The Charter, Diamond West Headquarters – Undisclosed Location, June 23, 2007
The room was full of agents and analysts. Presentations were queued, there was a light murmur in the room while the King of Diamonds stepped up to start the mission brief. She started, "Folks, this is going to be a long op and a long meeting; let's get started. First a short review. Fulcrum has been festering in the belly of the United States intelligence community for the last 30 years. They started as patriot extremists. They are still extremists, however now they have become a subsidiary of the Ring. This has given them resources they never had access to previously. This has made them even more dangerous and something we have decided must be dealt with. The Charter has made it Diamond's mission to eliminate Fulcrum. As of two weeks ago we received intel from Clubs. They have learned that Fulcrum has ramped up its bid to take over the US intelligence community. News came in from the Club's monitoring station that Five's former roommate, now CIA agent Bryce Larkin has received the assignment, codenamed Operation Sandwall."
Five started to flash undetectably on the sudden influx of information, but King continued; there was only one other person in the room that got that same flash, and everyone needed to know the details. "Fulcrum is plotting to steal the US Intersect. They've used Larkin's activation codes and as of right now he believes the mission is legit. Larkin has no known affiliation with Fulcrum so we believe he's being used. In two days' time, Queen of Hearts will lead an operation to assist Larkin with that plot, but the US Intersect will not be given to Fulcrum."
King looked at Five and spared a small smile. "Queen of Hearts will convince Larkin to send it to his sweet, old, reliable, best friend. Five, when you receive the US government's Intersect we will intercept and clean it. We can't have you loading a faulty version. As you all know, currently the only way their Intersect computer can run is off a cipher which acts as the brains of the Intersect System. The CIA and NSA worked together to create a Human Intersect but their project, codenamed Project Omaha, was a failure. The CIA and NSA are still nowhere near close to being able to achieve a Human Intersect, but they don't realize that. Five, you will use your Intersect to simulate the abilities of the current US Intersect with you as the "cipher". The file you will receive must look like you've downloaded it inadvertently. You are authorized to aid with legitimate government missions. You will be their first operational Human Intersect. You are not to allow the CIA, NSA, or any other government agency or their agents to understand the full capabilities of the Charter's Intersect. Database and analysis mode only, Five." She lifted her eyebrows up chidingly to which the Five of Diamonds shrugged innocently.
"All the Kings have met regarding this mission. We've agreed upon the following long-term operational objectives. Primary – Fulcrum will not be allowed access to any Intersect program. Secondary – Eliminate Fulcrum. It has been festering too long in the underbelly of the US government, rotting their intelligence system. Tertiary – Damage North and South American operations of the Ring. Taking out the Ring may be Heart's mission, but Diamonds has been tasked with this objective. The Kings do acknowledge that Diamonds will be in a good position to make a major dent in the Ring, particularly considering Fulcrum's recent foray under the Ring's thumb. Five, since you are running point on the primary objective, you will take lead for these tasks. Assemble a team of analysts."
King of Diamonds turned to address a short brunette woman. "Six, you've been promoted, you are now Seven of Diamonds. We've been without our Seven for some time and it is past due, congratulations." There was a small round of applause and big smiles across the room; Seven truly deserved the promotion.
King then held her hand towards the tall brunette in the front corner. "Everyone, this is now Six of Diamonds; again. Six, assist Five with the planning since you will both be undercover for this mission. You'll be getting your card back before you leave."
Five looked over at the reinstated Six of Diamonds and smiled, he loved working with his sister. They didn't get that many chances to do that anymore since she chose to pursue life outside of The Charter. She smiled back at him. She'd chosen to reactivate until her brother was no longer exposed; she wished he could have done this mission undercover. There really hadn't been another way: they had to use his real life to infiltrate the CIA and NSA to clean up this family business. The US intelligence services had proven repeatedly they couldn't be trusted with Intersect technology.
The King continued, "For those who don't know Six yet, she has just come out of retirement to assist in this mission. But only this mission, people. She's made her intentions clear. She has served the Charter well over the years and earned a well-deserved retirement. I wouldn't bother trying to change her mind; if I couldn't the rest of you certainly won't be able to." There was a gentle laugh around the room from those who knew the reinstated Six well.
