A/N1: Now that this shit is getting serious, you'd think someone would pay attention to who owns Chuck.
A/N2: A reputation is a fragile thing. It takes a long time to build one and only a moment to destroy it. That is exactly the guidance I have given my sons as my wife and I raised them (usually with respect to truthfulness). Well, I hope I've developed a bit of a reputation for consistency and reliability in my schedule of dropping a chapter of New Day on the Saturday morning of every week. Obviously, I missed last week's chapter drop. Sorry, guys. My office has been pretty insane for the last few weeks and I didn't finish this chapter in time. Also, sorry to say, I don't see my work calming down for a while. I'm going to try to keep to my Saturday morning schedule, but circumstances may end up preventing me from writing as much as usual. I'll do my best and I hope you can all stick with me until I can work my way back into my natural groove. And an extra special thanks to those of you (you know who you are) who reached out to me to make sure I hadn't been run over by a bus or something. All you guys are the best.
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Chuck, Sarah, and the other members of the extended Carmichael Team had just been given the complete download about Roark and his company, Roark Instruments. With that information now on the table, Chuck knew it was time to formulate a strategy vis a vis Roark.
"Ok," said Chuck, standing. "So, now we've gotten a good handle on the man and the task ahead of us. The job now is to figure out what we do next. And I have some ideas.
"First off, wonderful job, guys. Folks tell me we are getting a fairly decent rep in the community. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but, if it is right, it's due to things like this. Where the brains and energy of the smart folks in this room combine to become unbeatable. I am proud to be working with each and every one of you. Thank you."
Chuck paused and cocked his head a tiny bit to the side, as if considering what he'd just said. "Unbeatable. Let's face it, no one is unbeatable. Eventually everyone gets beaten. Defeated. Bested. It's inevitable. But... and here's the thing. Not us." Chuck stabbed a finger at the table and said, with emphasis, "NOT US. We cannot lose. Sure, we can lose a battle or two, but not the war. Not the war. You know why? Because there's too damn much at stake for us to fail. The future of our nation rests on our shoulders." Chuck waved his hands at the assembled men and women. "We have to be unbeatable." He gave one of his quick trademark grins and said, "No pressure, huh? Generations spanning hundreds of years fought and died to get us where we are now and we cannot allow some Fulcrum assholes to undo that effort. We must defeat them and we will, together. And then, many years from now, when you are bouncing your grandchild on your knees, you will know that what you did today and tomorrow and the day after that, what you did assured their future. And, although you can never say anything to anyone about this fight, you will smile to yourself and know that you were a member of our team, the team that defeated Fulcrum, the greatest threat to the integrity of the nation we have ever faced. And similarly, years from now, your peers, who aren't in this room today, those poor, poor souls...well, they will wish to the end of their days that they had been here with us. We are the very tip of the spear defending the future of the nation and I, for one, could not be prouder to be here among you all."
Fitz was crying openly and began to applaud slowly. Only a moment later, the room echoed with the applause from the assembled men and women.
Chuck waved it off modestly. "Okay. Enough of that. Now, let's come to some decisions about what we do from here. First things first. We've learned a lot about Roark and his business practices. He's a bottom feeder, using a battalion of lawyers to violate and manipulate the system. He's undoubtedly a thief of intellectual property. A tax cheat. A criminal on any number of levels. Generally, a douche. My dad hates his ass, so that's got to mean something all by itself.
"He's about to unleash a new operating system to the world with a huge hype machine getting publicity for it. Jorge's right. I'm going to get RIOS checked out top to bottom by some of my CI guys. That may thwart something this guy has in mind. We'll see, I guess. But that's beside the point.
"Here's the thing. We, in this room, don't care. We don't care about that stuff. That's not our job. What we care about...the only thing we care about, is stopping Fulcrum. I'm not saying we don't keep an eye on the rest of the chinks in Roark's armor, I'm suggesting that those are of lesser import to us than the main task of stopping Fulcrum. If they can help us, even by distraction, great. But otherwise, we have to look elsewhere for our strategic ideas."
There was a general nodding of heads around the room.
"Good. We are all in agreement. The thing I think we need above all is the list, the roster of Fulcrum agents. They have to have one. Even stopping the occasional operation they may mount is not the strategic defeat we need to inflict. The list will lead to their total defeat, enabling us to destroy them root and branch. I think that's the priority, even more than stopping the Sachem. The bosses considered a termination order against Roark, but I talked them out of it, at least until we can get the list.
"We need, among other things, to identify the Life Guard members who would be covering him. So, I suggest we watch what Roark does and to try to monitor his communications. At least some of those young men and women following him around all the time must be Fulcrum. Let's get pictures of them through the facial recognition software and see if any of them can be linked to the IC. That will give us a start. We know that Graham and Beckman have an algorithm going to make connections among the Fulcrum members we've identified. Getting some of those folks into it will certainly help.
"The second is to see what the fuck is happening inside the closed wing of that R&D building. Jorge and I can try to snoop electronically, but if the machines inside are airgapped, it won't be that successful."
Rachel said, "We have the building plans for the facility. They were on file with the City of Ventura. And we can monitor the electric usage from the utility company."
"That's not going to be too helpful, though," said Billy. "There's one electric meter for the whole facility. The usage isn't broken down by building, much less by portions of the buildings."
"What about some of the more tech stuff? Infrared? Radar?" asked Johnny.
Jorge said, "Infrared will give us heat sources near the walls, but little else. Radar, like the ground penetrating radar for instance, might be able to look through walls, but we'd have to be lucky to find something that would bounce back to us and not be blocked."
"Sorry, what?" asked Johnny.
