Chapter 16

Stark

I

June 09, 2012, pt. 1

It was in the 90s in the DC metro area. For once, however, it was a dry heat; so, on such a nice Saturday, it felt like the whole population was outside basking, swimming, frolicking.

Everyone but those stuck working down in the Pentagon. Everyone but the team set up by General Beckman and Agent Bartowski, with the assistance of a dark, mysterious, dangerous group of underground biochemical researchers who called themselves "The Guardians."

Beckman chuckled when she first heard the name. So pretentious; completely devoid of value – as if there was anything for them to guard? At least Fulcrum and The Ring had a semblance of meaning.

Unfortunately, the Guardians were much more formidable than any of the other foes Team Bartowski had faced. They had opened their dialogue with the Department of Defense by venting indetectable, untraceable, fine-crafted neurotoxins through the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol Building, then trading the antidote for a seat at the table, so to speak. Sixteen civilians died in the attack, but it was neatly covered up.

The Guardians, indeed, were perhaps the most knowledgeable in the world in their field. But they wanted more than nerve gas. They had long known about the Intersect, its abilities and its limitations. They knew that if they could apply their skills, they could turn this machine into the world's most powerful weapon.

Of course, the United States Government would never let that weapon fall into the hands of anyone, friend or foe – certainly not a group as dangerous as the Guardians. No one at the table was dumb enough to think otherwise. And while one side of the table had in its arsenal the most sophisticated bioweapons the world had ever seen, the other side had the Intersect technology itself – and an Intersect of their own. Perhaps, then, a stalemate was in order?

Think again, for the government simply could not pass up the opportunity to acquire such a hypothetical weapon for themselves.

Thus, what developed in the months since Chuck's meeting with Beckman back in April was an uneasy détente. The government led their Special Operations team, chaired jointly by Beckman and Bartowski, in the Pentagon, while the Guardians mostly collaborated remotely – for everyone expected the government to be working behind the scenes to try to track them down, and while they weren't afraid to launch another chemical attack, they couldn't risk killing those involved in Operation Bartowski before they concluded their research.

General Beckman had told Chuck about the attack back in April, about the group's plans to develop of bioweapon of – allegedly – enormous power through his own Intersect, and about the government's precarious position in needing to stop them without provoking a massacre. She even told him that, in spite of this threat, the government was interested in using The Guardians' research to augment the Intersect. She did not, however, tell him of their interest in the Intersect as a weapon. In fact – and with very little nudging on her part – she let him believe the ultimate goal was a tool to help the masses. Chuck came to believe that if the Intersect could be applied to anyone in the world, it could be used to help people learn, help them better navigate the world around them, even help treat certain cognitive disabilities.

Beckman still was not used to understanding the moral quandaries of deception. But, over three years since Langston Graham's death, and with the affinity she had for the agent who had grown to become the best in the field, this deception ate at her more than any she had felt before. Maybe… maybe she didn't even believe the government could safely wield this weapon.

Today, however, these worries took a backseat to something much heavier that weighed down her conscience.

II

Stark gunned it down the freeway, using the ambulance's sirens to clear any traffic in her way. She didn't care that anyone who took one look at the vehicle would notice it's a Virginia truck. She didn't care that she could get pulled over. Hell, she'd kill anyone who stood in her way.

Was it maternal instinct? She didn't know if she had any after leaving her daughter with the CIA for four years. So, was it guilt then? Was she trying to make up for it?

She didn't even know where she was going. When Betelgeuse radioed to her that the closest hospital was to the East in La Crosse, she took the hardest U-turn possible in the ice, through a median, and kept on.

Yet she only barely missed Julia when she pulled into the loading zone and ran inside La Crosse Center for Advanced Medicine. Having asked Betelgeuse only for the name on Robin's passport on the drive over, she thrashed her way through the line at reception to ask "do you have a Stephanie Murkowski?"

The receptionist, flustered, began to caution Stark for her impertinence when a nurse rang out from down a hall behind the desk. "Did you say 'Murkowski?'" the young man in dirty scrubs called back, rushing over.

Startled, Stark nearly forgot she wasn't supposed to reach for a weapon.

"Do you know her?" the nurse continued as Stark recovered.

"Yeah! I'm…" Stark paused. The words "I'm her mom" felt… unnatural; but eventually, she managed to speak the truth.