After the meeting wrapped up, the King went over to Five and Six to give them some words of encouragement. It wasn't an easy thing to let one's spy life and its inherent risks cross over to real life and one's friends. "Chuck, Ellie, how are you holding up?"
Chuck replied, "Honestly, Nancy? I was hoping to never have to deal with Larkin again and I'm hoping I don't actually have to interact with him much. I guess we'll see what the Intersect calculations hold, but you know he slept with Jill and how I felt about her."
Ellie couldn't hold her tongue, "Chuck you were so compromised with her. She's Fulcrum, Chuck!" Ellie still couldn't let go of her dislike of that bitch, Jill Roberts. Really, they had been lucky that Bryce made the break-up easier on Chuck. At least he seemed over her at the point, mostly…
"Ellie, you know we didn't know that at the time. I'm not going to rehash Jill with you again. Besides, that's not my only reason, even if we manipulated him into getting me kicked out of Stanford, he doesn't know that."
Chuck was not looking forward to letting his two worlds mix again. The last time it cost him his degree. He might have been pursuing it for fun, but still, it was something he was proud of. He'd earned that full scholarship ride to Stanford and all those semesters on the Dean's List. He didn't ever expect to use his degree at some dot com start up or big tech company or anything; being an agent for the Charter had been his career since before he was old enough to have a career.
Even without that piece of paper, he used his nearly complete engineering and computer science degrees regularly for the Charter. His latest project with his father had yielded enormous gains. They now had the Heart Intersect to utilize. The program was able to run predictive math and determine likely outcomes if their agents acted in a certain way or did a certain thing. It was like every operative being a Human Intersect, except that a Jack could help guide them focusing on agency priorities. It was invaluable to all the suits. The Charter would be in a much better position to safeguard world peace, save good people, stop wars from happening, and really do some good.
Heck, degree or no degree Chuck was well on his way to being promoted to Ten of Diamonds. The spot was due to open soon and he was pretty sure Nancy was keying him up to take it. He was happy for the newly promoted Seven, but he had more time with the Charter and had been next up for promotion. He was pretty sure that Nancy wanted to hold off until he could take Ten's place. If they completed this mission, he could finally move away from his real life, which he wryly acknowledged was also his cover once again. Success would do a lot towards getting that Ten position. Then he could focus on research, tech creation, and analysis work. He was already doing these things for the Charter but being a high card would mean far less risk of deep cover or fieldwork. In the field, the blending of real life and cover could get complicated. Working support would be far easier; maybe he would even be able to settle down at some point. After 10 plus years of field ops, between helping his parents and being an agent for the Charter, he was ready for that.
He had kept working part time at the Buy More for the last four years after being "kicked out" of Stanford. To be fair, he WAS kicked out, even if his father and the Charter manipulated Bryce into doing it. Working at the Buy More helped ground him and keep him sane (as insane as that place was). Running missions non-stop is a recipe for burn out and apathy, something he could not allow to happen. Also, it kept him seeing Ellie and Morgan on a regular basis. It was really an easy cover to keep, Big Mike didn't seem to care enough ever that Chuck was regularly on installs or "loaned" to other stores or corporate.
The Charter helped to make sure his cover job was intact, hacking and "hiring" him when necessary. Chuck had somehow managed to keep a balance between his two worlds. He felt that spies performed the best when they had something to live for and cared about people. He thought that the whole "spies don't have feelings bullshit", was just that, bullshit. Dehumanizing yourself only leads to dehumanizing of other people.
He also knew that there was a difference between sharing all the operational details of a mission and letting loved ones know what you did for a living. He imagined what would happen if Ellie didn't know he was a spy. It would be disastrous. Knowledge is power, why would you give power to someone like an adversary when it could be your loved ones you gave that power to? He admitted this line of thinking was probably due to being born into a spy family and he knew most spies didn't think like him.
"Chuck? Chuck?" Nancy was trying to get his attention.
"Sorry Nancy don't mind me, just the Intersect whirring along distracting me about the mission," Chuck apologized for getting lost in thought about the Buy More of all places.
