carina are well-trained agents."
"That's true. Maybe I should set my sights a bit lower. Perhaps start out in the FBI. Or maybe the DEA. They could use a scientist like me, couldn't they? I could be like a brainy Carina Miller for them."
Chuck gave her a look. "And a damn sexy one at that."
She ran her fingers through the back of his head and gently pulled him to her, placing her lips on his…
"Bartowski!" a hiss was heard from behind them.
Chuck turned around and saw Casey with an irate look on his face. He exhaled in frustration. "The man knows how to interrupt a romantic moment."
Jill nodded. "Go ahead. I can wait."
Chuck got up from the table to talk to Casey while Jill checked a message on her smartphone. She watched Chuck and Casey have a short discussion.
"Well, I hate it when Casey is right, but he does have a point," Chuck said as he sat back down. "We shouldn't be seen in public like this. You'd become 'the other woman' and the stalkerazzi would never leave you alone."
Jill's eyes widened. "Oh, God. I never thought of that. I find it so hard to believe that you have to worry about those things now. I don't envy you. You can't date anyone because everybody thinks you're dating Sarah."
"The price I pay for being with the team," Chuck replied with a shrug. "On the good side, he told me that Jimmy was OK, and Sarah and Carina were getting him from the hospital right now. I guess there are a few things to go over in LaFleur's stuff, so we have to head over there. Jimmy's usually my handler. I certainly prefer him over Casey. We have a lot in common. Although he's a bit crazy, like his character is. I mean, I was dropped from a roof and he was able to grab me and save my life."
"I can imagine. He seems like such a riot."
"Oh, you'd be surprised. I mean, he's one of the nicest people I've ever met, but that confident, funny persona Lance McCall has? Jimmy is really the opposite. He's very quiet in real life, incredibly shy. Sarah told me the guy was constantly stressed out in college and when he started on this job. Remember how I got sometimes doing those electrical engineering projects at Stanford? He was ten times as bad."
"I can see that. College can be tough. Neither of us had it easy. And I'm sure the computer science program at Illinois is a bear. They actually invented a lot of the things everybody uses to this day."
Chuck rose from his chair and put some money on the check. "We should get going."
Jill rose from her chair and followed Chuck and Casey out of the restaurant.
Hotel Amarano - Burbank, CA
March 3, 2016
4:00 PM PST
The team gathered in the conference room to go over Guy LaFleur's personal effects. Jimmy sat at his laptop trying to decipher LaFleur's files.
"Nothing," he said in frustration, wincing at the pain he was still feeling from the burns on his face despite the bandages and several layers of analgesic gel. "If he had the list, he didn't put it on here."
"What about that box we found?" Sarah asked.
Carina pulled the box out of the laptop case and placed it on the table. Chuck looked at it and began to flash, seeing images of paintings, a design of the box's outer casing, and a picture of Leonardo da Vinci.
"This is a Venetian Puzzle Box," Chuck said with a smile. "Very popular with Renaissance spies."
Sarah began to examine the box. "It's locked." She started to move the numbered tiles in the puzzle attached to the box.
"Uh uh!" Chuck replied. Sarah stepped back, and Chuck looked at the Roman numeral tiles. He then started to rearrange them. "The running, jumping, shooting people part, that's all you guys. The puzzles? That's me. You see, you'd think it'd be numerals one through twelve in a row, but these boxes use a complicated Fibonacci sequence."
He finished rearranging the numbers and heard a bell ding and the box click.
"Let's see what we got," Chuck said confidently.
He opened the box. Inside the box were several bricks of plastic explosives attached to a timer, which began a thirty-second countdown.
"That's a bomb," Sarah said as her voice rose in fear.
"Oh, my God," Chuck said as his face went ashen.
"Everybody, evac!" Casey ordered.
"Wait! Something's wrong," Jill said. "This doesn't make any sense. Guy wanted to help people, not hurt people. This is a clue. Guy was paranoid about security, came up with obscure passwords. His email password was a piece of Vogon poetry."
"Jill, if it looks like a bomb and ticks like a bomb, then generally it is a bomb!" Sarah said.
"Right here! Right here!" Jill pointed to a series of numbers. 23 – _:00 – 15/_ – _/15 – 3/_ – P _"We have to figure out the missing numbers and punch them in!"
Chuck stared at the numbers in shock. "I don't recognize the pattern!"
Jimmy stared at the numbers as the clock counted down to five seconds. He quickly punched a series of numbers into the keypad. The clock stopped with one second to go.
Everybody looked at Jimmy in stunned silence. He looked back and forth at everybody. "What?"
"How did…how…" Chuck began, completely flabbergasted. "How in the hell did you figure that out?"
Jimmy pointed to LaFleur's computer. "The guy may have been paranoid about passwords but he wasn't so good about wiping his browser history. He frequented a lot of sports websites. Probably did that when he needed a break from work. Jill, did Guy have a favorite sport?"