"Your daughter…" the nurse looked around, then stepped back, beckoning Stark to follow. "Come inside," he gestured to an empty check-up room, beckoning her to sit on an unprepped exam table as he closed the door. She refused, preferring to tower over the short man as he continued, softly and somewhat solemnly. "Your daughter was shot in the right shoulder. There's a major artery that runs down," he gestured around his own right shoulder and arm, "that we call the brachial. It was nearly severed by the impact. This caused her to lose a high volume of blood by the time she was admitted.

"She's in surgery, but we don't know if she'll survive. Our top priority right now is replacing that blood and repairing the artery. Fortunately, her blood type is O-negative. I'm sure you've heard the term 'universal donor' before; it's a bit of a misnomer: people who receive O-negative blood in treatments like these still need blood of their actual type eventually. But it also means that in our case, we have more than enough in store for your daughter's care.

"If she does survive the surgery, your daughter will still have a long road ahead of her. Aside from the artery, there's a wealth of damaged and destroyed muscle and nerve tissue. We can't promise we'll be able to repair that. If you have insurance, there are a few clinics we can refer you to for follow-up care.

"For now, you're welcome to remain here as long as you need, or in the waiting area back by reception. Wisconsin state law requires us to report gunshot wounds to authorities, so an officer may come by to ask you some questions."

Stark stared blankly at the nurse as he left the room, closing the door behind him. On the outside, she looked emotionless. But she was only suppressing the fire within to keep her head straight. The moment the door shut, she pulled up the wristwatch and spoke into it. She wasn't sure if it'd even work at this distance, but Betelgeuse did manage to respond to her initial "do you copy?" request, albeit with shoddy reception.

"Rachel's in surgery. Shot in the shoulder. It's bad. You wouldn't happen to have any of that stuff the CIA used to patch us up on Christmas, do you?"

"Closest stash I-I have is in Winnipeg."

"Okay," Stark continued more rapidly, "outside of the CIA I've only heard unreliable rumors about this stuff, so I need you to tell me everything you know about how it works."

"Not… not well enough, I-I'm afraid." Betelgeuse explained what he had heard from the rogue Ring agents who revived him long ago, about how two hours was the longest it could theoretically work after death. It took a moment – hearing his granddaughter may not make it worked him up. "May-may-maybe the, maybe the CIA im-improved it, but but b-b-but my stuff is synth-synthesized, synthesized directly from the stuff of of of tw-twenty years ago."

Stark sighed and finally sat on the exam table. There was nothing she could do but wait and hope the surgeons could save her daughter. The fire within tried to force itself out, but she pushed it back in with all her willpower.

"Where are you," she asked into the wristwatch.

"Ed – Agent Hernandez and and I a-a-are parked outside of Ro-Rochester."

"Okay, you two get to Canada. We'll meet you there."

"What?"

"Once I know if… once I know Rachel's safe, I'm leaving to collect Julia. Then I'll double-back, collect Rachel, and meet you two up north.

"B-but that's way t-too dange—"

"What else am I supposed to do?" She frustratedly half-whispered back. Then she sighed, taking some deep breaths to control her emotions. "Listen, just… get up to Canada. I can take care of the rest."

"Y-you know, I-I can't communi-nicate with you like this over lon-long distances. N-Not securely, anyway."

"I'll reach out again when we get to Winnipeg."

III

Stark slipped out of the hospital. But she wouldn't go far: just down the street, to the first store she could find that carried prepaid phones. She barely waited to leave the store before tearing open the packaging, dialing, and slipping into an alley while it rang.

Please pick up, she pleaded to herself.

Click.

"Hey! It's me.

"Yeah. Are you still in…

"Michigan? Okay, um, can you meet me in Saint Katherine's city at the same hotel as the one in LA where we got all that rocky road?

"Saint Katherine?

"Y'know? Like Katie? Irish? Patron saint of…" she slapped the top of her head, frustrated that he didn't understand the coded language (though, in fairness, it had been years).

"Screw it, Katie O'Connell. Do you remember Katie O'Connell? Yeah? Okay, meet me in her city at the—

"O-ok awesome. And can you bring that computer I gave you Christmas 2028?

"No, I just need—

"Don't worry, I promise.

"Great, thank you. See you there.

"Love you too."

IV

Stark arrived in Madison well before him. In fairness, he had a few more hours on the road than she did, but she still began pacing nervously around the lobby of the hotel the moment she checked in.

Stark had her phone out in front of her the entire time; she had hurriedly given her number to reception at the hospital before peeling out, and the moment she left, she was in a permanent state of dread waiting for the call.

None came, however, by the time her dad arrived. But before he could even get a word of greeting in, she ushered him into an elevator.

There was no willing the elevator to move up 10 stories any faster, however, so Jack Burton managed to force a hug from his daughter in the meantime.