"It's alright Chuck. I know it's a lot to take in. You are going to be deep undercover in your own life… again. When we kept you off the CIA's radar four years ago it was because it had been too soon to go after Project Omaha. Now you are going to be on their radar in a big way. I know you can handle it, but I'm here if you want to talk." Nancy reassured her best operative. Chuck nodded an acknowledgement to her.
"Nancy, how are my background checks holding, anything out of the ordinary? Anything to worry about? Are all the Buy More records tidy? Hard copies taken care of too?" Chuck knew it couldn't hurt to be more paranoid when he was expecting both the CIA and the NSA to come down hard on him. He had to look spotless except for his expulsion. "And my Piranha alias, it's still unassociated, correct?" Chuck was in and out of deep cover in college as the hacker, Piranha. He had taken down some really bad elements and done some great work under that alias, but if there was anything linking him to the Piranha, the Charter's plan would be useless. He would never be able to eliminate Fulcrum. The Piranha was still on the FBI's most wanted list.
"Chuck, we've checked. Diamond's best analysts checked. Jack of Clubs checked. Queen of Hearts checked. Hell, I even had Queen of Spades check. It's clear. Your cover will remain intact and there will be no cracks to find in your real life to point back to the Charter or the Piranha. You know we would never risk that."
He did feel better knowing that both his parents and the Charter's best analysts had checked to make sure there wasn't anything amiss. "And Ellie?" Chuck kept his worry up.
"Ellie has been clean since she retired. Though I'm still not sure how she managed to get through Med School, being the Six of Diamonds, and having a non-spy relationship. No one would ever believe she had time for all of that even if there was a thread pointing back to the Charter." Nancy reassured Chuck.
"Thank you, Nancy, for letting me come back and help with this mission." Ellie would have interjected herself anyways, but it was nice to get it cleared and have full support.
"Chuck, Ellie, I'm not going to lie. This will be tough. You won't have a Jack to quarterback your mission. I know you both have experience without it, but your stress will be through the roof without the assist. I'm hoping that your Intersects will be all you need. I think the only reason this is going to work is because both of you will be able to check the Intersect Math and recalculate outcomes as you go. You will need to figure out a way to communicate that the NSA and the CIA will never find. Chuck, put those engineering skills to use, work with Ten to get the technology made before we need it, in other words, yesterday. We don't know when Larkin will be in play." They both nodded and shook the King's hand. She then went off to discuss more of the mission with other analysts and agents.
"Well Chuck, let's work on selecting some analysts. This mission won't plan itself." Ellie said, putting her arm in Chuck's arm and walking towards a group on the other side of the room.
"Sure El." He replied, not able to stop a small smile.
Ellie's Condo, Fox Run Condo and Apartment Complex, Echo Park September 19th, 2007
Chuck knew Ellie loved to throw parties. She looked for any excuse to have one and Chuck's birthday was certainly a no brainer. Not that he didn't love her, but they had just started getting used to living with each other recently as part of their mission. He just started to spend all his time at the condo after years of only quasi living there. It had been an adjustment period. Luckily Devon, having just finished his residency, never paid too much attention to Chuck's whereabouts.
His apartment across the courtyard sat empty, not that anyone ever knew it was Chuck's besides Ellie and work. The last piece of new drywall placed across access to the underground system was installed and the whole place was painted, shiny and ready to lease. He was really going to miss his bat pole entrance and the rest of his spy-gear fortress of solitude. The mission would start in full any day. Intersect calculations gave 89% certainty that if he could convince the CIA and NSA of his innocence, they would place an agent in the complex if available. All of Fox Run was owned under a set of Charter shell companies; even the NSA and CIA couldn't trace it back to the world's most secret clandestine global agency. The Charter used it generally as a safehouse and kept more than one empty condo there for that purpose. It was now inactive as a safehouse for the duration of the mission. The cleaners had done an excellent job of removing all traces of surveillance from not only Chuck's quarters but the safehouses. Chuck felt naked. Soon he would feel very exposed too. He was not in the mood for a party.