"As the radar wave penetrates through the wall, let's say it hits the metal framing. We'll get a bounceback and an image, but only of the metal framing. If we are lucky enough to pick a spot in the wall with no framing, we then hit a metal bookshelf or chair or desk or something on the other side. We get an image of that, but not of whatever's behind it. I guess it's worth a shot, but you'd have to have a hell of a lot of luck to find anything giving us useful information."
"X-rays?" asked Leo.
Jorge said, "You'd need a receiver on the far side. Those things aren't reflective and just leave a shadow. And to make it all the way through to the other side, you'd have to use a projector of tremendous power. Everyone inside would get cancer. It's nothing to play with."
Sarah said, "So let's get some of us inside. Let's get us jobs at Roark."
"I like that idea. I can apply for a computer engineering job," said Chuck.
"You? Nope, honey. Not you. You are Carmichael. You are a target of Fulcrum. Don't you think they know what you look like? It's not at all a safe play. If they were to somehow twig to the fact that you are Carmichael, that's all she wrote."
"Ok. You're right, of course," he said.
"I'm not, though," said Jorge. "I could apply."
Sarah said, "Nope. Like Chuck, I think we need you out here. We only have two computer geniuses and can't afford to risk either one."
"I'm no genius," grumbled Jorge.
"So, a couple of the rest of us. Janitors or security guards or something," said Fitz.
"Sounds like a good idea," agreed Casey.
"But you're out of the running too, Colonel," said Fitz. "Like Chuck and Sarah and Zee, you're already marked by the bad guys. This one is going to be just us. I figure between Mike's and my teams we'll be able to get at least a couple of guys inside."
"Ok," said Chuck. "Seems like we have a plan."
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When the meeting ended everyone went back to work and it wasn't until several hours later that Chuck and Sarah met in front of the Castle Studios building.
Waiting for his fiancé to join him by the steps, Chuck couldn't help but look out at the buildings in his view. He shuddered slightly with the knowledge that any one of those windows could hold his death from a sniper bullet. With no warning, he could be dead in the next second.
Sarah came out a moment later and wrapped him in a one-armed hug, giving him a loving kiss. She saw his gaze at the distant buildings and knew what he was thinking. She knew just how much the idea of an unseen sniper dispensing death from afar had freaked him out. It put them into a war zone at every moment for the rest of their lives.
Seeing where he'd been looking and the look on his face, she squeezed his hand and said, "It does no good to think about it. Like a random asteroid coming down from the heavens. When it comes it comes. We do the best we can in the meantime." She looked deeply into his chocolate brown eyes and said, "I love you more than that I ever thought possible and I need you. No one knows when the end will arrive and you can't spend every day in dread. Please try to put those thoughts to the side. I need you to live and love and laugh with me for the rest of our lives, however long that may be."
She pushed her head into his chest and hugged him. "Please, my love. Please."
Chuck held Sarah tightly and said, "Thanks. Intellectually, I know what you are saying is one hundred percent right. It might just take me a while to get my head into the right place. But I will do everything I can to get myself into a better head space. I promise. I know I need to be the man you fell in love with, and not some freaked out paranoid nutjob. I'll do my best."
They began to walk to their car, holding hands. He said, "Kind of freaky, though."
She grinned at him and said, "Yeah. I hate to tell you that you get used to it, but you do."
"Yippee. I'm sure that's fun," he told her with a wry grin.
"Just get in the car," she said, smiling at her man.
Soon after they had left the Studio complex Sarah said, "Channeling the Saint Crispin Day speech a little bit, huh, Sweetie?"
"Branagh was so good as Henry V. Come on, you were the one who wanted to rent it the other night" he said.
"Oh, I know. It's a great production. And he was really fantastic. Love it. I just didn't know that you would run with it today. Remind me to be careful what cultural influences I foist upon you," she said, reaching out to hold his hand with a smile.
"Wait, does that mean I have to be careful about what I drop on you? Because, I think I drop much worse shit on you than you drop on me."
"Oh, come on. Are you still embarrassed by Space Balls? Because I swear, I thought it was funny," she said with a happy smile at her Chuck.
"Well...?" he said, laughing with his Sarah.
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Marco Anglani popped open the stall of the toilet in the men's room and checked to make sure that it had full rolls of toilet paper. Then did the same in the next stall, and the next stall. In the one nearest the wall, he actually had to add a roll and replace the almost empty roll.
That job done, he moved out of the room and made his way to the other men's room on the floor. Wiping down the sink area was the most exciting part of that visit. There was a woman custodian whose job it was to check the women's rooms, so those weren't a concern.
After his rounds, he made his way back to the basement space allocated to the cleaning staff. Most of the people assembled were women, but there were a few men in the mix. Just about all of them were speaking Spanish.
One of the men said to him, in Spanish, "Hey. I hear you took Simon's job tonight. Long day for you, dude."
Replying in the same language, he said, "Yeah. Need the scratch. Ex-wife needs her fix. What can I tell ya?"
"Aw, shit, dude. I hear ya. Got one of those of my own." The two men bumped fists.
With a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner, Marco settled down next to the man and said, "You been working here long?"
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A/N3: Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) was, in my opinion, the best of his adaptations of Shakespeare's works (and they are all great). I recommend it to all of you. And the speech I referred to coined the phrase "band of brothers" referring to the men you have fought beside. During the time the original words were written, to be considered "brother" to the King was a very big deal.
A/N4: Thanks for reading and sticking with me this far, guys. I always thought the internet was filled with maniacs and axe-murders. But, in fact, there are a bunch of really nice folks randomly scattered among the maniacs and axe-murderers. Thanks, my friends.