"I know he liked basketball a lot," Jill replied.
"Which is a bit weird, given his name sounds like a Canadian hockey player. But those numbers? They're Michael Jordan's stat line for his final game with the Bulls when they beat the Jazz for the title. Played 44 minutes, shot 15 of 35 from the floor, 12 out of 15 from the line, 3 of 7 from three-point range, and had 45 total points. The correct code was 443512745."
Casey shook his head in disbelief. "Thanks for nerding up March Madness for me, Slade," he said in disgust.
"Wait, that still doesn't explain why he put a bomb in there," Carina said.
Chuck studied the contents of the box. "Jimmy, do you have a video probe?"
"Sure," he replied. Jimmy went to get a probe out of one of the cases in the conference room and handed it to Chuck. Chuck inserted it into the box and took a look around.
"Jill was right; this wasn't a bomb. Well, not one that could have hurt anybody. But we needed the right combination to get to these or they would have been destroyed."
He lifted the inside cover, showing the plastic explosives on top were actually fake. Inside was a bottle of alcohol and what appeared to be a speaker.
"OK, this one's on someone else," Jimmy said as he looked at the items in complete confusion.
"Doesn't make sense," Casey said. "What does a bottle of booze and a radio have in common?"
"Not a radio, a music box," Jill replied. "Guy loved music. The bottle must be a clue to a particular song."
"It's Amaretto," Carina said. "It must be an Italian song."
"A drinking song," Jimmy continued. "An Italian opera that contains a drinking song."
Chuck snapped his fingers. "La Traviata has one. It's called Libiamo ne' lieti calici. It's a Brindisi. A toast song. Alfredo sang it to impress Violetta."
Jill smiled. "Your dad made you play the flute. I remember you telling me that."
"Yeah, let's not bring that up," Chuck said in embarrassment.
"OK, what key was the Brindisi sung in?" Sarah asked.
"Ummm, C major, I think. Dammit, where's a pitch pipe when you need one?"
"AAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Casey sang in a high voice, causing the music box to unlock.
Everybody turned to him in complete astonishment. "Choir boy," he said dismissively, which did not shake off anyone's bewilderment. "What? I wasn't hatched."
Chuck pulled out the drawer under the music box to reveal the final piece.
"Those are opera glasses," Jill said.
Chuck never heard her as he had a flash, seeing more images of Da Vinci, some of his paintings, and some antique technical specs.
"Oh, uh no. They're actually not," Chuck said. "This is a key. A key to a very super-secret lock box." He pulled the key out of the handle of the opera glasses. "The Culper Ring used to use stuff like that to pass along information during the Revolutionary War days."
"Wow. Chuck, that's impressive."
"Yeah, nice going there, Brainiac," Casey replied, considerably less impressed than Jill was. "But before you go getting all full of yourself, if this is the key then where is the lock?"
Chuck grinned and waved the opera glasses. "The question, my dear Casey, is: where's the opera?"
Jill nodded. "I think I know."
The group left the hotel, unaware they were being followed by a man in an electrical maintenance van who had murdered two FBI agents earlier that day.
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion – Los Angeles Music Center
March 3, 2016
6:00 PM PST
The team entered the opera hall and began to look around. Sarah had Chuck and Jill go to Guy LaFleur's family box in the balcony while the rest of them looked around to see if anyone had followed them. So far they had found no one. Casey and Carina went to clear out the performers going through rehearsal.
"Guy loved the opera," Jill said as they entered the box.
"Whoah! Not bad!" Chuck was impressed, to say the least. "You really feel like you're on top of the action."
"How do we know what to look for?"
Chuck took out the key. "It should match the end of this key. Like…" Chuck started looking around the carpet and pulled the chairs aside. Jill did likewise.
"Something…something…" his face lit up. "…like this."
He knelt down to what appeared to be a four-holed separation in the floor. He inserted the key, and a square piece of the floor surrounding the lock popped upward. He reached in and pulled out a flash drive.
He stood up. "Bingo," he said in triumph, prompting a huge grin from Jill.
"Let's head back," Sarah said from the main aisle. She turned and spotted several people at the exits, all of whom pointed guns. "GET DOWN!"
Chuck and Jill hit the deck as a foursome of agents opened fire in the theater. Casey and Carina shoved the rest of the performers out the back while Jimmy rushed to the end of the aisle and charged towards the back with guns blazing.
"Get Jill out of here!" he ordered Chuck.
"Let's go!" Jill yelled, pulling at Chuck's arm. "This way!"
The two ran for the emergency exit as Casey and Carina took cover behind the curtains and readied their weapons. Jimmy kept firing away and charging towards the back. It drew the attention of the four gunmen towards him and away from the rest of the team. Sarah stood and shot the two men in the center. Carina took out the agent on the left, while Jimmy emptied his clips at the one closest to him.
Casey bounded down the back steps of the stage and ran in the direction of where Chuck and Jill should have come down from the upper levels. He then felt an elbow nail him across the head. He staggered to the side and dropped his gun.