"I'm warning you Ellie, you sick your doctor friends on me again and I'm going to go full loser on them. I'm going to whine about how I'm still pining over Jill, and I definitely will talk about as much nerdy stuff as possible. Really, I just want to play video games with Morgan and sulk. I've had too many people recently. I miss my apartment and it's just staring at me every time I'm in the courtyard."
"Come on Chuck, stop pouting, you'll have fun, and you know it." Ellie egged him on.
"Doubtful. Oh look, there's Morgan now." Morgan opened the window and stepped in.
"Where's who what now?" Morgan said, almost tripping as he cleared the window.
"Sorry buddy, no COD; we get to fail at picking up women again. Ellie won't let us out of my birthday party." Chuck whined.
"Well, it is your party. Maybe I'll get lucky!" Morgan smiled with a lecherous grin.
"Eww, Morgan. Just… No. Come on help me finish setting up." Ellie's disgust for Morgan was genuine.
Several hours and a few beers later, Chuck sat with Ellie at the fountain. He bumped her shoulder, "Ok, I had fun. It was even fun playing the how fast can I scare the girls away game."
Ellie rolled her eyes at him and laughed, "I know you don't do relationships Chuck and don't plan to while you are Five, but you've got to keep the options open! You'll want to settle down one day."
Chuck nodded, looking down at his shoes. He tried a few years back to have a girlfriend. Kayla had been an amazing girlfriend. The problem was, Chuck was not an amazing boyfriend. He couldn't juggle a relationship and work. Jill had always been so distant and never complained about how little time he spent with her. He knew why now; she was just as busy as he was with being a spy. It didn't occur to him that he would struggle to keep a relationship until Kayla. He constantly let Kayla down. He was flaky with her; he had no choice. He was faced with either marrying her so she could know the truth (his own qualifier) or breaking it off. More accurately, he didn't fight for her. The distance between them increased, until she decided to move away, and he didn't follow. He'd never let his spy life get close to her, so she had been in no danger, but keeping her at such a distance meant not truly being himself with her. It just couldn't work. They broke up when she moved away. He missed Kayla too much. Even Morgan knew not to talk about her, and he talked about everything.
He thought about dating other regular girls, he'd come close once with the owner of the sandwich shop down the way in the Buy More plaza, Lou. He ended up making sure they would be just friends. Kayla was still too fresh, and the problem was still the same. He tried dating some of his colleagues at the Charter, it never lasted long, and he always regretted it afterwards. It was the worst kind of walk of shame, he knew they all talked about him afterwards, because they all tried to date him. He was finished with that casual bullshit. Nope he was now a like priest. Yep, celibate and chaste, he wasn't going to play that game again. He laughed at himself knowing that was a tall order, good thing he was tall.
"Well, I'm going to go appease Morgan and finish the evening with some COD. He took Odessa's rejection pretty hard, not to mention the other dozen women he tried to pick up tonight. You have to hand it to him, he's tenacious."
"Eww, I do not have to hand anything to him Chuck, it's in the rules, No Touching. You know that." Ellie laughed.
It was getting late and Morgan was getting annoying. He'd been whining over Odessa, just like Chuck had predicted. Chuck had stopped playing COD and spoke, "Cheer up Morgan, you did talk to some women. Practice makes perfect." Chuck's computer chirped, Morgan looked over and saw the pop-up, saying, "Wow, blast from the past. Bryce remembered your birthday, dude." It caught Chuck off guard for half a second, "What?" 'Shit, it is mission go,' Chuck thought. He stopped listening to Morgan and was already into spy mode.
"Well, time to pedal Morgan. I'm done for the night."
"Are you sure you don't want to look at it? Why would he email you?"
"Probably some spam email with a virus knowing that asshat. I'll look at that trash in the morning. No use spoiling a perfectly bad mood with the risk of more bad mood. Ha! Good night, Morgan."
"Good night, Chuck. Happy Birthday."
Once Morgan was on his way Chuck changed modes. He called Ellie into the room and then they called Jack. Jack of Diamonds retrieved the email as planned and left a burnt-out email that looked like it had been downloaded. Chuck had been surprised by the Zork access wall. Programming Zork had been their thing. Maybe Bryce wasn't quite as much of an asshat as he remembered. Maybe Bryce actually felt bad about Stanford. Chuck needed to focus. He caused critical failures to run on the motherboard and hard drive, making sure to kill the BIOS while he was at it. He hated killing a perfectly good computer, but it was for a good cause.
