Everything that we are now

Is everything we can't let go

Or it's gone forever, far away

I hope tomorrow is like today

Don't you go away tomorrow

I don't think I could handle that

You're probably dreaming that

You're flying on

Then you start to fall

But then you rise

And shine forever

Don't go away

I hope tomorrow is like today

"I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today"

Guster

May 18, 2036

Westside Medical Center, Los Angeles, California

"He's gone?" Sarah almost screamed, flinching at the unexpected volume of her own voice. "Casey, you have to find him!"

Casey took a few breaths before he replied. "I know you're upset Sarah, but we can't lose our minds here. We have to be logical. You have no idea how much of Chuck is there…and how much is the Intersect. I didn't want to have to say this, but we have the potential to be hunting down someone with Volkoff's personality…plus the physical skills in the Intersect… and Chuck's computer skills. It makes Volkoff look like a playground bully."

Sarah's hand holding the phone started to shake. Her voice cracked when she opened her mouth, and had to start again. "The other personality…Casey, he still loves me," Sarah said. "Part of Chuck is in there. I know it."

Casey's voice was as cold as ice as he replied, "That may be the only thing that can stop him."

"John," Ellie said, speaking up. Sarah angled the phone towards her sister-in-law. "If he took off, he could have done it to protect us…Sarah. You have to find him. I can't help him at all if I can't get to him."

"We're limited here," Casey answered. "Calling in the big guns, or any kind of support, lights up Chuck's Intersect status like a Christmas tree. Any inkling that there's a rogue Intersect implant, they shoot first, ask questions later. One Volkoff was enough."

Fighting tears, Sarah said, "Stephen's mission…"

"It's classified, you know that," Casey replied. As the head of the NSA, Casey had high enough security clearance to have been briefed. The Intersect Team's point of contact was Jane Bentley, but Delson was NSA. Adding a gentleness to his voice that Sarah still almost never heard, he finished, "He'll get it done. All of it."

"Casey, like you said, we don't know how much of Chuck is there, or why he took off…but the first place I would look is his father's cabin in Bishop," Sarah said.

Casey knew of it, but had never been there personally. "It's a four hour drive. I can check on satellites, see if there's any activity on the ground. If he's not there, we'd be wasting valuable time and potentially losing a trail to somewhere else."

Sarah was so deep in thought she didn't even remember signing off or saying goodbye to Casey. She wanted to let her son know things were even more critical, but she refrained. He was already doing everything he possibly could and still had to carry out his mission. Letting him know his father had disappeared would only make things worse.

She just had to wait…which for her, even now, was the hardest thing.

May 19, 2036

Cairo, Egypt

The team had just gotten settled in the hotel room when Stephen's search through the mainframe completed. The flight had been long, and traveling east meant the day felt never ending. Fifteen hours had passed while they were in the air and everyone's body felt like it was late in the evening, almost time to retire, but the local time was mid-morning. They trained and were conditioned for jet lag, and knew adjusting to local time was always the easiest way to acclimate, but for this trip that would mean being awake for almost 36 hours. Del recommended three hours of sleep for everyone, before they even attempted to plan the mission.

Cozette had argued with Stephen, but he chose to stay awake for an additional hour to analyze his results. Waiting until Del was asleep worked to both not have him question what he was doing, but also not reprimand him for not sleeping long enough. He sat at the computer, watching Cozette sleep, counting her breaths in and out as a way to calm him, ground him. She would have been the first one to remind him that despite his Intersect, he was not superhuman. There was a limit to how much his inborn Intersect could supplement his natural skills.

Stephen had no arrogance within himself. He could reason with himself, even if somehow the words in his head he heard in his father's voice, when he started to rely on the Intersect to do more than it was capable.

The moment he opened the file, he saw the search had been successful. Aunt Ellie was right, he thought. His algorithm had found the most correlations in the files related to the Sentries in 2021, that few weeks after his parents had discovered his Intersect. When he had met Cozette for the first time, when he was just nine years old.