"What's going on? Are you in trouble?"

"No, Dad. Not me, particularly.

"You're still registered under Carl Kent, aren't you?"

"Yeah, and don't make me change it again, either," he cautioned as the elevator doors opened; "I've grown quite fond of the name in the past five or six years. Even got me a friend in town," he added as Stark guided him to her room.

The old con-man immediately noticed the lack of luggage or even ruffled bedding in this small room. The windows – from which a spectacular view of Lake Mendota could have streamed in – were shut tight.

"So what about you? Still in the spy game, I take it. What are you under?"

"Stark."

"Like Tony?"

Stark raised an eyebrow.

"Tony Stark? Iron Man?"

"Just Stark. Cold, direct, easy to remember."

"Yeah," Jack – or Carl, now – shrugged, "sorry; the kids are obsessed with superhero movies. Oh!" He added after an odd look from his daughter, "right: that friend of mine has a couple of grandkids. Very kind, but a bit rowdy.

"Are you okay?"

"Sorry, Dad," Stark apologized with a sigh, "I just… I've got a lot on my mind right now. Can you hand me the computer?"

Carl produced a laptop from his shoulder bag and handed it to his daughter, who immediately set it on a small table at the far end of the room. There she sat, typing frantically. Not one to eavesdrop, her father resisted the temptation of curiosity for quite a while, but when he finally broke down and glanced over Stark's shoulder, he saw a flurry of popups and strange files open. He couldn't help but ask: "what are you doing on that thing?"

"I set up a remote connection to my home machine, in case of situations like this. I'm tracking… um, I'm doing some work."

"Still working with the CIA I take it?"

"Dad, I went solo decades ago, I've told you this."

"Right… I knew that."

Stark couldn't tell if her dad was just being suspicious or if he genuinely forgot. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd forgotten something that big in recent years.

"Okay," Stark sighed when she finally got her car up on her tracking software (currently a blue blip moving down Interstate 90 through southeastern South Dakota). She stood and turned. "Sorry to ask this, but do you mind if I hang onto this?"

"Whoa, hold on." Carl folded his arms and stood between his daughter and the door. "On one condition," he demanded: "you tell me what's going on."

Stark flashed a small smile. "C'mon, Dad, I don't have time for th—"

"No, no," he interjected, waving his hands in front of him. "I haven't seen you since you gave me that thing. Four years since I've last seen my daughter. Barely a word over the phone too. Then suddenly you call me up, out of the blue, ask me to take a four-hour drive to some hotel you clearly just checked into for this little meeting, and now you want to leave again without even talking to me?

"Come on…" he was nearly pleading at this point. "I'm getting old, Sarah—" he noticed his daughter tense at the name she hadn't used in decades, "or, Jenny, or Stark, or Sam… whatever. I know we have a history of long absences, but…

"That last Christmas… you were just like you are now: distant, fidgety, like you couldn't wait to get out of there."

"I know, and I'm really sorry; I promise, after I get things settled, I'll visit you firs—"

"Then I never saw again," her dad interrupted, repeating his earlier point. "Until today, I didn't think I would ever see you again. And now you want to leave mere seconds after our reunion.

"Come on. At least tell me what's going on right now. Then you can go back to saving the world, or whatever it is you do these days."

Her father's words struck a nerve of guilt. Dejectedly, Stark sat at the edge of the bed. And after thinking for a while, and with a little difficulty, she finally opened up. "You remember how… how Rachel was taken from me?

"Right before that last Christmas we spent together, I found her."

"She's alive?"

"I… was going to tell you, back then. But then, I thought, there must have been a reason…

"She was being taken care of by someone I trusted deeply. At the CIA. So I figured that there had to be some very good reason why she… was being hidden, so…"

Stark sighed and wiped a tear from her cheek. "That's not the only reason." She sounded – and felt – ashamed. "I… I had a very dangerous mission. This underground terrorist group in the Southeast were…"

Being vulnerable was always difficult for Stark. Even – and perhaps especially so – in front of her dad. "I screwed up. I prioritized a dangerous but ultimately less-important situation over getting my daughter back, and then I was too afraid to talk to you about it back then, and eventually…

"Eventually I just convinced myself that she was in good hands with the CIA. And then, it just kept going like this until I was roped into…" Stark put her hand over her face like she was suppressing a sob.

Her father didn't know how to process this. Of course he cared deeply about his granddaughter, whom he had only seen once at the hospital when she was born. And when he found out she was missing (Stark never told him about Chuck's involvement), he was just as devastated as his daughter. So to find out she was alive was such a shock, he could barely process the fact that Stark had kept this from him for so long, let alone how that made him feel.