"Ok Jack, I'm going dark after this call, final review time. I'll be accessible via Six's communication device only. I do not intend to call in unless it is an absolute emergency. Six's secure phone, Ocular, and earwig will be locked up and she will not be accessing them except for routine checks for usability unless it is under emergency protocols. Reports will be submitted as previously discussed. You will need to give me the signal if the Intersect update location and drop site has been compromised. Six's secure phone has been confirmed to be on the encrypted communication network and will require the rotating encryption key as planned previously, however as we just covered it will be locked away and deactivated. All the team's personal iPhones are uploaded with my EROS app for primary communication as needed. I will be taking my Diamond access card, secure phone, and any remaining Charter tech and leaving it in the Encino base for now. Any Bartowski connection to the house has long since been severed and they won't be able to access the base below the house even if they start nosing around the property. Jack, tell Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Spades we will miss them. Tell them if they need to get a message to us, they can always use the retired Eight of Diamonds. They will know how to reach him. King are you with Jack?"
"Yes, Five?" she replied.
"Any last-minute thoughts?" Chuck asked.
"Don't let them know how good you are; remember what we talked about. You are basically no better than facial recognition software combined with a low-level analyst. I don't want you embedded forever and if they ever realize how good you are, you'll be working on a second pension. I want you all for the Diamonds."
Chuck laughed, "Thanks King. Wish us luck."
"Godspeed Five and Six. And good luck."
Finishing the last-minute final pre-mission tasks, including a late-night drive to the old house in Encino, at least gave a chance for Chuck and Ellie to have some honest time together before putting on the total façade that would be required for the unforeseeable future.
"Ellie, I want you to know how sorry I am."
"About what?"
"I know you want to marry Devon soon. Until we finish this mission, it will be near impossible for that to happen without keeping your past with the Charter a secret."
"He hasn't even asked yet. Let's worry about it when we get there. And Chuck, I know you don't want to talk about her, but it's not too late for Kayla. Maybe when all this is done you can try again with her."
"Pretty sure that ship has sailed." Thinking about her still made Chuck sad. The rest of their ride passed in silence. He needed to focus on the mission now. They had created a list of potential agents that would be likely to come and respond to the theft of the Intersect. He was reviewing the strategies and outcomes for each agent they were predicting. He wanted to be ready, but he knew no plan survived first contact. They reached the condo and turned in for the night, hopefully to get some rest for the upcoming challenges.
Chuck awoke and got ready for work. He was used to flashing on bits of intel on a daily basis and usually it didn't mean much so he ignored the flash he had on the motorcade coming through this morning on his normal way to work, he just filed it away for later and knew they would need a different way into work, he did wonder who would be in town to get a motorcade.
A bit later he was starting his workday at the Buy More and talking the Nerd Herd through the daily plan. It was his favorite part of the day. He loved mission briefs. He always ran the herd like that, he couldn't help it, he was so well trained on how to get a team on task and organized. "Fellow nerds, today is going to be a very bad day. We've got a new computer virus on our hands. They're calling this one the Irene Demova virus. Yes, yes, it's named after the Serbian porn star. Lonely dude call volume will be high. This is a nasty one, kids. It's a computer killer. Last night, the display version of our Prism Express laptop was fried when someone…." Looking over at Morgan, he paused, "decided to enter Ms. Demova's Web site. Anna, close your eyes…. This is what happens." Chuck demonstrated the virus on the computer he just repaired from the virus. Morgan made a lame excuse. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please just ignore dirty uncle Morgan." As the computer laid dying on the Nerd Herd desk, Chuck noticed the news Morgan just turned on the wall of TVs and flashed. 'Well, that answers that question. Stanfield is in town; I'll need to run some Intersect calculations to see how it factors in, if at all, to the mission.' He wrapped up the mission brief, as he was fond of calling it, and sent the nerds to work. He had some math to crunch.