No loose ends, he thought, remembering documents he had already read before any of this had even occurred to anyone. The Director and Assistant Director had both been killed in the Op. Operatives who had kidnapped his young aunt and attempted to kill both him and his father were all apprehended.

They had been running with the theory that his father's shadow Intersect was somehow done with nefarious purposes. What if it was an accident? Something that was never meant for him. If it had somehow come out of the Sentries mission, everyone involved was now dead or incarcerated. Certainly everyone who would have known about an Intersect upload was now dead. Everyone, Stephen realized with a flash, with the exception of his future father-in-law.

He went into the bathroom and shut the door. He made sure he was dialing on the encrypted satellite link when he typed in Jacques Robert's number.

"Stephen?" Jacques answered urgently.

Stephen counted the hours in his head, realizing he had called in the middle of the night in Los Angeles, a few minutes past midnight. "Cozette is fine, Mr. Robert," he said quickly, knowing the time and the nature of the call had sparked worry about his daughter's welfare. Stephen heard him sigh with relief on the other end. "I actually called to ask you for some information."

"Go ahead. I'll help however I can," Jacques replied, lowering his voice to a whisper, obviously trying to not wake his wife.

Trying to be as precise and concise as he possibly could, Stephen explained everything that had happened to his father and their current working hypothesis. He told Jacques about his computer search and the information he had just learned. He made it a point to tell his fiancee's father that he was supposed to be sleeping and time was of the essence.

"I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but the version your father has currently was considered by the CIA to be the 3.0," Jacques said.

"I know about all of it, including the enhancements the CIA made…with the digital laudanol," Stephen said curtly.

"When your grandfather designed the original, there was a device called the key that allowed them to reprogram the Intersect at will. He split the key components with his associates. The problem was the original had been tampered with, and the other two pieces of the key Stephen needed were no longer in his possession. All the future versions of the Intersect and all the corresponding work Stephen did after that initial download and the day he died were meant to remove the defective Intersect from Hartley Winterbottom," he explained.

"Corrine Winterbottom had the last software patch my grandfather made before the U.S. government usurped the Intersect program and he had to go underground. All of that was destroyed in 2012 when the program was disbanded. That was when the Sentries took over," Stephen added, the information aligning in his head. He was curious where Jacques was going with this.

"The only component of the key still in Stephen's hands was where he kept his modifications," Jacques said.

"My grandfather's digital engram…as well as a program that worked in the medulla oblongata that promotes healing at a rapid rate," Stephen explained. "My father has both of those."

"Stephen J. Bartowski was a genius," Jacques said. "I'm familiar with his work, but he was the molecular computing expert. But I knew that 'fix,' if you will, would have needed at least part of the original program, the same way a primer would work for DNA PCR. It was just waiting for the catalyst, which would have been the file that your search just confirmed."

"Ok…" Stephen breathed. "I trust you on that. I understood blah blah blah DNA blah."

Jacques chuckled just a bit before he continued. "It was never meant to be indefinitely loaded into someone's head once it was modified with the key the way it was. It was meant to break through the identity Intersect, to pull Hartley out from underneath the Volkoff persona."

Stephen was starting to worry. "Why didn't my Aunt Ellie know that?" he asked.

"I'm assuming the engram Stephen left behind adapted to your father's brain, considering Chuck's brain was the template," Jacques said.

Stephen sighed, struggling with his emotions. "My father could talk to my grandfather via that overlay. He told me it acts almost like an instruction manual."

"That's extraordinary," Jacques said in hushed tones, his accent more pronounced in his amazement. "But that may have been the problem as well." The silence stretched before he continued. "That primer was tunneling under your father's personality, treating it like an implant."

"Because it was designed to remove what was already there. My father's genetic mutation would have made his brain functions indistinguishable from Intersect activity anyway," Stephen replied, making the assumptions and believing them as he spoke. "That was what my Aunt saw on the MRI."