"And today…" Stark continued, tears escaping her trembling hand as her father silently sat beside her, wrapping his arm around her back and rubbing her shoulder to console her. "She was shot," she managed to control herself just enough to blurt out. "She might die. And I can't be with her because I have to follow this stupid—" she said no more, instead electing to sob in her father's arms.

She stayed like this for a while, unable to wrest herself from this abyss of heart-wrenching pain. When the phone call finally came, her father picked it up for her.

V

The trek west was exhausting. Julia's head start, and the terrible gas mileage of that ambulance, meant Stark had to cut sleep to a minimum to catch up to her target. Fortunately, she had a pretty good hunch as to where the asset was headed; she had done her research: there were only two possible reasonable destinations, and Stark didn't particularly think Julia would rather return to her dorm.

Instead of leaving Madison west on I-90 – the optimal route – Stark elected to take a turn north. It was only about an hour slower to enter Minnesota near Minneapolis, but Stark knew that no matter what, she couldn't pass back through La Crosse. She wouldn't be able to handle it.

Besides, perhaps she still had a chance of reaching Betelgeuse if she were a little further north.

"Betelgeuse, do you copy?" She asked futilely while pulled into a rest stop just outside of St Paul. It had already been over 6 hours since she'd told him to leave for Canada.

Stark sighed and strained to control her emotions. C'mon, remember your damn training! "Betelgeuse? I… I don't think you'll hear this, but in the off chance…

"Rachel had a heart attack in surgery. She's in a coma. They… don't think she's going to make it. If there's… any way you can get that Catalyst stuff down here…

"I have to keep going. The asset's too far away already. I'm sorry."

Betelgeuse heard none of this.

VI

Stark got 4 hours of sleep on her 24-hour-long trek to Seattle. Not to mention, this is after being up for over 28 hours through her escape from DC and visit with her father. No amount of field training could fight off the weariness of 4 hours of sleep across over two days.

Julia, untrained but rested from the drive to the cabin the day before, stayed awake the entire trip. Even though she sped quite ridiculously in places, Stark had no chance of catching up with the asset.

Why Julia would return to her mother, Stark hadn't the slightest idea. Though unsure who Orion could have set her up with at infancy, Stark knew any agent worth their salt would train their children at least in the basics of field safety; Julia's obvious lack of expertise in this area told Stark that her mother was no spy. Thus, there was no safety in returning home. So why on earth did she? Did Julia really think this act of rebellion was worth the mortal peril it brought her?

Or was there something more sinister afoot? Could Julia be some sort of double agent? Could she have set the group up back in Minnesota? Could she have set Rachel up?

No, it didn't add up. She tried to help Rachel in the end – a move Stark never expected. She got Stark to supply a second getaway car too, way back in Virginia. She didn't want to hurt the rest of the group. Or at least she didn't want on Stark's bad side.

So… was she just ignorant of the risks? Did she maybe just not care?

These questions swirled in Stark's head as she sped toward the now stationary blip on the map on her father's laptop.

It led her to a run-down neighborhood south of the city. Half-decrepit houses sat buried in weeds and rain across from rows of construction buildings and smokestacks. In front of one of these houses was the car Julia had stolen. Given the hours that had passed between hers and Stark's arrival, the latter prayed desparately to find the former in the sad-looking grey ranch-style with boarded windows in front of her.

She didn't even make it to the door.

"Don't move," a voice called from behind her.

Stark froze, put her hands up about a third of the way, then tapped into her training. "Okay, I'm unarmed," she lied, attempting to slowly shuffle around to face the person behind her.

But he wasn't having it. "I said FREEZE!" He cocked his gun.

"Listen, let's just—"

"We ain't got time for negotiations. I've just got one thing to say: We got her. She's gone. You lose."

A gunshot rang through the neighborhood.

VII

"Oh thank god, HOLY shit…" Shaw nearly collapsed when he heard the news. He slumped in a heavy leather chair in his underground hideout to calm down. After a few breaths, he continued. "I'm sorry," he wheezed to the woman on the other end of the phone, "I didn't… I didn't think… we'd actually get her. I really thought we were screwed. AAAH!" He sighed again.

VIII

Half a world away, a man dials a number on his phone. It rings three-and-a-half times before someone picks up.

"Hey, it's me. I'm calling in my chit."

…

"My chit. You know? Fifteen years ago? Saved your life?

"—Whatever, just… listen: I need your help."