The man who killed the FBI agents retrieved his gun as Chuck and Jill entered the outer hallway. The man reached out, grabbed Jill, and held her by the neck as he pointed a gun at her head. She screamed.
"No no no!" Chuck shouted as Sarah, Carina, and Jimmy came up behind them.
"Give me the list, Chuck," the man said.
"Don't do it, Chuck," Sarah whispered.
"Chuck, please!" Jill begged.
"Now, Chuck," the man said in a threatening voice. "I'll shoot her."
"OK, OK!" Chuck said quickly. He fumbled in his pocket for the flash drive. He started to pull it out, but it slipped out of his hand and landed at Jimmy's feet.
"Sorry, sorry," Chuck said in shame. "God, this is like that episode you guys had in Milan."
"I got it," Jimmy said in disgust as he reached down and grabbed the flash drive, handing it back to Chuck.
"Jimmy, that was stupid!" Carina hissed.
"No, wait!" Chuck said. "You know what? There's an easy way to end this."
Chuck threw the flash drive back on the ground and stomped it repeatedly with his foot until it was damaged beyond repair.
"There you go. We don't know your agents and you don't know ours," Chuck said. "Mexican standoff. Now let Jill go."
The man cocked his gun. "You seem to forget I still have a weapon on your girlfriend."
Chuck shrugged. "You may have a gun, but I have a Casey."
The man's eyes widened and he turned around…just in time for Casey to head-butt him into the wall, following it up with a brutal hook to put him on the ground. Chuck pulled Jill out of the way as Carina got the gun he took from Casey and aimed it at him. Jimmy flipped the man onto his stomach and put handcuffs on him.
"You idiot, Bartowski!" Casey looked ready to tear Chuck's limbs off. "Now we'll never know the names of those Fulcrum agents! I've got a good mind to haul your ass in on charges of treason!"
"Yeah, and I'm pissed off, too!" Jimmy growled. "You know how much music was on that flash drive? It took me hours to get it off my old laptop and get it ready to transfer to my new laptop!"
Sarah, Casey, and Carina were stunned silent. Chuck had a big grin on his face.
"You mean…" Sarah began.
Chuck took the flash drive Jimmy palmed and held it up with a smile. "I dropped it at his feet on purpose. I'm just glad he figured it out."
Carina nodded and smiled. "Jen and Jill pulled the same trick on the show with that art thief at the museum in Milan."
"That's right." Chuck handed the flash drive to Sarah. "And now we can find out who the bad guys are."
"Chuck that's…" Jill was beyond impressed. "You were amazing. Again!"
That gave Chuck a big smile. Casey and Jimmy pulled the Fulcrum agent up and took him away, led out of the theater by Sarah and Carina. Sarah took a look back to see Chuck and Jill kissing passionately. She turned forward again, completely deflated.
Hotel Amarano - Burbank, CA
March 3, 2016
8:00 PM PST
Jimmy sat at his computer running through the encryption programs available to him to break the cipher on Dr. LaFleur's list. After the NSA processed the Fulcrum agent who murdered the two FBI agents and took Jill hostage, everybody returned to go over the data they found.
"Well done, team," Beckman said over videoconference. "We'll now be able to discover the identity of every Fulcrum agent with whom Guy was in contact. You did excellent work."
"I think Chuck deserves most of the credit for today," Sarah said, although she felt like complete hell at seeing Chuck and Jill kissing.
"Be sure to thank the asset for his service. By the way, where is Chuck?"
"My guess would be rounding second base," Casey replied with considerable snark, which drew an evil glare from Sarah.
~/^\~
Chuck and Jill went into Chuck's room in permanent lip-lock. She ripped open his shirt and put it on the bed.
"Wait, wait, wait," he said as Jill was about to pounce. "I can't…I can't do this."
"What?" Jill said. She then looked at what Chuck was staring at: the webcam on top of his computer. "Don't tell me…"
"I am that important, apparently," Chuck replied in defeat. "They have me under constant surveillance."
"Well, I have some spy moves of my own," Jill purred. She grinned and pulled off her shirt, tossing it casually over the webcam and blocking its view. "Let's get our weekend started."
Jill went to the bed and fell on top of Chuck, kissing him hard.
~/^\~
"Here we go," Jimmy said as he switched the image of his computer to the large monitor. "The computer found the right decryption key."
Everybody turned to the screen to see a list of agents flash by. Every now and then, the computer would beep and an image would stop on a particular agent, revealing them to be Fulcrum. The team took notes to prepare for Beckman. Of the hundreds of agents they saw, 5% of them were Fulcrum agents.
They then paused the computer and stared in absolute shock.
They immediately grabbed their weapons and bounded out of the hotel, tearing down Interstate 5 at over 100 MPH. They barged into Chuck's apartment and ran for his bedroom and found nobody there.
Chuck was already gone with Jill, apparently unaware she was a Fulcrum agent.