"Stephen, that was 15 years ago. And your father only started having memory issues a few months ago?" Jacques asked incredulously.

"Noticeable ones at least," Stephen added.

"Your father's brain has been fighting this all this time…the way your immune system would fight a cold. Fifteen years of that and, well, you become prone to autoimmune diseases. Too much activity causes the damage," Jacques replied. His words were factual, but he sounded devastated, like he was telling Stephen his father was terminally ill.

Stephen gasped, feeling like his stomach flipped upside down, with a sudden realization. "You think there's no way to stop this," he said sharply.

"It's certainly not as simple as your aunt thought it was," Jacques told him.

Simple? His Aunt Ellie had no idea where to begin, and that was supposed to have been the simple part?

Jacques continued, "There's no additional identity to remove, not after 15 years. The primer has almost become a part of his brain. It's just a matter of how long your father's brain can stay intact before it eventually wears his own personality away." He took a shuddering breath. "I'm so sorry, Stephen. I wished I had better news."

Fighting a wave of nausea, Stephen swallowed hard. How could he tell his mother that? He thought helplessly. A thousand images filled his head, more than a flash, but not part of the Intersect. "No," he said, partially in a daze, not even sure what he was negating. But his mind ran with the thread. "My father's second Intersect, the 2.0, started to overload his neural pathways…but he reset it on his own. He can do that again."

"He's been doing that," Jacques reminded him. "For 15 years. I don't think his brain can do that indefinitely, even as…special as it is."

Stephen could not accept what Cozette's father was telling him. "But now he has my grandfather's engrams there. Don't count him out yet, Mr. Robert."

"I know this is…not the best time. But, considering the circumstances, you can call me Dad, Stephen," Jacques said hesitantly.

"Yeah," Stephen replied, and said nothing else.

}LS{

Anytime he could have used to sleep had passed as Stephen sat in front of the computer, scanning every file that was included in the over 4000 pages of intelligence associated with the mission against the Sentries.

"Babe, you didn't sleep?" Cozette said as she walked up behind him, yawning. She rested a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her.

"What?" she asked, slightly shrill, immediately anxious at the look she saw on his face.

"I talked to your father," he admitted. "He had some very sound theories. None of which are anything but utter hopelessness when it comes to my father."

She listened supportively as he quickly explained. "Oh, Stephen, I'm so sorry," she whispered, sliding the hand that was on his shoulder around his neck as she leaned forward to hug him.

"If there is any chance that I can figure this out, maybe give my aunt a little more to work with, I have to try," he swore to her. "But I've been through almost every last thing that the CIA had on file, and nothing matches the search flag yet."

Cozette glanced at his computer screen and the ridiculous speed with which he was perusing documents. Even as she watched, he slowed down. It was a scanned document, from someone's letterhead. Jill Roberts' name was at the top of the page in the address. A form letter, it seemed as her eyes scanned down the page.

Stephen's screaming shattered the silence.

}LS{

One moment he had been looking at his computer screen…now he was flat on his back, staring at the rusty white on the ceiling in his hotel room. He heard screaming…not understanding until he coughed dryly, that the person screaming was him.

Cozette's hands on the front of his shirt centered him. He forced his mouth closed, forced himself to breathe. In…out…in…out. He could hear her frantic noises, but they sounded far away, like a voice echoing through a cardboard tube.

Headache…He'd had one, but it was gone now. Gone the moment he opened his eyes. He'd flashed, he suddenly realized, although for the first time in his comprehensive memory, he couldn't remember a thing about the flash. Cozette was calling his name.

He felt another hand, stronger, grabbing the front of his shirt in a fist and twisting, pulling his chest hair with it as it spun. He was pulled to a sitting position. "Ugh…thanks, Del," he grumbled, realizing who had grabbed him.

"What the hell are you doing?" Del asked.

Cozette swatted Del's hand away. "He fainted…or…something," she said breathlessly, leaning forward, close to his face.

"The letter," Stephen muttered. "On the computer screen."

Her face still a mask of anxiety, Cozette stood slowly and moved to stand in front of the computer.

"I flashed when I looked at it," he said. "No intel…it just…hurt." Cozette looked nervously between the screen and Del, then looked down at Stephen again. Their side mission was now fully exposed to their partner.

"Del–" Stephen started.

"Guys, it's ok," Del said as he watched the silent exchange. "Casey read me in on all of it. Just in case. I know technically we are on our own." He smiled crookedly at Stephen. "And, yes, I said 'we.'"

"Thank you," Cozette whispered softly.

"So what the hell is that then?" Del asked again, ignoring her emotional response.

Cozette leaned closer to the computer, scanning the entire screen. "There's a watermark on this document. It's a…" She squinted, leaning closer still. "It's a geometric pattern. Looks like–"

"Parallelograms and rhombuses," Stephen finished for her. "I remember that now." His blue eyes went wide and his lips parted as he caught his breath. "Oh my god, Zette, that was it," he exclaimed. "The watermark. My father had to have looked at that document." He started scrambling to his feet.

"How is it that? I don't understand," Cozette said.

"It was the trigger, the primer, your father called it. When my father looked at it, the repair functionality of the portion of the key started working, doing what my grandfather designed it to do," Stephen said so quickly the words ran together.

"But you flashed…what does that mean?" she asked.

"My Intersect is part of my brain," he explained to her. "There's nothing to remove. It just gave me a whopper of a headache…and I'm sure it will again if I look at it."

"The Sentries had that then?" Del asked as he started putting everything together. "The CIA knew the Sentries broke into a substation in Halifax, Virginia. My guess would be that it was included in that. They may not have known what it was, or what it did. Anyone without an Intersect just sees a weird splotch on that paper."

"Zette, what is the actual content of that letter?" Stephen asked her, knowing he couldn't look at it again.

She scanned it quickly. "He's talking about…framework. The…the…data architecture template for the implant," she said slowly, reading faster than she was talking.

"That's it!" Stephen shouted.

"What?" Cozette and Del asked in unison.

"Why they were after me…when I was little," Stephen said, choking up as he remembered that time…bullets in his house, Cole Barker, being told his father was dead. "They tried to use this, which was the only thing they had after Beckman destroyed everything else in 2012, and it made the implant fail. They needed my brain as a blueprint to fix it."

His tender emotionality turned to anxious dread. "My father saw this completely by accident. No one knew this was here." His eyes softened as he turned to Cozette. "The Director was someone that my father used to know…before he met my mother. An old girlfriend or something, at least as far as I could tell. She died in 2021. This document was cross-referenced in the final debriefing conclusion. He must have reviewed it…probably when no one else was in the room."

"So what does that mean, Stephen?" Del asked.

A smile slowly spread across his face, the first sign of relief he had felt in almost three days. "Your father didn't know how to fix it. But I think I do. We just have to survive this mission and get back to Los Angeles in one piece." Cozette smiled in return, hugging her fiance as she sensed his calm resolve.

"Nap time is over, lady and gentleman," Del said crisply, in what Stephen referred to as his "Green Beret voice." "Let's get cracking. Time's wasting."

"Aye, aye, sir," Stephen said, half teasing, used to giving their partner a ribbing whenever he could.

"Wrong branch of the military, Bartowski," Del grumbled. "You're lucky I like you."

"We're the lucky ones, Del," Cozette said, giving him a mock bat of her eyelashes.

"Are we done clowning around?" Del asked, raising his voice.

"Who are you calling a clown?" Stephen replied in a mock gangster voice. Del raised his eyebrows in exaggerated frustration while Cozette giggled. "What? It's from a movie," Stephen sighed.

"Casey tried to tell me. I should have listened," Del grumbled. He would never say out loud how relieved he was to see Stephen's anxiety caused by his concern for his father had some sort of resolution. It made the mission that much easier to survive.